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Marking three years since she moved to Jersey this week, Eva Ziegler said she found it "difficult to settle down" and make "life-long friends" when she first came to the island.
Inspired by her own experience of finding moving over from Leeds with her boyfriend for his new job "quite hard" at first, the 23-year-old has now launched her own girls run club to prevent others from feeling the same.
"My boyfriend plays rugby, so when we moved he immediately made about 40 new friends [at Jersey Rugby Club] and it was easy for him to meet people, but I don't do any team sports so found it quite hard moving over here," Miss Ziegler said.
"It's taken me a long time to settle down and meet some friends, I'd not had any lasting friendships since moving over until the start of this year."
Explaining her motivation for starting AM Run Club, which "is more about the socialising than the running", she added: "I wish I had something like this when I moved over here".
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Pictured: Eva Ziegler found it "quite hard" finding friends when moving to Jersey.
As the AM (pre-noon) name would suggest, the group meet every Saturday morning for a casual 20-minute run before heading for a coffee or a sweet treat.
Noting that there are multiple local running clubs, Miss Ziegler explained that she had tried many before and none had helped build her social bubble.
"There are an abundance of run clubs in Jersey," she said. "I've been to a few of them and a lot of very focused on the running, obviously. But I didn't want [AM Run Club] to be about the running, almost more about the socialising side of it."
Group running can also be "quite scary" for some, she added, and was a problem that is made worse by social media.
"On social media at the moment, like Instagram and TikTok, it is very much about the running hype at the moment. All you see is people doing these crazy long fast runs and a lot of people that want to get into running see that and think it's the norm.
"My club is a bit more realistic, and it's just about having a nice time"
Having held their first session a few weeks ago, which she said was "really lovely", Miss Ziegler wants to pair future sessions with activities such as yoga before of after the run.
Women of any age can join AM Run Club. To find out more, get in touch via their Instagram page HERE.
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