Wednesday 11 December 2013

C&C - Becoming a Club Runner


Although Christmas and Carols might be on my mind at this time of year, in this case C&C actually refers to Cambridge and Coleridge – a local running club which as of last night I am now a paid-up member of. I’ve been weighing up whether to join a club for a while now - I used to attend free Monday night sessions with a coach from C&C but they started at 6pm and with an increase in workload over the summer it became impossible to make it on time. Since I stopped going to those, I have missed the experience of running in a group but have still been nervous about joining the club.

In local races and parkrun I’m a middle of the pack runner, but I know that club runners are usually thought to be speedier than that – I wasn’t sure whether my pace would be welcome at a club - after all I won’t be winning any trophies (unless I keep running this pace until I’m a pensioner and then I might get a decent age-grading!). However, I’ve gradually got to know lots of club runners and have realised that actually they aren’t actually all speed-demons and, regardless of their pace, they are generally a friendly bunch. In fact, they are not really any different to non-club-runners – they just like running and get to run together in the cold, dark evenings, rather than by themselves!
My other concern was that the coached sessions might not match what my marathon training plan said I should be doing each week. However, chatting this through with a friend (who managed the awesome time of exactly 4 hours dead for his first marathon a couple of months ago) he said that he just gave over responsibility for his speedwork to the club session regardless of what his training plan said. Basically, you just need to include some intervals/speedwork and exactly what that is each week doesn’t really matter. Speaking to him and to other friends along with my husband who joined C&C a few months ago persuaded me to head to the club last night.

The session was described as “Off-track: Aerobic, 6 x 4:00, 3:00 recovery, West Site” which quite frankly was a complete mystery to me. We started off with 2 laps of the track as a warm up and then continued with some drills including skipping, high knees and strides, before jogging to the ‘West Site’ to start the actual session. The session was led by Coach Rich, who blew the whistle to set us off and we had to run at about 5K pace for 4 minutes, when he would blow the whistle again. We then had 3 minutes recovery, before the whistle blew again and we had to aim to get back to the starting point in 4 minutes. We repeated that twice more, each time aiming for the same spot. It was a good workout and I’m sure I pushed myself more than I would have done had I been trying to do a similar session by myself – it was also good not having to think about anything or look at the time – I just had to listen for the whistle and then go!

One of my favourite things about running is the community aspect and I am looking forward to being part of C&C. It also makes me chuckle that I was considered to be pretty rubbish at PE at school and yet now I’ll be donning a club vest for races. My thoughts on PE in schools is a topic for a whole other blog post though…

2 comments:

  1. Ooh exciting!! I'm going to join a new club too!! Hope you enjoy your new club-running!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks, I'm looking forward to it (plus it gives me an excuse to buy a new hoodie!)- hope you find a new club you like :-)

    ReplyDelete