Have you ever out run/out lived your running club? (Read 1048 times)

Mr R

posted: 4/15/2009 at 10:48 PM

I really don't think you should be paying $100 to join a running group. Pay for a good coach who will give you lots of personal attention, but other than that, you should only pay member dues to clubs that reinvest that money in the club. As far as getting beyond your club, you should do what's right for you. A running club is not a life partner with whom you must enter a monogamous relationship. It's just a vehicle to find training partners. I've been a part of several different training groups. There have been times when I could barely keep up, and I would only join them for easy runs. There have also been times when there was nobody at a workout who could keep up my pace, so it was just warmup/cooldown together. People come and go from training groups/clubs. The training changes over time. Sometimes it won't be aligned with your fitness or goals, and then it's time to move on. You can still call up your old running buddies to go for some easy mileage, even if you're spending more time with a different group of runners. I've gone for easy runs with Olympians and sub-4 milers. I can't do workouts with them, so we train with different groups most of the time, but on an easy day, we can go together. If you keep running long enough, you'll have hundreds of training partners over the decades. Some will be faster, some slower, some will be your best friends, some will be in and out of your life in a snap. Embrace it. It's one of my favorite things about the sport.

What was the secret, they wanted to know; in a thousand different ways they wanted to know The Secret. And not one of them was prepared, truly prepared to believe that it had not so much to do with chemicals and zippy mental tricks as with that most unprofound and sometimes heart-rending process of removing, molecule by molecule, the very tough rubber that comprised the bottoms of his training shoes. The Trial of Miles, Miles of Trials. How could they be expected to understand that? -John Parker

AmoresPerros

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posted: 4/15/2009 at 11:08 PM

I've done open water swims with people of various speeds -- and it's a lot less comfortable to adjust swimming speed than running speed (according to me). So we tend to spread out, and often kind of pair off into fairly similar paces. But it's still very much a group activity -- we're together at the beginning, we see each other at various points out and back, and we mostly see each other afterward. I've also done group runs where we bifurcated -- split into slower & faster groups. With swimming, if I see one slower person getting left alone, I may go join them (and breaststroke to adjust to the pace) -- safety (& slightly social manners). With running, if I see one person (esp. if a female) winding up alone, I'm likely to go run with them -- social manners & slight safety (ie, a solitary female might feel a bit less safe running alone, in some areas).

It's a 5k. It hurt like hell...then I tried to pick it up. The end.

bap

posted: 4/16/2009 at 1:59 PM
modified: 4/16/2009 at 2:01 PM

Quote from Aimster on 4/15/2009 at 4:07 PM:

I'd say most of my long runs have been in the neighborhood of 9:30 -10:00/mile. I did run nice and slow this weekend with a member of the team, she is recovering from a hamstring problem, plus it rained. I believe my Garmin had us at a 9:50 average. I've been concentrating on time on my feet and not worrying about pace.

Nice. My running club costs $20 to join, including a t-shirt and free coaching.

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jeffdonahue

posted: 4/16/2009 at 3:01 PM
modified: 4/16/2009 at 3:03 PM

Last year when I really upped my mileage I just ran from my gym to where my group meets (so that I would arrive there just as they were leaving) and then I woudl run back afterwards. This tacked on 4 more miles to whatever they were doing for the day. As for speed, I dont really have that problem. My group tends to run around 8:30-8:50mpm pace and that is just fine for me. And when we get to tempo, track and hill workouts there are some guys in my group that I could never catch and others that may never catch me so it all evens out depending on how I am feeling that day. I also have another person that is slower than I am that I run with occasionally, but I go at her pace. Usually I will just call her up and see if she wants to run - then I ask how far she wants to go. If I was planning to go farther we meet at her house and I run over, if I was planning on going the same as her I usually drive over and we run from there (it rarely happens that she is running more than me). But she has always been okay with knowing that I can run faster than her if I wanted and that I might be doing extra miles after I leave her.