Club Runs - A Chilly One!

Hello blog lovers.

What a chilly night!  Winter is certainly beginning to claim its time in our year!  Scrapping frost of the cars, wooly hats and gloves! Brrrrr!  But runners still get out there and do it!  My thinking is, it's only for an hour, but in my case its for 2, so lets get on with it!

The Graduates are still keen, which is all that it takes to be a runner.  If you can get yourself out of your nice comfy sofa, away from the drivel on the t.v. and cram your self into your running tights, bright reflective tops and jackets, and shove on a warm luminous hat (well mine is luminous, I look like a big zit running down the road!) then you really are a runner!  Nagging Sister, Tracy and Ade and Lorraine were at the rec this evening, well, N.S. went and collected Lorraine as she was running a tad late, and I didn't want her to miss out on todays run.

I was a bit negligent as I had forgotten to charge up my Garmin! I was going to do a slightly different route today but decided I would stick to the route that we had done before as I knew the exactly milage of that.  And as Tracy was coming back from injury the route was going to be the same as last time and that is run in the opposite direction! Are you with me so far? Good!

But for Ade and N.S. to make it a bit more challenging for them, then they will be doing the 'sprint backs' to me at my whistle! Well, you have got to keep it fun!  All I can say is that every one did so well indeed! I was impressed with everyone, they all kept going, Lorraine had a tight calf and had to stretch out a couple of times, but that was it.  No walking stops at all! Now to work on the speed!

Group 1 Run

SingstarJo was leading group 1 today, and it's a bit of a special one today as DiscoRich's Saturdays Beginners have graduated and they are joining us for the Group runs. I think some beginners are even joining group 2!  SingstarJo has chosen her route that will allow a short cut towards the end of the run, but if they really are feeling totally comfortable and still have tons of enery, then the is the slightly longer route with a small tiny hill, might be more appealing to them. It's the same route that I had taken the graduates on only an hour earlier!  Illustrious Leader will be sweeping this evening and when we get to the point of decision time, i.e. longer route or shorter route, then I would take all those that want to do the shorter route and take them back to the rec to begin stretches.

S.J. took us up Birchwood.  Now this should get our blood pumping and will soon warm us all up!  But just after starting on this route we had a faller!  She came down quite hard and grazed her knee!  She felt like she wanted to carry on, but sometimes you have to say to runners, "No, pain is not good, relax, get better for another time" Runners can be stubborn! But it is that determination that you need to get you out into the cold night air, or to keep you going to the end of a marathon, or to keep going after you have done 80 - 90 miles! Anyway we persuaded her to not to run any more, I.L. will walk with her back to her car, and then she will come and join up with us on another part of the route!

The group was staying quite tight together, up the rest of the hill, and then down again.  We did start to pull apart after  a while.  With the built in stopping points that SingstarJo there wasn't too much of a gap, and to keep the faster runners from getting cold, S.J. even had a little extra bit for them to do while the back runners caught up and took a bit of a breather!

The next stopping point is the infamous off license (which is not a mini supermarket). Infamous only because we I still see it as such, (I must stop  living in the past!, when I was younger, skinnier, but a couch potato!) From there it was straight down to the Newsshopper carpark where we had another regroup and decision time!

About 8 or so decided that 3 miles for sufficient for todays run and went with me for the shorter route.  As we were running down Pettswood road I had noticed that J.J. and Janet we in front of me! Trail blazing, leading the way home! "What are you two do here?" I called out jokingly to them and they called back "We were hoping you didn't notice us" they both called back.

All in all a good couple of runs this evening, well apart from the one fall!  I shall let you all know how Wendi is getting on in my next club run!