Yesterday was the first day of our new beginners course! We had a great intake for this one. Forty six people showed up, ready to run and get healthy and fit. There were a couple of people that I recognised from the last group and a there was one person I knew very indeed, my pastor! He has decided that he wants to try this running malarkey. It's never too late! NaggyNeighbour drove us to the rec but on the way I saw our other neighbour, Shalini! She was one of our beginners about 18 months (although she came on the last week!) She was running along the road, we offered to take her there! There is one thing about getting back into running, when you have been a runner before, you have it in your mind that you can kind of pick up from where you were. Shalini had a baby which is why she stopped running and she knew that she wanted to go back to the beginners before getting back to club runs. Running to the course, from where we live and then running back is a sure fire way of your brain kicking in and saying "stop this nonsense right now" Seriously, it's true. But Shalini accepted our lift and was quite pleased that she did!
DiscoRich was there to do the welcome speech and then he handed over to me and ZippySherry. RefMichael was away but he will be back. I took the first session. Do you know, again I looked at all these people standing in front of me, all wanting to learn how to run a 5k. I looked over to my left and saw all of my PWR running buddies that had come along to support all the people that had turned up and I was feeling nervous! Every time, that first week standing in the front, I wonder if I am saying the right thing, doing everything in the right order so that no one comes away with any injured muscles by over doing things. Did I mention everything that I should have!
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| Do I look as if I feel I am facing fierce lions! |
But this time I think I did do things in the right order, I nice 2 lap brisk walk of the rec and then the drills, not too many, just enough to get everyone warm up nicely ready for their 1 minute of running and 5 minutes of walking. We like to start of slowly, build it up! It is such a morale booster the first two weeks! You feel like you are achieving something on the very first day! Even those that used to run and are coming back to running. When then think about only running for that 60 seconds, it sounds so easy, but it still takes your body to get used to it. It's totally best to go slowly!
I had forgotten to introduce all of our PWR members that were there to help out but I feel that DiscoRich and done that, so I am not going to panic over that! Next time I will make sure. I am sure there were other things too, but the session needed to start and start we did. Like a super team we all walked around the green, briskly! You can see there are some people with totally long legs that were just way in front but I think that everyone walked a little faster than they usually do. We got back to the start and then did our drills, skipping, jogging, butt kicks and side steps. Make sure all the leg muscles got a bit of a workout ready to our running.
After that I started up my Garmin, I had already preset my Garmin to the right alerts of 1 min run/5 min walk. Then we started our running. I did try to chat to people, but I knew if I got in to too much of a conversation then I would not hear the very delicate tiny little beep of my watch, and I probably wouldn't notice the vibration on my wrist either! It has been known that I have had them running for 3 minutes when it should have been only for 1 minute! We had to run 5 times, five times that little run/walk reps and that was it. I was chatting to my PastorPaul on the 4th rep and he said that it felt that it was getting easier, the first minute of running was harder than the 4th and the 5th! Well, it does seem like it and that is because you get warmed up, your breathing settles into a nice rhythm and you start to relax a bit! See what I mean about starting out slowly! Can you imagine if you just went out and ran a mile straight off, no warm up, no drills just out the door and run! Well that's how I started running way back in 2008! Let me tell you, it wasn't pretty! It was darn hard and I thought I would never be able to do it! It was also why I didn't do much running in 2009 too, I had no one to help me, no special running day, no one to run with regularly! Of course there were a couple of my friends but we just ran when we had time! But I found that when I joined in the beginners course of Autumn 2010 then I found out that being part of a team, a group it was kept me motivated!
Anyway, I am waffling! We finished the running section, five times running and walking. It seemed to have gone by so quickly, if it wasn't for the clock telling us that we had ran for the 30 minutes I think I would have quite easily done one more rep with them! Even DiscoRich wanted to do another rep with them, he said it felt like we only done 4!
We had our cool down stretches, I brought a couple of the PWR's into the circle of friends ship so that they could show everyone what the stretches looked liked. The homework was given and then that was it! The first week of 2018 Autumn beginners course done! I felt relieved, no one looked like they were going to quit, everyone still very much enthusiastic about it and looking forward to next week!
Lou, one of our beginners from the last one was there with her camera, and SnapperHannah too! She is doing so well! Already moved up to group 3 and running 7.5ks Cow and Bean runs (its a coffee shop where they all meet at the end) and regularly smashing her parkrun pb's!
Here's some photos from Lou
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