First Run

Well, alert readers may remember that I said I didn’t want to miss the first Running Room run clinic. And I didn’t. I signed up for the Monday evening learn-to-run clinic, and last night was the first night.

I decided that the session starting in March would be the best, since it goes for 10 weeks, and should leave me running 20 minutes non-stop by the end of May or so. That will set me up for a (hopefully) good summer of independent running. Having signed up for the spring clinic means starting in March, and it has been so nice here since the beginning of March. As a special treat for the first clinic, of course, the temperature did drop back to -10°. I dressed up though, and it was actually fine… much better than I had anticipated.

I have run before. About 3 years ago I was running 5km 2-3 times per week through the summer. So taking a learn-to-run clinic felt like it was going to be good as far as helping me to get out there at a specific time, but also pretty soft in terms of difficulty. I was happy to find that there are many people just like me in the class. With a class of about 100, there are people who run fast, and some who run slow. There is one instructor, but many group leaders; when we go out running, the group leaders run at different paces, so there is a subgroup for any pace. I was worried that the first class running practice (run 1 minute, walk 2 minutes, repeat 6 times) was going to be super-boring, but since I ran in the front group it was actually a good challenge.

One other good thing about this class is that I’m hoping to learn this method of ramping up distance more gradually. My old method of run-till-you-drop-and-hope-its-further-than-last-week is trial by fire for the first 5 or 6 runs, and probably not that good for me either. At the clinic, I certainly could not have kept that pace up for the whole distance without the walking, and week by week the balance will change over to running until we are running 10 minutes with a 1 minute walking break. I think I will delete the walking break when running on my own.

Anyway, I found the class helpful. When it’s over I’ll either continue on my own, or consider signing up for the next session, which takes you from running 20 minutes continuously to running 10 km.

Also, the end of this clinic coincides with the National Capital Race Weekend, so I am considering doing a 5 km run as a part of that.

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