I've wanted to run with the Harriers for over two years now but with work commitments and also, I should admit, a slight fear of running with other people, I haven't made it. Last Thursday I bit the bullet and turned up for their tempo day.
Meeting in the Harriers club on the edge of the park, the 7p.m. start is a fairly relaxed affair with people turning up and having a chat awaiting their different groupings. The groups are pretty straight forward at 4, 6, 8 or 10 miles, lead out of the door by longer serving members who know the routes. I opted for the 10 which is an out and back to Tower Bridge, with the front runners keeping a tidy pace throughout. With the London Marathon coming up fairly shortly and 20+ Victoria Park Harriers running it, I think the front runners are looking at sub 3's at least.
I've been undecided for a long time about joining a club, torn between the solitude that I love from clocking miles and the knowledge you can gain from a well established and experienced group of runners. Thursday night, as I thought, decided that for me.
I ran alongside a multiple OMM finisher and Fellsman badge holder so quickly found a like minded being. We ran slightly behind the front pack and had a younger runner tucked in with us, keeping quiet and running hard (he didn't actually tell us until we were 100 yards from the clubhouse that he hadn't run the 10 miler before and had been keeping a good 7min/mile pace throughout!).
A few things became immediately apparent during this Thursday outing. The front runners looked strong, which was good. The group run meant I was keeping a pace that I may have otherwise slackened back on, and that has its very obvious training benefits! It reminded me more of being with a pack in a race and it was a good feeling to be out with fellow runners, knowing that the pace was constant, feeling a part of the pack rather than the tagger on. I'm a massive fan of mileage, I love clocking endless miles up the canal paths from my home, but this session was a shorter sharper burst of running that I know will do well for strength conditioning. The Harriers also run a speed/interval session on a Tuesday that I imagine will have the same benefits. Another benefit to the run was a new route, traffic free, that I had only partially been on before. With many miles stepped looking for traffic free routes this was an added bonus to the evening! The time clocked up fast as we chatted along the route and being a small group actually made the night time canal route a lot easier as my thoughts were on my running and not on what, or who, may be round the next corner!
To top it all off the club has a bar, open on Thursday evenings post run. Next time I'll remember to take a change of gear. Could it get better? Well, it seems that it just might as I was told they also have BBQ's in the summer!
So with my first run banked I'm looking forward to more training with them. I think I'll still be keeping my long runs to myself, but these weekly sessions look to be a really good way of mixing up training, being involved with other runners and also being involved with events at the clubhouse. I think they also do XC and fell, which is somthing I'll jump on given half the chance!
So as if all this excitement wasn't enough, the final big toenail to come off post Beacons Ultra has parted ways and left a shiny new (half) toenail in its place! Its been threatening to fall and I wasnt sure whether to pull or not, so left it to its own devices:
Not before too long I should be able to construct one of these:
Hahaha!
And now in true typical British fashion, I'm expecting my car to leave its exhaust pipe on the motorway, my roof to collapse with the sheer weight of a freak snowstorm or my ankle to turn over and snap on an acorn, just to counteract all this great news.
Happy Spring Running!
