Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Running Class

I signed up for a "Marathon 501" class through a local running shop. My marathon training partner Vicki was going to do it, so I figured I would too.

The group meets twice a week, on Wednesday evenings and Saturday mornings. Wednesday night will be hill work or speed work, while Saturday is the long run. We have two coaches and we also get emails a few times a week from the head coach of the whole program. (They run this class out of several locations.) Plus they have a website with different training schedules we can use, and where we track all of our workouts so the coaches can review it during the week and give us comments when we meet for class.

Last Wednesday was the first class where we actually ran. The prior Wednesday was orientation and they didn't have a Saturday meeting. Not sure how I feel about the class so far. We met at the running store, then ran two miles to a middle school that has a track. Once on the track, we did a two-mile timed run that the coaches will use to help us determine what our training pace should be. Then we ran two miles back to the store, got some initial comments from the coaches about our workouts we'd posted online, and that was it.

I was hoping that we'd be getting some tips on running form and that sort of thing during the class, but so far it hasn't happened. This thing will run through October (most people in the class are training for the Detroit marathon that happens in Oct.) so there's still plenty of time for that, I guess. But the coaches seem a little disorganized and I'm hoping that improves, too. If nothing else, though, at least it will force me to do some hills and speed work which are two things I tend to avoid on my own.

I won't be attending the Saturday long runs because they take place at a park which is way too far away from David's house where I spend the weekends. I don't want to drive 90 minutes to meet for a 6:45am long run. Vicki and I meet at a park and do our long runs together, and there's a huge Team in Training group that meets there so we always have people to run with if we want.

Overall, I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that I didn't waste $150!

3 comments:

Black Bear! said...

A class is cool! I totally forgot training for Detroit would happen about now. The class will keep you motivated on some of those days in about 11 weeks, where you are sick of training. So, I don't think the $150 is a waste yet.

I will be interested to see how they coach you along the way and how it helps you. One day, you will learn to embrace the hill and love it.

Uhm, no, nevermind, hills suck, but it sounded good when I wrote that. LOL

Cathy said...

Hahaha, yeah embrace the hill sounds good but I'm not buying into it. :) I am doing the Heart of the Hills 10K in July in Bloomfield Hills, though, to try to convince myself to embrace the hills. You should run it, too. :)

chris mcpeake said...

Always tough to know what your getting with a class. Hopefully it will end up being good.