Being Da Coach

As some of you know, I’ve been hosting "Learn To Run" clinics at work for the last few years. It was never started as an officially organized group or with thoughts of world domination through the strength of legs I’ve trained. It started innocently enough with a single question, "Mark, can you show me how to run?"

I’ll never claim to be an expert runner, but I do read a bit and experiment a bit and even listen to people that coach me. So initially, all I did was invite people along on my lunchtime run to get a little sweaty.

Well, that one runner told a few people and they told a few more people that I was holding clinics to teach people how to run. It took on a life all it’s own when I got three phone calls one April a few years ago from people asking when I was starting my spring clinic. This was news to me, I was just running with friends. Having to take on a whole herd of new runners was a more than little daunting. The final straw was the invite to present information on running at the Health And Safety Fair at work.

Not being one to walk away from a reasonable challenge, I pulled together some documentation off the web, some personal experiences, some photos and finishers medals and I did a small presentation to a group of about ten people. Through out the next week I received even more calls as to when I was going to start my spring clinic.

At that point I figured I might as well get serious, so I found out what I needed to do to put together an official program at work. I crafted an email to the Fitness distribution list at work, and arranged another lunch time meeting to let people know what to expect and to answer any questions.

That was four years ago.

Last year, I had a few of the people that started with my first few clinics decide to run the Bay. I didn’t organize much, just a few informal training runs from La Salle Park after work. All members that started finished the race and vowed to return. Most of them asked for their next challenge, so I suggested the 100-mile relay. We had some challenges with people getting sick and juggling substitutions, but in the end we all had a blast.

In 2005 I ran my usual clinics both Spring and Fall, with the usual number of people successfully completing the 6-8 week 5k program. In November, a number of former clinic runners asked for a "real" Around the Bay clinic.

So, what was I to do? First, I hacked up a marathon training schedule and I emailed it out to those that wanted it. Then, we figured out what day of the week we could all do a training run on Northshore. When we settled on a day for the die-hards, I posted it out, once again, on the company fitness list with an open invite for anyone that wanted to join us. So, for the month of February, we met every Friday at 4:30 PM to run the Northshore hills.

Everything went well, through most of the month until I realized that our Friday training run was almost everyone’s weekly long run. Oops, it was time to start bumping mileage.

For the rest of the time leading up to the race, we ran those Northshore hills every Friday night, first five miles, then seven miles then 12 miles and finally 15 miles. Over the winter months, these poor people had to put up with my stories, my incessant yakking and gentle suggestions that we do pickup’s on those hills.

On race day, they had the usual nerves and jitters on the first half of the race, but when they hit Northshore it was like being on their home turf. All but one of them finished within their target time (setting PB’s) and all are looking at a return attempt next year.

And me? I’m looking forward to having even more people joining me on my 2007 training sessions, running those darn hills over, and over, and over again.

By Mark G. Collis

Revised: April 25, 2006.