Running and the Noobie

Running and the Noobie

Downtown Dash 2008, 5 km & 10 km after race celebration with the
Learn To Run Clinic from work.
Couch Potatoes to 5 km in 10 weeks. Congratulations runners!

 

Why write an article on new runners? Well, there are a lot of “How To” guides for running on the web, coached clinics, and other reading materials. Heck, Runners World has built their business on serving new runners with glossy, retouched pictures and the same rehashed articles.

You read them for a couple of years until you get that deja vu experience one too many times. Eventually, you allow your subscription to expire and only poach, ah… borrow, the odd copy from friends and coworkers that have just started running. I’m not saying that they don’t have articles that are valuable, it’s just that only after a year or so, they run out of things to say that you haven’t read before. It’s kind of like hanging out at coffee with Charles Fraser, pretty soon he runs out of new jokes and starts reusing the old ones.

But I digress…

As many of you know, I have been doing a “Learn To Run” clinic at work for a number of years now. I’m not an expert coach by any measure, but I do enjoy taking a raw couch potato and, over an eight to ten week period, slowly turn them into a runner that can finish a 5 km without stopping or hailing a taxi.

That’s a big deal for most people. It’s one of the few times they have done something really hard under their own power and succeeded. They have to do it for themselves and by themselves. In my experience, most people never have that kind of opportunity for success in their daily lives. In our instant gratification society, running gives them a chance to personally experience and understand at a visceral level what it takes to succeed at something that involves a lot of work, over a long period of time. It allows them to explore themselves mentally, experience their bodies as a machine instead of a place of habitation and see what happens when they take the long, slow and steady approach to a challenge.

For some, the process of becoming a runner did not begin with reading a notice in an email and lacing up a pair of shoes. It began with a snide comment from a coworker or a trip to the doctor telling them about their high blood pressure or cholesterol levels. Sometimes, it’s being out of breath while chasing their kids around the park, other times, it’s a pair of slacks that won’t do up anymore. Once in a while, someone just decides that it’s time to change things in their life and do something for themselves. There are a million paths that lead to the start of this journey, all of them valid, the only question is what do to about it and how to get there when the going gets tough.

This is where the “Learn To Run” clinics come in.

For me, coaching started with a young lady preparing for her wedding, asking me to show her how to run. So, being the kind of person I am, I said sure. Besides, Trish was pleasant company and an enthusiastic student. We started slowly, using the tried and true Galloway method, walk two minutes, run for one. Repeat three times a week for 30 minutes. Easy, eh? So easy, I tell anyone that will listen that they can do it. After the first week, you add 15 seconds running and remove 15 seconds walking, maintaining that 30 minutes of activity. Honestly, it’s not rocket science. If it were, I wouldn’t be coaching it.

However, staying motivated when your lungs and legs are crying “Uncle!” is hard unless you have someone to help push you just a little bit harder than you are comfortable doing. In many ways, it’s all about stepping outside of your comfort zone. The coach’s job is to confirm aches and pains (“Yup, that’s normal. No, that’s not.”), fix running form, convince people that they can run fast when their body says no and to beg, plead and hector people into buying “real” running shoes instead of wearing cheapo, Walmart specials.

Mostly what I do, besides look at my stopwatch and blow a whistle, is to get people to discard negative thoughts (“I can’t”, “It’s too hard”, “I’ll hurt myself”, “I’m not good enough”, “I’m too fat”, “I’m too old” or “I’m not an athletic type”) and replace them with positive, self affirming, “Can DO!” thinking.

And for those that complete the program, an amazing thing happens. They change. The “Can’t” becomes “CAN!” And even more amazingly, these lessons learned both physically and mentally, spill over into their non-athletic endeavors.

Instant gratification teaches us that unless you succeed immediately, you are a failure. Learning to run teaches people that can become the success they envision if they are patient, have a plan and hold true to the vision, despite the odds against them and the setbacks thrown in their way. Learning to run gives people a chance to have a very real, very personal success, which they earned all on their own.

From this success, I’ve had runners continue on to longer distances. Some LTR graduates bugged me into getting them trained to finish the Around The Bay, and my winter Friday afternoon training runs have become a yearly event starting the first week in January. Some have even joined me on the 100 mile relay as team members and a few have even completed marathons.

When asked, “How much do your clinics cost?”, I tell them we do it for free. Why? Because I love to help people succeed and share in that moment. The culmination of the LTR clinic is not the graduation at a local 5 km race. For me it’s that moment, the first time they do a 5 km training run and they go from “Mark’s crazy, I’m not ready to run this distance yet” to “I’M REALLY GOING TO DO IT!” It’s a thing of beauty and a transformation that I never get tired of sharing.

In the end, it’s about the discovery of an inner strength and ability that people didn’t know they had. It’s a tough thing, clawing away all those years of people telling you that you aren’t good enough, all that self-doubt and feeling of unworthiness. It’s scary climbing out of that nice little niche that defines who you are and where you belong in the hierarchy around you, and to start defining your own boundaries. That’s what my Learning to Run Clinic is about. It’s not the distance that matters it’s the journey to get there.

As I tell my students, I can get you to the start line, but you make it to the finish line all by yourself. And get there they do.
 

By Mark G. Collis

Revised: October 13, 2008 .