Runner Commandment #4: During group training runs, don’t let anyone run alone.

fitness

By Paul Pajo

Runner Commandment #4: During group training runs, don’t let anyone run alone.

You’ve probably met these kind of runners during your training runs – they don’t like running with the group. They’s join the pre-training run chitchat, they’ll join the post-training run chitchat but they won’t run with the group during the run. They’ll probably be just ahead of the pack or just behind the pack but they’re just a little bit aloof so that you can’t seem to talk with them. Maybe they’ll even pace with the group but they’d have their earphones on and don’t seem to mind the group running with them. Or they don’t even have earphones on but you know from that look in their eye that they just want to run alone even though there’s a group running with them. Well, these runners are the exception to the rule – most people would like to have somebody running with them on training runs even though they don’t seem to say anything and based from our exception of a runner we can try to think of ways to make sure that runners training with us don’t run alone:

1. Runners who are always behind the group – it’s either these are newbie runners or runners doing base building runs and trying to get their heart rates lower. It’s good to run with these group because you’ll be able to converse while you’re running and if it’s a long run then you’ll be able to put in the miles without necessary taxing your heart. If you know these kind of runners join your training runs regularly then it might be a good idea to invite other newbie runners to run with them so that everyone gets the benefit of having company of a group that enjoys an easy pace.

2. Runners who are always ahead the group – you know these runners – they go way ahead of the group and then come back for you. You could probably do interval runs or tempo runs with these kind of runners. Keep up with them and once you’re a kilometer away, ask them to come back to the group at a lower speed. You can probably rack a lot of mileage over your usual routes without having to loop with all that rubber band action. And if it’s a hill run, you get the benefits of a veritable hill repeats with all that uphill and downhill action.

3. Runners with their earphones on – you can tear a page away from Improv Everywhere by asking for the playlist from these runners and see if you can run synchronized on the same playlist. That means that even they are in a world of their own, you’re also listening to the same music on the same playlist and probably run on the same tempo. Maybe you can have have some people join you on your running mp3 party!

4. Runners who run in the pack but seem to want to be left alone – some runners can just get lost in the moments of their run and maybe they’re even practicing how to zone out for races that’s why they’re trying to see if they can de-focus that background noise and focus on their running – maybe their concentrating on their pace, their stride length, their cadence, their gait, their form. What I’d probably do is just trail from behind and see if I can learn anything from their form and their gait. If their newbie runners, you can probably offer some observations of what you saw during their run after the training run. That’s how I learned to have an 8 minute per kilometer running gear – I would be following an ultramarathoner friend of mine who joined us in our training runs but I would just be closely following behind and checking periodically how he would keep his cadence. Before I knew it, I already could get into an 8 minute per kilometer pace easily and without effort.

One of the things that I’ve learned on training runs is not to break the pace of a running group on a training run. It only takes one runner to break the pace and before you know it, everyone goes on their merry way and on their own pace. I learned this the hard way on one of our training runs – I like going downhill very fast and one time I decided to pull away a little bit more. The other runners took this as a signal that it they could break pace and what used to be a talkative group running at leisurely 8 and half minutes per kilometer long run suddenly disappeared as everyone started their own pace. Before you know it, everyone was running alone and that’s something I don’t want to ever do again.