The week the main news is Mike Hastie taking the Leadership in Running Fitness course, and therefore becoming the third trained coach for Winchester Fit Club RC (after myself and Mike D).
The one day course is a mix of classroom and practical activities and focuses on how to structure and lead running sessions and how to create development plans for both groups and individuals.
The course detail can be found here:
https://www.englandathletics.org/coaching/qualifications-landing-page/leadership-in-running-fitness/
Later in the year we have Rachel also attending the training course and it is our intention to send two more members next year. This is in addition to coach James also attending the Coach in Running Fitness course later this year/early next.
This is all part of our long term plans to develop and improve the running club for the benefit of the Fit Club members. More coaches mean that we can run more sessions each week. In addition we will have the ability to split the groups to enable more focussed sessions.
If you are interested in taking this course in 2020 please let me know and we can discuss further.
parkrun News 20th July
This week we had 21 Fit Clubbers running at 4 different parkrun venues. We had 16 at Winchester, Trish at Bangor (NI), Allen and Catherine at Vicarstown and Ben and Shelley at Millenium Country Park.The notable runs were Allen and Catherine both bagging course PBs at Vicarstown. That included third place overall for Allen. Fantastic running from the Westobys!
Also worth nothing that Mike H was a guide for a visually impaired runner and still managed 21:12. Phenomenal running from Mike and great of him to help another runner in that way.
Lastly, spare a thought for Alf who visited Whiteley parkrun only to discover it wasn’t on!! Unperturbed he and 20 others proceeded to run it anyway. Well done Alf!
Here is a link to the consolidated club report: http://www.parkrun.com/
Thursday Session 18th July - St Catherine's mixed bag
This Thursday the runners met up at Garnier Road for a mixed bag session; a mix of intervals and hill sprints. This week 17 runners joined Coach James on a beautiful summers evening for, what turned out to be, a short but high intensity session, focussed on pacing and endurance.
After a short warm-up jog we stopped at the bottom of St Catherine's steps where we would be based for the majority of the session. The first set of drills were based around pace judgement. Coach James set the runners off for a 30 second sprint. At the end of the 30s he blew a whistle and the runners had 30s to get back to the start point. This was testing the pace judgement of the runners...go off too quickly and thy won't make it back to the start. Go off too easy and you'll make it back to the start before the second 30s is up.
We then did the same but with 45s out and 45s back, then 1m out and 1m back.
Following this the group had a short break before doing one rep up the St Catherine's steps with a jog back down.
This whole session was repeated twice through before a jog back to the start and a stretch.
With Coach James away next week the run will be a social run led by Anne and One R. They will meet you at 7pm at Garnier Road. This will be an easy pace run of roughly 3-4 miles.
Race Reports
Valentines parkrun by Coach James
Sarah’s grandparents live in East London and so we decided to travel up to see them early on Saturday morning. This gave me the opportunity to visit Valentines parkrun in Ilford. parkruns beginning with a V are rare, with only 3 in the UK, so this trip enabled me to tick off another letter towards my parkrun alphabet.
We left home just after 6am for the 2 hour drive over. We had left a little contingency for the M25 but we had a really clear trip over which meant that we arrived at the park before 8am. This gave the kids the chance to hit the playground to burn off some energy before their trip in the buggy around the parkrun course. It also enabled us to meet the event team as they arrived and see the parkrun being set-up. It always amazes me how out of nothing a full event can be set-up in such a short space of time, and then seemingly out of every corner of the park people start arriving just before 9am. It’s very slick.
The route itself is a two lap course which starts and finishes outside the main café in the centre of the park. Running down the central path you turn and run around the boating lake, down through the car park (complete with speed bumps, which the kids loved), and then round the top part of the park before dropping back down to the start finish. The course was entirely on concrete paths and fairly flat, with only a few slight undulations. We started off steadily with me still struggling from a very tight glute, however by the end of the first mile this had eased and I was in full flow. It was a cracking morning for running with it being bright and sunny but not too warm.
In the distance I could see another buggy runner who I resolved to try and catch. I picked my pace up and started to close the gap. At half way I was a few hundred metres back from her, but I was closing. As we got to the boating lake she pulled further ahead again as we went up the slight hill for the last time. I caught her with about half a mile to go, but she reacted and got onto my heels. Concerned she may try and go past on the final straight I decided to start my finishing push early to try and drop her. We both finished strongly and I ended up pipping her by a few meters. I spoke with her afterwards and she had appreciated the mini-battle as we went round as she had broken her buggy running PB by over a minute!
After the run we headed to the café for a post-run breakfast. As the café is right by the finish we were able to watch the rest of the runners finishing and cheer them in.
All in all it was a lovely parkrun day. Great course through a really nice park, fast, fairly flat, friendly team and a nice café. Highly recommended!
General Announcements
WFC Running Club Calendar
- 25th July - Garnier Road
WFC parkrun Club
- 25th July - Garnier Road
WFC parkrun Club
Winchester Fit Club Runners is set-up as a club with parkrun. If you go into your profile (there is a link to it on the parkrun results email and newsletter email) you can select your club. Change yours to Winchester Fit Club Runners and you will appear in the consolidated club report that we get each week.
WFC Runners WhatsApp Group
There is a WFC Runners WhatsApp chat group where we generally just wang on about running, races and cake. If you are not already part of this then please get in contact with Coach James or Coach Mike who will add you.
WFC Runners Strava Club
If you are a Strava user there is a Winchester Fit Club Runners club page. This can be accessed here: https://www.strava.com/clubs/WFC-Runners. Request to join and we will approve!
Booking onto sessions
Booking onto our training sessions enables the coaches to plan the session accordingly. You can book on in the following location: https://winchesterfitclub.simplybook.it/v2/
Race Calendar
The race calendar is now stored here: https://wfcrunners.blogspot.com/2019/01/race-calendar-2019-and-beyond.html
Race Kit
The full range of kit available to purchase and instructions on how to order can be found in the following link: https://wfcrunners.blogspot.com/2019/01/kit-details-and-prices.html
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