I have been incredibly busy the last couple weeks. I’ve been writing, scrapping, and rewriting training plans. I’ve been running and training for my half marathon coming up in a month or so. Plus I’ve started with a fabulous group of ladies for 5K training. It’s been crazy! Add all this house nonsense on top of all this, and I am exhausted. Thankfully my exhaustion and busyness has been in a very positive manner, otherwise I probably would have taken a long walk off a short pier by now!
Last weekend I was planning on meeting with the 5K group on Saturday morning. Unfortunately the rain kept us indoors. There was supposed to be a small window sans rain the next day (which didn’t happen), so we planned on Sunday instead.
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| Two watches, a clipboard, and a first aid kit. Must be time for some coaching! |
I’ve really been looking forward to the 5K group for a while now. It’s my sweet spot. It’s where I started, after all. It’s no coincidence that it’s my favorite distance to race. In my humble opinion, the 5K is the best. It’s short and sweet. You can lay it all out there and the likelihood of bonking is pretty minimal. Plus if you do bonk, it’s a short walk back to your car, the finish line, your house — wherever you started. The 5K distance is challenging but manageable. I’m a big proponent of the 5K and I totally think 5K runs and races are underestimated.
So as I was saying… I have been really looking forward to coaching this group of ladies for their first 5K! Despite our gross weather, we met up for our first meeting. We did some housekeeping — very brief discussions about goals and purpose. They shared theirs, I shared mine. Then we did some warming up. I hope I didn’t scare my girls off, because I did get several reports the next day about being sore. But I’m thinking it was a “good” sore instead of bad because no one seemed to complain. 🙂
After our weekly huddle and warm up, we headed out in the rain for our run! At first I couldn’t tell if the wind was making it sound rainier than it was, or if it was actually raining pretty hard. Come to think of it, I’m not sure I ever figured it out. What I did figure out, however, was that I was sweating, cold, and wet from the rain, which made it quite interesting for my body to figure out what to do! There’s a first for everything, I suppose.
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| Super foggy en route to our first 5K group run. |
All in all, the 5K team did great. From a coaching perspective, it was nice to be able to help them along if/when they needed encouragement. And from a runner perspective, it was rewarding to be able to share my love and knowledge of the sport with others who were willing and eager to join me. The program I’m using with them is the exact same one I used for myself. It works, it’s challenging but not threatening, and here I am 5 years later, loving (almost) every run — from 2 miles to 22.
After our run, we headed back under cover to cool down and stretch it out. I think stretching was my favorite part to be honest. I might change up the structure of our training meetings based on how things went with our first group run. We’ll see how the next one goes and then I’ll go from there. I gave my girls a week’s worth of homework, and so far it seems like they’ve been keeping up. I’m so proud of them.
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| Sweaty/hot, cold, and drenched from the rain. |
This weekend many of the ladies are traveling for the 4th, so we are taking this weekend off from the group run. I’ll be sending them more homework for next week in the meantime. And then we will be back at it together!
Huge congratulations to my inaugural 5K training group on a great first week! You guys rocked it when we were together and you’re still rocking it on your own. I’m so proud of you and I hope you’re proud of yourselves.
To all my other readers, near and far, have a great weekend! If you’re celebrating the 4th of July, be safe and have fun. Good luck to everyone running and racing this weekend. Let’s shout it out — what races are you doing, or what distance will you be running??
xo
Happy 4th of July!
