Your pace or mine?
It's nice to have training partners. More than someone to run with once a week, a training partner keeps you honest all week long, and is usually headed for the same goal as you are. The trick is finding how to balance training efforts that fit into everyones pace calculator. It's tough!
My wife and I run together quite a bit, this year especially, and it was really enjoyable. We made it through most of the Minnesota winter outdoors ( only 83" of snow this past winter, ugh! ), and set our goal on the Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon in October. We trained with two other regulars during the winter that were also training for MTCM, and picked up another about mid July. Our goal times were all over the place. From three hours ( Bryan ) to 3:39 ( me ) to 3:50 ( Jeanette ) to "under four" ( Dave and Ben ) and finally, for Stan, "to finish". It was going to be the first for Dave, Ben and Stan.
Running as a group is such a fantastic way to train, but with such different time goals we couldn't all train together all the time. The beauty of group running is that you can adjust your workouts to fit when to run with the group. Bryan would hit his hard days with other, faster runners and use his group time for moderate and recovery runs. I could run hard with him on days that were tough for me, yet he would benefit from these as medium days. I'd do the same with Jeanette, running hard on my own or with Bryan, and with her for my medium days. For long runs, we'd all start together and just string out as the run progressed. We knew ahead of time the long runs would be a true compromise, and some days you had to run a bit slower or faster than you'd like, but the benefit of a training partner was well worth it.
Jeanette and I had our best year of running in a long time, and having each other and our training partners was the reason why. Friends to run with is the way to get out the door. It's fun, social, motivating and so much more. I'm very thankful for our group, and I hope you have a training group to run with, too.
My wife and I run together quite a bit, this year especially, and it was really enjoyable. We made it through most of the Minnesota winter outdoors ( only 83" of snow this past winter, ugh! ), and set our goal on the Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon in October. We trained with two other regulars during the winter that were also training for MTCM, and picked up another about mid July. Our goal times were all over the place. From three hours ( Bryan ) to 3:39 ( me ) to 3:50 ( Jeanette ) to "under four" ( Dave and Ben ) and finally, for Stan, "to finish". It was going to be the first for Dave, Ben and Stan.
Running as a group is such a fantastic way to train, but with such different time goals we couldn't all train together all the time. The beauty of group running is that you can adjust your workouts to fit when to run with the group. Bryan would hit his hard days with other, faster runners and use his group time for moderate and recovery runs. I could run hard with him on days that were tough for me, yet he would benefit from these as medium days. I'd do the same with Jeanette, running hard on my own or with Bryan, and with her for my medium days. For long runs, we'd all start together and just string out as the run progressed. We knew ahead of time the long runs would be a true compromise, and some days you had to run a bit slower or faster than you'd like, but the benefit of a training partner was well worth it.
Jeanette and I had our best year of running in a long time, and having each other and our training partners was the reason why. Friends to run with is the way to get out the door. It's fun, social, motivating and so much more. I'm very thankful for our group, and I hope you have a training group to run with, too.
GREAT job with the blog, Brian! I couldn't agree more with your article on training partners. It really has made a huge difference in my ability to run (and finish!) my first marathon. I can't thank you and the rest of our group (Jeanette, Bryan and Dave) for making one of my dreams come true! Thanks for "being there" for me!!
ReplyDelete-STAN