Coaching Anyone?

I used to run training programs for my old running club centered in the District until some incredibly offensive behavior by a clique of boorish and puerile  20-something  board members towards me and my programs caused me to leave that club behind for good.  Last year I helped the program director of the MCC, an Arlington club, coach its Walk-To-Run (WTR) training program. 

That was a little tame for me, run/walking four 15-minute miles every Saturday but I actually believe helping other people get off the couch and get moving to any degree out there is a way of giving back.  Those Alpha jerks in my former running club (one of them is now its president) used to sneer that taking groups out and actually running with them was "chaperoned running" but screw them.  As we used to refer to certain types when I was in the State Patrol, they're Adam Henrys.

On Saturday morning I dropped in on the MCC director's current WTR program and took his star pupil, who wanted to push herself, out for four miles on the Mount Vernon Trail at a 2/3 "modality" (walk two minutes, run three minutes) while the director went with the rest of the group at a 4/1 modality.  It took us 62 minutes to go the four miles and twice we had to cut back a little from our three-minute run intervals but it was a fun outing, it was good to be out there moving early on a Saturday morning. 

The program director spoke with me beforehand about being the pace-group leader of the MCC's 10K Program, a true running group, which is firing up in May, and I said I'd consider it.  I'm back! 

The Finish of Cycle One

The Marathon Charity Cooperative in Arlington offers Walk--To-Run (WTR, sometimes known affectionately as Couch-To-5K) training throughout the year; three cycles of about seventeen weeks each.  Its premise is simple enough: several weeks of walking, getting up to four miles distance, then the participants do a walk/run ratio that starts off at 1/4 (one minute of running to four minutes of walking) and finishes at the inverse ratio of 4/1.

The one requirement to complete the program (besides coming each Saturday, but that's pretty much voluntary) is to run/walk a 5K race. There are plenty of opportunities; as the program director, John, likes to say, "You can't swing a dead cat by the tail in DC on a weekend without hitting someone running a 5K race."

About a dozen aspirants started off in the program in January, and by late last month this had winnowed down to a hard core of about seven or eight, including the three coaches, John, Vandana and myself.  One Saturday John proudly showed me the time of 35:37 frozen on his watch, his time from a twilight 5K race the evening before, his best time in years.  One participant ran both a 5K and an 8K, one trainee was working towards running a half marathon later this month and did a 5K early in the program in under 40 minutes, and four others including Vandana ran a 5K on the last Saturday of the program, mere hours before our celebratory ending banquet at a local diner.  I ran a 5K in March which I detailed in my last post.

I believe in participation, and encouraging others to participate and showing them the way; that's why I moved on from my last running club, of which I was president, to the MCC as they are more in line with my preferences.  Here is a picture of the dedicated small group of achievers on our penultimate run.

The steady pace wins the race

The fourth meeting of the Walk to Run 5K training program I am coaching for was held last Saturday on a beautiful temperate morning. Seven of us gathered in the parking lot of the Lady Bird Johnson Park off the George Washington Parkway in Arlington and set off for a four mile walk on the Mount Vernon Trail along the Potomac.

Northbound we walked as tons of joggers and bicyclists went by, chatting amiably and keeping hydrated. At Roosevelt Island we turned around at the midway point to return. Next week we will walk eastbound into the District over the Potomac bridges and introduce running to these non-runners, running a minute then resuming walking for five minutes.

A few months hence this ratio will be reversed and we will be running five minutes and walking one minute for recovery. Along the way everyone is supposed to do an actual 5K race, for the experience of it, at the then-achieved walk/run ratio.

It's the same program I used to return to running last year after a year layoff due to injury. It was good to be out there and coaching again as part of an organization, the Marathon Charity Cooperation (MCC), that is dedicated to inclusion and encouraging novices to participate in activity sports. (Right: Coach John, director of the MCC's Walk-To-Run 5K Program.)