2019-20 Beginners Week 11

Well done last week!  That was a big jump up in time – going from 7 minute to 10 minute segments.  That’s HUGE!  I know it was hard, but you did it!    AND how fun to be in fancy dress (as they say here).  Thank you all for your spirit – it was amusing to see the reactions from pedestrians as we ran by.

This week we will increase our intervals up to 12 minutes.  If you hadn’t noticed, we are increasing our time faster now so it is so important to make sure you are getting at least the Tues/Thurs (or substitute days) in and it will be much easier on you if you are doing that third run on the weekend.  It will be easy to suddenly feel like you’re falling behind and we don’t want that to happen!

Some of you may be away for ISSTs (the high school end of the season sports tournaments for those of you without ASL high schoolers) this week so just try to get the run in when you can.  I’ll be away watching my daughter play field hockey in The Hague so I will miss you!  The rest of the coaches will be here this week so you’ll be in good hands.

Don’t forget to keep it SLOW on Tuesdays.  You can get an app for your phone – I recommend MapMyRun, Strava or RunKeeper – that will track how fast you are running.  You should be running between a 12:30 and 13:30 minute mile at the most (and it is completely fine to be slower).  I would recommend that one person be in charge of the timing for Tuesdays and another person keep track of the speed.  You should pause the app when you walk so you’re accurately timing the run portion.  For your weekend run, it’s OK to go a bit faster because it’s for a shorter time and distance.  But don’t kill yourselves!

Thank you for the responses about destination runs.  Most of you wanted about a 50/50 split so I’ve created a schedule between now and winter break that incorporates that for the most part.  We did a destination last week so we’ll start out with looping back this week.  Here is the tentative schedule until winter break:
7 Nov – loop back to SJW – Camden to Regent’s Park
14 Nov – destination – Green Park via Hyde Park
21 Nov – loop back to SJW – Notting Hill
28 Nov – ASL Thanksgiving – several coaches will be here to run if others are, route TBD
5 Dec – holiday lights run (6 am start)
12 Dec – loop back to Primrose Hill (Pia’s) for our beginner gathering!

Please try your best to be on time for the run.  Some of us need to get to work or other commitments so it’s important that we can start out on time.  We will try to have the warm up exercises started before 8:20 so we can be ready to go shortly after that.  Thank you!

Have a great run on Thursday and I’ll see you next week!
Amy

Route for this week: 
Start down St John’s Wood Terrace to Charlbert and then down to the canal entrance at Regent’s Park.  Run east on the canal towards Camden Market where we exit the canal over the bridge and turn right onto Camden High Street.  We’ll run down Camden High Street to Mornington Crescent Tube Station and veer right onto Hampstead Road, which we will take down to Robert Street.  Turn right on Robert for a few blocks and then a left on Albany Street and then the first right onto Chester Gate.  Run on the Outer Circle of Regents Park until you get to the exit for Charlbert Street.  Take Charlbert back up to St John’s Wood Terrace and then to Starbucks.