Well, nothing like breaking new ground for the beginner program!  Well done to all of you for getting out there, many of you with coaches you had never met before.  From what I’ve heard, you all had a great run.  And 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!  SO great to see several of you outside Starbucks after the run.  We will get through this!

Shout out to Ritu who is back with us and looking strong!  And I have to also give major kudos to Tanya who is keeping up with our runs on her own in India – SO impressive!

It sounds like most of you had a great run yesterday. If you would like to mix it up and run with a variety of different volunteer coaches this month, just let me know BY THE END OF TODAY, FRIDAY.  Else I will aim to pair you with only 1 coach the whole month (maybe 2, to make schedules work). Some of you may feel more comfortable running with the same person. Others may enjoy getting to know more than one of our friendly and supportive volunteer coaches. Either is completely fine.

As usual, repeat yesterday’s run on Tuesday, and try to get in a 30-35 min total time run this weekend.  Pair up with someone if you can – it makes the time go so much faster.  And encourage each other on your What’sApp group.  No runner left behind!  If you are having trouble finding someone to pair with, please let me know – I know some coaches, and guest coaches, would be happy to run with you on other days to keep you motivated and on schedule. 
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 12:00 and 13:30 minute mile at the most (and it is completely fine and normal to be slower).  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!

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!

I will send out an email early next week with the runner/coach pairings like I did this week along with a proposed route.  You don’t have to follow the route – it’s just a suggestion.  You can work with your coach about where you want to go.  And take a selfie!  I loved seeing the photos from this week…