This is going to be a VERY long email, but it has a lot of important information so I\u2019m going to do a little table of contents at the top to make sure you don\u2019t miss anything. Here are topics we will cover:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hampton Court Race Update<\/li>
Revised Training Schedule<\/li>
Increasing the Non-Thursday Run Time<\/li>
Coach\/Runner match-ups<\/li>
WRW Watch Party<\/li>
Where We\u2019ve Live<\/li>
This week\u2019s route<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
First, the race update. I\u2019m just going to let Micki say it – I\u2019ve taken this from the email she sent to the M\/W\/F runners yesterday:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
IMPORTANT! Hampton Court Half Update.<\/strong> Obviously we all have been wondering about the status of our annual half marathon on March 21st at Hampton Court Palace. Race Boss Sue Wheeler has kept in contact with the race organizers, and as of this week they have not yet made a decision. But we feel the chance of it proceeding in its original format is increasingly unlikely given the extension of the UK lockdown to March 8. Further, as your WRW-organising team, even if the race goes on, we would be concerned– as many of you might be– about sending our community into a very large group event just seven weeks from now, and less than two weeks after the potential end of UK lockdown restrictions. For these reasons, we have decided to officially move our training target to a late April or early May half marathon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is possible the Hampton Court Palace Half itself could be rescheduled for that window (which would be great!) but if not, we have been assured by organisers that we will still have the option to run it as a virtual event, with flexibility in the timing. So while we wait to see if the official race is rescheduled and for when, we are working on a backup plan to try to offer the best version of a WRW community-wide event we can!
Revised Training Schedule<\/strong> OK, so what does this mean for you, the beginner group? It\u2019s really not much different from the regular group. We are going to revise the training schedule so we have a more gradual build and add some rest weeks in there. Since we now have a bit of breathing room, we are really going to start emphasizing the mileage over the minutes (sorry!) for the Thursday runs. We are going to keep our 90 minute run for this week (which translates to about 7.25 miles) but as you can see from the schedule, we pare the increases back a bit. We may revise this a bit after February break but for now, this is the new schedule. The far right column shows the expected mileage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The training plan minutes assume you are running about a 13 min\/mi. \u00a0Some of you are faster than that, some of you are slower. \u00a0But the half marathon will be 13.1 miles for all of you so that\u2019s what we need to be training towards at this point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
For those of you who have been, or are, injured, this might allow you to build up and catch up with us. Your assigned coach will work with you on this – more on that below. Increasing your non-Thursday run time<\/strong>Starting this week, you should increase your running time so you are running 45 minutes on the weekend and 60 minutes on Tuesdays (so start this on Tuesday if you can). You\u2019ll keep doing this for the rest of the training until the race. Remember to keep it nice and slow! Also, make sure you stretch, and use a foam roller if you have one, after EVERY run. This is so important!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Coach\/Runner Match-ups<\/strong>We coaches have been feeling a bit out of touch with the group as a whole (that Zoom meeting was SO GREAT to reconnect!) and we want to make sure no one is slipping through the cracks and that everyone has someone to go to for guidance on any physical issues or questions about anything. To do this, we are going to try out coach\/runner match-ups. Each coach (including our regular guest coaches Shannon, Sue and Micki) each have 2 or 3 of you as their match-up. If they haven\u2019t already, they will reach out and let you know they are your assigned coach. This does NOT mean that coach will be running with you on Thursday. We will continue to rotate among coaches and runners on Thursday because we all love seeing all of you! This is really so you have a first point of contact and so we all can make sure you are feeling supported and that we know how you\u2019re doing each week. For those of you who are not in London or who are injured, the coaches will plan to reach out weekly, or more often if necessary, to see how you\u2019re doing, make sure you got the runs in, etc. If you\u2019re in London and running with a coach on Thursdays (or whenever), they likely won\u2019t need to reach out because we coaches will report in about how the run was and how amazing you all are, as usual. This doesn\u2019t mean you can\u2019t email\/talk to another coach – this is really about not slipping through the cracks, as I said before. We are the mama birds – we want to make sure all of our chicks are ready to fly before we push them out of the nest \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n\n\n\n
WRW Watch Party this week<\/strong> Here\u2019s another bit copied from the M\/W\/F email from WRW. Everyone is invited to join in so we didn\u2019t want you to miss out! How about some big-screen running inspiration together on the small screen? We’re going to try to have a couple of ‘Watch Parties’ using Amazon Prime. We will post the link on the WRW Facebook page 30 minutes before the party starts (see below for times). You’ll need a UK Amazon Prime account to join (apologies to our friends not in the UK). Once you join the party, we will watch in sync and with the benefit of a chat function. You can always do this with a smaller group of friends, but what a potentially fun way to connect with the broader WRW group we’ve been missing! The selections are two running-related movies:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/womenrunningtheworld.com\/beginners\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2021\/01\/Screen-Shot-2021-01-31-at-1.55.33-PM-1024x270.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/womenrunningtheworld.com\/beginners\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2021\/01\/Screen-Shot-2021-01-31-at-8.33.54-PM.png\")
<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"