Hi Mo,
Greets from the sunny side of San Francisco, how are you? All’s well here and I thought I’d just drop you a line to say what I’ve been up to. Now the marathon is over, I was looking around for something to do like join a running club or a Boot Camp or summat and I happened upon a running group called K Stars San Francisco. Catchy name, huh?
I had seen these guys online in November last year but thought I wouldn’t bother with it because I thought I’d rather train on my own and ‘get the work done’ as such, as far as banging out fifty/sixty miles a week is concerned.
View Running in a larger map
AAAAAnyway, I went down there last Saturday for 9am and met up with the rest of the runners who, like Boot Camp, all showed up at about three seconds to nine and said ‘Hi’ and so on.
They’re all very nice and really good runners too, so I was proper pissed off with the thought that I could have done my long runs on Saturdays with guys and girls of a very high standard. I met a lovely guy called Ian who I spent most of the morning chatting to, a very friendly guy.
Golden Gate Park - Hyde Park on stearoids
So, we meet up and everyone stands in a circle and, kinda like an AA meeting, everyone says what they’re going to to do, so I say “I’m Morgan and I’m going to run seven miles at an 8 minute mile”. Each one in turn says their mileage and then it’s off we go.
One of the many lakes at Golden Gate park
The really cool thing is that we start the run through the Golden Gate Park and head downhill for the first mile or two running en masse which is a great warm up and feels really team-like.
The beach is always beautiful at the end of Golden Gate park. Really dreamy!
Then, once we’re at the end of GG park, we’re at the ocean which is beautiful and then we keep on running untill we get to our target distance and then peel off and head back to the shop, Crepes on Cole where we have brunch. Ace!
Track Night
Yesterday, I went to the K Stars track night in Kezar Stadium and it was absolutely ballistic fun too – you would have loved it.
Kesar Stadium in the evening.
The track is a classic 8 lane 400 metre track and so I met up with some same and some new faces and paid $16 for 4 sessions – sweet.
I had to take some pics, but on the qt, in case they thought I was some kinda nutter!
First, we warmed up with a few bouncy kinda stretches and then went on to do warm up 100m shuttles. Once warmed up, we started and 800m run, maximum pace, then rested, then two 400m runs and rests, then two 200m and then finish on two 15m runs. I did fairly OK and was quite pleased with my performance so I’m in the upper group with some really fast moving guys, so I will keep on the case to get myself into really super shape.
Snacks after training...
What’s also cool, is that Andy, the guy who runs the gig, records all your times so I will be able to keep an eye on whether I’m doing well or badly each week – Obvious, but cool huh?
Compare and Contrast
Tell you what too, I went out last Sunday to a MeetUp group to go running and went along to the local (awesome) sports shop (Sports Basement) to meet up with the running group which contains some 500 casual members. There were only 5 people there, myself included. I thought I wonder why this has so few people for such a large body count?
Anyway, it turns out that the reason why is that the guy who runs the group goes running at a 6 minute mile rate for the entire 5 mile loop which is all trail running and personally, I’m just not able for it at all, so he came in first, obviously, me second about a few minutes later and the rest came in much much later. I mean what’s the point of going running or training with people if you end up doing the whole thing on your own?? Duh!
A fleet of feet at Fleet Feet
I’ve also been out running with a small group at a shop called Fleet Feet, a bunch of guys and girls in Marina that do running. Nice group of people and they have a raffle every month for a pair of trainers, which I won!! I was thrilled!! I haven’t won anything in ages, but I passed on my win because I already have three pairs of shoes in the US; my cycling shoes, my trainers and my New Balance kickabouts, so the draw chose another ticket and my hombre Racey won himself a new pair of Nikes. He’s a very fast guy and is trying to qualify for Boston which is a sick making 3:10 ffs!!
I know you can run that man, but I simply don’t know how. Even if I had a Kenyan passport, I still couldn’t do it. I wonder if I could train to with a professional coach, you know, as a documentary, six months to get me good enough to do a 3:10 marathon. Dunno, very very steep challenge.
What’s been learned?
So the lessons learned are a timely reminder that a really warm welcome is very very important to new people – vital – I mean you have to really reach out man, something I miss from my Boot Camp days. I forgot how awkward some people feel when confronted with meeting new people – they can only look at their toes the poor things and you just wanna say ‘Hi’ and ‘How are you?’ and chat and so on. I used to really like that aspect of Boot Camp, you know, greeting people – last Saturday soooo reminded me of that!
The other thing is that you have to do is make it so that everyone with any modest effort can achieve something and do allright, you know, fit in!
So that was my little foray into running clubs, so it’s looking good! I’ll let you know more as it happens. I also met a girl from New York who was nice and had only arrived in SF a week ago sent by her firm in New York to go set up the SF office; good job!!
Anyway, that’s it from me, I’m off out for a coffee and to go read the papers and a book I’ve got on the go. Hope you’re well,
Love and respec’, good luck with the marathon training.
Morgan
