Thank you for the Run (Club)

May 5, 2023

   
I’ll be honest, I am a bit late to this “enjoying running” thing, but now that I am here, I have a few thank-yous to give. Some of them go out directly to people and definitely one to running as a whole. I also wanted to share some general thoughts, advice and resources that may help you get into, or back into, running - all inspired by my experiences running in a group.


With the spring in full bloom, I imagine some of you may start to look for ways to be active in the sun. I know that some of my suggestions are not new, but one or two of them may be new to you, as they were to me. The photos included in this writing are from an opportunity I had with my run club. One of our club members works for Puma and was able to hook us up with shoes, so we did a little shoot that inspired me to write this editorial. I hope you enjoy it and get out and run!


Starting Line



Up until about a year ago, I had a general distaste for running and maybe you can relate. It’s not easy to start, and once you do, it’s hard to keep a consistent routine. Stepping out into the cold rain, or blistering hot afternoon is daunting, improvements in times and efforts are marginal, injuries are always a step away, and most times, it's usually easier to find anything else to do other than run to get your heart rate up for your daily dose of physical activity. I was never really enjoying running so I always found a way to not run.


That being said, running has always been in and around my life and it was mostly done begrudgingly. Participating in competitive sports growing up, running itself was always part of pre or post season workouts or more often than not, some sort of punishment for not performing up to a certain standard in a game or training session. As I got older it was occasionally a way to “retest” my fitness levels between different life transitions or events, and sometimes I’d just go through a stretch of time where running fit into the day, but these small stints would always end in some nagging injury and soreness. I could never imagine running longer than 5 km as I would be gassed after those runs, and sore for the day or two after. This consistently led to me claiming that I wasn’t a runner, the excuses were easy to find; “I’m more of a quick burst guy”, “I can’t handle it mentally”, “I’d rather do anything else to get my heart rate up”. People had told me (especially my brother), if I just stuck with it, I’d learn to love it, but I was never able to get over the metaphorical hill of finding my stride. It always felt like a battle, I was always racing myself, getting hurt, and having to take long breaks from running.


When running alone, I was falling into this trap of constantly wanting to be faster than the last time. Maybe it was my deep interest in data collection through Strava combined with my self competitive nature of racing my previous self but I couldn’t imagine not being faster than the time before. If I was putting in all this work to run, why wouldn't I be faster every time? If it only took me 26 minutes to run 5km yesterday, shouldn’t it take me 25.5 today?


This started to change once I began running with different people at different paces, and in that, being forced to run slower to keep conversation, I started noticing my knee pains and soreness started to fade and I was able to get more runs in during the week, rather than having to take three or four days off between runs.


I had never really looked at running as a social outing. What's the point of running with someone if you’re both out of breath? Won’t it just always seem like a race? Then what do we do after we run, we just go home because we are sweaty and drenched from the rain? I also wasn’t exactly interested in racing either, as I felt I plateaued every single time I had a stint of running. If it's not clear already, I definitely had some biases against running and was continuing to let it plague my ability to enjoy my runs. I am glad I have friends and family who continue to inspire and motivate me to keep running and slowly but surely, I have come around to love this sport all thanks to them.

Thank you NNRC

I have friends in the city, and a brother back home in Ontario, who consistently encouraged me to join their runs and I owe them all a collective thank you for keeping me interested despite my excuse making and initial distaste of this activity.


Our club was started on a whim, just a passing idea. A couple friends said “let’s meet on Sunday at Superflux brewery, run a bit, and end with a beer”, as I assume most running clubs start in this way or some iteration of this at least. Week after week, people met up, invited more people, hit the road for a fun run and ended with a beverage or two. Now our small group can range anywhere from two to ten runners, dogs and babies too. For the past couple of years, It has been a rare occasion that there is not a run happening on Sundays; rain, sleet, or snow, you know there is going to be a message in the group chat on Sunday morning encouraging everyone to meet for the run. I am super thankful, and feel privileged, to have a group of people who embrace runners of all calibers, it has strengthened my friendships with many of these people, maintained a routine of fitness in all of us, and has helped me recalibrate my approach to running and enjoy it in a way that I didn’t think was possible a couple years back. If you have been needing both an excuse to exercise and to integrate some social time in your week, I strongly encourage you to reach out to some people and get running. Leave the ego behind and just enjoy being outside, side by side, at any pace that works, going slow and having the conversation is beneficial in so many ways for both your mental and physical health.



The more we show up, the more conversations we have while we run. You rarely spend the entire run with one person as we ebb and flow in different cohorts while we cross streets, wait at stop lights, or maybe feel a rush of energy to push a little faster (or the opposite), but this constant state of sparking conversation and running at a pace that allows you to interact with others on the run is, in my opinion, the biggest factor in the benefits of running this way.


Next Steps

This transition in running philosophy has also led me to doing more research all sparked by stumbling upon what is known as “low heart rate training” (and I have told everyone about it since, so if you are one of those people, I apologize, feel free to skip to the conclusion below. If you are not, hear me out and check out these resources). Maybe it was coincidence, or maybe it was the YouTube algorithm knowing exactly how my life is being currently lived, but I was recommended a video by Floris Gierman about his 10 years of running at a low heart rate, all done at conversational pace while running a marathon. I was hooked, how could this be possible? Running a marathon at a heart rate that you can casually talk about your training experience, he must have been going super slow…(spoiler alert, he wasn’t).


I won’t go too deep into the science behind it (although I’d love to), but, this is a well studied training method of running with lots of evidence and research to support it. Running at a conversational pace (low heart rate) has increased my ability to run long distances, decreased my soreness, and improved my general cardio fitness. It is way easier on the body, as it allows you to build a “bigger base”, and will allow you to eventually run further and faster than you ever have before. Starting this low heart rate training (also known as MAF Method) on your own is often reported as mentally fatiguing, to go from your average pace on your “regular runs” to slowing down by 30 seconds to a minute for each kilometer definitely hurts the ego, especially if you are a Strava or data junkie like myself. Again, this is where the social run really helps, conversing through a run makes you run at a slower pace, but also makes a 6:00 min/km not feel so slow and boring. It triggered a different approach in my mind and allowed me to leave the super competitive nature of sport behind, and just return to enjoying the run for what it is.

I am only a few months into MAF training, doing the majority of my runs at around 145 bpm, and it has totally changed my experience and continues to improve my running, my soreness, and my mind.


Finishing Lines


With my first “official race” coming up this weekend, I am excited, nervous, and amazed by my progress both physically and mentally in running. A combination of running with the group, maintaining good sleeping & eating habits, stretching, and low heart rate training has allowed me to really enjoy the experience and, if you’ve read this far, I hope you can integrate some of these aspects into your own life. It’s definitely not easy, fitting it into a busy life sometimes means having to get up 6am to run before the kid wakes up, or running on a lunch break, and the reward…well the reward is slow to manifest, but so far, it’s paid off.

Vancouver is an amazing city to run, with hilly terrain to train harder if needed, or super flat routes like the seawall, there is something for everyone, and likely a group out there looking for members.

Thank you to Superflux brewery for always accommodating and caring for our club post run, to the run club of course, to my brother, and to Andrew & Puma for hooking us up with shoes for this spring training!

Some Additional Running Resources: