Hard run clinic

Thursday was the first day of my new run clinic. The other run clinics I have done have been for learning to run or new runners. As I have a half marathon coming up on May 3rd, I joined a half marathon clinic which also has marathon runners in it. 

I was a little concerned because the email that was sent out said that runners should be able to run for 40 minutes comfortably. I've never run more than 18 minutes at a time and then I only did that a couple of times. 

When I arrived at Run clinic I immediately felt out of place. There were people there that I had seen running at races and I knew that they were fast. Very fast which is a little intimidating when you're the turtle. 

When clinic started Phil told us that we would be doing hill repeats. We were to run a warm up along the same path I took with my last clinic. 

We started out as a group walking up to the top of the road and then across the street. We started running right away and I immediately fell way behind. By the time I reached the end of the arena the group had rounded the far corner and were out of sight. 

As I know the area I cut through a parking lot and headed up to the intersection where I knew they would go past to where we were going to do the hill repeats. When I got there the last of the group were already crossing the intersection. A couple of people called to me as we headed down the hill. 

I already knew I was probably in over my head. Once I joined everyone we started doing drills. I hadn't done these drills before and I didn't know them. The two people leading the group were great at explaining them. 

When it was time to start the hill repeats there were three starting points. One for the fast runners (the furthest distance) one for the regular runners and the there was my starting point. 

I appreciate that the leader was taking my speed into consideration but even with a huge head start, I was still far behind the others.  I hate knowing that everyone else was waiting for me to finish. I don't want to make people wait for me, I don't like it at all. 

Run clinic was a humbling experience. I had in my head that I was doing well with my running but this was a wake up call. 

I went home feeling disappointed with myself, with the fact that I'm not doing nearly as well as I thought I was doing. 

I still feel that I'm in over my head with this clinic. However, I'm going to try again next week. If I still feel out of my element I'll see if I can switch over to the 10K clinic but I'll follow the distance plan for long runs.