Becoming Official…

Yesterday morning I sacrificed the usual ‘Sunday Long Run’ – invariably followed by a large coffee and a bacon and cream cheese bagel from D’Nisi  – in order to pile into Kenny’s car for a drive out to Livingstone. The reason for our road trip? To spend the day learning how to be ‘Jog Leaders’. Kenny and I had established our ‘Runbetweeners Run Group’ a couple of weeks ago but had experienced a few difficulties actually finding a JogScotland course with spaces available for us – hence the trip out of Glasgow – and so had not been able to affiliate to Jog Scotland. While this delayed our ability to really promote the group prior to its maiden outing, it did give us an opportunity to experiment with a couple of sessions aimed primarily at a group of mates (and wives!) who we had managed to rope into attending. These proved invaluable and we learned some important lessons which I am sure will serve us well in the future – mainly that everyone definitely LOVES hill sessions. And so it was that we found ourselves two weeks later journeying down to Livingstone to learn how to become the leaders of an official Jog Scotland group.

The course itself was very insightful and full of interesting characters. It was fascinating hearing the different stories of the hopeful Jog Leaders and the different aims which they had for their own groups. Some attendees were from well established groups and others were, like ourselves, looking at starting their own. Our instructors for the day, Laura and Jaz, kept the session entertaining and relevant which definitely helped to keep the information digestable as a full day in a classroom could have been intolerable – just ask one of my pupils! As the course meandered through the basics of group organisation, planning and promotion it was clear that there was lots to think about when running a group such as ours but also that we had been working on the right lines with our current set up – a few tweaks and things would be grand! A morning spent in the classroom was followed by some more practical tasks in the afternoon before we concluded the session by constructing ‘6-week training plans’ in our groups of four (or was it six?!). We were provided with lots of practical information and left the course happy that we were equipped to move forward and get things underway! We also met lots of people who will undoubtedly be useful contacts over the coming months.

And so we now find ourselves as qualified ‘Jog Leaders’ with an official, affiliated group! As things move forward I am sure we will have plenty of lessons still to learn and unforeseen obstacles to overcome however I am really excited to see how things progress. Our group will be based out of the new Run4it store in Giffnock and will meet on Monday evenings at 6pm. Anyone who fancies joining us can get in touch via this blog, Twitter (@therunbetweeners) or on Facebook. See you there!