Week 1

If I'm going to run a marathon in a few months, I probably shouldn't do my training at 7 pm (inside joke there). Even though I've completed 438 miles on my own since May, I decided to give Borgess Run Camp a try for a couple of reasons. The first being the most obvious, since they are putting on the marathon, one would think they would know how to train people for it. The second, I've heard good things about their program, plus I already knew a couple people participating in the program and it never hurts to have a few familiar faces around. The official start was today.

Well, I'm hoping that this is one case where first impressions are wrong. Today was a mixed bag of thoughts, some positive, some negative. Even though I'm surprised at the number of negative thoughts, it will probably make for better blogging, or at the very least it will be interesting to see how this plays out for the next 18 weeks. Most of my negative feelings come from I expected more. We picked groups based on our pace and those groups have team leaders. Granted, my group has three leaders, but by my count it also has twenty seven runners. I guess I expected a group size somewhat smaller. Maybe they expect a certain level of attrition, but the camp makes a big deal about knowing your fellow runners, there's no way I'm remembering twenty seven names! When I say I expected more, I didn't mean larger groups, I was hoping for a more personal feel.

Running has an interesting dynamic where it's really you versus yourself. Sure, you really are racing against other people, but at least for me, I have many conversations with myself as I'm doing it (as I look over my shoulder seeing if the guys with the straight jackets are coming). The past couple weeks when running with friends has been much different than running alone, the runs with friends have been much more enjoyable to me. I suppose what that really says is that I don't like having to talk to myself! I was expecting Run Camp to be more social than it was the first day. I figured we'd get into our groups, then do some kind of introduction to get at least some idea of the various types of people. Instead, it was form into groups, go outside do some quick stretches, then start running. At some point during the stretches after I saw about the sixth person put in their headphones, I figured there wouldn't be much conversation during our run and broke out my own headphones (which I wasn't planning on using, but had them with me just in case). At this point, I found humor in fact I joined a group to run, but I was pretty much running by myself, let the fun conversations with myself start.

The run itself didn't go as I would have expected either. Though we started out in what I'd call a herd, by mile 2.5, we were already fairly spaced apart. Where I'd expect the team leaders to act as herders, by mile 3 we were on our own. Then finishing, again I expected at least some kind of interaction of "how did it go?", "here's the plan for the week", etc or even some kind of group huddle. Instead it was only the three or four of us that pretty much stuck together for the run, grab some snacks, check-in that you are back and that's it. For a group run, it didn't stay a group for very long. Weird.

Even though I don't have anything positive to say about the overall experience, I really did enjoy the run. There was a fair amount of black ice out there and it made for a very interesting feeling between running and skating. After mile 3, something clicked and I think I smiled the whole way back. The temp was perfect, I felt comfortable on the roads and my footing, and my body felt awesome. I don't ever remember smiling on the second half of whatever distance I'm going before, normally I'm sure it's a face of anguish.

18 weeks to go, hopefully I didn't pay money to run by myself. I struggled deciding which pace to go with, it's probably still too early to tell, but that pace felt good. I'm still somewhat torn because I'd like to run with friends, but at the same time I'd like to push myself with my pace. Since one of the themes of Run Camp is being positive, my positive outlook is at least with my group, when running on the road my chances of being hit by a car are greatly reduced...lets say 1 in 27. Maybe I'm wrong with my gut feelings and things will work themselves out after week 2.