Last night I signed up for a 10K Running Clinic with The RunningRoom. It was a spur of the moment decision! Jamie, one of the guys in work, runs quite a bit and had recommended these guys, so, although I’d missed the first week, I decided to go for it.

The course costs $75, which is nothing when you consider what you get in return: a technical running shirt, 2 instructor-led runs per week and a weekly talk on a topic related to your training. The talk this week was on shoes, though nutrition and biomechanics will be covered in coming weeks, which I’m looking forward to.

Last night was my night, so I wandered down wondering what I was in store for. All the usual questions: how fast is the group, are they friendly, etc.? The talk on the different types of running shoes was pretty interesting and well presented, with Alex, the shop manager, exhibiting a pair of feet with absolutely zero arches! Talk about flat feet!

I was less than enthusiastic when I found out that the run on the agenda was a 4km time trial. Seeing as how this was the second week of the program, I was being thrown in at the deep end. The idea was to set a time so they could group us into our pace groups, so we were told to run as fast as we could without killing ourselves. We were taken down to the seawall where there are kilometre markers along the run route and one of the instructors was at the 2km mark to provide splits.

There’s about 20 in the group, none of whom I’d met before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. We all started together and I hit the front early, a little bit worried that I was setting off too fast. I felt fine though, so just kept going, even though my HRM was telling me that my heart rate was about 20bpm more that it usually is when running – probably the chilli chicken and beer I’d had for lunch – not exactly ideal preparation!

The tentative plan was to stick to a fixed pace until the 3km mark and then pick it up towards the end if I hadn’t spewed in the meantime. I hit the halfway mark in 10:15 feeling a bit out of breath, but nothing serious. At the 3km I still felt OK, so I picked up the pace a little and managed to finish in 20:29, splitting 10:14 for the second half. Even better was that I had beaten everyone else by almost 2mins which was a bit of a surprise – we’ll see how I go once the distance increases though!

So, the journey has begun. Hopefully the fact that I’ve joined a group will force me to be a bit more disciplined in my approach to training. Time will tell…