Joining a running club
I had “Join a Running club” on my list of running things to do, and it seemed an easy one to tick off. So I started googling around for running clubs local to Beeston
What I’m looking for
To narrow it down I had a couple of things that I really wanted from a club:
- Local – ideally I’d like to jog/walk to most events rather than public transport or the car
- Not too pricey
- Friendly
- Good event attendance – Be nice to be able to share lifts to events
- Good range of abilities – This wasn’t just for me, Mrs BeestonRunner is interested as well
- Coaching – a lot of running clubs seem to be just that, without much ‘certified’ advice. And I need advice 🙂
The candidates
A bit of googling turned up that the ‘local’ running clubs to me are:
- Long Eaton Running Club
- Beeston Athletics Club
- Nottingham Athletics Club
- Erewash Valley Running Club
- Rebel Runners
Nottingham Athletics club looks great. but training involved regular visits to Harvey Haddon which is a bit of a pain from Beestion, and with 2 of us wanting to join it was going to get expensive once you’d added on the cost of a track pass. At the moment we couldn’t justify the expense (running was meant to be a cheaper alternative to cycling)
Rebel Runners looked good for beginner runners, but wanting to push my distances this year I wanted the option to do 10+ mile runs with others to break the monotony
The finalist
Out of the other Beeston Athletics Club was the closest to our house with a majority of their runs starting about a mile from us, so handy for a warmup and saves getting the car out all the time. We went for a test run on one of their Wednesday club runs as Mrs BeestonRunner was a bit worried that her pace would cause problems. Absolutely no problems, a nice 5 mile loop at 10:30-11:00 minutes per mile with a small group, all nattering on the way around and getting back to the Olympia about the same time as all the other groups did.
So once 2019 was a couple of days old we signed up. All nice and easy. With a couple of forms and some electronic bank transfers we were Beeston AC members, and UK Athletics members as well.
Unfortunately with the marathon training being a planned and pretty selfish pursuit we’ve not made it back for another run. But I am looking forward to the Summer Road season we can now take part in, and the North Midlands Cross Country league later in the year is also on the cards.