A warm welcome to PARR, everyone!
Nobody wants to follow a legend and it is with trepidation that I follow Aimee’s footsteps in writing the weekly emails. The new members may never know the treat we were given with Aimee’s weekly emails and the veteran members may quickly be reminded of what they are missing.
I will do my best to fill Aimee’s HUGE shoes, but you should lower your expectations and look at my emails as utilitarian.
Brevity has never been my strength, but I will do my best to provide you with the necessary information for you to have a great PARR season.
We had a great (very biased) PARR kick off party where over 100 members were in attendance. We have tried to provide necessary information for the members who were unable to attend. By now, you should have been placed in a pace group. We continue to have new members join and veteran members rejoin, so we are doing our best to place these members ASAP.
I’ve been told our members may not read everything, so let me first talk about this Saturday’s workout. You should read this portion of the email (or risk going to the wrong place or starting at the wrong time), even if you disregard everything else below. However, please be mindful the emails are lengthy because we get many questions from our members, so we try to include this information for the benefit of all of our members.
SATURDAY 7/21 DETAILS
As far as the schedule, you’ll notice that we alternated the Hill weeks between the FM and HM folks. So this week the FM will be doing just a timed run, while the HM folks head to Bailey Bridge to do their first Hill Workout.
We will all meet at Turner High School. There is construction that limits access to the Turner track but we are still able to park in the front of the fenced gate. We will all meet in the Turner parking lot for our scheduled runs.
We will meet back at the Turner parking lot for a CORE workout led by Caroline/Kaylin, wrapping up by 7:15ish. BE SURE TO BRING A MAT OR TOWEL. Your elbows and knees will hate you if you don’t.
FM: 5:45AM – 60-minutes Easy run + CORE – you’ll run west on Bailey, north/up MacLean, Left/west on Magnolia and turn around at 30 minutes (around Harkey).
HM: 6:00AM – 40-minutes with 4 HILLS on Bailey Bridge + CORE. You’ll run east on Bailey toward Bailey Bridge, do your 4 HILLS and return to Turner Parking lot.
Walking group: 6:15AM – 40 minutes walk toward Bailey Bridge +CORE. You’ll walk east on Bailey toward Bailey Bridge for 20 minutes and return to Turner Parking lot.
Water will be provided at Turner only. Please bring hydration if you need it along the course.
With regard to running hills, please read Daniel Imreke’s note below on HILL training.
“There are a variety of ways to tackle hill workouts, but we will keep it simple for the first week. Once you get to Bailey Bridge, run uphill at Marathon Pace (or 60% effort if you don’t know your marathon pace) and then run downhill at a slower, easier pace to recover and relax your breath. Once you have reached the base of the other side of the bridge, immediately turn around and repeat going the opposite direction. Try not to stop unless necessary. One uphill counts as 1 hill. A roundtrip up, down, and back over will count as 2 hills. Continue this for the assigned workout, 4 hills for the week 1 half marathoners. Once you have completed 4 hills, please run back to Turner at an easy conversational pace to complete your 40 minute workout.
Running hills improves leg and heart strength, central nervous system stamina, and forces you to lift your knees (a desirable trait in running form). Running uphill reduces the impact forces on your feet and legs, but be careful while running downhill to not over stress your knees. While running uphill, your stride should be slightly shorter than on a flat surface and you should be looking directly ahead (not down). While running downhill, be sure to not over stride (try landing with your feet directly beneath your hips and let gravity carry you downhill). One way to accomplish this is to increase your cadence (# of steps per minute) while running downhill. Increasing your cadence/strides downhill will also reduce the impact on your legs.”
Facebook has been a game changer for PARR – such a great place to communicate, collaborate, coordinate and motivate. We are a running group that is quite social, thus we do engage in social media. While you may have valid concerns about social media, FB does allow our members to effectively and efficiently communicate with each other. If you chose to not get on FB, you will miss out on important posts about daily runs/workouts, and you may not get a chance to meet our inspirational and motivational members. We strongly encourage you to join FB, if nothing else than to join our group.
If you’re not in our private Facebook Group, please request to join here: https://www.facebook.com/
Each group also has their individual FB page, so please make sure you get added to your respective group. We have linked the other PARR training groups so you can see posts made by members in other groups.
Please continue to post general running, funny, witty, informational posts and motivational stories to FB. Also, if you travel and take PARR global, please feel free to post your running adventures as you transverse the globe, #parrglobal.
THE Schedule
The entire schedule is posted here: https://goparr.com/schedules/
REMEMBER: the official PARR runs are the Saturday runs and the most people show up. The weekday runs are up to each of us to complete, BUT…Lots of folks coordinating those. We have a weekly morning track session on Wednesday that has become quite popular over the years. This track session is available for members to join. Most of us use it to do our weekly speed work but feel free to join to do your own thing. You must have read my numerous weekly posts about track so hopefully, this is not a secret to anyone who is on our FB page. ALL PACES welcomed to the track.
Just a few questions that have come up…
HM or FM? – this always means Half Marathon and Full Marathon
What is the PB? The PB is the Professional Building at 2225 County Road 90 that that folks sometimes meet for weekday runs.
What pace do I run? We normally do a magic mile to start the season and with that time, you can find your appropriate training paces from the PARR website. We chose to forego the magic mile this year. However, you can still find your training paces if you find the VDOT Running Calculator (created by Dr. Jack Daniels) and download it for free from either the Android or Apple store. Once you get the app, you can enter in one of your recent races and it’ll provide you with the various training paces, along with your race pace for various distances from a mile to the full marathon. Even if you’re training for the HM, we frequently ask you to run at your FM pace so it’s important for you to know your pace. If you are running for fun, fitness and friends, then you may not feel the need to do this.
Are we done yet? Like never!
Be social, be happy! PARR is a great group of people who share a love for running. Many long-term friendships have been built within the group. For the new members, there may be anxiety in joining such a big group. From my own experience, I had anxiety and nervousness during my first season as I met many of the members. My advice to new or veteran members is please do your best to meet someone new on every run. If you see someone running or walking by himself/herself, try to take the opportunity to meet/run/walk with him/her. It’s early in the season so pace and distance is not as important as trying to find someone you can run with throughout the season. Introduce yourself to every member, not just people in your own group. If you give a bit of effort in trying to get to know someone new, you may find future long time friends.
With all of this said, Have a great Saturday and weekend!
Laurence