We all have busy lives, both at work or at home. We live to fulfil the expectations our professional life demands from us and seek to have all time we can get for our family, for our friends and for us.
Together we have a plethora of different schedules which influence the time of the day we can do the things we love. In my case I’m always exploring ways to fit my runs into the agenda.
Having a considerably good work-life-balance is perfect, as I can often fit 2 to 3 training sessions per week at lunchtime – even though that may mean having to pickup a sandwich or quick soup to get back to my affairs.
At work we have a great community of runners: we train together whenever possible and participate in races in the vicinity together as a group. Finding the right schedule to get people training together during the week can be challenging however. You have the morning runners, the lunch-break runners, the late afternoon runners and the ones which prefer to run in the calmness of the evening.
A cool way to get the community together has been the introduction of interval trainings. You have runners who love it and use it frequently as a means to enhance their performance. You have others which do it once in a while only, lacking the motivation to take the effort required in such a session. And you have obviously the ones which read about it or don’t even have a clue what it is, but ultimately have never done it.
My good friend Ricardo started posting on Strava regular sessions where he was hitting the running track with pushy series. The rationale was to have a controlled environment, with measured distance and goal in sight. The reasons for him to do so were super sound and hence I looked for a track next to my work place where I could do it as well. Next thing I started inviting people to join, on a recurring basis, same day of the week, same time.
Happy faces at the end of an interval training session
The outcome has been absolutely fantastic!
We have more and more runners joining every week. We have the top athletes. We have the ones which like to follow the pros as a way to get the missing motivation kick and to get closer to their goals. And we have others which for one reason or another just keep coming.
This week Tuesday we had a fabulous session! We weren’t many this time, however we had one of the first Spring days in Düsseldorf. Mild temperature around 16ºC made us hit the track in shorts and shirt, enjoy a sunny afternoon and push on the track to feel the warm sweat on the skin. The soccer field in the middle of the track was filled with teenagers having sports school classes, filling the atmosphere with pleasant sounds of laughter and delight.
While suffering on the track with 200 m or 1 Km intervals, everyone left with a smiley face and a general feeling of “this was fun”!
Can’t wait for next Tuesday! 🙂
2 Replies to “Interval training bringing the community together”