If you believe it you can achieve it

I've been running with my running club for the past six or seven months now. When I joined I only did long runs with them because I needed to get out early and I didn't want to run by myself (plus I needed some motivation at the time). I kept doing only long runs with them for a while until about a month ago when I decided to do their tempo/hill workouts and early morning weekly runs which we loving call our vampire runs (we start at 5am). 

I wanted to be able to ease into marathon training rather than feel like I was hitting the ground running. So increasing my group runs was a way for me to get miles in early in the morning and interact with the club more. And as my marathon training starts in about a week, I feel more than prepared for training.

Do you see that!? This new record was obtained last week during a grueling hill workout. If you haven't already, check out my earlier post about running with my club HERE and see how I transitioned from being a singular runner to a group runner. 

All the science even points to the benefits of running with others as seen in this article from Runner's World. Of course I didn't pay attention to that earlier in my running career because I'm stubborn and don't like to listen to others (my wife has first hand accounts of this). That's not to say that I didn't get faster on my own. Within a year I was able to reduce my pace by over one minute. But there's something about running with a group of people that can produce greater results.

This glorious time that I posted has come after a month of group runs and being coached with specialized workouts (I'll do a separate post about the benefits of having a running coach). When the record flashed on my watch I was pleasantly surprised. I'm not one of the faster runners in my club but over time I've been able to keep them in my sights on my runs. 

If this is what I'm capable of now, I'm certainly looking forward to how I'll do after training.