I joined their marathon training program in September, after a year of fattening Covid-19…read more"stay-at-home" measures as a way to start moving. I didn't want to make a review right away because I wanted to go through the whole experience, but now I'm pretty sure I'm going to continue with them, so let me break it down for you.
The short version, if you don't want to read a lot, is: Do it!!!
The Experience: while in my youth I didn't have a car and I hated public transportation, so I used to walk a lot when possible, it's been about 20 years of being sort of a couch potato, with some brief stints at gyms and/or riding bicycles by myself...
A friend of mine is training with Team Footworks, and she made it look attractive... though I still had some reservations because, generally speaking, I've felt that experienced athletes seem to look down upon couch potatoes, even on beginners' classes. Keep in mind, these are not classes, this is training, so my expectations were fairly low.
Right before the season started, they made a zoom meeting where they explained all the program AND answered all questions. And then let us go to the first session without joining yet, just as a test.
Overall, first session is: pick a group you think you can keep up with. Same with the following two sessions. I bounced around a little bit on those three sessions and then it was suggested to me that I should probably join the walkers, so I did.
The whole season I stayed with that group, a very welcoming and encouraging group of people led by Debby and Renee. Every Saturday, we started stretching and warming up at the route-start point (the Footworks store), and increasing the mileage every session.
They recommend, in addition to the Saturday sessions, you walk/run at least twice within the week, and do a different low-impact activity on one other day to round up the training and conditioning.
If you want, you can join the "fun-run" every Tuesday and Thursday, where people from different groups just meet up and do about four or five miles at their own pace. That covers the twice a week training, leaving only the low-impact activity for you to figure out.
After each season there is a "big event" (what you're supposed to be training for). But since covid has been messing up gatherings, my first season ended up with as "half marathon" event organized by Footworks itself, which was fun and showed us the progress.
Now I'm starting my second season. Now I'm training with the runners. What they call the 3-1 group (run three minutes, walk one to recover, the three again and one again and so on and so forth.
I feel I'm probably not ready for that group yet, but they have been so supportive and encouraging that pushing myself a bit over my comfort zone actually helps me get in better shape and improve, which is the whole point of the training.
Each season is about three months, they're always pointing to a specific event (marathon or half-marathon, but it's just a goal to set your sights on, not a requirement.
Also the Footworks store, has products for all your running needs and they are prepared for, willing to, and happy to help you and advise you in any way you need for your training.
Plus, sometimes we go to happy-hour after runs, which helps make this something more like a group of friends who train together instead of just strangers who meet up to train, and that in turn helps you have an environment that promotes your coming back and doing the work.
