Sunday run

The first Junior run of 2022 was at Rivelin valley parks, off Rails road. Kris took the older group & I took the younger group. The older group headed down the valley to one of the further green spaces. I’ve not yet found out what they covered in their session, but I did hear tell of some freezing paddling in the river to clean off.

Photo credit to Kris. Cooling down and cleaning off!

The younger group stayed in the nearest green space to the parking. After warm up, we did some reps on a zig-zag course to get into the swing of things. Losing your feet and sliding out were the order of the day; most people got a bum slide in at some point. The organisational challenge being to keep everyone moving enough to not get too cold; adults included. After the drills we filled out the rest of the time with some running games, with just enough breaks to recover.

Next Sunday is Norfolk Park. With Michael G & Jess leading.

Session content

Regulars will already know this, but its worth pointing it out again…

The Sunday sessions are meant to cater for a range of abilities and are very definitely not an elite running programme. The aim is to enable kids to enjoy running for its own sake, learn off road running skills and judgement, to enable them to learn and develop as fell runners. The long term ambition is to get them to adulthood with enthusiasm and skills to carry on gaining experience and developing as hill goers. But its also fine for them to drop out along the way; and leave us with the knowledge they’ve got the grounding to return to the sport and the hills should they choose to. There’s a case to be made to say that just focusing on running as an end in itself from a young age through into adulthood, might pass up the opportunities for a broad range of life experiences and skills.

The under 11s group (certainly when I’m leading) does some directed fitness and skills work, but the majority of the time is just spent playing running games. It was an important realisation for me early in parenthood, that young children don’t run in a continuous fashion. They run in a start-stop manner. To expect otherwise is to invite frustration. As the younger group currently goes from 6 to 11, one of the objectives is developing a continuous running style.

The older group has a huge range of abilities. The challenge is always to cater for that range. There is good reason to do some drills and intervals to increase skills and fitness. There’s also a lot to be said for the plain enjoyment of going running – this is the most frequent plea we hear from this group, “can we just go for a run please?”

The challenge for this group is always balance. Enough fun running, but not leaving anyone. Enough skills to keep on learning and developing, but not getting dull. The leaders put a great deal into thinking about and planning these sessions to make them work well and not get repetitive.

Whilst being new to the group is always going to be a bit intimidating, I’d always encourage kids to come and try it out, if they like being active in the outdoors. Its as far from a regimented soulless sports training session as I can possibly make it! Wet feet are pretty much a certainty!

Other areas

I see that lots of Dark Peakers were out at SYO, Whirlow yesterday. Again slippy was the order of the day. Well done to all who got out there!

There’s still a LiRF coaching course on offer funded by the club. Let me know if you want to take it up?

Lewis