Endurance Squad Tuesday Virtual Reps

We’ve been hosting our ‘Tuesday virtual reps’ session via Zoom each week. It’s been brilliant to have people coming along and all running hard in a reps session – together virtually but apart in different locations.

We want to give people a way to keep up their training and to feel motivated, but it’s about more than just the running. A vital part of what we’re trying to do is keeping us all feeling connected with other runners – we run better and feel better when we’ve got our running pals supporting us, so we’re aiming to create a positive way to connect runners with each other during this difficult period.

One of the lovely aspects of doing these sessions has been that they’re so inclusive, and they’ve reconnected us with familiar faces. Because everything is time-based (such as 6 x 3 minute reps with jog recoveries) it doesn’t matter what pace anyone is running. We’ve had some runners who we know are belting out speedy paces, while others are running at a slower pace, or race-walking, or running around their gardens. We’ve had people in different places joining us, from around the wider Cambridge region, into Norfolk, up in Scotland, and even in Colorado. We’ve shared this more widely too, and had club runners from Huntingdon, Biggleswade and elsewhere – we’re happy for anyone to come along and it’s been great getting to know them. And we’ve been so happy to have some past friends rejoining us who are unlikely to be training with us on a Tuesday, including (and I’m sure they won’t mind us name-dropping) Neil Costello and Alan Baldock.

So what happens in the session? At the start we welcome everyone in for a chat, say hello and get to know who’s in the session with us. Then we all do a warm up together, with video demo. Runners can then take their phones out with them, keeping audio on via Zoom so they can listen to us calling out the rep times – with us shouting lots of encouragement and coaching tips to keep people motivated and thinking about running well. We bring in different runners on audio at different points in the session so everyone has a sense of running with other people, and can hear from each other. We then join back together for stretches and a chat at the end.

We’d love you to come along – feel free to join us whether you are fast, slow, C&C, non-C&C, know us or not, are as near as Cambridge or as far away as New Zealand – ALL are welcome! The sessions are 6:30pm every Tuesday:
URL: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/575361329?pwd=jKcdS9-UtPuHrKwidUzp8YWanX4HXg
Meeting ID: 575 361 329
Password: 000574

Hope to see you there!
Sarah Wightman, Richard Lyle & the endurance coaching team