Going loopy

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FurryH Feb 2018 10:39pm, 8 Feb 2018 1,696 posts	0 FurryH The club I ran with had set routes and the groups I ran with rather than looping back (although this was advocated but rarelly happened) they would stop and regroup. Personally when I ended up being fastest in the group I would perfer to stop and wait for others to catch up than loop. Looping did my head in. we tended to group together in similar paces at the start which makes this a lot easier. The groups were fairly dynamic and relied a lot on communication with quite often people dropping back to slower groups behind. Agreeing a pace at the start is key and the group should run at the pace and stop regroup or split into smaller groups as you go.
Autumnleaves Feb 2018 9:58am, 9 Feb 2018 11,896 posts	0 Autumnleaves I genuinely don't understand why turning back at a mid-point should do anyone's head in? On our routes we have one musterpoint in the 5k one and two on the 6k. Fastest finishers can also loop back from the end rather than hang around and get cold. The coaches/leaders may well do other loops back if we get really strung out. It does depend on what people want to get out of the run and ours are all generally intended to be social and therefore at a chatty pace. I can appreciate that if you are trying to hold on to your fast or tempo pace you might not want to turn round, but we don't encourage our runners to do that in our runs as a general rule. The other week I used fixed turn points as a very effective fartlek session for our faster men - they loved it. We also have an unofficial 'league' of 'who can add the most distance to a route'.
jdarun Feb 2018 11:02am, 9 Feb 2018 2,434 posts	0 jdarun Well I suppose if people just prefer standing around then that's their choice. Seems odd to me, and I would think it more off-putting to a newbie tail runner to have a bunch charge off into the distance and wait occasionally than to have them looping back and forth. In the first case you are clearly holding them up but the second they are just getting a longer run in.
The_Saint Feb 2018 11:29am, 9 Feb 2018 6,177 posts	0 The_Saint Catering for random running speeds is a nightmare, especially at night when people turn up dressed in all black with headphones and look blankly at you when you ask what kind of pace they run at or what time do you typically do at parkrun. We have a group that run at 9 to 10 minute mile pace (or slower if they have to) and everyone else has to fit in between 6:45 and 8:45 miling. In theory it sounds great that you get members to run at agreed paces in between but it is not that easy. The looping/stopping thing doesn't come into it as we don't stop or wait. I didn't dream of turning up to run with a club until I was confident of running below 7:30 miling for 45 minutes, a problem is people who turn up who should be at a couch to 5K programme and want to stop after 400 metres.
jdarun Feb 2018 12:17pm, 9 Feb 2018 2,435 posts	0 jdarun Well we’ve not quite had that but even pretty decent runners apparently feel a bit intimidated by the thought of joining our group runs which is a shame.
Autumnleaves Feb 2018 2:33pm, 9 Feb 2018 11,898 posts	0 Autumnleaves I suppose to an extent it depends on where within your runners' other training the club/group run sits. If you want to use it is a chance to run quite hard against people who are as fast or faster than you are, there may well be a frustration with accommodating a wide range of paces. If you view it as one of your easy paced runs then you might not mind so much. Within the Resolution Runners set up our mantra is that no-one gets left behind and so we do our utmost to ensure that those at the back have someone with them and that most of 'the pack' touch base with them at least once. I am pretty fierce about it and reinforce the rule, re-explaining why we do it regularly - if faster runners don't like it then they can run elsewhere as ultimately we set ourselves up to support beginners and those new to running that local running clubs don't always cater for. We also seek to encourage a 'group running' mentality - it isn't 'all about me' - we need people to be willing to take some collective responsibility for each other, otherwise we couldn't really function
jdarun Feb 2018 3:16pm, 9 Feb 2018 2,437 posts	0 jdarun It seems that a re-launch of the twice-weekly runs is taking place, one to be officially branded as a social run with looping/staying together encouraged and the other to be a harder run with regrouping much as at present. We'll see how that goes...have to say I feel like a bit of a fraud commenting as I generally prefer to (and can) run during the day anyway. But I will try to turn up for a few of them.
Autumnleaves Feb 2018 3:39pm, 9 Feb 2018 11,899 posts	0 Autumnleaves That sounds like a good compromise
p^2 Feb 2018 5:51pm, 9 Feb 2018 30 posts	0 p^2 We used to do this backwards. Slowest people (and their official shepherd) ran first. Anybody running wanting to run faster was obliged to run a minute off-route (next side road, or similar) and catch up with the shepherd later. You could then decide to recover at the shepherd's pace, or do another off-piste excursion. This had the benefit that nobody felt tempted to stop to let the slow people catch up.
jdarun Feb 2018 6:38pm, 9 Feb 2018 2,440 posts	0 jdarun That’s a good arrangement. I always loop back some way behind my wife when we run together but also go ahead a bit.