The Group Workout

It sends tremors of fear into the hearts of newer athletes everywhere. A GROUP workout. Eek.

As adults, we don't have P.E. class in our lives anymore, and only a few have a coach directing each and every workout. Which means we either work out alone, with a few friends or we join a group. I was in the first camp for a long time. I worked out alone. Alone doing a DVD, alone running on a path, alone alone alone. I was too scared to run/workout with anyone else. I didn't want to be the new person doing everything wrong or moving too slow. It was terrifying to think about sticking out like that. I didn't want my friends to realize a weakness about me, and I didn't want my first impression to strangers be my lack of athletic ability. So, I avoided it for a long time.

Luckily I have some great friends who continued to ask me to join them on a run or to lift. That led to my first half marathon and my first good relationship with strength training. Fast forward a year or two, and I found myself living in a state where I knew no one. My running buddies were an eight hour drive away. Therefore, I found myself at a crossroads. I either run alone or find new training pals. I actually took the former approach first. I trained for the Capital City Half last year all on my lonesome. And damn those long runs were lonesome. Since I had been through the paces before, I knew I could manage the distances, but in reality it kind of sucked to have no one to suffer with alongside me.

Starting to get bored of "just running," I decided to try out triathlons last summer. Because of my lack of running buddy-ship, I figured that if I added in some other sports (like biking and swimming), it would help break up the monotony of solo workouts. Turns out that my foray into a new realm of sports actually helped nudge me into a new community, too. By no means am I yet connected to the multi-sport community in Columbus. But I am hoping to change that.

I've taken little steps. I have my awesome Run Club at LifeTime Fitness (Easton). We have a solid core of 6-10 people who meet every Wednesday and Sunday to either do intervals on the dreadmill when its cold or pound the pavement/trails when the weather is acceptable. Running with this group has helped me improve in more ways than I ever thought possible. I try to keep up and try not to get passed. I run faster and farther than I ever thought I would. A five mile run no longer feels like it's a "long run" - it feels like that should be the standard when I go out. A three or four mile jaunt is a "quick run" (even though, honestly, my times are still far from "quick").

As the temps begin to warm, I plan to join some sort of group for Open Water swims, and a group for bike rides. It may be the local triathlon club or some of the cycling groups suggested to me by awesome readers (thanks, BDD!) But I now know that you just have to take the leap and surround yourself with people who perform better than you do. It is a surefire way to ramp up your own performance.

I actually started this post yesterday morning and didn't finish. Oddly enough, I have seen similar themes about group fitness in several places in the past few days:

A NYTimes article on how folks need "connection and meaning" to keep working out.

Blogger Nicole at Geek Turned Athlete just joined a very hardcore running group.

My buddy D is attending her first ever run club meeting tonight. (and she has a brand new blog - go check it out! we're running together in her first ever half mary this april!)

Have you ever had those butterflies meeting a new training group for the first time? Are you glad you went?

P.S. Anyone know what happened to Q? He seems to have disappeared from the blogosphere!!!