Frequently Asked Questions
The coaches reviewed whether this could be introduced, however with a small coaching team of volunteers we found that we could not consistently deliver a new training session, if we added another session what would we offer 5k, 10km, half or even marathon and everyone is training for different events? The coaching team looked at whether we could make changes to existing sessions but felt splitting the training session was too impractical. The existing sessions focus on technique, speed and easy running which are the foundations of any race specific training plan which could be incorporated to any distance you are training for.
The coaching team will be offering 10k training plans varying on your fitness level created by one of our coaches Jim Dodsworth, these will cover the type of training you should be doing to race to your best time. A marathon training plan was the other requested distance, we recommend anyone who would like any support running a marathon, especially for the first time, to speak with any of the coaching team who will gladly discuss how you could approach 26.2miles.
David Ward and Bruce Gander have started running a 7 Woods, Cherry Orchard or Crouch Valley run on a Sunday but this is being done as LoSS members, not as club coach lead social run. This doesn’t occur every week so if you are not on Facebook and want to join feel free to reach out to either and they can provide you the information. As a coaching team and with races and personal commitments, we could not consistently cover a weekend long run but if anyone would like to join the coaching team to become a run leader, to either lead or start a club training session, the club can support your qualifications.
The Wednesday training session is about technique, we practice the components of running regularly. The coaches do provide feedback during the sessions where they think appropriate. If anyone has any specific concerns with their technique speak to one of the coaches and they will be more than happy to help.
The club sessions used to start at 19:45 however when the world changed due to COVID we looked at various different start times, with a mixture of members who attend our session working locally, London or at home we feel 19:30 is a good compromise.
We know attending a club training session may seem daunting for the very first time and you may have seen we have already managed changes in all of our sessions from Back to Running through to our Friday session runs, all coaches are asking about new members, checking in with them throughout and after the session has finished.
For back to running we have introduce a buddy system. Simon Taylor will be running monthly Zoom sessions for all new members to ask any question so anything you need to know he can help with, members of the coaching team can join the sessions to help you put a name to face and help put anyone at ease.
At this time a junior Leigh-on-Sea Striders isn’t something we can offer. There are challenges around the coaching team size to consistently offer sessions and the lack of suitable facilities especially during winter months. There are also additional protection measures we have to take to offer this and at present we don’t feel we can do this every week to the standard we would set ourselves. If there are members with children looking to join a running club as a junior, we recommend SSA ssathletics.co.uk.