On the run

LEARNING CURVE:Envious at the sight of healthy joggers? If you can't beat them, join them: sign up for a running class, writes ROSEMARY Mac CABE

THERE ARE TWO types of people in this world: people who run, and people who don’t. People who run pound the pavements at all hours, or so it seems, and care not a whit for the weather conditions or legions of beeping trucks battling their way down the quays.

For Aoife Long, runner envy drove her to sign up with Run with Tina (runwithtina.com) for an eight-week course of intensive running classes, three nights a week. “I live really close to the city centre,” says Long, “where you see people running all the time, so I became really conscious of it. It looks like a really fit and healthy thing to do.”

She’s not alone in her envy. There’s nothing more infuriating than emerging from a near-coma on a Sunday morning to take a drive through the Phoenix Park only to be confronted by hordes of happy runners, earphones in, smiles plastered on their fit little faces.

Long signed up for the classes in January after a recommendation from a friend. “I met her one evening when I hadn’t seen her in a while. She was so excited about it, telling us how great it was, and I just thought. . .”

But starting running isn’t like starting to knit; your body is going to stage some form of protest, in some cases quite a violent one, and it helps to start out with a reasonable level of fitness. In Long’s case, she had done some regular exercise in the months beforehand, but Christmas and the adverse weather conditions put a dampener on any plans to forge a solid foundation.

“My fitness levels were okay, I’d say, before starting,” she says. “I used to do a lot of aerobics and go walking regularly, but I hadn’t done anything in a while – I used to be out of breath running for the bus, which is how I’d judge it.

“Tina Murphy, who runs the courses in Ballsbridge, told us to go for walks about three times a week, to build up our fitness before starting the course,” says Long. “But, with the bad weather, and Christmas, the only preparation I did was walking to the Luas after work and watching a lot of TV in the evenings!”

So what is it like, to start running from an “okay” fitness level? “The first class was grand, actually,” says Long. “We ran for one minute, eight times, with a lot of walking in between – and afterwards, we did exercises and stretches.”

So far, so . . . nice. So what about the pain? What about the tortuous cramps, the exhausted, overworked mind?

“I’ve really found that I’ve been looking forward to going to the classes,” says Long. “I find it clears my head. When you’re running, you’re concentrating on breathing, pacing yourself and not tripping up – you’re not thinking about the usual mundane things, which is really refreshing.”

There are those who would argue running, like breathing or eating chocolate, is an instinct, and not something that needs to be taught. So why learn to run at all? Why not just lace up your trainers, set off for the park and go? “Well, I find the running really tough – I’m not sure it’s something I could do on my own, without the group to motivate me,” says Long. “Running sounds like it should be really easy, but it’s even easier to get injured. A lot of the core exercises we do – which aren’t easy either, by the way – are to prevent the common injuries experienced by runners.”

The advantage of running with a group, says Long, is not only the extra push it provides, but the social aspect – Long’s class has planned to run a five kilometre run over Patrick’s Day weekend to celebrate the ending of the course. “There is a group feel to the class,” she says. “While we’re actually running, a few of us go into antisocial mode, concentrating on breathing, but other people chat away. Then, at the end, there are five minutes where we chat to each other as we’re walking back, and of course congratulate ourselves.”

An eight-week running course for beginners costs €150; new courses start on March 15th and May 10th. See runwithtina.com; e-mail tina@runwithtina.com