Gain Motivation by Joining a Club or Team

​​So, I tried the whole training alone thing. I wanted to start racing but not having anyone to coach me or tell me what to do, and no one to tell me what’s right and what’s wrong made it harder that way. First off, running alone everyday and tying to be consistent and motivated was tough enough. I didn’t last training alone, there’s just so much negativity that went through my head, that I couldn’t fight off. Then when it came to be creating a racing plan, that was difficult. I didn’t even know where to begin. I felt like the training plan was one of the most important parts! How are you going to start training yourself, and let alone starting to run if you don’t know how much running is right and what pace is correct to be doing every day, then you must figure out when is the right time to start increasing your mileage, and deciding when to increase pace, also you got to get educated on when to start doing workouts. There are so many workouts to do. So not only do you have to figure out when to do them, you must figure out which workouts are best to do and when to start and how much of that workout you should be doing, and how long and so forth. It sounds overwhelming doesn’t.
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So, when you’re super motivated about doing this, you’ll try it, won’t you? So, I went on the internet, and read many coaches theories and training plans for people who were beginners and barely coming back to people who were advanced. I was reading through all those training plans and started putting in random workouts, but only ones I enjoyed doing. Then I started choosing however long I felt was realistically possible. So, I already wasn’t looking at it from a coach’s side, I was looking at it from a lazy runner’s side. It was way different then someone just telling me what to do. And that wasn’t the worst of it. I didn’t even know how to sign up for races. Now I kept thinking, well I’m going to train to do the LA half marathon, and I looked up how much time it would take to train, it said I needed 4 months, and that was the exact amount of time I had to train, but honestly, I wouldn’t have done it. And even If I had, it wouldn’t have been correctly. I only knew of 5k’s, and half marathons, and marathons. I didn’t know of anything else, I didn’t know of track and field races I could run in or anything else. I would have stuck to something small.

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Now, that I have joined our WAR Elite team, it may just be the beginning, but I know this team will do amazing achievements. I’ve already seen improvements from myself, just by running with them. I now feel I have a better motivation to run. It’s always easier running with someone than to run alone. You have people to help push each other, and keep each other going. You have people to train with that are trying to do the same things as you, and who can grow together. And Rojas gives us a training plan, so now there’s no stress of when and what to do. He tells us the mileage we should be doing and what pace, and all. Now, we are more mature now, I know in high school some of us had different mindsets, some of us hate being told what to do, and others must be told. I’ve been used to being coached my whole life with sports, my father was always that person. So, I honestly need someone to coach me, and to critique me and yell at me, I work better that way. Now I have someone to tell which workouts to do, whether I like them or not, and when and how to do them. Now, I’m not worried about my training. I feel confident, because our team has everything it needs. We have the coach, the plan, runners, and races, it would always be nice to have more runners. The more the merrier. We also have the running club, so that is a lot of people that can run together for fun or be social! So, you don’t have to just run alone, or maybe train alone, you can join a team or a club, and make lifelong friends. It doesn’t have to be so hard. So, think about joining a team or a club, I did and it’s the best! 

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