Nike+ run club

Back in the days of Nike town in Bourke street (Melbourne), I used to attend nike running sessions. They were awesome, especially since you got advice on running, got to trial their shoes, and they gave out raffle tickets to win free stuff. I might have won a running belt and two caps (although gave a cap away to my friend who had come along one time). Weekday sessions went from the store and Saturday sessions from the tan.  Then the store closed and my running also largely stopped. Recently I'd seen hints of a "new" running club but the posts I found on Facebook were usually months old that no one was responding to them anymore.  In trying on the new epic run tights (comfiest pants I now own and nice and warm in this awful Melbourne spring we're having) at the Nike Melbourne Central store, I saw a sign in the change rooms to head to the store's Facebook page for details about a running group. Again I found a post from at least a month ago mentioning a venue change.

Here's the pants (taken from their Facebook page)

Eventually a hunt on the internet and I found this guy's blog:

http://www.larsgrombach.com/2012/09/nike-run-club-melbourne.html

From there I found an old event and the nike running au group. Success!

https://www.facebook.com/nikerunningau

The facebook event which seems to get shuffled along each week is here:
https://www.facebook.com/events/721703157846166/
(if that link stops working from the nike running au page, go to events - it will either be a future or past one for melbourne :))

Thanks to Dean for answering my question on Facebook about whether they ran regardless of the weather and his suggestion to introduce myself when I came along I found the extra motivation I needed to combat the rain that started as soon as I left work and actually attend!  Instead of running from the store they now hire an area of federation square (amphitheatre) with massive numbers of people turning up.

This picture doesn't show a massive amount of people as a lot of us were hiding from the rain

Well organised, you need to sign a release form for new runners or sign a sheet for returning runners and get a run card stamped. After 5 runs you can claim a free nike dry fit tshirt (see above). They're black and awesome!

The front

The Back - so glad people were wearing these for me to spot on the run

You can then leave your bag with them getting an wristband in exchange for safe return of your belongings. There was a warmup (which kind of fizzled as I think too many people were trying to take shelter from the rain), then the run groups were announced and headed off.

This time there were 5 & 10km distances with pace groups of 5, 6 or 7 min Kms. I annoyingly run at 6:30 and thought it would be good to push myself to run at 6. Unfortunately lots of people seemed to be running faster than 6 min km once we got to the tan track which was way too fast for me! 

Here we are momentarily stuck at traffic lights - such a variety of people

Here's my run

Despite dropping back and running solo most of the 5kms, I still always had someone with a nike shirt or wristband in sight. I also was greeted on return and asked by both Dean and my pace runner how I went. So that was nice! Drinks were available as well as lolly snakes. A group stretching session was also held which I'm usually pretty lazy about doing.

I'm a bit sad the Monday runs don't happen anymore as it means I can't make my local boxing class on a Wednesday night but it's a great way to go running with a variety of different people. I hope they can facilitate smaller groups (maybe having 2 run leaders spread themselves out in the group rather than both up the front), and maybe introduce half minute pace groups so that the group actually run at the speed they're supposed to. Maybe the 7 min group would have run fast!! They were short on run leaders for this session though. I've probably found this friendly group just as they go on break for the Christmas period but at least now I know who they are and that they'll be doing training for Run for the kids next year! I'm pretty confident given the weather I wouldn't have run when I got home so this was great to keep training!