Book them, they will run!

If you're reading this and have ever entered a race or fun run, regardless of your ability, I'm sure you will know all about pre-race nerves.  Booked months in advance, the big day quickly comes around.  You have done the training but the voice in the back of your head tells you that you should have done more.  Your nerves grow as you stand in the starting area ages before the start of the race and there doesn't seem to be anyone else around.

You start to doubt yourself.  "What was I thinking entering a 10k?  I'm not fit enough. I'll probably come last anyway".  You realise that if you just set off running you could be at the end long before the gathering crowds have even started their humiliating mass warm-up.

Last night I went through all of that and more! It was the inaugural run for South Leeds Lakers.  I had printed off registration forms and route maps, dug out all of my spare hi-vis running gear in case any stealth runners turned up, advertised the group on Facebook, Twitter, and at Cross Flatts Parkrun.  I had even done the training for group leaders, but was I ready enough?

I stood alone in the car park of Beeston Co-op, waiting.  As with race days I was early, but I had to be first one there, just in case somebody arrived early, thought that they had been stood up and decided to go home!  What on Earth was I doing there?  Who was I to think that I could be a running group leader?  I should just go for a run, after all nobody would turn up.  In two years of running around Beeston I could count on one hand the number of other runners I had passed on any single run.

But then, out of the darkness they came.  One or two at first, fluorescent t-shirts visible long before I could identify their faces.  It wasn't too long before there were enough people to describe us as a group.  I had envisaged five or six people setting off around Beeston but to get almost twenty people turn up on the first night was fantastic.  Nineteen of us set off into the night, passing the Tommy Wass, running down Dewsbury Road and back up Beeston Road to finish outside Snipper Clarke's at the end of South Leeds Lakers' first 5k run.

Before we started running I laid out my stall.  I want South Leeds Lakers to be a social running group.  People coming together to run because they love it, but also to encourage others to take up the activity that, for some reason or another, had managed to get nineteen people to come out and join a stranger on a freezing cold February night.  The run should be at a pace comfortable enough to talk through, that way we can share our stories of running highs and running lows, and pass on any hints and tips on how to run better, or avoid injury.

Photo courtesy of South Leeds Life

Last night we did just that.  The group did spread out, but it was still running together and people were talking all the way round.  Importantly strangers helped each other around the route, up the unforgiving Beeston Hill, and cheered each other over the finish line.

My nerves had vanished and they had been replaced by an overwhelming sense of joy and achievement.  On the one hand I had been out for a bit of a run, nothing new there.  On the other hand I had got people together to run.  A diverse mixture of people and abilities coming together to run because I had given them permission to do so.

Had they enjoyed it? Yes.  Did they want to do the same thing next week? Yes!  Did I feel like I had just set a new 10k PB? YES!  We are already looking forward to next week's run and I know that those original nineteen runners are already spreading the news of the group to their friends.  At 6:55pm last night we were runners but now we are South Leeds Lakers!