Every now and again when I am in the company of the people I call running friends and my wife calls geeks the subject turns to clubs.

Now I want to make it really clear – I have nothing against clubs.  They organise a lot of the races on the calendar, get kids active and involved and support the entire sport from grassroots to elite level.  And the people who are active in clubs are almost evangelical about them – they get you access to facilities, other runners and coaching.  Clubs are a good thing.

But I won’t be joining one anytime soon and an ad hoc survey at the turn of the year on the popular running forum Boards.ie  suggested that as many as 30% of regular runners aren’t in a club.  So if clubs are so good what possible advantages can a self coached runner have that would keep them away?  Here are a few…

Knowledge is power

Jack Daniels is one of the most respected running coaches and authors out there and one of his core philosophies is that every session must have a clear purpose and the athlete must run to that purpose.  Now a good coach will explain to an athlete why he or she is doing a particular training session.  But when an athlete has taken control of their own training plan they have a complete understanding of what they are doing.  Instead of getting a hurried explanation at trackside while they stretch the self coached athlete will often have studied the training plan in some detail days, weeks and months in advance.  They will know that recovery runs have to be slow because they know the hard sessions will come the next day, they appreciate the value and long term benefits of running reps at a certain intensity because they have read the theory behind the plan.  And as any teacher will tell you the more involved the student the better the work.

And many self coached runners have a magpies approach to running.  While a club runner has a coach who advises them on how to train, perhaps on what to wear or eat, the best forms of cross training and so on the self coached runner has literally hundreds of coaches to solicit advice from.  The explosion in social media has made it easier to talk directly to coaches and your peers and to trade ideas and advice.  And the same tools can be used to find specialist advice on areas such as nutrition and strength training that may not be available in your local club.  Add to this the wide range of running books and magazines and the frequent courses run around the country both within and without the club structure and the self coached runners issue may be too much coaching and advice, not too little!

One to one is better than one to many

If you are new to running and you begin a structured training regime under a club coach you will make huge progress.  Likewise if you are a top club runner you will get more focussed and individual attention.  But what if you are between those extremes?  What if you’ve already made the initial gains but aren’t quite good enough to get personal attention?

As a self coached runner this isn’t an issue – while many runners simply take a plan from a book or the internet the more experienced athletes will adapt and amend these plans to suit their own circumstances.  Small tweaks such as moving long run days to fit around the family lead to larger ones such as changing the type or frequency of speed sessions to address a personal weakness.  No-one knows your body as well as you do and with a little bit of experience you can take a generic training plan and turn it into a high value and personal plan to make you a better runner.

And of course if you are setting your own agenda then you know that every session is geared exactly towards your goals.  Long runs are distance appropriate and build progressively.  Most importantly speed sessions are designed to build speed for the distance of your target race.  For example Pfitzinger and Douglas believe that VO2 max is one of the least valuable indicators of success at a marathon and as such place a very low priority on VO2 max training.  However your weekly club speed sessions may feature 400m reps at high intensity, something of limited value if your priority is endurance racing.

If it ain’t broke…

Club runners frequently use their own or other runners success as a reason to join a club.  However not all successful runners are club runners.  3 of the top 10 and 6 of the top 20 finishers in the recent Strawberry Half Marathon results were not listed as club members (which neatly echoes our 30% number from the survey).  Many self coached runners have had years of happy running with improving results while staying outside the club scene.  They enjoy the freedom of running when they want and defining their own schedule.  As the most individual of sports many athletes have an instinctive dislike for the “7pm on Tuesday for your speedwork” discipline and regime that they perceive as coming with a club.  And they race for themselves, choosing when and where to compete rather than doing a cross country to make up the team numbers and in the hope of picking up a point.  And if they are enjoying their running and getting the results they want from the training they do what benefit is there for them in joining a club?

So there you are – three reasons why being self coached isn’t a bad thing!  Do you agree?  Or do all the club runners reading this think I’m well off target?

written by Andrew McDonagh