How Can I Be An Effective Running Coach In London During These Trying Times?

 Yes, these are definitely trying times, and I’m just as tired of talking about the pandemic as you are of hearing about it, but that does contribute to the challenge you face being a running coach right now. However, being a running coach in London has always been a challenge, it’s a crowded city, and a hectic one as well.

If you live in London, you work long, hard hours to afford it. Even the low-income estates in London cost an arm and a leg, and utilities aren’t cheap, either. The result of this, is, well, fairly obvious. It’s hard to find places to run, it’s harder to find places to run that everyone can access, and it’s nigh impossible to get everyone onto the same schedule to run together.

So, the concept of an online running club would have been just what the doctor ordered well before the pandemic hit, it’s just that, like with many changes made in the wake of this disaster, it has been hastened, and a solution arrived at long before it would otherwise have happened.

But, you have to wonder, how the heck does an online running club work? As a running coach in London, you sit there going, you can’t run over the Internet, so what exactly does this even do? All, don’t feel bad, because the first time I heard of this concept, even being an expert on technology, I wondered the same exact thing.

Demystifying the concept of the online running club…

Here’s how it works, and it’s pretty simple. Everyone has a smart phone, everyone has an affordable smart watch the can read biometric data, and everyone installs either a running club app, or uses the same toolchain of stuff that performs those functions. People will go for their runs individually, on their own schedule, at the most convenient location they can access. They will record their biometric data, they will record their time and distance, and then everyone will share this preferably over a dedicated app.

These apps can do things like make this data more digestible to you as a coach, as well as help everyone compare their staffs, and even have virtual races after every body records their runs, allowing for that necessary bit of friendly competition within the team. In fact, actual track meets can even be handled this way, though the occasional, extremely-safely-handled meet up is still probably necessary for that.

 

You may be debating whether or not you want to invest in this versus just waiting out the pandemic, and returning to your previous ways of doing things. However, as I said, the pandemic just lampshade in this existing issue, and you will find that this is the best way to handle being a running coach London well after the pandemic has finally had the common courtesy to buzz off. Just be sure that you choose an app that is equally compatible for both mobile what forms, and is capable of those social interactions. Otherwise, you will have to use a toolchain consisting of things like zoom/discord, and statistical comparison tools to achieve the same thing, and that’s just adding unnecessary complication to the matter.