Being in Urban Running Coach during the Pandemic

Being a running coach in London has always been a tricky thing, due in no small part to the crowded conditions and lack of open space. 

Urban Running Coach during the Pandemic

The streets of London are busy, so unless you go out into the suburbs, there’s not a lot of unclogged roadway along which you can run. Sure, there are parks and recreational areas, but they’re often small, meaning that any running route is going to be rather twisty and inconvenient.

This is worse, now, thanks to the pandemic. How can a running coach keep his athletes healthy, in shape and engage with the sports when you can even get together and use a track, or work out together at the gym.

Well, there are ways, but they require a little bit of ingenuity. The one problem that it’s kind of on you, as a coach, or as a runner, to solve, is finding a place to run. In a city like London, finding a place of solitude like this that’s open enough is going to be a bit of a challenge, but you’re just going to have to look around and find such a place. The suburbs are the best, as the streets rarely have a lot of heavy foot traffic, so not only is it more open for running, but it’s actually safe to go for runs in these places.

This virus only transmits through extremely close quarters or direct physical contact, surfaces don’t transmit it well, and being out in the world isn’t going to get you exposed to some omnipresent plague that will instantly infect and or kill you. So, once you find a place, you can also go for your runs. You just can’t run together in the traditional sense.


Harnessing Technology for the Modern Running Coach

Like everything else, you’re simply going to have to offload a lot of the responsibilities to a digital theater, and everyone will just have to run at different locations, sharing their vital statistics through smart watch data. This will be things like heart rate, caloric count, and pedometer readings. This can be done with even the cheapest smart watch and smart phone, and when mixed with a running coach app, you can actually get a lot of useful information, without having to be right there with your athletes. You can even set up races where the runners don’t have to be running at the same time. They can run at their leisure, and then the distances and speeds can be measured by the running coach app afterwards, to determine who would win a race had they been running together on the track.

This makes it a lot easier to be a running coach in London, pandemic or not. As a running coach, you may want to continue to use this, at least supplemental it, even after the pandemic, as it means that you can get your runners to exercise in a competitive manner without them having to all scheduled to be around at the same time, something that’s increasingly hard to do given how busy everyone’s lives are.

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