BUSY MONTH FOR OUR RUNNING GROUPS!

Our running clubs have had a super busy month in November. First up we had our latest Couch To 5K graduation run at Stretford ParkRun which had a fantastic turn out with lots of runners from all clubs attending to support our newest MileShyers.

Later in the month we took part in the Manchester 24 Hour Run Against Homelessness which raised almost £10,000 for the Greater Manchester Mayor’s Charity “A Bed Every Night” scheme. Our Old Trafford walking group took part in a walking wave early in the afternoon and we had a large group of runners flying the MileShy flag early evening. It was amazing to see the running community come together for such a great cause.

We also had some of our runners involved in filming for the BBC talking about how being active can improve your health. Our runners even got to meet the amazing Mr Motivator! We’re really looking forward to being part of the programme.

Later in the month one of our runners, Aggie, told us about hardcore runner Gary McKee who would be attending Stretford parkrun as part of his “Three Six Five” challenge where he is running 365 marathons in 365 days to raise funds for Macmillan. Of course we had to rally our runners and lots of us went down to support his fantastic effort, some of us were even lucky enough to run with him for a little while.

As well as all these amazing events we have still had great attendance at all six of our clubs despite the dark nights and wet weather, what a hardy bunch you all are! Our Facebook and Instagram feeds are always buzzing with our runners out on social runs, participating in races and attending parkruns here, there and everywhere!

If you’re still thinking of joining us just sign up and come on down!

WALKING GROUPS MADE THE PAPERS!

Earlier this month we were approached by The Messenger paper who wanted to do a story on our newest walking group at the Trafford Centre and how it’s helping the disabled and elderly get active again. Coach Jane met with reporter Claudia Savage to talk about how our walking groups in all our locations are helping people from all walks of life with improving their walking, and how we are here to support those with poor mental health as well as physical health.

You can read the full article HERE. If you would like to come along to one of our walking groups to take the first steps to improving your wellbeing please complete our sign up form  and we’ll get in touch to find out what you hope to achieve by attending our sessions. 

MILESHYCLUB CHARITY SANTA DASH IS BACK!

The MileShyClub Santa Dash is back for 2022! Tickets are on sale NOW with some Early Bird tickets still available at 2019 prices! Join us at the stunning Sale Water Park on Sunday 4th December to get into a festive mood and do your bit for three local charities at the same time!

We have a 9am event for families which is 2.2K long and another one at 10.30 for bigger kids which is 5K. This is a fancy dress event, the bigger the better. Fancy dress is not mandatory but there are prizes for the best Christmassy outfits!

All runners get a Santa hat, goody bag and medal with monies going to local charity. We will also be collecting on the day for Sale West Food Bank AND the Partington Rainbow Cafe Pet Food Bank.

Get signed up now, festive cheer starts here!

SILENT DISCO SUMMER SOCIAL

We held our Summer Social earlier this month and had an absolute ball with Silent Adventures’ Silent Disco throughout the streets of Manchester. We walked, we danced, we sang, we laughed and afterwards we went for food and drink to laugh again at all the photos and videos! It was brilliant to see all our runners and walkers from all of our different groups come together and have such an amazing time. The next social will be our Christmas Party and Awards Celebration on the 8th December. Keep your eye on our Upcoming Events page for more details.

TRAFFORD CENTRE WALKING GROUP

We currently offer five walking clubs a week based in Old Trafford, Partington, Sale, Stretford and Urmston. We’re really excited to be launching our sixth walking group next Wednesday and we’re even more excited to be taking MileShyClub to a BRAND NEW location at the Trafford Centre.

Our walks are community walking groups for those who want to get fitter but just need to start off with small steps. All groups are led by Advanced Walk Leaders who will guide you towards your first continuous mile together with a few warm up exercises to improve mobility, coordination and balance. We know that exercise has huge benefits for both physical and mental health and we’ve really loved helping people back into the community to get more active and meet new people. 

We’ll be meeting in The Great Hall at 10am on Wednesday mornings. If you’d like to come along please fill in our sign up form here. If you know somebody that would benefit from this indoor walking group please fill out the form for them and we’ll do the rest.

IT'S A DOG'S LIFE!

Well done to everyone who made today’s Dog Walk/Run at Sale Water Park. Peaches, an 8-year-old Labrador/Samoyed cross has sent us this race review:

“This morning was pretty pawsome. Me and my brother Oscar always get really excited when we visit Sale Water Park, but today was extra exciting because we made some new friends.

First up, we bumped into Harris who was super excited to get going.  I told him to just calm down but he didn’t listen, and he kept dragging his owner Bram around the paths whilst we patiently waited for the others. 

Another Spaniel called Willow turned up and she was FAST. She brought her whole family along and got on really well with Harris.  Those two were the really competitive runners, but we didn’t mind. (Let them get on with it I say).

It all got a little bit crazy at 9.30am and me and Oscar tried to keep everyone calm by telling them to shut up but no one could really hear us. One of those really posh dogs turned up (you know the type I mean, one with the word ‘doodle’ in the name).  He was called Shay (Seamus) and was really nervous to meet us all for the first time but his owner said he did really well.  He even threw himself into the lake at one point which always looks like a good idea but you know he’s going to regret the clean up job later.

Anyway, then the Romanians turned up. Frida was very cute and smelled like every dog breed under the sun.  My Mum even got to hold Frida whilst her Mum went to get a coffee and my Mum let Frida jump all over her legs which we’re not allowed to do, so you know she’s a nice dog. Hugo, a Romanian Shepherd was also there.  He really didn’t like us at first.  He kept telling us to leave him alone and we were all a bit scared of him, but when he got to know us a bit better he actually had a really good time and made some friends.  My Mum gave him an extra bit of sausage at the end because I think she’s got a soft spot for those with bad experiences coming to the club.

Yaeger, a mini schnauzer was really well behaved. It could be that he was a bit taken aback by it all.  But everyone went “aww” when he did as he was told and lied down on the floor for a treat.  We could probably learn a thing or two from him.

Merlin and Benji were crazy!  They were so full of beans, I think they would have needed to go round the water park at least 3 times to run out of energy.  I didn’t really get to see much of them so I hope they enjoyed themselves.

A beautiful black Labrador called Lola turned up too.  She came back for coffee and biscuits at the end soaked through so she had clearly enjoyed herself. A little Jack Russell turned up who my Mum called Boris by accident and immediately offended everyone. Thing is, the name's stuck now!

Some humans called Kath, Jane, Geraldine and Corrine turned up without dogs, but they were still fun to play with.

Some of us ran round the water park and some of us walked it.  We did a sort of run and a walk because I love to run but my brother Oscar is really lazy and can’t run more than one lap of the water park.  It’s ok though as I found a ball so my Mum kept me busy.

Everyone said we should do it again and I think that’s a great idea, especially if there’s more sausages at the end.  I’ll speak with my Mum and see what we can do.

Happy Sunday everyone,

Peaches x

 

COUCH TO 5K DONE!

Our latest Couch To 5Kers absolutely smashed their graduation run at Sale Water ParkRun last week! We had lots of runners from all six of our Couch To 5K groups plus amazing support from lots of our other MileShyers as always! Huge thankyou to everybody that came down!

It’s always amazing to watch new runners grow in confidence week by week, and we love to see the huge sense of achievement that every runner experiences as they cross their first 5K finish line! That’s the best bit about starting in a Couch To 5K group, EVERYBODY has the same hopes and fears. When you do your C25K with us you’ll generally attend one group run a week (though you can attend more if you want to!) and complete two homework sessions throughout the following week. If you stick to the scheduled runs you should be able to run a 5K in just nine weeks. Once you’ve completed the final week of the course there is a graduation 5K at a local ParkRun where all the MileShy community will be out to support. It’s a running party!

All of our Couch To 5K groups have a WhatsApp group chat with all the other runners and coaches so you can ask questions and get advice at any time. You can also use it to arrange to run your homework runs with your fellow runners to keep you motivated. And if there ever comes a time where you may not be feeling quite as motivated to get out there and do it there will always be somebody on hand with words of encouragement that will make you want to go out and get it done.

Our next Couch To 5K programme starts WC 5th September. If you’d like to join to give it a go you can find all the details here. Alternatively, as a beginner runner you can join any of our groups at any time as we always cater for complete beginners (with the exception of our 5K Improvers group on a Thursday night!)

EVENING TRAIL RUNS

We’re really taking advantage of the summer evening and light nights and taking our Thursday evening groups on a tour of local trails throughout July and August. Our first outing was to Dunham Massey where we took in some of the beautiful Bridgewater Canal and Dunham Massey Country Park. These runs are to encourage some of our newer runners to try trail running and runners from all groups are welcome. We loved seeing so many new faces turning up to our last one and really hope to see more new faces at the next ones!

Our next evening trail run is this Thursday, 21st July, which will take in the local trails of Sale and Chorlton Water Parks. We will be meeting at Jackson’s Boat at 6.30pm. We will run between five and six miles on mostly hard packed paths. Trail shoes with grip are recommended but not essential, road running shoes will be fine. This is a social run for those who want to try running somewhere a little bit different, no one gets left behind!

There will also be another trail run on Thursday 11th August, stay tuned for more details!

WELLBEING DAY

We were delighted to be involved at a Health and Wellbeing day this week which was hosted by our friends at Voice of BME Trafford at Limelight.

Club founder Jane Dennison delivered a workshop on managing stress and anxiety and later in the day many attendees from the workshop attended our beginner walking group! We had some great conversations, some great food and even got to see some Bollywood dancing on our walk. Thanks so much to Aliya from Voice of BME for inviting us along - we really do love getting to know this wonderful group!

Our walking group meets outside Limelight every Wednesday at 1pm. Come and join us! You can find all the information about our Old Trafford group HERE and our other walking groups HERE.

COUCH TO 5K STARTS

At our first Couch To 5K session in Sale the general consensus was that the hardest part of the day was leaving the house. Everybody was chatting whilst waiting for the session to start and it soon became apparent that everybody had the same fears: they’d never run before, they’d tried running before but couldn’t do it, they’d tried running on a treadmill but didn’t like it, they’d run on a treadmill but couldn’t run outside, they couldn’t imagine running for five minutes nevermind five kilometres.

But that’s the best bit about starting in a Couch To 5K group, EVERYBODY has the same hopes and fears. And everybody is really motivated to get started! When you do your C25K with us you’ll generally attend one group run a week (though you can attend more if you want to!) and complete two homework sessions throughout the following week. If you stick to the scheduled runs you should be able to run a 5K in just nine weeks. Once you’ve completed the final week of the course there is a graduation 5K at a local ParkRun where all the MileShy community will be out to support. It’s a running party!

All of our Couch To 5K groups have a WhatsApp group chat with all the other runners and coaches so you can ask questions and get advice at any time. You can also use it to arrange to run your homework runs with your fellow runners to keep you motivated. And if there ever comes a time where you may not be feeling quite as motivated to get out there and do it there will always be somebody on hand with words of encouragement that will make you want to go out and get it done.

We’re still only two weeks into our latest programme, it’s not too late to start now! If you’d like to join the current Couch To 5K programme you can find all the details here. Alternatively, as a beginner runner you can join any of our groups at any time as we always cater for complete beginners (with the exception of our 5K Improvers group on a Thursday night!)