Disclaimer: For those new to this blog, I have committed myself to lose 40 pounds in 2011, hence the #40in2011 Challenge, and weekly I will post progress towards my objective. This report covers progress through week 2 of 50.

For those new to this blog, I have committed myself to lose 40 pounds in 2011, hence the #40in 2011 Challenge, and weekly I will post progress towards my objective. This report covers progress through week 1 of 50.

Definitely one of my favorite running experiences is running relay races. A few years back I entered this field while running as a part of Team White Line Fever in RAGNAR Texas. Last year I ran as a part of Team with No Name in Hood to Coast. This year I will be running on April 15th and 16th on one of two teams our company is putting together for RAGNAR Southern California, which covers 200 miles and runs from Huntington Beach, CA to Coronado Island in San Diego.

We have a few new or fairly new runners who have jumped into the fray, and that’s pretty exciting. What more experienced runners tend to forget is how daunting any race can be, let alone one that covers more than 200 miles even if there will be between 8 and 12 runners joining together to complete it. So what I’ve done here is put together a few pointers to help out the newbies and hopefully lesson any anxiety that might be accumulating.

This isn’t a race, it’s a relay. This is probably the most important point to remember. Unless you are joining a team with an explicit competition objective, 99% of the teams are just trying to complete the event in the middle of the pack. Relays are very much about the experience and you’ll observe elite collegiate athletes as well as first timers, including this year two teams from The Biggest Loser television series. The main objective is to have fun. Your finish time is of secondary importance. You just don’t want to be the last.

You do need to train for a relay. A successful relay is about being able to run, recover, run, recover, run and recover as effectively as possible. Therefore your training should help you to do this on race day. Like any other running event, you will want to build up an adequate endurance and structural base by gradually increasing the mileage for any individual run along with weekly volume. What’s different is that you will want to build up your physical and mental ability to handle multiple runs in a relatively short period of time. Therefore, there’s a bit more emphasis on back to back days of running and then a couple multi-run days to simulate event-day experience. These multi-run days are much more about your mental training than physical. These runs will provide you with confidence that you can do this, and also provide a bit of humility as you learn that going out as hard as you can in your first leg will only leaving you wanting by the time you start your third leg.

So to get our newbies started, I’ve created a 14-week training plan which will guide you from now all the way up the starting line in April. Happy training.

* Feel free to match your multi-run distances to the individual legs you will be running.

Okay, so on January 3rd I laid the gauntlet down. 2011 Outcome goal: Return to 185 lbs in 2011. At an embarrassing 225.5 lbs to start the year, you might wonder why I’m posting this publicly. Well it isn’t for some narcissistic reason or because I want people to feel like they need to support me in this endeavor. In truth, I’m doing this for two reasons. One because I’m a firm believer that a goal is not real until it is announced. That means that folks like you get to hold me accountable, if at any time I don’t do so myself (not that you have to, of course). Yes, that’s right I’m declaring open season on me to assassins like Timmy who already has jumped into the frey with his oh so unique way of providing feedback and support. Timmy, keep it up buddy. I count on you for clarity as well as for new words that can be used in an adult-only version of Scrabble. The second reason is because I need to log my progress for my own benefit and this is as good a place as any. So if during the next few months you see a new post on this blog with a similar title, feel free to opt out, without any hurt feelings.

My third – yes I said two – reason is that I’ve found that some folks aren’t very good at reporting on projects, both in business and in their personal lives. So for the aspiring project managers out there or for those who just want to dip their toe into the waters of accountability and management practices, this exercise might help you as you put your own plans together, although I will refrain from over exciting all of you with terms like Gantt and Pert. In business, there is an adage that a task is not complete until it is reported upon, and the same holds true in training, meaning that your workout is not complete until you record it in your log. Kind of like the tree falling in the forest if nobody was around. Providing regular reporting is good practice because it works. It keeps you focused, provides valuable information and quite frankly doesn’t really take that much time. One caveat, I know an awful lot of people who spend more times on the report than the work. It should be apparent why that doesn’t make sense.

Why 40 in 2011? (The Outcome Goal) Well last year I participated in the 10in10 challenge, with an outcome goal to lose 10 pounds in 10 weeks. And yes I reported on it, and yes by the time I reached the start line of the 2010 Los Angeles Marathon in March, I had easily hit that mark. The trouble was that from March to December, I somehow found a way to let it all get away from me covering my 10 and raising it another 10. Lot’s of excuses why, lost days traveling, lousy nutrition on the road, blah blah. There’s always enough of those to go around. So to quote one of my favorite movie villain lines, “If at first you don’t succeed, Mr Kidd” “Try try again, Mr. Wint”. (extra credit if you are old enough to remember this one.) And this time it’s go big or go home! Or go small, or , well, you know what I mean.

Each week I will report out using the following format:

How’d I do? (The Outcome Goal) Up or down and by how much. I use three levels of performance measures. Less than Expected, Met Expectations and Exceeded Expectations. I’ll also include a report card on the Process Goals, which are all posted using Joe’s Goals.

Here’s an example of a weekly report from last year:

Report Card – Week 8

February 22 – February 28:

Then we’ll summarize our insights on these by analyzing them within the following three categories:

1. Caloric Intake/Nutrition

2. Caloric Expenditure/Positive Stress

3. Recovery/Adaptation
   

I’ll be logging my daily workouts using Buckeye Outdoors, a terrific free online training log managed by some friends of mine who have dedicated themselves to providing high quality work while giving back to their community. Below is an example of a weekly report that is generated.

By the way, while you are there, if you want some additional motivation you can join 2011′s version of the 10 in 10 Challenge. Just search for “10 in 10 2011″ at http://buckeyeoutdoors.com/training/challenges You can also learn more about this on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/#!/10in10Challenge

Sound complicated? It’s not. But if you want to get even simpler in your own 2011 goals, follow these simple steps. 1) Select one to three outcome goals, 2) break those down into one to five process goals, 3) tell your friends and family about them both to declare them and because their lives will probably be impacted, 4) log your progress after each activity (paper taped onto your refrigerator works great), and 5) analyze your results and report out weekly. That’s about it. This simple process will give you structure, focus and motivation. Hope it will help you as much as it has helped me as well as the many athletes and staff I’ve worked with over the years. Conclusion: I’m just as excited as any new person using the New Year as an artificial reason to do what could be started on any day of the year. But in the end, who cares, as long as it works. Have a tremendous 2011. Thanks for coming along.

OK, not really. CLE is providing free massage therapists as a way to help ease the stress for holiday travelers around Thanksgiving. Pretty cool example of customer experience management. And they still can’t touch my junk. Winning tag line was provided exclusively by my friend Bill Porter!



For as long as I can remember, my life has revolved around human performance, sports and athletics. My father was a golfer and competitive swimmer (didn’t get that gene), my mother participated in every sport imaginable from tennis and golf to riding on boys shoulders while surfing down in Mexico, and my sister turned Title IX on its ear in her own way by being a five sport letter girl and making the boys in high school and the men at UCLA look foolish in any number of sports. It was just part of our lives. Being Jewish has also been a large part of my life, and no, ordinarily I don’t go around wearing a kippah on a daily basis or even mention it, but I do think it has influenced my outlook on life and how I approach competitive athletics. Full disclosure, for the most part I grew up as what one might casually call a Beverly Hills Jew, getting Bar Mitzvahed, and going to High Holiday services, and not much more. Even so, I have always considered being Jewish to be a big part of who I am, except for the whole slaughtering and sacrificing of animals, keeping multiple wives, all that huge portion, high calorie tasteless food and that whole carnivore thing – I haven’t quite reconciled all of that yet.

What I have been in tune with is how these two important pieces of my life, athletics and Judaism, have occasionally come together to create a perfect synergy of spirit and purpose. I’ve often wondered, however, why when the discussion of Jewish athletes arises, only a few names like Sandy Koufax come to people’s minds. Maybe that’s because there are so few well known Jewish athletes and that makes it so easy to identify the few there actually are; it’s kind of like asking the question, do you know of any “Catholic American Presidents?” My earliest competitive memories of combining Judaism with sport are from back in high school playing Yeshiva Academy in some non-league basketball game and having to wait until sundown to start the game and thinking to myself, how ridiculous it was that we had to keep stopping for one of the boys to pick up his kippah that inevitably would continue to fall off of his head while running around.

Like many, however, my first and most memorable connection to Judiasm and athletics came in 1972 while watching the summer Olympics in Munich, Germany, watching American athletes, who’s names I will never forget collect myriad medals in individual sports that up until that time were sports there just to prove how weak I was as part of the Mr. Peanuts Physical Fitness Tests we did annually in elementary school: Frank Shorter, Mark Spitz, Dwight Stones, Shirley Babashoff and of course the ultimate front runner Steve Prefontaine, who actually lost to Gammoudi, Viren and Stewart in one of the greatest 800 meter races ever run as a part of a 5,000 meter final.

Combining with these amazing athletic success stories was the unfolding horror as members of Black September took Israeli Olympic athletes and coaches hostage, finally killing them on the tarmac at the airport in a botched rescue attempt. Like Beamer’s famous last words on Flight 93 “Let’s roll”, I still remember these words from Jim McKay from those Olympic games as if  he just said them yesterday:

“When I was a kid, my father used to say “Our greatest hopes and our worst fears are seldom realized.” Our worst fears have been realized tonight. They’ve now said that there were eleven hostages. Two were killed in their rooms yesterday morning, nine were killed at the airport tonight. They’re all gone”

In the years that followed those 1972 games, I got actively involved in sport, even figured out how to do a pull-up and have thought about the best and the worst of those games ever since.

So as I sit here typing on Yom Kippur, thinking about what this holiday or holy day is all about, I do so through my own particular lens, one that continually combines human performance and sport with my own interpretation of Judiasm.

Beyond the tragedy of that event, it also opened my eyes up to really terrific athletes who were also Jewish, or maybe it’s more appropriate to say, really terrific Jews who were also athletes? And obviously with my passions focused since college in the area of endurance sport, I can say that we as a community still have a long way to go although if you look at the individual sports within a triathlon, we’re pretty well represented. Well, not all of the sports. Jews have continued to suck at cycling, even a guy named Levi Leipheimer isn’t Jewish, what’s up with that? We do alright in running with standout Deena (Drossin) Kastor leading that field, and absolutely own swimming. Think about these aquatic athletes, all Jewish, who are all household names regardless of your religious affiliation: Jason Lezak, Lenny Krayzelburg, Mark Spitz, and Dara Torres. As for the complete triathlete picture, well we don’t exactly dominate that sport but can point to Joanna Zeiger who was the Ironman 70.3 World Champion in 2008. Hey, it’s a start.

So with this mindset, I found myself in NY during these Days of Awe and was particularly thrilled to be able to attend services at Temple Israel in New Rochelle, NY, just a few miles from where Cindy and I lived for most of the past 10 years. It is a bet kennesit, (meeting place) where we can see old friends and neighbors and now perhaps most importantly, it is led by Scott Weiner, a rabbi, who is also a former Team for Kids member and one of the founders of Running Rabbis. Yes, you got it right, Running Rabbis, a group of rabbis that are committed to positive change in their communities and use running as a catalyst.

Scott was a TFK member back in 2006, where at the NYC Marathon he popped off a respectable 3:52 marathon. Since then he has run NYC two more times and has dropped his average pace per mile almost a full minute and finished last year’s race in 3:35. This tells me two things, First, he got a lot faster after he left the team I was coaching, and second a rabbinical appearance in Boston cannot be far behind.

Last night at Erev Yom Kippur services, I listened to Scott give an impassioned sermon on the purpose of a Jewish congregation such as that at Temple Israel, and took much enjoyment out of the fact that he made at least 4 references to sport and discussed a balanced nutritional meal of spiritual, mental and social calories. Cindy leaned over to me and whispered, “You can tell he drank the runner’s Kool-Aid”.

But being Jewish and an athlete, I can’t help but find a certain degree of humor in the process of fasting as a form of “suffering”, don’t they know that a fun day for people like us is to swim 2.4 miles and bike 112 miles BEFORE running a marathon? Like speed limits on roads that I feel should take into account the car you are driving, I’m pretty sure this whole simulated suffering thing needs to run on a sliding scale, otherwise for many it becomes simply a really convenient time to shrink your stomach and begin dieting so you can fit into you best ski bunny outfit this winter.

So here are a few recommendations for more effective suffering as our Jewish population gets increasingly athletic and performance oriented:

• Instead of fasting, don’t let us use the bathrooms for 24 hours;
• Set up bike trainers with reading stands in front of them and then make us go through services as if it were a Spinning class. Every time the arc is opened, we have to stand in the saddle;
• Tie this to an American Cancer Society Relay for Life event and have us run or walk on treadmills in the synagogue for 24 hours while raising funds to fight cancer;
• Let’s simulate a real exodus and put on an 80 lb backpack and hike the entire day in the hot sun without any food or water – I actually did this on a UCLA Outdoor Adventure instructor outing that was scheduled on Yom Kippur

Regardless of the changes we might make to how we observe the holiday, I hope Temple Israel understands the value that Rabbi Weiner can bring to this congregation by shepherding the physical as well as the spiritual health of its congregants. And they have a perfect 6-mile course right outside their temple that they can train on. Pinebrook Blvd might well become Westchester’s equivalent of San Vicente in Santa Monica, CA.

More broadly, I think it’s time for Jews to accept their rightful place in the endurance sport community. We come from a culture where suffering is part and parcel with whom we are. And let’s face it, we already have the complaining part down. We’re world class at that. L’shanah Tova. Have a happy, healthy and sweet new year.

The Leonard Lopate Show. “The New Nutritionist: Your Grocer”, Friday August 6, 2010

Let me start by saying that I am a huge fan of Leonard Lopate and not having a tremendous amount of time to read for pleasure, his show The Leonard Lopate Show on WNYC has helped to educate, enlighten and intrigue me and beyond that has gotten me through any number of long multi-hour runs by listening to his podcasts. Every now and then, I come across an interview that really just makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Last week’s episode entitled “The New Nutritionist: Your Grocer” was just such an episode. Leonard, I’ll chalk it up to having a bad day because there is no way you would have let your guest, The Wall Street Journal’s Timothy Martin get off of the hook so easily for any other reason. It was clear that he had no idea what he was talking about on the topic of nutrition or healthy and active lifestyles. Now having spent the past ten years directly involved in the fight against youth obesity, I feel that this is one of those public discussions that I just can’t let slide.

Just to bring everyone up to speed, the episode highlights one of a number of new nutritional ranking systems that are being put into place at grocery store chains designed to provide shoppers with simple and necessary information to make healthier choices when shopping. In this instance, this system combines all of the factors such as sugar content, fiber, sodium levels, fat , etc and runs them through an algorithm to arrive at a single score between 1 and 100 with the higher number being associated with the healthiest foods available.  I really like the concept, but I found two obvious flaws in the author’s argument that Leonard in any other situation would have not let him slide on.

The first is that this system is being funded by a grocery store chain and a hospital and led by a nutritionist at Yale. Sounds great, right? The problem is that nutritional guidance is hardly a science and the prevailing winds seem to change what the public is told to do with regard to the factors listed above. Eat high carbs for fuel, don’t eat carbs, look at net carbs. eat fiber, but not too much, take fat out of your diet, fat is good in your diet, use portion control but don’t eat too little or you’ll trigger starvation responses,only eat low glycemic, eat all protein, don’t eat protein, and on and on and on. So what does this mean with respect to my first issue of controversy? We didn’t cover any of the aspects of how the algorithm is created or the philosophy that the founders adhere to.  Personally, I’m not going to take anyone’s judgment as an authority on this subject just because they teach at Yale.

The second issue is the one that made me accelerate the pace of my run yesterday because I was just hopping mad. The statement was that this system is not designed to drive people to eating better in a way that would really make a difference. It’s not to make people stop eating potato chips or other crappy food, rather it is designed so that people can select the healthiest choice within each category. So you can choose the healthiest potato chip, or the healthiest diet soda and feel good about making those selections. This statement was reinforced throughout the interview and I couldn’t figure out why the guest and even Leonard seemed to be acting defensive about wanting to help people make real choices that can help, like helping people to make real healthy choices is a bad thing. In one example, they suggested that a shopper was observed buying one brand of breakfast sausages over another because of this scoring system. The honest truth is that he shouldn’t have bought either brand and I would just bet that this system provided support to this guy to feel like he is justified and actually doing something healthy by buying this brand of artery clogging, heart stopping, stroke creating wannabe food. Didn’t we just get past all of this with the whole fat free generation of manufactured foods where we saw obesity increase even further because people inaccurately rationalized that since it’s fat free they can eat as much of it as they want?

Leonard, your show does a service to so many and to not call out this obvious flaw in the author’s logic only reinforced bad messages to an already confused population, and unfortunately one that seems committed to data mine for any evidence they can find to continue their bad behaviors which cost our country billions of dollars each year, all of which are preventable.

I hope you invite the author back to challenge him in your traditional thoughtful and objective way, and provide your listeners with real guidance on how they can use these new technologies to make a measurable difference in their lives and the lives of those who they love.

“It’s unfortunate, that’s all I can say,” Knowles said. “It’s unfortunate for the young lady. But you’ve got to teach the kids that rules are rules.”

I learned about this issue when listening to Mike and Mike on ESPN radio last week. Here is the full SI artcle. I was surprised initially that ESPN radio was covering a SoCal High School Track Meet, and then I realized that the sport itself was just the setting for one of those lessons of sport are the lessons of life moments. I’ll preface this by reminding my readers that I loathe policy without purpose and have never been one to support the creation and enforcement of rules, favoring applying the combination of guiding principles and wisdom instead. What happened to Robin Laird of South Pasadena High School is a perfect example of why.

Mike Golic of ESPN radio repeated a radio-friendly version of the phrase “chicken shit” over and over again, and I was incredibly impressed by his declaration that if his child was on the Monrovia team, he would never let her play for Mike Knowles ever again.

The articles and media attention that has followed has attempted to balance the story on the one hand stating how important it is that High School athletes learn the importance of following rules, while cries for sportsmanship and the emptiness of winning by losing are carried by others.

I on the other hand will not be so subtle. Mike Knowles, get your head out of your ass! I’ve coached undefeated league championship teams at the High School level too so I know how important it is to win and also know that it so much more important to be a role model. Given my experiences, I feel quite confident in my ability to make that claim along with the strong suggestion that you do some serious soul searching about your priorities.

The rule is there to protect the athletes from injury. That’s it. It does not protect against an unfair performance advantage and you know it, I know it and everyone else who’d heard of this story knows it. Her bracelet had NOTHING to do with her making that excellent vault and leading her team to victory. If I had such a lapse of judgment, I would expect, no I would demand that my players, my family and my AD remind me to get my head out of my ass.

Thumbing through the numerous online reactions to this situation, I have yet to find anyone who actually provides a compelling argument supporting Mike Knowles actions. Why? Because there is no positive spin on this story. Here’s a few of my favorite recommended responses:

“Yup, it’s all about you Mr. Knowles. You’ve sure taught those kids a lesson to win at all costs. Be self absorbed and only worry about yourself.”

“And I LOVE the idea about sending him friendship bracelets!! Address below…

Monrovia High School
845 West Colorado Boulevard
Monrovia, CA 91016″

and my personal favorite:

“Rules are rules. Time for the building inspector to check out his house. Have the DMV inspect his vehicle. IRS audit the past 7 years of taxes…..After all, rules are rules.”

It’s time to take a lesson from John McEnroe. You know the one where his opponent makes an incredible play which is then overturned due to a ticky-tack bullshit rule imposed by the chair umpire or line judge? And just to show that they really have no real power, Johnny Mac would hit his next shot 20 rows into the upper deck to purposely lose the point and give his opponent his just due. It’s about doing what’s right.

You and your players should do the same. There’s nothing more that I would love to see than you and your own players either publicly or quietly giving back the championship to the team that actually won this contest. And don’t you dare give me excuses about league rules or things that can’t be overturned. You have the patches. You have the trophies. Bundle them up, pile them and your team into your van, take the South Pasadena High School team out for dinner and give them a true mea culpa. You can still do the right thing, and if you can’t, your players certainly can. And in that action, they too will be truly champions.

>>
I’m that guy, you know the one, the guy who always appears to be running around at one hundred miles an hour, never slowing down, never smelling the roses, never having time for those closest to him, etc etc etc. While this isn’t completely true (my close friends know I’m equally satisfied driving a large complex project or sleeping on a rock in Sequoia), I figure the least I can do is completely disconnect for one hour and that hour begins tonight at 8:30PM as I will participate in Earth Hour. What difference will it make? Globally, most assuredly my participation won’t make any difference at all, but I figure if I can sit in the dark for an hour disconnected from The Matrix, it can’t be a bad thing personally. And at a minimum, it makes a great excuse for not having to watch repeats of Real Housewives of NY. Maybe you’ll join me as well.

In every community, you’ll find its members categorized into various groups. Running communities are no exception to this rule. You’ll find the veterans, those elder statesmen or regular members who have been coming for years; the leaders, usually the founders, organizers or decision makers; the followers, a subset of the regulars that show up and simply go along with what everyone else is doing; the celebrities, the folks who show up one week are gone for the next two months and then come back regaling their club members with terrific stories of their running in exotic locations abroad; and then there is the new guy.

Regardless of gender or even of how many, the new guy arrives into a running group with energy, hopes, expectations, an agenda, and a shoe full of anxiety and apprehension. The new guy can be new to running, a thirty-year veteran who just moved into the area or a travelling businessman. The new guy might be there for a single run or there to join the club indefinitely. Underlying all of these, the primary goal of the new guy is to be invited in and have an enjoyable time. But the quickest way to make this perfect situation completely horific is for the new guy to be too forward, too knowing, too ignorant or too irritating. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that inserting oneself into a group of runners is as difficult as blending into a prison click but like everything else in life, the new guy has one chance to make a first impression. So if you’re the new guy, here are a few things to do and a few questions to ask to ensure the enjoyment of your first run:

1. Call ahead. If you’re the spontaneous sort, you can just show up at the posted time and meeting place, but it’s been my experience that that’s a 50/50 shot at best. Lots of clubs post regular runs but many either never instituted anything formal or the group changed their logistics or eliminated the weekly run entirely. When you call the organizer, ask them a few basic questions. Do they meet as scheduled? How far do they run? Is the posted time an arrival time or a run start time? What pace do they run? How large is the group? Do they run on streets or trails? How easy is it to get lost? Is the course marked or easy to follow? Will you be there or should I be looking for anyone in particular? Should you bring anything? Does their group have a specific purpose or mission – what’s the composition of its members? The answer to this last question may not seem important but if you are a new runner and you connect in with a group of cross country A-personality racers you may not be very happy as they drop you in an unknown area within the first few hundred yards. Another reason is that the running group may be part of a larger community. On two occasions, I found myself running with Christian church members and GLBT members without knowing it until I was about a mile into the run. On both occasions I had terrific runs, but I felt a bit disingenuous as both groups assumed that I was already a part of their community. These are fairly benign examples, but increasingly I’m seeing that causes of all types are realizing that appealing to runners is a great way to recruit new members, and you just might want to insure that the folks you’ll be running with are at least somewhat aligned to the conversation topics that you might want to have out there on the road.  For instance, I wouldn’t necessarily want to be running with a group of hunters talking about their latest kill.
2. Show up early. Parking and logistics are never as easy as they appear to be, especially if you are connecting with a group while on a business trip. I remember connecting with a weekly group run in Piedmont Park in Atlanta and the starting place was listed on the internet as near the tennis courts. It took me a good twenty minutes of driving around before I finally stumbled upon the correct entrance to the park and the meeting location for the group. The only thing worse than a crappy run is missing the run itself in an unfamiliar area with no idea where to run next.
3. Introduce yourself. I know this sounds like an obvious thing to do, but how you introduce yourself can give you a lot of information about the group and can help to blend in much quicker. I usually begin first by asking if this is the group run that I’m looking for. Even as recent as last week, I showed up at a running store where runners were congregating and when I asked them if they were members of a particular group, they told me no, that this was a running class and the group I was looking for would be arriving a few yards down in about fifteen minutes. In Los Angeles, if you show up on a Saturday or Sunday morning at the end of San Vicente where it hits Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica, you’ll find four or five different groups meeting within a ten yard area and it can be both overwhelming and a bit intimidating if all of a sudden you jump into a group with a completely different purpose than the one you expected. The better a runner you are and the more familiar you are with the area, the less of an issue this is. Introducing yourself to the runners that are already there will help to alleviate this issue. When you introduce yourself, let people know that you are new, that you haven’t run with this group before, and let them know how familiar or unfamiliar you are with the area in which you’ll be running. Here’s what not to do. Don’t tell them what distance you would like to run and how fast. In short, you are not a member of their club yet and you haven’t earned the right to do that. I’ve seen folks do this and they are seen as pushy, entitled and assuming. It sets a bad tone that is completely avoidable.
4. Ask them what their plans are for this particular run. Even if you have previously asked the organizer this on the phone, things change. It also solves the awkwardness described in step number three. By asking them how far they are planning to run and at what pace, you can figure out if that fits with what you are able to, and want to do. There’s still an escape clause. Nobody knows you and there’s no harm in backing out if it doesn’t work for you. You can do it quietly and without fanfare by simply telling the organizer that you were hoping to go longer, shorter, faster or slower, however you’d love to connect with them another time now that you have a better understanding what they do. But do let the organizer know. There’s nothing worse for a conscientious club organizer than hunting around for a new runner that’s gone missing, especially when you haven’t gone missing, you just dropped out on your own.
5. Find at least one person running a similar distance and pace. Many groups start together and then break up into smaller groups by pace. This can be a formal process set up before you start or informal as runners start to hit their stride. Try to find at least one person slower than you, and a person faster than you because in most all cases you’ll need to apply a pace discount or premium to what they tell you. “We’re going to probably run 7’s” might mean we’ll start out at a 7:00 min/mile pace but then the speed up once the testosterone sets in, or alternatively it means we’re really running 7:30’s or even 8’s but I exaggerate a bit. The terrain can also come into play. This is a bigger issue with cycling groups but running 9’s on a 6-mile climb requires much more energy that running 9’s on a flat route. If you’ve been used to the latter, you might not be able to keep up. What you’re really looking for is a tour guide, someone to follow that knows the route so you won’t get lost. By identifying folks slower and faster, you hedge your bet and once you start running you can blend in with the folks that seem right for how you’re feeling that day.
6. Communicate but don’t over-communicate. This isn’t your group and even the friendliest of folks will get tired of you if you talk the entire time about how great running is somewhere else. If they’re interested they’ll start asking you questions but the general rule is that less is more. Remember you’re the new guy.
7. Run with humility. If you are a world-class runner don’t go out with the intention of showing everyone how terrific you are. They’ll see it soon enough. Nothing is more endearing that a great athlete that seems to be content enjoying the company of those who are less gifted. And as the new guy, you are already cool, and only by opening your mouth or by doing something silly can that change and it can only really change for the negative; view this as just another interpretation of low impact running.

Most importantly, have fun out there. Being the new guy doesn’t last forever, so enjoy it while you can.