The orientation for the running clinic was held at the Brent Gym inside the Ultra premises last Friday, November 14, 2008 and was mainly hosted by Coach Rio dela Cruz.  It was my first time inside Ultra so I was a bit surprised at the condition of the gym: it was a bit run down but it was good enough to accommodate the participants.  Surprisingly the event was a bit messed up: nobody was attending to the entering participants so we didn’t know if we’re supposed to sign what looked like attendance sheets on the table; what seemed like attendance sheets have name, mobile number and birth date fields (all pre-filled with everyone’s number!) and as it turned out it wasn’t an attendance sheet but you have to wonder why a sheet with all those sensitive info were left out in the open; and the event started late.

The first session entitled “Fitness Training Principles, Injury Prevention, and Hydration” was conducted by Dean Hercules Callanta of UP College of Human Kinetics.  This was a very informative session especially for beginners and those that aren’t expert in sports science.  Here are some excerpts from his presentation:

About goal setting:

• Goals must be “realistic;”
• Based on how long your goal is, it may be short-term (about 8 weeks), long-term (6-18 months), and of course there’s the lifetime maintenance goals;
• Goals, in written form, must be periodically evaluated and modified; and
• You must recognize obstacles to achieving your goals.

With regards to training, there’s also a FITT formula:

Frequency: how often
Intensity: how difficult
Time: how long
Type: what physical activity

Also included in the presentation was about injuries, which are preventable (overuse, strength deficiencies, …) and non-preventable (accidents), and hydration/fluid replacement guidelines.

The next part was more of a Q&A session from Prof. Dave Bernades and was more like a running aid session but a bit more elaborate.  It was about shoes, your foot, and the like.

The next sessions are filled with interesting activities like finding the right Nike shoes for your foot and customizing your training program based on your skills and goals.  Ten more coaches headed by coach Rio will handle the participants as there’s a possibility of having a maximum of 100 participants per coaching session (sessions in Ultra for November and December are maxed out already), that’s a coach for every ten participants so supervision should be good.  We’ll find out in the next sessions if these can be delivered so we’ll just have to see what would happen.

Overall this was one of the most promising clinic I’ve joined yet also very demanding as it spans several weeks (16 weeks to be exact).  It makes me nervous just looking at the weekly schedule (so I may have to change the long-term goal I registered on the site) but the problem I see here is that if you’re like me who is already working, you’ll never know when you’ll be sent somewhere else because of work, also that one of the two weekly session is held every Friday (the last time I checked only the Friday session have vacancies).  On the bright side is that sessions are to be posted online afterwards (supposedly) so if you missed a session or is away you may “catch up.”  I guess we’ll just have to see who will “survive” to the last day of the clinic!