Everyone who has ever joined this club stood outside the pavilion once, pretending to check their phone, deciding whether to come in. All two hundred and thirty of us. So this is the article I wish someone had written before my first Tuesday: exactly what happens, in order, with the worries answered in the places they actually occur.
The ten minutes before
Come at ten to seven. The pavilion door is propped open with a breeze block; inside is a kit cupboard, a kettle and more hi-vis than a motorway. Say "I am new" to literally anyone. You will be pointed at whichever coach is leading, they will take your name, ask what you have been running lately, and put you with a group. That is the whole induction. There is no tour, no test, and the form can wait until you are sure of us.
How fast do I need to be?
There is no answer to this because it is the wrong question. The club runs in pace groups: the front group would frighten the fast wall, the back group chats the entire way round, and there are four or five groups in between. You will land in the right one within a week. Nobody has ever been too slow for this club. Somebody has occasionally been too fast, and we made him a coach.
What to wear
Whatever you run in now. Nobody is assessing your kit; half the back group runs in decade-old race t-shirts, which is its own kind of flex. The only rules are a headtorch between October and March for road groups, and if you come often enough, a club vest eventually, because Dave will wear you down.
The bit nobody believes
Nobody gets dropped. Every group has a designated back marker, every session loops or regroups, and the coaches count heads out and heads back like anxious hens. The fear of being left gasping on a dark hill somewhere is the single biggest thing that keeps people from joining a club, and it is the single first thing club running solved, decades ago.
Afterwards
The kettle goes on, somebody produces a tin of something baked, and the session gets talked up from ordinary to legendary in roughly nine minutes. Then everyone drifts home. That is it. That is the club. It will take you three visits to feel like a regular and one winter to become unrecognisable to yourself.
Tuesday or Thursday, ten minutes early. I will probably see you by the door.