Turning up: clubs, weekly timed events and the track

The universal fear is being the slowest, and it is nearly always misplaced. Most clubs of any size run in pace groups, and the groups exist because a club whose sessions only suited its fastest members would have very few members. The question to ask before a first session is not whether you are fast enough but what groups run and how they are organised, which any club will answer.

What clubs actually provide is harder to buy than coaching: a fixed time in the week that you will not skip because somebody is expecting you, and people who know the routes. The coaching, where it exists, tends to be the smaller part of the value for a new runner.

Free, volunteer-organised, weekly timed runs over a fixed course have become one of the main routes into the sport in a number of countries. The pattern is consistent where they exist: register once, bring proof of your registration, turn up, run, get a time. There is no entry fee and no qualification.

Two things surprise first-timers. There is usually a formal briefing, which is worth listening to because it covers the course and any hazards on it. And there is nearly always somebody designated to run at the back so that no participant finishes alone, which removes the specific fear that stops most people going.

A running track is the one running venue with conventions strict enough that breaking them is genuinely dangerous, and the rules are almost never written down anywhere on site. Track dimensions and lane numbering are set by World Athletics for competition, but the etiquette below is custom rather than regulation, and it is consistent nearly everywhere.

What everybody is assumed to know:

• Run anticlockwise — Unless the venue has posted otherwise. Going the other way puts you head-on into faster traffic on a blind bend.
• Lane one is for fast running — The inside lane is where hard efforts and timed repetitions are run. Warming up, cooling down and jogging happen in the outer lanes.
• Look before you cross — Crossing lanes without looking is how collisions happen. Someone running a hard interval is not able to change line.
• Call "track" to pass — The convention for warning somebody ahead that you are coming through on their inside. Move out when you hear it.
• Do not stand on the track — Recovery between repetitions happens off the running surface, or at least off lane one.