THE weather may well be taking a turn for the worst as Winter takes it’s grip on town, but that doesn’t stop the gang at Barry Running Club, as they aren’t fair weather runners. Wrapping up warm, you’ll find them out and about running the streets.

Out in all conditions, last week started off with a session on the dunes down at Merthyr Mawr.

It was a murky session but the weather held off till the very end, and everyone escaped without getting soaked. It was a session that involved five hard efforts of running backwards and forwards up the ‘Big Dipper’, which is Europe’s biggest freestanding single sand dunes – a tough one, but a great workout.

Tuesday night the club always meets up during the winter season at Barry Island for a rotational six week programme that they follow, and last week the evenings session was a Hill/Flat Interval session.

Utilising the promenade stretch, and the upper path towards the bandstand, the session involved doing 60 seconds of hard effort running followed by a recovery jog, which was repeated six times, on both paths.

It might not sound a lot, but it is certainly a good effort, especially considering there was only twenty seconds of rest between each burst, plus a warm up and cool down jog which comprised of the full length of the promenade twice.

The week ended with Thursday’s session which gave the runners a choice of three routes. The club likes to colour code the options, making it easy for runners of all levels to pick a route that is suitable for their ability.

Green runs are usually in the region of two to three miles, blue runs are an intermediate level and are about four to seven miles, and red runs tend to be eight to 12 miles.

One thing that the club is insistent on, is that no one get’s left behind. There is always someone to run with you, and no matter what, someone always ensures that the last person back is waited for.

Each week there is a different start point on Thursday evenings, of which is posted on the club’s Facebook page, and this week everyone started off from the Waitrose car park. There were some tough hills, split across the choice of routes, ranging from Church Road as the guys ran up from Coldbrook, and for those that picked the intermediate and harder routes, they had the challenge of Trinity Hill thrown into the mix – great effort was put in by all that attended this week.

Keen to run with others? Come along, the sessions are free of charge, and are on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7.30pm, and Sunday mornings at 9am.

Full details can be found on the club website at http://barryrunningclub.weebly.com and on the club’s Facebook page.