At H+P we really are lucky to have such a large range of ages and abilities working hard together to make each other better. It doesn’t matter how fast you are naturally, but becoming faster than ever before feels great!
To do this, staying healthy, staying consistent, and maintaining psychological strength and positivity is imperative. Being better than you’ve ever been feels good because it’s extremely hard to achieve. There is no doubt that the pack you run with can help you conquer your personal challenges, but can also potentially hurt your chances of success depending on the dynamic.
Here are some rules to live by that awesome H+P teammates have exhibited over the years that without a doubt help them and their teammates be better!
1. Don’t race workouts. Putting in 85-95% of your race effort will breed consistency, help to prevent injury, and take away from the fear and mental anguish associated with showing up for and completing hard workouts. We’re all competitive, but we should bottle that up for race day.
2. If you drop out of a workout, and decide to jump back in, don’t lead once you return. Your teammates are beat down from the entire workout 
and really don’t benefit from being pushed by somebody with fresh legs. Just hang off the back of the pack, and try to choose a more reasonable starting pace next time to prevent the need to drop out.
3. If you are doing a low volume workout, and plan to go hard enough to lead, warn your teammates around you who are doing full volume workouts so they don’t get sucked into a pace that isn’t reasonable for them!
4. Go slow on the recovery, and loop back to pick up runners anywhere close to you. Don’t try to “win” the workout on the recovery. Working together as a pack makes the time pass more quickly, and the level of pain experienced more manageable.
5. Keep the pace as steady as possible throughout. Throwing in surges creates gaps and makes it hard for everybody to maintain the consistency and quality of their workout.
6. Saying good job to your teammates as you run by them really does make a difference– keep it up!
7. High-fives post-workout = mandatory (unless you really don’t want to haha). Selfies are optional Terry!
8. If you’re working out with somebody slightly slower than you but want to work well as a team, doing the 1st ½ to 3/4 of the rep at the slower runner’s speed, and then having a planned acceleration to the faster runners’ speed for the remainder of the rep works well for both runners.
TRACK STUFF (assuming outdoor)
9. Recovery is done in the outside lanes, watch for people coming behind you, move further to the outside as needed
10. Running hard is done on the inside lanes.
11. If you are running fast and passing somebody who is also running hard, pass them on the 
outside…stay as tight as you want…but this is not a time to say “Track” as it would be during Trackfest.
12. If you feel too slow to run on the inside lanes, you’re welcome to do your workout on the far outside couple lanes, but just expect to have to weave through people recovering etc. since this is not the normal place for people to be running hard.
13. If you are running hard in a pack more than 2-3 people wide- try to stay super tight together to limit how far people will have to deviate from lane 1 and 2 to pass you.
14. On the indoor track, don’t try to “win” the workout by cutting to the inside. Make sure your crew is all on the same page about which lane the intervals are going to be run in.
Hopefully this list makes sense and doesn’t seem too restrictive. It’s a free country, and if you want to absolutely crush people and never give high fives (see Will being completely ruthless in the pic to the right); you are free to do so!
#cantwontstop
