Begin running courses - Have you done one? What were the good and bad bits?

Together with a clubmate who has done RunEngland beginner courses before (I've already picked her brains!) I'll be doing a club/RunEngland begin-to-run course at the start of September.

I'd like to hear from people who've been on a beginners' running course to find out what you thought was good and what was maybe a bit of a turn-off. It would be interesting to know who ran the course (local club? RunEngland? Local gym? Combination of the above?) but don't feel you have to name names, "a local running club" is fine

I do remember being a beginner myself (not very fit & a bit round) and more recently have taken friends and colleagues out & done couch-to-5k with them, but that's a pretty small sample of people and I'd like to do my best for the much wider range of folk who'll turn up this autumn.

Start with the real basics. Clothing and shoes. I did not own lycra and was frightened of it

I did get proper shoes but buying lycra seemed only appropriate for 'runners' and I didn't identify with them. I started with a running group who organsied a night in a running shop - drinks and nibbles - and we could all try and buy with 10% discount. I'd probably been running a few weeks by this time but it meant I bought proper clothing without any self consciousness.

Might seem a silly thing and tbh I almost can't remember feeling that way but it was useful. Alternatively point them in direction of online outlets?

Stretching was a bit of a mystery....  (I'm not on about lycra here) but being shown just a couple of stretches at a time would have been useful. We whizzed through oodles - none of which I probably did correctly.

That's a good idea - we have a friendly local running shop who might well be up for that. 

What about the actual running? Do people prefer straight "going out for a run" where you cover the course with warm-up, then walk-run, then cool-down, or do they enjoy a bit of variety like relay games round a loop in the park ? (The pattern of exertion would be roughly the same more or less but people might prefer one thing or the other). I can see that some people might see  the plain "going out" as boring, and others might find anything more complicated too much at the end of a long day or be reminded (in a positive OR negative way!) of school games... 

I am about to do my course this weekend but also run with a group. We had our first night last week and we did a run where we got people to run fast so many lamposts with warm up and cool down. Feedback was that they wouldnt do that alone as they would feel daft and could just run distance alone. I reckon variety is good. We started with indian file to see what level everyone was at too which worked really well as people naturally went off into their own groups.(we do have 4 leaders of varying ability) Good Luck with it all.

I liked a mix of sessions and that also leads to ...er a mix of sessions when you step it up a bit. Most of my running was at one speed but we did lamp post races/hill sessions and so on, one night of the week and your traditional group steady run another