Thinking Of Running With Us
Stopsley Striders are always pleased to welcome new members, whether you are a beginner or an experienced athlete.
We meet at Inspire Luton Sports Village, Hitchin Road, Luton LU2 8DD on Monday and Thursday in the meeting room (downstairs through the cafe), from 18:45; notices at 18:50, out and running from 19:00. Bag storage will be in the ground floor lockers – don’t forget your 20p.
For new runners to the club, we offer a calendar months attendance without asking you to commit to the club. This gives you the opportunity, over a maximum of eight visits, to make sure the club suits you. After the month, if you are happy we ask that you commit to the club, by joining and completing the membership form.
Details of membership and the form can be found here.
If you mention, on arrival, that you are new to the club, then they will try to match you to a group that will run at a similar pace and distance to you. These groups aren’t set in stone, so feel free to ask around (just make sure you ask how far they are planning on running that night).
We ask members to join Spond, which is available on Android or Apple devices, and register themselves on the link that will be circulated.
Once registered with Stopsley Striders, it is vitally important that, in your settings section on Spond, you change your Contact Information to ‘Only Visible for Administrators’. This will ensure that only Club Administrators see your details. If you do not do this everyone will be able to see your contact details. It is also important to keep your ICE and medical details up to date, as accidents do happen and will be important so that club leaders and coaches can contact the relevant people when appropriate.
We have quite a wide range of groups of runners. On Monday evenings most of the groups usually run for somewhere between 30-60 minutes. You must be 18 or older to run with us. Thursday evenings we usually have a coached structured session (also known as ‘speedwork’) that people can take part in if they want to, or continue to do their own runs.
We also run a Coached Track Session on Tuesday evenings at 7:30pm at Stockwood Park Track. This is an excellent, well-lit, safe and supportive environment that supports runners of all abilities to improve their speed and endurance. These sessions cost an additional £3, and sign up is available via the Spond App.
The club has social events each month at the Barrels PH and at Crawley Green Social Club. We are a #RunAndTalk Group, regularly holding supportive running sessions for members, as well as monthly 5K and 8K Social runs with run leaders and tail runners and our monthly Sunday Long Runday where we support runners wanting to train for longer events with a coffee and cake afterwards!
The club also experiences a number of benefits such as fully insured running, discounts to all ARC races, further discounts with race organisations, discounts on running clothing and trainers and some discounts with local businesses. Those runners who are also affiliated to England Athletics also get a discounted entry in EA events and further discounts shared in their monthly newsletter.
The club does not have a minimum fitness requirement for you to want to run with us but we do recommend that you can jog for 30 mins without stopping!
We have an annual 12 week beginners course that starts in April.
If you would like to learn how to run from scratch in the meantime we would like to recommend the following to you.
- Couch to 5k that has been developed by the NHS to help new or returning runners wishing learn how to run from scratch with NHS LiveWell
- Also you may like to try out your local free 5K parkrun where you will find likeminded people including beginners to running. The local parkrun to us is Luton Wardown
We look forward to welcoming you soon to Stopsley Striders!
If you have any questions or concerns, please send us an email and you will be contacted as soon as possible.