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Garrett Coughlan crosses the line to take third place for Crusaders at the 2009 National Road Relays in Raheny. Photograph: racepix365.com

In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a road running boom going on. Around the country and around the world, established races are attracting a record number of entries and new races are getting off the ground. There has never been a better time to be involved in road running. You may be a beginner and just thinking about getting involved. Or you may already have done a number of road races and would like to improve or would like to be a bit more structured about your running. Either way, joining Crusaders AC should be your next step.

Road runners benefit in many ways from being members of an athletics club. Almost all training plans involve some kind of long run once a week. Most people prefer to do their long run in the company of other runners, at a so-called “conversational” pace. In a club, there will be a ready-made group of people interested in getting together to do a weekend long run in company. They just divide up into groups according to their target pace, and off they go.

Regardless of your level of ability, an important element of your training should involve seeking to be able to sustain a slightly faster pace. The best way to approach this is to do what’s known as an interval session, where you run a bit faster than you would on a longer run, but for a much shorter duration and with some interval of time to recover between exertions. Whatever about long runs, almost everyone prefers to do interval sessions in the company of other runners at roughly their own level of ability. Crusaders AC can offer a road runner a structured environment and state-of-the-art facilities in which to do their intervals sessions. Again, regardless of your level, there will be a number of people at roughly that level for you to join in with.

Finally, joining a club will foster a strong social element to your running, which will make it more enjoyable for you and help you to sustain it. Groups of club members regularly organise trips to the big road races around Ireland, such as the Ballycotton ‘10’ or the Streets of Galway 8k. There is invariably a group preparing for the Dublin City Marathon each year and smaller groups occasionally arrange to do big city marathons abroad. By virtue of being a member of a club, you may also develop an interest in some complementary areas such as cross-country or mountain running. Having a bit of variety to your running season makes it easier to sustain interest.

The simplest way to proceed is to just turn up for the main training session of the week, on Tuesday evening in Irishtown Stadium. (See Training for details.) All levels of ability are catered for. You will not be under any immediately obligation to join and prospective members are welcome to come along for a few weeks to see if the club suits their needs. Alternatively, just e-mail .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) if you have any further queries.