Looking back at 2013 and ahead to 2014!

Sunday, December 29, 2013 · Mike Davis

Good morning! Wow, the last Sunday in 2013! What happened in 2013? Personally I was all over the place this year and unlike some years it wasn’t outside of New Hampshire. This year I worked with 3 running groups, multiple marathon runners, a few new runners and many in between. NFLR continued to grow as the primary resource for runners in the Dover and Portsmouth area as well as most of the Seacoast of New Hampshire. We moved into the Community room over Runners Alley Portsmouth, giving our clients a great location to hookup for various instruction and consultation. Late in the fall we added a tremendous resource in the Medical Motion gait analysis system and raised over 500 dollars for the Krempels Center while introducing the 360 gait analysis. We also added many new resources to the NFLR website that provide our clients even more personalized training. What a great year it has been for me personally being able to work with so many runners but also for NFLR in that we continued our development as the number one resource for the Seacoast of New Hampshire. Along the way I was asked to be the Road Runners Club of America New Hampshire state representative, which was a great honor. More on that in a bit. My goal for 2013 was to bring in additional help to NFLR and continue to develop a multi-functional business that allowed for greater support to the Seacoast and beyond. We have been focusing primarily on the Dover, Portsmouth, the Brunswick’s and surrounding towns with the eyes on the beyond down the road. Our website development thanks to Doug Mackinnon and Katie Mack provides us with so many great possibilities I have to reign in my ultimate goals of reaching runners everywhere to making sure runners in my local area are getting the best resources now. Lew Ricker of South Berwick Maine has been assisting NFLR and continues to develop as a running coach and key contributor. I look forward to a greater role from Lew as he continues to gain education and experience. 2013 also brought another RRCA certified coach to NFLR in my daughter Jennifer Miller. Having her certification as well as having just completed her studies in Occupational Therapy, Jennifer brings a whole new dimension to NFLR. Jennifer also developed a bi-weekly newsletter that will morph into a NFLR e-magazine in 2014, so she is another great resource. All of these people I have mentioned helped 2013 become a huge success for No Finish Line Running and will play bigger roles in 2014. So what’s ahead for 2014? Again I will be working with Runners Alley training groups, helping runners from distance of 10K to half marathons. These training groups are lots of fun and immensely rewarding for the runners and myself. At NFLR we are beginning a partnership with Newington/ Portsmouth NH Sport and Spine, Physical Therapy. Initially we will share their locations in Newington and Portsmouth to offer strength training for runners as well as running gait technique development using the Altra-G Zero Gravity treadmill. NFLR and Sport and Spine also hope to eventually team up to work together in helping the running community. (Look for more details on the home page soon) Pretty exciting stuff! Contact us about the value of strength training for runners and we will get you in for a workout! 2014 will also bring some really exciting stuff to www.nofinishlinerunning.com. We have been working on ideas that will offer a membership option (free) to the website, which will provide some great resources such as an electronic running log that you can access from anywhere and even get some feedback on your training. Be looking for this addition in a few months! We are also working on our client pages that we added in 2013, with the goal of even greater support and motivation. NFLR will continue reaching out to the local communities by helping with charitable events and possibly teaming up with a local race series. Hopefully we will have an announcement in the early spring detailing a partnership with an organization in the local area. This year we started working on our NFLR mission statement and in the coming months we will share it, but I can tell you this much; our mission is to never stop developing a unique personalized approach to helping every type of runner. We love working with new runners as well as those more experienced marathoners and we will continue to develop resources to accommodate all of them. We have a great deal of experience and knowledge but 2014 will bring even more formal education in areas of running that will directly and indirectly benefit all of our runners. Understanding various approaches to training is something that I feel is important. For example, while the Lydiard training system may not be for everyone, there may be some parts of it that will help with a particular area of someone’s training. Jack Daniel’s training methods will continue to be our model for guiding runners but depending on the individual runner we will continue to come up with more of a personalized hybrid training approach. So 2014 will bring many challenges for NFLR as well as some great opportunities and somewhere in there we have to find time for our running! I am excited for NFLR, but I’m also excited for all those we will get to help with gait analysis, strength training for runners, personalized training plans and then putting it altogether to create the best possible runner! Well I have shared a lot with you, but really we have a lot more to share! Stay with us, give us your thoughts and most of all keep running! I am taking a couple days of R&R with my wife, but I will be back Wednesday for some 2014 goals that I will share. Hope you have a great Sunday! Mike