"The Center"

Friday, January 16, 2015 · Mike Davis

Good morning! No doubt, I am not alone in being thankful that it is Friday! While most of you hopefully have Monday off, I am fortunate to have both today and Monday off! Timing is perfect with tomorrow being the Grand Opening of the “No Finish Line Running Coaching & Endurance Resource Center,” which will often be referred to as “The Center”. Because of tomorrow’s significant event, today’s Coffee and Chat won’t be exactly the typical Friday Quick Intervals. Instead, I want to talk about what tomorrow means for me and the others that have helped to make it happen. As I wrote about a few weeks ago when I announced the opening of “No Finish Line Running Coaching & Endurance Resource Center”; this idea has been in the making for many years. In fact, I can remember the exact day my daughter drove up from Worcester to spend the day working on NFLR things with me. One of the “things” we worked on was a list of all we wanted to do, followed by assigning a timeline. A running resource center was on the list, and though what we will be opening tomorrow is not exactly the one we laid out then, it will definitely be a start of what we envisioned. What that means is “The Center” we unveil to you and the Seacoast is only the start of our vision and as we move forward we actually have a concept that will be an even greater resource to runners and all endurance athletes. Jennifer definitely has many of her Dad’s attributes and most definitely one of them being a dreamer or maybe it sounds more stable if I say we are both “visionaries’.” I would say that both dreamer and visionaries together are consistent with what we have always been with NFLR. Over time I will share with you the additional vision for “The Center” as well as No Finish Line Running, but the business side of me keeps in mind that the competition needs to come up with their own ideas! Tomorrow when you walk into “The Center” at 44G Dover Point Road, Dover, you will be greeted by a member of our team that will give you a quick introduction of “The Center” and then hopefully you will move around and take some time to talk with the various team members and get greater detail about what they do, possibly a hands on demonstration, ask some questions, check out some of the unique equipment and get some help for your training. Some of the things that you will have the opportunity to learn about: - Interactive Running Coach - Running Form Analysis - Unique ways to improve your running form - Running Group opportunities - Strength & Conditioning as it directly impacts runners and endurance athletes - Functional Movement Screening - Pilates and why all of us runners should be doing it - Runners Alley will be represented by their owner who will help you with what type of shoe you should be wearing All of that under one roof while you are learning about what resources are available to you, you can enjoy some not some snacks, coffee and bottled water. If you come early enough you will receive a custom “NFLR Coaching & Endurance Resource Center” coffee mug and all guests will draw a free ticket for one of our various resources! On top of all that, if you are lucky we will be giving away a few raffle prizes that include a gift certificate from Runners Alley, and different packages from “The Center.” There will also be great discount coupons available for “The Center” and Runners Alley as well. So you can see that tomorrow will be a fantastic day and worth coming by for! At the top of this coffee and chat I said that I would talk about what “The Center” means to me as well as our team that has made it possible. NFLR started about 5 years ago as a simple personal coaching service with mostly one person (me) and with some help from people like Jennifer (daughter), Doug and Katie Mackinnon. We developed a website and a business model that at the core represented our desire to help every runner find the ultimate passion through their running. To us “ultimate” meant many things such as health, spiritual, community, personal improvement, greater self-awareness and much, much more. We have succeeded in helping numerous people find the “ultimate” benefits that come with their running and that is a wonderful feeling for both us and those we have worked with. Now we are opening a place that will greatly increase our ability to help people realize the ultimate benefits that are at the core of our business existence. We have added Jasmin Lepir to the team who will bring great knowledge and experience to our strength and conditioning programs. We have also been fortunate to find Erica Rice to help runners and other endurance athletes by providing a great resource in Pilates. Yoga is wonderful and has great benefits, but Pilates offers a greater combination of core and stability that makes it perfect for endurance athletes. Adding these two to our team has been huge in our ability to truly have an all-encompassing resource center. My wife and number one partner mentioned to me yesterday that much of this dream/concept has been the result of our desire to help runners in the areas that we neglected back when we started out. Today we both have various challenging physical issues that are a result of just putting on a pair of cheap running shoes and running. After years of this mentality we became educated by such people as “Runners Alley” and “Road Runners Club of America,” but we could not turn back the hands of time on some of the damage we did to our bodies. Today we continue to run with some challenges but now we utilize our knowledge and experience to help ourselves and others. “The Center” is definitely a result of our desire to help others avoid the mistakes we made early on. My wife is so smart! There you have it! “The Center” will open tomorrow and from there we plan to give the Seacoast and beyond something very special that will help endurance athletes like nothing else available! Come on by and check us out! Thanks for having coffee. God Bless! Mike