It’s 6:30 in the morning and Julie-Ann has just left to catch the ferry to Halifax. It’s dark. It’s cold. It’s way too early. But she’s on her way anyway – on her way to meet up with Monica (our massage therapist) to do their second training run in preparation for a spring 10k.
Here’s the funny thing, though: Julie-Ann hates getting up early and she hates running. Monica hates running too. But they’re doing it anyway, God love 'em. And their mutual distaste for running makes them perfect, although unlikely, training partners.
This morning, as we were sipping our 5:00am coffee, I asked Julie-Ann why she was doing this, given her dislikes. She just looked at me and went back to her coffee. 'Perhaps it's a bit early for questions,' I thought, so I left it -- but not for long. Later, as we were eating breakfast, I asked her again. “I don’t think much about it," she replied with a shrug – "I just do.” 'Huh,' I thought -- 'that's so not like me.' Julie-Ann certainly is a doer – she leaves the brooding and cud chewing to me. In this case, it’s probably a good thing that she’s not over-analyzing: too much introspection would probably gum up the works.
So here's the program: at 7:00am, they’ll meet at the SMU track and run a lap. That’s it – one lap. The training schedule they’ve decided to follow really takes to heart the notion of starting small and building slowly. In this first week of training, they are meeting three times (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday) and simply running one lap of the track. From there, they'll add one lap to their runs each week. So next week, they’ll do two laps each run, the week after they’ll do three, and so on. According to the math, it will take them 25 weeks to build from 400m to 10k. By May, they’ll be close.
For Julie-Ann, the program is starting a bit small – she ran a 5k last year and has been doing 2.5k runs fairly regularly to maintain her fitness. But she was more than happy to have someone to share her training with. In fact, having to meet Monica will be what gets her out of bed and into her running shoes as the mornings get colder and colder and as the bus ride seems longer and longer. If she’s scheduled a meeting, she’s going to show up – that’s what managers and administrators do. She doesn’t need dreamy goals and aspirations to motivate her in this case – she just needs an entry in her daytimer.
The training program was the brainchild of an athletic therapist that Monica works with at SMU. Monica asked him how she, a beginner, should build for a 10k. And I think his one lap progression idea was quite clever. Building slowly will give their bodies a chance to develop while minimizing the risk of injury. It’ll be interesting, though, to see how this all plays out when the mileage starts piling up. They may get to a point where they need to keep two of their runs at a certain level and just push one run as a long run. Either way, in building slowly, they’ll be able to learn to listen to their bodies and adjust the program accordingly.
The two haven’t decided on a goal race yet, and they’ve both wisely decided against having a time goal. For now, they're just running for distance and seeing what happens. As new challenges arise – time constraints, schedule conflicts, snow, boredom – they’ll meet them the same way every other runner does: any way they can.
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