I will be embarking next month on my first ever fun run: specifically, the Eltham Fun Run 2009. As I’m not in the shape I once was I thought, oh, I’ll dip my toe in slowly, do the 5km and see how that goes. Then maybe sometime in the future I’d give the 10km a crack? That sounds like a plan.
Then my friend (who’s also running in the same race and is much better than I am) encouraged me to just do it and so I have: I committed to the 10kms. Which is nothing compared a marathon, but trust me, it’s a good starting point. I suppose I can already run 5kms fairly comfortably.
Darling that she is, she even printed out for me a training timetable and I now find myself staring daily at it on the door of my fridge. After a few modifications (I juggled around on which-days-I-did-what) it looks like this:
Friday: Run and Strength
Saturday: REST
Sunday: Cross training
Monday: Major Run
Tuesday: Stretch and Strength
Wednesday: Minor Run
Thursday: Cross Training
The period of time spent exercising and lengths of distance travelled, obviously, increase the closer we get to the race day, except in the last week where I ease it back to build some energy reserves. I’ve gone and borrowed a lot of running magazines from the library and they’re all full of interesting information, even if I’m still not sure what a ‘taper’ is and why I’m supposed to incorporate sprints into my training/race, etc. I was pleased to read that for distances up to 10kms, its deemed ‘ok’ to run it out on the treadmill: anything over, and it should be done out on the road, because the bitumen is much harder and your muscles need to get used to it. Or something like that. It’s a whole different world, just like Adam’s bike riding. He tries to explain to me all the different types of bikes, tyres, gear etc there are out there and I just end up getting baffled.
On the subject of bike riding, I’ve started getting emails regarding the Melbourne Summer Cycle 2010. This year I hope to compete because we didn’t get to do last year’s as it fell over the weekend of dad’s funeral.
But I’ll tackle this fun run first before I start worrying about that!
