Get On, Clip In, Fall Off

Breaking the 15 minute mile

All the literature says that people who are just starting running should start out gently so as to not turn all the complex bits of mechanical and hydraulic engineering that legs are made of into so much biological mush. The effect, one is led to believe, is similiar to that of the transporter malfunction in the first Star Trek film which turns a hapless test subject into a pile of molecularly scrambled mince. Not wishing this to happen (if I'm going to be a redshirt it'll be in an even-numbered Trek movie, dammit), I sought out some suggested training schedules on the web.

Most beginner's programmes are for people whose entire life consists of the office, home and the car inbetween. I'm a little fitter than that, so it was faintly frustrating to find that most of the programmes on the web started out with things like "In the first week, walk for five minutes every other day". Uh, I can walk forever. It's 20 minutes from the station to the place I'm working at the moment. What I wanted to do was run. Still, I knew better than to overstretch myself and turn into the aforementioned pile of biogoop, so I kind of took the Serpentine running club's programme and combined it with their other programme to come up with a kind of "don't push yourself" regime that would probably suit me okay provided I didn't do anything overwhelmingly stupid.

Anyway, I digress. Our intrepid hero had just stepped out of the front door in running shoes for the first time, so let's catch up with him. It won't take long, as he hasn't got far yet.

The plan in my mind for this first time out was to do what I could in half an hour. This turned out to be down to the Thames, along a bit and then back up though Kingston - a total of 3.6km (if you want miles, work'em out yourself - this is the 21st century, for heavens' sake). I figured that if I could so something in half an hour then I'd have at least accomplished something even if it was just doing something in shorts and running shoes which I could have accomplished in about the same time in jeans and boots. Still, it's the thought that counts.

I turned left out of the front door and walked briskly down the first couple of streets as, let's face it, if I'd started running straight away I'd have only been kidding myself and bringing forward the point at which my legs would inevitably fall off. After a few hundred metres I was feeling dangerous enough to try a little run and accelerated into one. So far, so good, but I didn't want to break myself so after a while it was back to a walk. Brighton Road had a few people wandering up and down it so I ran that bit to disguise my enormous lack of fitness.

After running for a bit my arms and legs started to do their own thing. Once it got to the point that they were flailing around in a way that was beginning to move me backwards and sideways more than forwards I gave up and walked for a bit instead. Down onto Portsmouth Road I, er, walked, and along to the beginning of the footpath along the Thames that links Surbiton to Kingston. On the footpath I ran a bit, then walked a bit, then ran a bit, then headed back up to the main road and across to head for home. A meander through Kingston gave me the dangerously impetuous impulse to run a little more, so I did, then walked along most of Claremont Road, across the Surbiton station footbridge, and back home with a feeling of immense relief. I immediately drank a lot of water and collapsed in a weird wobbly heap.

Another thing which the literature says is that you should always keep a running log. This is so you know how far you've run this week and how long it took you. It's also so you can make notes of exactly how rubbish you felt afterwards. I'd already downloaded an Excel spreadsheet for the purpose (hey, Excel's useful for something!) and now dutifully filled in my time - 28 minutes approximately, as I didn't bother timing it to the second - and distance. It promptly informed me that I'd run at 7.7km/h and that it reckoned that with that sort of performance I'd finish a marathon in 6 hours and 18 minutes, a speed at which I could probably walk a marathon distance. No matter, as I wasn't actually looking to run a marathon anyway. I was more interested in getting to Kingston and back without needing hospitalisation right now, thanks.

However, I felt good and slightly smug despite the appallingly depressing numbers. I'd accomplished something by going out at all, which was the important thing. Now I just had to repeat the exercise a few hundred times and maybe I'd be able to call myself a proper runner.

One factor which helped me get round the run this time was that miraculously, this was the only time I've been out in running shoes that I didn't pass a whole bunch of other people out running and looking much more healthy and confident than myself. I saw a couple of others at a distance, but there wasn't any of that passing people a couple of metres away on the street and having to look as if you were just out for a relaxing stroll in the park and not at all puffing away red-facedly and desperately.

To be continued.. (if you're lucky, I'll talk about the oddities of stretching)

Posted by mpk at September 14, 2004 11:13 PM | TrackBack