Something Different

It’s been getting harder all the time to stir myself to get out for a jog. It doesn’t take much to find some spurious reason to put off a planned session to another time. The weather hasn’t helped much either what with cold and rain, sometimes both together. The trouble is that when I do get out the session suffers from a certain lack of commitment. It gets done, but usually in a rather half hearted manner and lacks the commitment needed to improve performance. So when I don’t produce the hoped-for goods, there’s always a feeling of disappointment which does nothing to break the cycle. I can partly put it down to doing almost no training, either running or boating, by myself. On the odd occasion that I’ve joined in with others it goes better and I can usually hold my end up long enough to get a better result out of the session.

So, when I found a local advert for a jog/run training group to improve running performance it seemed like a good idea. The group is for those just out of the initial beginners phase who can manage a continuous 30 minute jog and who want to improve on to 10k and beyond. I have that qualification. For me the value is in doing the session with others and effectively competing with them. Up until now the only competitive element in my training has been within the weekly ParkRun. Good, but not good enough. So I joined up and duly presented myself on the Monday evening at the local recreation ground.

At the first session there were nine of us altogether of whom half were ladies from a previous class. Proceedings started with the usual warm up and stretching. Then on to a couple of exercises that I’m not familiar with to get arms working as well as legs. We also started using short lengths of bungee with handles attached to the ends to provide resistance to the arms. For the last half hour we enjoyed doing short runs while flicking up our heels to meet our backsides. At the end I knew I had done a workout because of the number of new aches that I’d acquired. 

As part of the course we had each been given some ‘homework’ to do. Mine consisted of at least a five mile run and a further 30 minute run incorporating three five minute pace intervals. Using that weeks ParkRun as the ‘pace’ session I put in the second half of each mile a bit faster than usual. Of course the first one went better than the other two but I was reasonably happy to find that I’d knocked 22secs off the previous weeks time, although I had thought I might have done better.

The second session, a week later with the group reduced to five, after the usual warm-up started on what the coach referred to as ‘Fartlek’. It wasn’t the Fartlek that I know and loved from old. These were out and out intervals. Actually they were quite short but on an increasing scale from 30 seconds increasing by 15 seconds up to two minutes. Even though the session was easy enough, by the end I was pushing hard to keep up with the only other male in the group. I had taken a bit of a stumble on the second rep which had done one of my knee ligaments no good at all and was glad to call it a day at the finish.

The knee responded to ice and rest for a couple of days and on Thursday went for my homework five miler. The previous rain for three days had ensured that the grass track would be muddy and slippery. The cold ensured that it would be a thoroughly miserable jog. I jogged through the first mile as slow as I have ever done and by a mile and a half the ache to the knee had returned along with most of the others that have haunted me over the last couple of years. I just could not get warm and ended up taking the short cut back to the car, ending up at only four and a half miles.

On the positive side, going with the group does seem to be working as I’d hoped. I’ve put more effort into those two sessions than I would have done otherwise. Despite the poor showing on the last five miler something might be working judging by the new arrangement of aches and pains I’m experiencing… onwards.