After an obscenely long break from slug blogging I thought it was time that I got back into it. I’m pleased to see that people do read these blogs. They don’t post comments to them, but they do read them.
My training targets for 2007 were blown completely out of the window by my husband’s cancer diagnosis in March. Boy is it hard to train effectively when you think that the most important person in your life might die.
I’m pleased however to say that due to the absolutely fantastic medical treatment he has had, and is still having, he’ll probably see me into my pine box first (and hopefully at a very advanced age!).
So while my husband has become an enforced slug due to 24/7 chemotherapy for months at a time, I’ve just been clocking the junk miles. No real purpose to going for a run other than off-setting some of the chocolate I’ve been overeating, keeping the blood pressure down, and getting a bit of stress relief.
Then in August my husband suggested that I might like to enter a race, it would give me something to aim for, a target that would require some actual training.
In the end I decided on doing the
Terry Fox Run. It’s not a race, it’s just a run where people collect pledges and run in Terry Fox’s memory, with all proceeds going to cancer research. If you don’t know the story of Terry Fox then take a few minutes to
read it, it’s the most amazing story. Every year thousands of people worldwide run for the Terry Fox Foundation. To date over $400 million has been raised.
So choosing to do the 10km run I had 7 weeks to ‘run’ day. Now I’m not a fast runner, too much bodyweight to lug around, but I figured perhaps I might run some off (yeah, in my dreams...). My husband had even bought me a new running vest for my birthday with a skeleton rib cage on it. Haven’t seen my ribs in years so it was nice to see what they should look like.
My next question was how should I train? After months of junk miles I wasn’t sure where to start. So I started with the
Runners World website. The website is filled with interesting info for runners, be it experienced, intermediate or newbie. It also has a ‘
smartcoach’, a bit like a virtual personal trainer. From some simple input info it can give you a basic training program for a running event.
I ended up with a 7 week training program that would peak on September 16, the day of the Terry Fox Run. In my next blog I’ll tell you how the training went.
