Thus far, the predominant theme I’ve found in my morning
runs is how little I enjoy getting up in the morning to go running. When
compared with the endless possibilities given by lying in bed, getting up to
exhaust myself before breakfast seems somehow the worse option.
Today, though, was the start of a new week, as Wednesdays
often are. And I was most intrigued by how this week was going to go, given the
promise of the website for Week 3. Namely, this week’s “workout” (I don’t feel
like I’m doing enough to make that the right word for it, but anyway) involves
a 5 minute warmup, then two lots of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking, 1.5
minutes running, 2 minutes walking, 3 minutes running, 1 minute walking, and
then a 5 minute warmdown. This in and of itself wasn’t overly exciting – what did
interest me was the fact that this is advertised as taking 27 minutes in total
(and indeed today’s podcast was only 25 minutes). I was most interested to see
how they intended to fit 35 minutes worth of things to do in that time.
Fully expectant to be having a Time Lord in my ear today, I
set out, bemused but interested to see what was going to happen. Maybe I would
learn that one of the tricks of the trade is that time doesn’t work the same
for runners as it does for normal people. Perhaps when people run marathons it
actually only takes them five minutes from their perspective, it’s just because
we’re watching them that it seems so much longer. I was quite excited to become
a time traveller, I haven’t been one since next year.
But sadly, in order to discover my new-found powers, I would
have to go on a run. (Or, you know, just listen to the podcasts at home in bed.
But given the quality of music, having pain in your legs and no oxygen in your
lungs can often serve as a pleasant distraction).
The first surprise of the day came during the first three
minute run. Chad (the voice on my iPod) had been his usual verbose self,
greeting me with a cheery “Warm-up” and then “Run”, and I was perfectly ready
for this to be the extent of our communication. But suddenly, in the middle of
the run, the music faded out and Chad expanded his vocabulary at me, uttering
the wise words of “Two minutes left”. (OK, fine, it wasn’t exactly in the
middle of the run.) A minute later I was treated to another new word, with “One
minute left”. This was a relatively pleasant development – although for three
minute runs I’m not likely to lose how long I’ve been running, on longer runs
regular input could be quite useful in helping me to keep track of how I’m
doing. Although on a half-hour run I suspect an update every minute might get a
bit annoying, so hopefully Chad will discover the gift of silence around that
point.
The second surprise came once I’d finished the 1.5 minute
run, when Chad came back to inform me that I was “half-way through”, before
sending me off on a 3 minute run which was followed by a claim that I was
approaching my “last run”. I’d been tricked by this before, and wasn’t quite
prepared to believe him, but indeed after one more 1.5 minute run he told me to
“warm down”.
This change of pace was somewhat unexpected. It means that
this week I’ll only be running for 9 minutes, the same length of time I was
doing in the first week (admittedly here in more concentrated bursts). I almost
felt a little bit cheated. If I’m going to get up at ridiculous o’clock in the
morning, at the very least I want to feel like I’ve done a level of exercise
worthy of the time.
On the other hand, the reduced demand on the legs is
probably no bad thing. I suspect that I’m not built for physical exertion. The
last time I went running I found myself with pretty much constant leg aches and
sporadic pains until I stopped for an extended period of time, and it looks
like they’re starting to remember this again. My warm-down walk was fairly slow
(and a bit longer than normal because, having expected a longer run, I was in
the middle of nowhere when I was told to stop), and when I got back I had a
nice lie down in bed for about 15 minutes until I felt keen enough to get up
again.
In a way, this is a good thing, though. It means that I can
be fairly sure that I haven’t missed an opportunity for a career as a marine, or
an Olympic athlete, or a not-having-leg-pain-after-running specialist (it’s a
job. Probably.) I seem to have a body that’s built for working in an office,
and I can cope with this. Sadly, though, it doesn’t look like I’ll be able to
get a job as a Time Lord either; both because it looks like the secret of time
travel is a bit more complicated than the podcasts seem to suggest, and also
because that too seems to be a job that requires a lot of running, from the documentaries
I’ve seen on the BBC.
Peter Garibaldi
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