Traning to run

The Athletics badge asks the applicant to explain, in 500 words or so, how to train for an athletic event. Now, I'll admit, I'm not much of a competitive athlete, so instead, I'm going to address how I went about practicing for the 2 mile run I've been working on (for the Army Physical Fitness Test), and how many, many things I've done wrong. (After a weeklong cold, I'm shooting for another run on Thursday, since I'm hideously busy Wednesday nights.)

Hey, after all, Goofus was always much more interesting than Gallant, right?

To begin with, I started running after something like a 2-year period of nonrunning, as well as a 2-month period of exerciselessness. In general, this is a bad way to start. Honestly, though, these 2 months have been the longest period of time I haven't exercised since I was something like 16 or 17 and going to the gym with my parents after school. Even through college and grad school (especially grad school), I was religious about exercise. Since moving to Brooklyn, though, things have really fallen by the wayside. And for an incredibly stupid reason: there's no available gym that's easy to walk to. Somehow, taking the train to the gym seems like it defeats the entire purpose of going to the gym. (On this front, I feel similarly to the way I used to regard people at my tiny New England college who would drive to the athletic center, which, on a residential campus maybe a mile square, seemed absurd. Does this make me a snob? Maybe.) There are regular promises to open a second branch of the YMCA, and my stubbornness is compelling me to hold out for this new, easier-to-reach branch. I will not take the train to exercise, though it's only punishing my own self.

Regardless of all that, I used a modified version of the couch-to-5k running program, which had served me well in the past (well, moderately well, in that it got me up to being able to run for some distance without stopping, but wasn't all that useful for the building up of speed). Rumor has it that if I legitimately want to become fast, I'll have to train for it -- doing things like the hilariously-named fartleks (Swedish for "speed play," or "running real fast for a couple minutes until your brains fall out, going back to regular pace, and repeating ad infinitum). There are legitimate explanations for fartlek, including all kinds of ideas about how fartlek can increase aerobic capacity, can simulate actual athletic events (sprinting to catch an opponent, for example), and theories about how doing this will allow you to actually run fewer total miles in training. Frankly, I've ignored nearly all of this with the explanation (to myself) that I don't need to get that much faster.

In terms of equipment, my dear shoe-selling uncle would recommend that a new runner might see some class of expert who could recommend shoes with appropriate arch support, correction for pronation, and so forth. I did this, too, once, and it was pretty great (I wound up with a pair of Asics I still have). The truth? Um, remember how I said I still have those Asics? Yeah. I'm running in them, three years later. I've swapped out the insoles for a pair of prescription orthotics (hey, I'm a teacher and on my feet all day, and these orthotics were my last gasp of health care benefits before a multi-month gap in coverage). I was actually extremely interested in an article in the NY Times last week suggesting that shoes, in general, aren't actually all that necessary. However, I've seen what people do on the street, and I refuse to haul around my neighborhood with my poor toes a'hanging out. Hell, I've seen what the soles of my feet look like on a day around the city while wearing flip flops. It's not pretty.

So, to sum up: minimal training, no emphasis on speed, old shoes.

Up next: Running Thursday, then on to beginning the next badge. Aviation?