Today is Day 1 of the sixteen-week Flora Marathon Training Plan for “first timers”. The plan was emailed to me by the Flora organisers shortly after my place was confirmed last year and consists of sixteen separate pdf files. Not a lovely spreadsheet or a tastefully formatted Word document; not even ONE pdf file with sixteen pages but SIXTEEN SEPARATE PDF FILES.
This incorrect and inefficient use of Office–related applications seems to bother me far more than might be reasonably expected. It’s a disgrace and just plain wrong of course (and they’re a f#cking pain in the arse to print), but I can’t help feeling that I might be transferring some of my own anxiety and insecurity about what’s to come on to the unsuspecting Flora addicts and their crack Adobe habit.
Anyway, for those of you with bionic eyesight, here’s what the plan for week 1 looks like. At the top of the page there’s a breakdown of the running and resting I should be doing each day, at the bottom there’s a motivational tip ("Try running from a lion") and a ‘training’ recipe (101 ways to bake, fry, roast, toast and sauté with Flora) and in the middle there’s a ‘training tip’. It reads as follows:
“Try fartlek! – ‘Fartlek’ is Swedish for ‘speed play’ and consists of bursts of speed in the middle of a training run. After your warm-up, try running at an easy training pace, throwing in bursts of speed for various distances throughout the run. Vary the speed and times of the speed sections, from as short as 15 seconds to as long as 2-3 minutes. Between these bursts, allow yourself enough recovery time to match roughly 2/3 of the effort time.”
A few observations about this…
(i) If this was a wise extract from the Kenyan marathon playbook I might be more convinced. But Sweden? Really?
(ii) This is WEEK ONE of the marathon training plan for FIRST TIMERS. What the F#CK are we doing discussing “speed play”?
(iii) And what’s with the Good Will Hunting algebra problem in the last sentence?
(iv) I am a 44 year-old ex-smoker who’s just recently realised he can get off a couch. I don’t DO “bursts”. Seriously, ask any of the guys I play football with about my “change of pace” and then stand well back because you might just get splattered with something nasty when their SIDES ACTUALLY SPLIT from the convulsive and uncontrollable laughter.
(v) And for that matter, what the hell is the difference between “jog”, “steady”, “easy”, “very easy”, “comfortable” and “brisk” when illustrating the type of running I should be doing? I have one pace. If you’d described each day’s running as “XX minutes, mosey” then you’re talking my type of language.
So Sweden, I love your tasty meatballs and your reasonably priced furniture; I especially love your Henrik Larsson and the blonde one out of ABBA. But as far as your week one training tips are concerned you can Fartlek Off.
For the record, I was going to play football for an hour this evening instead of doing the plan’s “25 minute jog”. But things changed and I didn’t manage either. Bad start.
This incorrect and inefficient use of Office–related applications seems to bother me far more than might be reasonably expected. It’s a disgrace and just plain wrong of course (and they’re a f#cking pain in the arse to print), but I can’t help feeling that I might be transferring some of my own anxiety and insecurity about what’s to come on to the unsuspecting Flora addicts and their crack Adobe habit.
Anyway, for those of you with bionic eyesight, here’s what the plan for week 1 looks like. At the top of the page there’s a breakdown of the running and resting I should be doing each day, at the bottom there’s a motivational tip ("Try running from a lion") and a ‘training’ recipe (101 ways to bake, fry, roast, toast and sauté with Flora) and in the middle there’s a ‘training tip’. It reads as follows:“Try fartlek! – ‘Fartlek’ is Swedish for ‘speed play’ and consists of bursts of speed in the middle of a training run. After your warm-up, try running at an easy training pace, throwing in bursts of speed for various distances throughout the run. Vary the speed and times of the speed sections, from as short as 15 seconds to as long as 2-3 minutes. Between these bursts, allow yourself enough recovery time to match roughly 2/3 of the effort time.”
A few observations about this…
(i) If this was a wise extract from the Kenyan marathon playbook I might be more convinced. But Sweden? Really?
(ii) This is WEEK ONE of the marathon training plan for FIRST TIMERS. What the F#CK are we doing discussing “speed play”?
(iii) And what’s with the Good Will Hunting algebra problem in the last sentence?
(iv) I am a 44 year-old ex-smoker who’s just recently realised he can get off a couch. I don’t DO “bursts”. Seriously, ask any of the guys I play football with about my “change of pace” and then stand well back because you might just get splattered with something nasty when their SIDES ACTUALLY SPLIT from the convulsive and uncontrollable laughter.
(v) And for that matter, what the hell is the difference between “jog”, “steady”, “easy”, “very easy”, “comfortable” and “brisk” when illustrating the type of running I should be doing? I have one pace. If you’d described each day’s running as “XX minutes, mosey” then you’re talking my type of language.
So Sweden, I love your tasty meatballs and your reasonably priced furniture; I especially love your Henrik Larsson and the blonde one out of ABBA. But as far as your week one training tips are concerned you can Fartlek Off.
For the record, I was going to play football for an hour this evening instead of doing the plan’s “25 minute jog”. But things changed and I didn’t manage either. Bad start.
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