The latest week – week eight of a twenty week half marathon training plan

The third article of the Geneva Convention states that “persons taking no active part in hostilities….should be treated humanely and that the following actions are prohibited….torture”.

Now I’m not talking about my month off the alcohol for the Royal Melbourne Hospital, this allegory (see I’m talking symbolically here) relates to my running training.

Am I stretching the boundaries by thinking that I am not taking part in any hostilities, therefore should not be subjected to torture? Seriously peoples, who in their right mind would participate in a “10 minute warm up jog” AND THEN the actual training? Tuesday I was advised to do the warm up and then 6 lots of 500 metre sprints, with a 1 minute rest between each and Friday three lots of 1km sprints with a one minute rest. Let me ask you a simple question…who in their right mind warms up for 10 minutes and then “sprints” for one kilometre? And if you could sprint that far who then rests for a measly 60 seconds and then attempts to do it again? And then AGAIN???? So taking into account my ample girth, I pushed out 6 lots of 400 metre “sprints” (well as fast as I could go) with a 2 minute rest – and still on the 6^th one I was close to stopping to bring up my meagre breakfast. Friday? 800m solid with two minute walking rest. Feeling nauseous all day is not one of the aims of this program.

But that is not the worst of it. Friday, I did my run after work. A new moon was about so the place watch pitch black, I was alone in the whole park as nobody else in their right mind would be out sprinting on a cold night, let alone a Friday. I can 100% swear this was the FIRST Friday night run that I had done in my whole life. That night is generally reserved for a beer or two after work, which quickly turns into three, then an SMS to the wife saying “won’t be much longer”, a quick one for the road, a further SMS….”still here don’t bother cooking for me”…..then a quick round for the road and a late arrival home to find an arrow pointing to the spare room. At least my beloved is kind enough to leave my pillow there, no point me turning on all the lights in the house to get my bearings. So all up Dry July and this running caper had me home early, running in the cold, sober and questioning my sanity.

It’s not all discouraging I did go for a 4km light jog on Thursday night and that was pleasant and a good mental time out from the day.

But back to the link to “torture”. My adviser who runs 100km events for fun, said I should head out on Sunday (long run day) for a 12km run and if I was feeling good at the end, walk a km and then run one more. Well I wasn’t feeling that good, so I just pumped out the 12kms with three drink breaks (too short to rate a mention) with a slow steady walk home.

Here’s where the pain kicked in….a recent book I purchased referred to “runners nipple”, an irritation of the nipple due to the friction of clothing and often complicated by sweating. Such a nice little quaint reference to something that may happen to people who run longer distances. I’ll give you the tip – it is no little quaint “irritation”. What sort of word is that? Irritation? Isn’t that when you have a mosquito in the same room at you at night time? Something which distracts – “vexation”.  Vexation my rear end, this was pain with a capital “P”. As readers would appreciate, men have a better tolerance for pain that our female counterparts, they only have to go through childbirth and things of that ilk, we suffer flu quietly and without complaint, when having to endure an ingrowing hair or cut or scratch we do so without a fuss, tattoos? Not an issue. So when I tell you a few layers of skin off the top of your nipple hurts, I am not exaggerating, to be honest it hurt a bit when I was walking home, it was just when I hopped into the hot shower that a scream was heard three suburbs away. Apparently strategically placed Band-Aids (a la Janet Jackson) will assist with this problem – what about the problem of having to rip the bloody things off? You think of that Mr Running Advice man? So now I’m reduced to having to apply Vaseline to sensitive areas before I go for a long run – I don’t even want to contemplate how many strange questions I’ll be getting as I prepare for my Sunday jogs. So when I next run for charity I’ll be able to honestly say “I gave my blood for this”.