'The Bump' runs a race.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Wow…have John and I gotten soft. It was sunny and somewhere in the 50’s as I drove home thinking about the bike ride I was going to do. John had called to say he was in the neighborhood and would stop for a visit before heading to an appointment and letting me do my ride. I knew he wouldn’t have time to get any dinner before going, so I threw on some spaghetti noodles. I had left over sauce and meatballs from Sunday. He arrived shortly after I started heating the water.

“You’re going to ride out there? Man…it is cooooooold,” he said, drawing out the ‘cold’ like we were in Arctic National Park or something. And yet…I kind of did something I don’t normally do…which is to agree with him. How quickly I’d become a freeze baby. When I look back over the blog and see the conditions I was enduring on the bike in the spring just to get off of the trainer and outside, this weather would be a heat wave. It wasn’t this spring though, and it wasn’t a heat wave, and I wasn’t looking forward to riding. Besides, John needed company eating his spaghetti so I decided to join him.

He left and I went to work on the computer deciding that yes, I was going to bag the ride since I would have had only 45 minutes before dark. John pretty much feels that October is not a biking month, but I’m still going to try and get some rides in on the weekends when there is sufficient day light. I recognize that I need some cross training if I am to stay healthy enough to run, and that means some biking all year. I was still feeling quite a bit of soreness in the abdominal area from the long run yesterday though, and knew that if I didn’t ride, I wouldn’t be doing anything…and so I did nothing.

Nancy, an old friend who had moved to Virginia some years ago, was in town about 7 weeks ago and had stopped in for a visit. We’re Facebook friends and I knew that she had lost over 100 pounds – 105 to be exact. I was excited to see her again and to hear all about the process she’d gone through to get and keep the weight off. Essentially, it was diet, she said. It took her two years and the key, she felt, was to always know what she was going to eat. She was extremely disciplined about bringing her lunch to work, planning her snacks and eating a diet that she knew was healthy, balanced and avoided hollow calories. She wanted to do more, though, and knew my specialty.

“I want to run this 5K in October and I’ve gone out and done some jogging, but I get bored with it so quickly,” she told me. I suggested writing her a specific, day by day program of walking and jogging that would have her ready to run the entire distance on the day of the race.

“Look…it’s easier if you have a schedule every day when you walk out the door. I’m going to write it up and you just do it,” I said. She and I used to teach Sunday school together and she always let me take the lead and make the plans…happy to be ‘the bump’ as she called herself. She was ready to be a bump again.

I wrote the plan so that she’d be mostly walking initially, but following each bout of walking with a jog of, at first only 1 minute. I’d build up the jogging time while subtracting the walking until I had her jogging non-stop for 35-40 minutes…enough time to run a 5K race.

I received numerous messages from her and her daughter, Jamie, over the course of the training. Jamie was following the schedule with her mom…and hating it. She’d whine about how tough it was, but I just told her to cut the crap and do the work…which she did. She’s like John and just wants to whine some.

This past Saturday, I received a voice message from Nancy telling me she’d just completed the race in around 34 minutes and had run every step. She was extremely proud of herself…as she should have been, and wanted to thank me for the program and support.

It’s really simple, I think, but only if you have definable goals and a way to measure your results. Having a date in time such as she did for the race, is an excellent task master and something I always recommend to folks trying to accomplish fitness or weight related goals. Good job, Nancy. And Jamie…quick your crappy whining.