runography

I’d agreed to coach Dylan towards his goals to become fit and tonight was his 2nd run, on Saturday he had exceeded my expectations by completing the 0.55mile run around the park at Cambuslang. It wasn’t that I didn’t think he was capable, it was more that I didn’t think he was willing. I fully expected him to stop after the first gasp for air and start walking. I believe most people have the ability to go out and run for 5-10 mins on their first attempt, it’s just whether they believe they can or not that is the problem.

I had heaped enough encouragement on him and emphasised that the aim was to complete the distance so we can build on it for future runs. So tonights strategy, “Lets go out and run the same distance again”.

We started off strongly and I let Dylan lead at the early stage, but had to check his speed quite quickly as he was a bit fast. He was wearing the Garmin but I just felt that the pace was a little faster than Saturday. The run is uphill to start with, a slight gradient, and it leads to a steep downhill section after about 200m. We go in that direction to avoid the steeper uphill gradient of the other direction, a good change will be to run in the opposite direction as he gets stronger.

Dylan’s arms, like most kids when running are all over the place so I have to remind him to relax and not to move them around too much or he’ll waste energy that he should keep for the run. He settles in to a nice rhythm and is learning to reduce the arm movement. I am also trying to get him to hold his head up more as he stoops forward quite a bit when running. Again he’s getting better at this.

As we approach the steep downhill section, on the first run he sprinted down the hill, even though I’d warned him that he would need to conserve his energy. This time he remembered and ran down at a much healthier pace. We completed the downhill section and were on the home straight, Dylan was struggling a little but kept the pace up and gave the thumbs up when I asked if he was ok.

He got to the bin that marks the end of the run and pressed the stop button on the Garmin in a time of 6:38. This is 11 seconds faster than the run on Saturday. A great improvement, he paced a lot more of the run himself this time, reduced the overall time and his min/mi pace went from 12:21 to 11:55 min/mi, a nice sub 12 min/mi pace.

Our next run is on Thursday, we’ll continue with this distance and course for a couple of weeks to keep the confidence building and to give him a chance to build up his muscles and stamina.

I am going to have to search the web for exercise programs for kids as there are limits to the distance they should be running. I reckon targeting some 3k fun runs would be a good idea, that’ll give him a chance to build up his strength and give him some realistic targets to try and reach.

The 2008 freshnlo Junior Great Scottish Run (3k) 6th September 2008, looks like a good target. My thoughts are that I’ll be training for the 2008 freshnlo Great Scottish Run (1/2 marathon) 7th September 2008, so will be good for us to link our goals. Of course he could completely lose interest in all this, but lets remain positive for now.

A 1/2 marathon eh… Who’d have thought it.