I have an admission to make. I have a bit of a crush on someone. My wife kind of knows about it, but doesn’t know the full extent of it. She (my crush) has a lilting British accent and she talks to me in the most calm and soothing way. Here’s what she sounds like:

For the last 9 weeks I’ve been on a running program called Get Running. I ran back in high school until I discovered cycling. I have run at various times to “get exercise” – on the beach on vacation, when I got sick of cycling. I usually ran (excuse the pun) right back to cycling because I hated running. Not unlike someone else I know. Between 8th and 9th grade I ran 500K over the summer. Between 9th grade and 10th grade I ran 1000K. I was a pretty serious runner as a 15 year-old. Cycling took me over at 16 and the running slowly faded. Years passed, I became at times a hard-core cyclist. I did some races when I first moved to Fredericksburg. Running was always about doing something different, but it never stuck.

Until I met, HER. She encouraged me for 9 weeks. She even let me listen to music while she occasionally broke in to tell me of my progress. She would say things like “Fantastic!” and Brilliant!” when I would finish the run. I got addicted to that as much as the running itself. The music part was great too. I could listen to my own music, Spotify, and in the end Pandora (XTC Radio, FTW!). I never listened to music when I ran back in high school. Those unfamiliar with the technology at the time, we had these things called “Walkmans”. A “portable” tape player that seemed to weigh as much as a bowling ball. There was also no such thing as “ear buds”. What we have today in the form unlimited music choices on a light, truly portable device is amazing. So it all came together with this program. And now I’m done.

I’m kind of sad now though. The relationship ended so abruptly. I got the final message that you see above, but no spoken words like “I’ve really enjoyed running with you”. There was a hopeful mention of a “next time”, but there is not any sign of where I go next to find that. It’s almost like she isn’t real.

Anyway, the program is pretty good. In all seriousness, I would change one thing about the program itself. The progression is pretty good, but you get to a point (I suspect others would to) where you need to “plateau”. That is where you reach a certain distance/timed run and you stay there for a while before you go to longer distances/times. So when you get to 15 minutes continuous runs, they should hold it there for a couple weeks, and even introduce some shorter runs again. Then increase the length of runs again. Maybe they think people will get frustrated with it needing to take more than 9 weeks to get to 30 minute runs, but I think it could be too much for some. There were days when I had all I could do to finish. A couple of times I was so tired I would easily trip over roots on the ground and fall on my – well you know. Now I feel good and will look at other programs or maybe configure my own. I am aching for cycling now, but the wintery weather we are having lately isn’t conducive. I don’t want to ride indoors. So we’ll see how things move forward. I may continue running while I begin my cycling again. The best part of this is I still go into the cycling season with good fitness. Not good cycling fitness per se, but at least less weight to haul up the hills when I do get back on the wheels. Exercise is such a wondrous drug. But I’ll miss that voice.