CHAPTER SEVEN

The Full Fitness Programme

The object of this programme is to stay fit and healthy for the rest of your life.

BRUCE: ‘As I write this, and I know that it is tempting fate, I haven’t stopped running regularly since I took a few weeks off in the summer of 1955. OK, so I am naturally skinny and built for running, but in several decades of teaching and coaching I must have been exposed to an awful lot of germs. The reason that I have never been seriously ill may be partly genetic, but I like to think that staying fit and eating well has given me a robust immune system.’

Following a sound fitness programme does not guarantee that you will never get ill, but it does stack the odds in your favour. A good fitness programme must provide the following benefits:

A runner’s fitness programme should also make you fit enough to run in a 10k race. This gives it a different slant to a fitness programme based around a gym or a pool.

You won’t be as strong in the arm as someone who does weight-training and you won’t be as flexible as someone who does Yoga four times a week – but you will be able to run a lot faster than them.

The programme which follows is one which can be safely followed up to the age of fifty and maybe beyond. Those who have the desire and the talent may wish to go on to the more strenuous programmes in the later chapters – the marathon schedules for example, but this one will make you fit enough to run a respectable 10k.

Age adjustments

The programme you are following at 45 will probably not be the right one for you at 65.

During those twenty years, in spite of your best efforts, you will have lost some flexibility and some muscle strength. You will not be running as fast, as we have seen in Chapter 1. We have therefore suggested, throughout the book, some guidelines for modifying the tougher programmes.

‘I started running when I was informed that I was going to become a father, I was overweight and had been smoking since the age of 12. To begin was torture, but I persevered and became a competent marathon runner.’

JONATHAN SUCH

(who later ran the 90km Comrades Marathon in under 7 hours)

Running only schedule

Week 1: 13–14 miles

Week 2: 15–16 miles

Week 3: 16–17 miles

Week 4: 20 miles

Week 5: 22 miles approx.

Week 6: 25 miles

Week 7: 25 miles

Week 8: 25 miles

Week 9: 23 miles

Notes

Age Adjustments

At ths level it is the state of fitness which counts, rather than the age. The final workload is twenty-five miles a week – about three hours a week, which is not excessive for a sixty or even a seventy-year-old runner. The key is to move up to the next week only when you are confident that you can handle it. If other pres-sures get in the way, stay at, say, Week 4, for three weeks before breaking the 20-miles-a-week barrier. There is no hurry – you have the rest of yout life.

Additional Training

If you are already doing other forms of exercise, such as swimming or weight training, we suggest that you try to keep them going while you are building up your running. If not, do not add anything until you have adjusted to the extra workload.

After that you might consider what else you need. Weight training is the easiest thing to do, because it improves all-round muscular strength, which otherwise declines at the rate of about 0.5% per year after the age of 40. See the recommendations in Chapter 9.

Sports such as hockey, squash, football all require fitness, but they do not develop fitness to a great extent, because the periods of intense effort tend to be short, interspersed with longer periods of rest or low-level activity. The older the player gets, the more he tends to use his experience to save himself extra effort. This pays off in the short term, because there is still a reserve of energy which can be tapped in an emergency, but in the long term it is self-defeating, because the body is not being pushed. The older games player therefore needs to work on his fitness more between games – with running for cardiovascular fitness, or with weights in the gym for strength, to stay at the same level. He also has to be more aware of the need to warm up and warm down properly.

Racing cross-country

The weekly sportsman’s programme

The triathlon programme

Swimming and cycling are excellent ways of maintaining cardio-vascular fitness, so when combined with running, making a triathlon, you have an almost perfect training programme

It is probably true to say that triathletes are the fittest section of the popu-lation, because they develop the muscles needed for running, swimming and cycling at the same time as building great endurance and a tremendous heart-lung system. The only groups to compare with them are the rowers and the cross-country skiers, who also use a wide variety of muscles.

The great strength of triathlon training is that it has a much lower proportion of ‘impact stress’ – the effect of the foot hitting the road time after time. The drawbacks are that to compete you need a good bike (expensive), a safe place to cycle (rare in Britain) and plenty of warm water to swim in (almost unknown in Britain).

However, if you merely want to train like a triathlete and get the benefits, you can use the local pool for your swimming and get a little pair of rollers (the Turbo Trainer) on which you can mount your bike. You can then do a twenty-mile spin on the bike without leaving the house.

Douglas Cowie, the RAF runner (see here) who reached international level in the marathon, now uses the following schedule, at the age of 48:

This is a pretty tough programme, involving up to fifty miles a week of running, but up to the age of 45 he was running almost twice as much, and now he says: ‘I feel as fit and healthy as I have done in my whole life.’

Age adjustments

Only very fit 40-somethings could handle this without a rest day. For the majority of over-40s we would recommend that one of the Monday-Wednesday-Friday sessions be reduced to 20 mins swim only – which still leaves six days of running. For over-50s we recommend that the Sunday run should be one hour, the Monday-Wednesday sessions be either cycle-swim or run-swim, and the Friday should be rest or swim only.

Seasonal adjustments

The safest way to improve, as in pure running, is to increase the volume first, and only improve the quality of the training once you can handle the quantity.

World Vets 10k championships

JENNY GRAY

Age: 41

Occupation: television producer, mother of two

‘The first time I remember running was when I was eight years old. My father used to stand at the window in our lounge and time my brother and I while we raced about two miles up a country lane and back- we did it almost every evening in the summer months. When I was at school there was no opportunity to do athletics. At university I played a bit of squash and ran three miles around the golf course every morning. My first race was the Durham Colleges Fun Run, 5km, where I was the first woman. While I lived in Japan I tried to do twenty minutes every morning to keep fit, but that stopped when I moved to London.

‘During the years that my two children were born I maintained my fitness by going to the gym and doing aerobic classes. We moved to the countrysie in Hertfordshire in 1995 and there was an opportunity to run again; work and children restricted me to running six miles once a week, but I managed three aerobic or weight-training classes a week as well. On that training I ran my first half marathon in 1997, and did it in 1 hr 36. After running a few more races I decided to train for the 1999 London Marathon. I increased my training to one long run a week and two aerobic classes, and ran it in 3 hr 13. After that people said that I should train properly, so I joined my nearest club – Vauxhall AC – and set foot on a track for the first time.

‘I started running four times a week, including two sessions on the grass track. My 10k time came down to 39 minutes and then 38:05. I had my first cross-country season and won the Chiltern League series.’

Since then, Jenny has gone on to become a highly successful runner in the W40 cate-gory – and she is still improving. She ran 3 hr 3 in the 2000 London Marathon and 2 hr 57 in 2001. In 2000 she won her first British Vets track championship at 5000m, with 17:51, and in 2001 she won the British Vets 1500m in 4:43 – her first race at the distance – before going to Australia for the World Veterans Championships and winning bronze medals in both the 5000m (17:40) and the 1500m (4:40).

Typical week’s training