Diary of a novice runner

What would you say if a workmate came to you and said they were keen to run a half-marathon and wondered if you would assist them to achieve their goal?
A person in her early 20s with no running background to speak of and whose fitness levels and socially-inclined lifestyle hardly fitted into the ideal mould for completing 5km without damaging their health, let alone 21km.
And whose main reason for even considering such a daunting assignment was a desire to beat her two older sisters, both of whom had already successfully completed marathons and had running as part of their daily regime.
My guess is you would do what I did when Jo Moir made her approach, say yes let's do it, while thinking in your hearts of hearts that once the grind of constant training begun in earnest they would call it quits.
Give her a fortnight and she would be looking for some easier way to spend her spare time.
I mean it wasn't going to be all beer and skittles even for me. Sure, I was a regular jogger who had 14 marathons under the belt but they were in a past life and the thought of again churning out the kilometres necessary to have one in shape for a half-marathon didn't exactly have me doing cartwheels & not that the ageing body would allow that to happen anyway!
The only sensible part of the whole scenario was that the half-marathon we would be aiming at allowed for a 16-week training programme.
Mind you, that did take in the Christmas break when allowance had to be made for the drinking and eating excesses which go with that time of the year but even so there was ample opportunity to achieve the necessary degree of fitness.
No excuses there.
Setting the ground rules which would have us in that state wasn't difficult either.
We would train together at least three to four times a week for the first couple of months, covering a variety of distances stretching up to 10km at the very most.
Occasionally we would forsake the road and go the local parks where we would look to improve our aerobic capacity by running up steps or small hills, or by doing repeat sprints over, say, 50m or 100m.
The next two months would be the crunch.
Then we would need to increase our training to more like five days per week with the distances covered increasing as well.
I won't bore you with the details but two weeks out from the race itself out we had to be at the stage where 15km was a breeze and 21km was eminently achievable. Sounds easy I know but I promise you it's not, especially when like Jo you are starting from scratch.
It didn't take long to realise though that Ms Moir is made of sterner much sterner stuff than I had first imagined.
Any thoughts this would be a two-week flirtation with something entirely foreign to her were soon forgotten.
Yes, there were the few odd adjectives used to describe my response to her pleas of "let's take a rest" which would have no place in a family newspaper.
But, hey, isn't that normal when you are completely out of breath and some plonker tells you there is just 1km to go, when you know damn well there is at least double that?
Remarkably it took only a few runs before we were able to hold a conversation from go to whoa. Those who know Jo will say that would hardly be surprising because, as befits the female gender in general, she is seldom short of a word but for anyone new to running it's usually a difficult art to master.
Amazing too what you actually talk about as you look to release the mind from the pain you are feeling in the legs.
I won't give the details because the book is still a work in progress but, suffice to say, Jo is an interesting person with interesting thoughts about this, that and everything.
Providing the lawyers find a way to allow the real names to be published we have a best seller on our hands for sure.
As Jo's fitness improved so did her speed, and herein lay a problem. Not for her but for me.
When it came to the quicker runs I couldn't cut the mustard so plans had to be formulated which had me covering a course which allowed me to take short cuts so we could get to the finishing point at about the same time.
Henley Lake proved an ideal venue in that respect, dog poop and all.
Two weeks out and we took a trip to Wellington to run part of the half-marathon course with the one sister still amongst her intended competition on the big day.
This was the acid test and Jo came through with flying colours. Restrict the number of Tui pints and barbecues over the next few days and the world was her oyster.
Come the race itself and the only worry was that Jo would go out too fast, something which often happens with newcomers in long distance events.
In the excitement of the occasion it is easy to forget just how far you have to run.
As it transpired Jo probably took that warning too seriously, for her and big Sis covered the first 5km so slowly they were in danger of not achieving their aim of breaking the two hour barrier.
However, a few words of "aggressive encouragement" from the sidelines from a coach whose own training programme had been cut short by a calf strain had the desired effect and she upped the tempo so impressively that she beat her targeted time by all of seven minutes, and big Sis by about that margin as well. Quite frankly I don't know who was prouder, pupil or coach. Mission impossible had been accomplished.
Why relate this story now?
Well, Jo has just one day left at the Times-Age before she heads to the UK as part of her OE and she is the very last person to enjoy being the centre of attention.
Having the chance to listen to her colourful descriptions of people who put her in that position just one more time makes it all worthwhile.
Happy travels Jo...