Training for the PTC Classic

By DOUG MARTZ
Special To The Citizen

Back in the days when I was in the Army, there was very little to compare with the daily joy of running, except perhaps doing the inevitable pushups and situps that went along with it.

I was pretty good at it. My legs and arms were strong and my chest was closer to my neck than my waist. Other soldiers would come up to me and ask my "secret" to running faster and farther. I would tell them there was no secret that to run faster you had to run faster and to run farther you had to run farther. Inevitably and invariably, they would look at me as though I had lost my mind. They refused to belive there was no secret no instant success to running.

There wasn't then and there isn't now when my legs and arms are not nearly as strong and my chest has migrated southward. To run faster and farther you simply need to run faster and farther.

The PTC Classic is looming on the horizon (Oct. 14, my circled calendar tells me) and it has been some time since I heeded my own running counsel. I have become more like the dreaded couch potato than the lean and hungry gazelle I once resembled. I know, from talking with former runners and wannabe runners and never were runners that there are a lot of people just like me those who know they should run, those who know they should want to run, and those who believe they ought to convince themselves they want to run. We are a fraternity whose number is legion.

So how to begin? Well, the PTC Classic has three courses: two five-kilometer (3.1-mile) races (one for men and one for women) for beginners, desultory runners and returning runners and a 15-kilometer (9.3-mile) race for those who have passed the hurdles of running to the nether regions. Most of the people I know, myself included, do not belong in the longer category. Most of us might be classified as running duffers or perhaps those not quite that dedicated.

To borrow a phrase from "The Sound Of Music," "Let's start at the very beginning." If, like me, you plan to run the shorter course for the Classic, begin with five running steps, or 10 or 20. It doesn't have to be a lot. But it does have to be a start. And it's not a start tomorrow, it's a start today. For most of us there has to be a time to run. It might even be the time we would otherwise spend channel surfing while waiting for the interminable commercials between Olympic sets on television.

No matter. Just, as Nike points out, get out and do it. It won't feel real good at first. Muscles that have gotten used to their sedentary ways will cry, scream and moan in protest. And one of the sad facts of aging is that the older we are, the longer the muscles will cry, scream and moan. We won't be hurt, we'll just be sore (and yes, Virginia, there is an important difference between the two).

But a small run today will be followed by a longer (defined as one more step than yesterday) run tomorrow and so on and so forth (along the way, remember to find and fill out an entry form for the Classic).

Race day dawns crisp, clear and clean and, with all your newfound enthusiasm and determination, you wind your way to the start line and are confronted by a sea of lean and hungry looking gazelles. It won't do much for confidence yours, mine or ours. But you'll be there and that's the important thing. You may not come in first overall or even first in your age group, but you'll come in first in your heart and your mind, pushing yourself across the finish line having run farther and faster than before and swearing you'll never do it again.

Doug Martz, 53, who has been running off and on for the past 30 years and has completed four Chicago marathons, considers himself a "trundler." He will be running his second PTC Classic this year.

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