For the first time ever, The Chronicle has assigned a writer to cover the Krispy Kreme Challenge to be held Saturday in Raleigh.
This writer will run two mile to the restaurant, eat a dozen Krispy Kremes and run two miles back-all in under an hour.
This task has fallen to me.
I am not totally sure why I have decided to do this. I work out very irregularly, and when I do run, I'm not exactly Usain Bolt-or Forrest Gump. I am, however, taking this endeavor seriously, and three days ago, I interviewed Jan Ogilvie, the former women's cross country coach and a familiar face to those who frequent Brodie Gym, where she teaches physical education classes.
I entered the interview in hopes of receiving a training regimen. What I got was a cold hard dose of reality:
So, how should I train for this?
The problem is, when you train for something, for instance, if you go out on the track and run a mile, you don't run at mile pace the whole time. You build a base, so in order to train for something like this, which sounds ludicrous in the middle, but essentially you're running a four mile race.
Oh, you've got to do it in under an hour.
OK, what I would do is have a car sitting nearby so you can jump into it halfway through your first mile and take it to the doughnut station.
I don't think I can do that. Should I run this week to build up for the race?
Basically, the last week before the race, you should be tapering. You should have already built up for the race. Essentially, right now, what you're trying to do is dig yourself out of a hole. If I had to say, though, what I would do is to jog at a reasonable pace this week, and rotate that with swimming. Three or four days before this, you don't want to be building up, because you will get out of the car and not be able to move. You're doing this whole thing backwards. I would definitely have a stretcher at the end, and maybe a wastebasket.... You should not run it, but jog it. Can you take the doughnuts with you on the last leg?
I don't know, would that be smart?
It's not smart no matter how you do it. But what I would do is jog easy and drink plenty of liquids. This is still probably one of the most ludicrous things I've ever heard.
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