What do you normally do on St. Stephens Day? Feeling a little full after the festivities of the previous day? Feeling a little remorseful at the thought of the extra lbs that the Christmas over-indulgence might have brought with it? Fancy getting some fresh air on St Stephen's Day for about 60 or 70 minutes? Fancy getting it when jogging the Athenry 10k the morning of St Stephen's Day? Read on before tearing up this message.

Last year, 22 'circuit trainees' from Craughwell sessions ran the Athenry 10k and all had a great time. The benefits included … getting rid of the post-Christmas Day blues, freeing up some space in the tummy for more food and drink later that day, maybe holding yourself back a little from overindulging in preparation for the 10k, shedding some weight prior to Christmas so that you end the festive season with no net weight gain, the achievement of completing a 10k race, putting yourself in a great position to have a routine exercise regime for 2007 etc.

The following is intended as a guideline program to encourage/help people to take part in their first 10k, hopefully on St Stephens Day. Craughwell AC will pay some of the entrance fee for club members doing the race. We'll try to sign up people in advance so that once you make the commitment, you'll hopefully carry on to do it.

The outline program is as follows. Its intended to slowly build you up into doing longer runs. For some of you who run already, this may be too cautious. If so, skip through the weeks to the longer runs.

Each week do two runs as per the schedule below. Note all numbers below mean "minutes", ie "jog 10m" means jog for 10 minutes (not miles!)

Each week just think about the runs that week, don't think about week 8 until you get to end of week 7 – otherwise it will put you off! You'll be surprised at how easy a 30 minute jog becomes after a few weeks.

In the initial weeks, finish each session with a longer walk to bring total exercise time to around an hour. It will be mostly walking in the early weeks.

Wk 1 Mon 30th Oct
1) Repeat 4 times: jog 2m, walk 2m (16m total)
2) Repeat 4 times: jog 3m, walk 2m (20m total)

Wk 2 Mon 6th Nov
1) Repeat 4 times: jog 4m, walk 2m (24m total)
2) Repeat 4 times: jog 5m, walk 2m (28m total)

Wk 3 Mon 13th Nov
1) Repeat 4 times: jog 6m, walk 2m (32m total)
2) Repeat 4 times: jog 7m, walk 2m (36m total)

Wk 4 Mon 20th Nov
1) Repeat 4 times: jog 8m, walk 2m (40m total)
2) Repeat 4 times: jog 10m, walk 2m (48m total)

Wk 5 Mon 27th Nov
1) Repeat 4 times: jog 12m, walk 2m (56m total)
2) Repeat 3 times: jog 15m, walk 2m (51m total)

Wk 6 Mon 4th Dec
1) Repeat 3 times: jog 18m, walk 2m (60m total)
2) Repeat 2 times: jog 21m, walk 2m (46m total)

Wk 7 Mon 11th Dec
1) Repeat 2 times: jog 24m, walk 2m (52m total)
2) Repeat 2 times: jog 27m, walk 2m (58m total)

Wk 8 Mon 18th Dec
1) Repeat 2 times: jog 30m, walk 2m (64m total)
2) Repeat once: jog 45m, walk 15m

People can follow their own schedule to get the above runs in or can link up with other club members. Club members will be meeting at the following times for above sessions – pick whatever times suit you:-

• 9am on Sunday mornings at Craughwell hall
  (contact Triona 087 9776360 or Michael 087 6591879)
• 8.10pm on Wednesday evenings at Craughwell hurling field
  (contact Triona)
• 9.30am on Thursday mornings at the hall in Craughwell
  (contact Val 087 9832152)

Once the new running track is available at Craughwell NS, we'll try to make use of it as part of above plans.