Week 5

Remember to warm up before running.

	series 1		series 2		series 3		series 4
	running	marching	running	marching	running	marching	running	marching
day 1	6	2	6	2	6	2	6	2
1-day break
day 2	6,5	2	6,5	2	6,5	2	6,5	2
1-day break
day 3	7	2	7	2	7	2	7	2
2-day break

If you manage to complete the entire day, you can safely proceed to the next one. If you are having a bad day and cannot run the entire training, it will be better for you to repeat the training after a day’s break. There is no need to hurry – regularity is more important than results.

Running on the big screen

Filmmakers love a running scene, and it is easy to see why. Running is instantly readable on camera. A character who starts to run is a character deciding to change something, and an audience understands that without a word of dialogue. Over the decades a handful of these scenes have burned themselves into pop culture.

The classics

You cannot talk about running in film without Rocky (1976). Sylvester Stallone pounding up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, arms thrown up at the top, is arguably the most imitated training montage ever shot, so much so that the steps themselves have become a tourist landmark. A few years later, Chariots of Fire (1981) gave running a very different texture, with its slow-motion beach run and Vangelis' synth theme turning a group of athletes preparing for the 1924 Olympics into something close to poetry.

Then there is Forrest Gump (1994), where Tom Hanks' character simply decides to run, and keeps running, back and forth across the country. It works as a metaphor precisely because it is not really about fitness at all; it is about processing grief by moving. The Pursuit of Happyness (2006) uses running more literally, with Will Smith's Chris Gardner forever sprinting to catch a bus, a shelter bed, or a shot at a better life.

The everyday runners

Not every running film is about legends. Brittany Runs a Marathon (2019) follows an ordinary woman, played by Jillian Bell, who takes up running while trying to turn her life around, and it earns its emotional payoff by keeping the struggle realistic rather than heroic. On the lighter side, Run Fatboy Run (2007) sends Simon Pegg stumbling through marathon training for reasons that have very little to do with fitness, and it lands because most of us recognize that gap between good intentions and aching legs. Smaller films like Saint Ralph and the documentary Spirit of the Marathon dig further into what draws people to the distance in the first place.

What ties all these together is that the running is rarely the point. It is a way for the camera to show someone getting up off the floor and trying again. Which, when you think about it, is exactly what a run feels like on the days you least want to go.