From left, Phil Gulbransen, Kim Stevenson and Gaine Petterson. PHOTO/STEPHEN PARKER
For many, tonight's Lake City Athletic Club's Night Of Miles event could well be the first time they have raced on a track.
For 15 Rotorua athletes, though, the event will be a test of their improvement over the past five weeks.
The 15 have being following Nick Willis' online fitness programme, the Miler Method, for five weeks and tonight they will find out if and by how much they can improve their time over the mile.
Willis will be at Rotorua International Stadium to see how they get on, and help them and others at the event prepare for their mile runs.
"[On Monday] in Auckland we had an event and it was fun seeing our athletes and cheering them on and seeing them push through and I got inspired myself," said Willis.
"It will be the same [tonight]. It will be fun to warm up with everyone. For a lot of them, it will be the first time they have done an actual track race, so it will be fun to see them go through that experience."
Willis and his wife Sierra developed the Miler Method programme. It enables athletes to link with others to get fit and ultimately improve their mile time after the training is complete.
The double Olympic medallist and his wife came up with the idea when Sierra wanted a break from the monotonous training that comes with preparing for longer races over 10km, the half marathon and marathon.
"We provide people with a training plan that's customised to their experience level and we have an online forum via Facebook on which we interact with people so they can ask us questions and they can post about their training, and [in Rotorua] they also meet up with local coach Kim Stevenson once a week to do one of the workouts."
Success for the athletes is determined by the extent they can improve on their mile time at the start of the programme. For Willis though, there are wider goals.
"Most of all it's whether people enjoy it," he said.
"Our main goal is to introduce more of the variety in training that training for the mile provides as opposed to just jogging every day.
''What we're most excited about are people who weren't actually runners at all. This is a mechanism for people to be introduced to a more energetic version of running and that's where the world is going - people want things that are energising and fun and active so we're providing a different avenue for people to fall in love with running.''
The Miler Method targets more than just middle distance runners.
"Running requires many different facets. If you're a middle distance runner, it's good to occasionally do some endurance work and if you're an endurance runner it's good to do some shorter distance work, because otherwise you get stale.''
Lakes Athletic Club member Gaine Petterson, 44, is a longer distance runner - tackling anything from 5km to marathons.
"One of the main reasons I signed up for it was so I can get used to the intensity of running shorter distances, to improve my mile time of course, and also to improve my 5k, 10k, half marathon times and marathon running.
''Another reason was - how often do you get to meet one of New Zealand's legends?"
Petterson came to running from a cycling background after "getting the urge" to do a marathon. This year will be his fourth Rotorua Marathon and he is aiming to go under three hours.
He said the boot camp had been quite intense, with workouts four or five times a week including interval training, hill running and longer 10-12km runs. But his body is getting used to the intensity and he hopes to be able to better his best mile time by 10 to 15 seconds tonight.
"That should be achievable," he said.
Phil Gulbransen, 63, is a half marathon specialist but said the boot camp had improved his speed work.
"It's a good programme to follow to improve short distance running speed and if you can improve your short distance running, it improves your long distance running.
"It shows you can always improve - I'm improving all the time and that's the aim of it."
He is looking for a 15-second mile-time improvement.
What: Lake City Athletic Club's Night Of Miles
When: Tonight, gates open 6.30pm, warmup 6.45pm, first mile 7pm
Where: Rotorua International Stadium No 2 track
Cost: Free
pf■enBring a stop watch if you want to take your own personal time. Free sausage sizzle and drink while stocks last.