The good natured and whimsical narrative of you must dance mixes the author’s running experiences with his day to day life in suburbia. As the tasks in the 13-week training program progress from easy to hard, fictional characters and one newspaper columnist who is best described as a character are enlisted for motivation.

CanLit characters “Poh-Poh” and “Cuyler Goodwill” share a proverbial over the shoulder voice of either caution or assurance. Between the two every loose lace and each muscle pull is assessed as being a sure sign of tempting the gods or pushing the envelope.

Without warning the training stakes were raised when the novice runner’s wife and the mother of their daughter’s friend declared their intent to lace up the runners and begin their own training.

Sanctuary against this competition, injury and potential humiliation was initially sought by revisiting in the theatre of his mind the newspaper columns of Pete McMartin. In due course the hilarity and humanity of the columns managed to spark a maelstrom of emotions in the novice runner’s household as; choice of clothing, medical concoctions and stalking all became issues on successive doorstep deliveries. The you must dance story should have been as easy as subscribing to a newspaper and running around the block. It wasn’t.