Now that the summer is in full swing, Quidditch has most likely followed one of two paths: it has slipped into the back of your thoughts, replaced by sun and sand, or it is now foremost, with the bright sun and gorgeous weather only encouraging thoughts of returning to the broom.

PHOTO: Christopher Chan, left, keeps fit over the summer months. || Provided.

For me, that compulsion to pursue people in bright yellow never quite leaves and only grows worse the brighter the sun becomes. So I have been working out in the past month, recovering from my sprained ankle and helping my friend get into the game.

To start out, stretching is imperative, as I found out on my first run in a couple months. With an injury, stretching thoroughly is important to prevent making it worse. Stretching out after can also help your muscles maintain the work you just put into them.

For a seeker, endurance is one of the most important aspects of one’s workout. I practice using a running exercise called fartleks. The Vaasa players ought to be familiar with the term, meaning “speed play” in Swedish. The exercise works both anaerobic and aerobic capacities, which is great for any position in Quidditch, but especially for seekers who must know how to operate in all conditions of terrain and their own bodies.

The exercise consists of the following:

• A warm up of easy running for five to 10 minutes.
• Steady, hard speed for about a mile and a half.
• A recovery of rapid walking for five minutes.
• Easy running with sprints in intervals until tired.
• Easy running with quick steps for shorter intervals.
• Full speed running uphill for a regular interval.
• Fast pace for one minute.
• Repeat the whole exercise for a total of about 45 minutes.

I like to combine landmark sprints into this exercise. These sprints involve looking ahead to something like a telephone pole, a street corner, or even a crack in the sidewalk, and committing to getting there in a sprint, and maintaining an easy jog after it. I think of the pole or crack as the snitch, open and unsuspecting and ready to be caught. It prepares one for those moments when you’ve been playing hard all game, and you see that one opening when you’re out of breath but need to go all-in. To be honest, I live for those moments.

As a seeker, I focus my exercise on endurance and speed. However, my friend Joe Guvendiren, coming from a casual hockey background, has come to enjoy the position of keeper. As a new player, he sees different tactics and placing strategies than players of other sports might not. From this background, and in the interest of working keeper strengths, we will focus on upper body workouts such as weight exercises. In seeker terms, this helps with the grappling that takes place with more physical snitches.

At the end of the summer, our goals are to have a faster mile time and to be able to function reasonably well at most levels of fatigue.