Training Summary 5/3-5/9

By -
Another week in the books.

Key Workouts:
8 x 1:20 hills
14 mile steady run w/surges

88 miles in 10 runs

This week I'm starting to feel strong. I've had a month straight of regular progressive training. I've gotta be careful not to start pushing now that I'm feeling good. Steady as she goes.

Throw away the lights, the definitions
And say of what you see in the dark

That it is this or that it is that,
But do not use the rotted names

How should you walk in that space and know
Nothing of the madness of space,

Nothing of its jocular procreations?

--Wallace Stevens, "The Man with the Blue Guitar"

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dull Training Post

By -
The last 9 months I've learned a lot about how to run high mileage--its benefits and its drawbacks. You could describe the last three years of my training life as one of trying to figure out how to run 100 plus miles per week.

It seems easy, right--you just go out the door and average 14 miles a day.

But the problem of course is that training only works if you are well-trained enough to absorb it. Although I've been running on and off for 20 (gulp!) years, these last 3 years were really my first attempt to push the envelope of the volume of miles that I've run. Even in college, I would never run much more than 65 miles per week for an extended period.

So, over the last three years, more often than not, I've run too much too quickly, and in the wrong ways. This is the primary reason that it took me so long to improve on my first real marathon attempt. I would have moments where the miles would really work well for me, and I would do things in training that I never could ha…
Read more

The Daily Run

By -
Image
Runners are generally creatures of habit. We have our standard loop, our daily schedule, and we stick to it more or less. Though they always sounds nice in theory, runners know that exploratory runs in new directions or in different cities are fundamentally disruptive to the training schedule. We prefer to know every inch of our path; it makes getting around it easier mentally. Our hardest workouts are done on the most uniform surface possible -- a 400m oval, which in its simplicity and uniform nature is a striking metaphor for the habitual nature of the runner's activity.

The deeper the runner gets into heavy training, the more essential habit becomes. When the body begins to resist the miles, when the legs feel heavy, or the brain fogs from fatigue, the easiest thing to do is what one did yesterday -- hit the standard loop. We have run it so many times that it almost literally runs itself. We are responsible for a minute or two of effort, but once out the door and on the loop, t…
Read more

What Is an Easy Run?

By -
Image
What is an easy run?

Well, most basically, it's a run that's easy to accomplish. It's the backbone of training. It's the run that makes every other run possible.

For some runners, this is all that needs to be said. But for a lot of other runners, especially new runners or runners who are entering a new stage of fitness, the concept of "easy" can be somewhat elusive.

Heck, if you are really out of shape, there's no such thing as an easy run because nothing feels easy.

That said, I think there are a few things I can say about easy running that will help new runners and experienced runners alike, mostly because I think that most people -- believe it or not -- can do their easy running better.

The place to start when looking to understand what an easy run is and how it works in training is to think about what it's not.

An easy run is not a workout, which means that it's not a couple more things: it's not structured or planned or focused on a certa…
Read more