How It Works

By -
Sorry for the hiatus. I needed a mental break. Lately I've been easing back into things. I ran my first workout in quite a while last night, and the increased blood flow to the brain ignited those same old dreams.

This is how it works:

Training is doing your homework. It's not exciting. More often than not it's tedious. There is certainly no glory in it. But you stick with it, over time, and incrementally through no specific session, your body changes. Your mind becomes calloused to effort. You stop thinking of running as difficult or interesting or magical. It just becomes what you do. It becomes a habit. 
 
Workouts too become like this. Intervals, tempos, strides, hills. You go to the track, to the bottom of a hill, and your body finds the effort. You do your homework. That's training. Repetition--building deep habits, building a runner's body and a runner's mind. You do your homework, not obsessively, just regularly. Over time you grow to realize that the most important workout that you will do is the easy hour run. That's the run that makes everything else possible. You live like a clock.
 
After weeks of this, you will have a month of it. After months of it, you will have a year of it.
 
Then, after you have done this for maybe three or four years, you will wake up one morning in a hotel room at about 4:30am and do the things you have always done. You eat some instant oatmeal. Drink some Gatorade. Put on your shorts, socks, shoes, your watch. This time, though, instead of heading out alone for a solitary hour, you will head towards a big crowd of people. A few of them will be like you: they will have a lean, hungry look around their eyes, wooden legs. You will nod in their direction. Most of the rest will be distracted, talking among their friends, smiling like they are at the mall, unaware of the great and magical event that is about to take place.
 
You'll find your way to a tiny little space of solitude and wait anxiously, feeling the tang of adrenaline in your legs. You'll stand there and take a deep breath, like it's your last. An anthem will play. A gun will sound.
 
Then you will run.

Comments

  1. Old ManMarch 11, 2011 at 4:28 PM

    welcome back

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousMarch 12, 2011 at 1:56 PM

    "the easy hour run. the run that makes everything possible." here here.

    I can't wait until I can cruise through 10 miles as a comfortable hour run...

    ReplyDelete
  3. DrewMarch 12, 2011 at 4:18 PM

    Exactly. Great post.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Jeff EdmondsMarch 13, 2011 at 8:14 PM

    Thanks, guys!! I hope to update the blog more regularly going forward!

    I am glad folks are still reading.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Sean HMarch 14, 2011 at 9:04 AM

    Good stuff Jeff!

    ReplyDelete
  6. BadDawgMarch 14, 2011 at 9:33 AM

    More like they will run, you will race. Good to see you back in the saddle Jeff, enjoy the ride.

    ReplyDelete
  7. ChrisMarch 14, 2011 at 2:34 PM

    Great post, nod.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Jonathan JeffriesMarch 15, 2011 at 2:57 PM

    Your writing flows just like you run.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Jeff EdmondsMarch 15, 2011 at 7:46 PM

    Thanks, folks!

    ReplyDelete
  10. AnonymousMarch 18, 2011 at 9:32 PM

    still reading, still forwarding to my runner pals, still resonating with the words you write - thanks!
    ~HappyFeat

    ReplyDelete
  11. Troy HeadrickMarch 22, 2011 at 2:47 PM

    This found its way to a post in the Boston Marathon section of the Runners World forums. It was so well stated that I had to come and take a look at what else you've had to say. And then I started my own blog.

    Excellent capture of the how and why of what we do.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Jeff EdmondsMarch 22, 2011 at 7:02 PM

    Thank you Happy Feat for sticking with me.

    Troy, I'm glad you started the blog. I just checked it out. Laying stone is a great metaphor.

    ReplyDelete
  13. BonkinMarch 30, 2011 at 5:19 PM

    Jeff,

    Awesome stuff as usual. Thanks for writing!

    ReplyDelete
  14. AnonymousJune 25, 2012 at 11:02 AM

    Keeps me motivated!

    ReplyDelete
  15. watchescaveSeptember 27, 2015 at 11:45 PM

    Keep it up !!

    ReplyDelete

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
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
Read more

Eulogy for a Great Coach: Van Townsend

By -
"...if an unusual necessity forces us to press onward, a surprising thing occurs. The fatigue gets worse up to a certain critical point, when gradually or suddenly it passes away, and we are fresher than before. We have evidently tapped a level of new energy, masked until then by the fatigue-obstacle usually obeyed. There may be layer after layer of this experience. A third and a fourth "wind" may supervene. Mental activity shows the phenomenon as well as physical, and in exceptional cases we may find, beyond the very extremity of fatigue-distress, amounts of ease and power that we never dreamed ourselves to own, — sources of strength habitually not taxed at all, because habitually we never push through the obstruction, never pass those early critical points." -- William James, "The Energies of Men" Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once. Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, It seems to me most stran
Read more