Posts Tagged ‘long slow distance’

Training Knowledge Is Power, Arm Yourself

23, Apr 2009

I have to hand it to my Mom, she’s forwarded me two great articles in the last 3 days. Yesterday’s New York Times included a story titled “Want to Go Faster? You Need a Trainer.” It speaks to exactly what I said in yesterday’s post. You can’t just go out running or go to the gym and hope that your persistence and dedication will pay off. You need to learn how to TRAIN. There are two ways to do this… 1) Have someone else guide you by joining a running club or hiring a coach / trainer. 2) Read everything running related that you can get your sweaty hands on.

Seriously, if you want to get better and you’re not training with a purpose, with specificity in mind… you probably won’t get much better. If you don’t go into every workout knowing which system(s) of your body that you are stressing and conditioning, then your probably not doing much of either. It’s a simple concept, but in the last few months it’s really hit home with me. And I’m running my best times ever…

Here are the first few paragraphs of the article, the rest can be found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/health/nutrition/23best.html

Want to Go Faster? You Need a Trainer
By GINA KOLATA

IF anyone ever wondered whether it was talent or sustained systematic training that makes athletes so good, they need only look at Joshua Gordon, a professional mediator in Boston.

Mr. Gordon ran cross-country in college before stopping completely to take up baseball. Six years later, in 1999, he decided, almost as a lark, to run the Boston Marathon. He joined a program to learn how to run longer distances, a process that involved gradually increasing the length of his runs and focusing only on distance, not speed.

Morning Runs / Progression Runs

22, Apr 2009

Writing for this blog has forced me to really dig deep into the vaults of running topics so that I have material to cover in my posts. When I started this thing a month ago, I had no idea that I would be reading every piece of running literature that I can get my hands on. Guess what, it pays off. Just like any other sport/hobby/activity, if you want to get better, knowledge is power. Most of the time, I don’t even actively try to incorporate new techniques into my training program, it just kind of happens. Take this morning for instance…

I hate running first thing in the morning.

FIRST Training

12, Apr 2009

I’ve blogged previously about my evolution into a 3-day a week runner. I don’t take off on non-running days, I just substitute in weight lifting and cardio machines. I’m not sure how I stumbled across my formula, but something tells me I must have read about the FIRST training program and subconsciously incorporated it into my routine. FIRST stands for “Furman Institute of Running and Scientific Training” and it’s the foundation of my new favorite running book Run Less Run Faster (B. Pierce, S. Murr, R. Moss).

I’m only half way through the book, but I get it. The training principles are for runners who are eager to put in quality workouts, but are injury prone. That’s me. The concepts addressed in Run Less Run Faster are so simple and intuitive, here it is in a nutshell: “To race fast you need to train fast, but if you train fast, you need to build in substantial recovery time or you risk career halting injury.” That’s it… kind of.

Sunday LSD

12, Apr 2009

I tried blogging from my mobile on Friday, but apparently it never posted. This is what I wrote:

“Looking forward to running outside tomorrow for the first time in a while. I was browsing the Runner’s World forums today and discovered a thread debating if heavy treadmill users are really runners. And I found myself defending the merits of the treadmill a little too vigorously. Maybe that’s because I can count the number of times I’ve run outdoors this year on two hands (and still have fingers left over).

There are some advantages to treadmilling (as I’ve discussed in previous posts) but the big problem is that treadmill pace isn’t a great predictor for race performance. Before the Bay to Bay 5k in March, I broke 17:45 on a few treadmill 3.1 milers, but even in a race environment that only translated to 18:04 outdoors.

Long story short, it’s finally getting nice out again I’m looking forward to running my tempo runs outdoors more often. Hoping for good weather for tomorrow’s long run.”

Then it rained all day on Saturday (in Allentown-PA, visiting Lauren’s parents for Easter). So much for making good on my enthusiasm to run outside. Went to the gym instead, all the way there vowing not to put in junk miles on the treadmill. The problem was, I did some intense intervals on Wednesday and skipped running on Thursday/Friday to rest up for Saturday’s long run. So what the hell was I supposed to do, skip a third day in a row? Do a tempo workout and jeopardize the opportunity to do a Sunday long run? I compromised and ran junk miles combined with some circuit lifting, which in retrospect was probably the right decision.

The other big running related event in my day on Saturday was purchasing a book I’ve been eying up for a while Run Less Run Faster by Bill Pierce, Scott Murr and Ray Moss. I’m about half way through the book already and expect it to be finished by Monday evening. I’ve absorbed a ton of useful info, which I’ll share in a separate post.

This morning was bitter cold but I sucked it up, layered and set out to do two 5.25 mile laps around the Ironton Trail.

ironton-trail

Here’s the link to the map: http://www.walkjogrun.net/routes/current_route.cfm?rid=2EFF18D9-C0B0-FE32-F31D9115FDE50CD0

3 Days A Week

30, Mar 2009

That’s how many days a week I run… and it works. How do I know? I’ve run a 3:40 marathon, a 1:30 Half and an 18 min 5k, ALL respectable times. And for the last 2 years, I’ve rarely run more than 3 days a week.

After recovering from all the training miles I put in for my first marathon, it was hard for me to go out there and run 5 days a week. It seemed like every time I tried to build back up, I kept getting injured. So last May, as I was beginning to train for my 2nd NY Marathon, I searched the Internet to validate my training plan. I wanted to know that training for a marathon could be done with a 3 day a week training schedule. Fortunately for me, I discovered this article…

http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/sports_outdoors/2008/05/run-your-fastes.html


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