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.