Training Tactics

The article "Running on the Shoulders of Giants" by Scott Douglas offers half a dozen interesting ideas for better training. It appears in the January/February 2009 issue of Running Times, a magazine that Ken Swab passed along to me. Douglas's suggestions:

• "Vary Great" - train at a wider variety of paces from day to day; make the hard days harder and the easy days easier, by multiple minutes/mile
• "Start Slow, Finish Fast" - vary the pace during an outing, again by many min/mi, and finish strong
• "Work the Recovery" - eat and drink appropriately right after a training run, to restore electrolytes and nutrients
• "Drill, Baby, Drill" - do range-of-motion and dynamic stretching exercises as part of the workout
• "Warm Up Aggressively" - spend more time and effort warming up, especially before a big race
• "Be a Reality-Based Optimist" - have faith in yourself

That last point is perhaps the most significant. As Douglas says, elite runners:

... have confidence that great things will happen if they do the right work. They see a fabulous workout or race as a hint of what they can achieve, not a unique occurrence.

In contrast, a couple of bad workouts, or a worse-than-expected race, are taken as aberrations. They are indications that something is amiss, and are opportunities for analysis. Am I not sleeping enough? Did I run like an idiot? Were my expectations in line with my current fitness? Am I on the verge of getting sick? And so on. ...

Marvelous advice, obviously applicable throughout life!

^z - 2009-04-09

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