I Am Legend

 It was an unplanned squad run that prompted this post.

I’d not run for a few days due to a combination of house-hunting and a nasty case of sinusitis. But last night I found myself at the club without a clue and ended up doing the whole-club which we now do once a month.

The session itself consists of laps of the square, just over 800m, meaning about a three minute effort for me. This was countered with the equivalent effort as someone else took their turn. We were supposed to split up into pairs, but I hate that – it feels like school PE, so I tagged along with another pair as a threesome meaning I was running with someone of equal ability which made for great racing.

The amount of discomfort I was feeling was a good measure of the fact that I was working hard, and my times were pleasingly consistent. I also found the benefit of the jog recovery, as my legs felt much better without all the lactate floating round them.

Anyhew, the point of this post was a conversation we had on the way down to the session. It seems that my training from Nick has taken on a life-force of its own. Some of the people at the club seem to talk about the sessions in a strange way, as if I’m asked to scale tall buildings, rescue kittens and give Mo and Galen a run for their money.

Of course, in reality my sessions are not vastly different to the ones run by the squad. The mix of efforts may be different, but there are only so many ways you can dress up a 4x 1mile or a 5x1200m session. I love the focus that my training gives me, and the fact I can alter things depending on what life throws in my direction (when I remember to tell Nick).

In the past, I suppose I have been slightly guilty of fostering this view. I’m a naturally private person and in some ways I’m quite protective of my training, well I’m the one paying for it. But I can never marry up that view with the one that sessions are always much more fun with others there. 

A while ago, for a number of reasons, I set my Garmin Connect profile to Private. However, I’ve had another think and decided this is unnecessary. I’ve love to connect with other runners so if you fancy sharing training, look me up here:

http://connect.garmin.com/profile/trainandscoff

Enjoy The Silence

Hi Folks,

Things have been a bit quiet at The Trial of Miles. That was (partly) a conscious decision on my part. 

I’ve got a new job at work, a much desired step-up the ladder, but it does mean I now have a 45 mile commute each way on most days, shrinking my free time somewhat. Also, after Frankfurt I took a long hard look at myself and realised there are certain aspects of my life that I need to change.

 A few months without the rentless push that I’ve subjected myself (and everyone else around me) to for the last few years. I love training and striving, but just as we take a recovery week after a period of hard graft, by brain needed a rest.

“What are you training for?” people would ask. “Nothing in particular…” I reply. Of course, they don’t believe me, but that’s the truth. 

Also, as discussed in my last post, you can get a bit sick of having running in your face ALL THE BLOODY TIME. It has been nice to take a step back. In fact, it’s made me realise how beneficial it is to have periods of specific things to train for. But also, you need recharge time.

I’ve also decided that I have really got to stop beating myself over every wobble or perceived event that hasn’t gone to plan. I have high expectations of myself, but that shouldn’t mean that I can’t cut myself some slack on occasion. Shit happens, that’s life. I’m not helping myself and I’m making life a misery for others.

 Frankfurt was a bit of a turning point for me on that score. I hadn’t quite got the time I was after, but there wasn’t a thing that I could have done differently to alter the result. I left it all out there.

I think we can be guilty of getting so hung up on times and numbers that we can forget the real benefits of running - Doing something healthy that you enjoy, preferably with your friends at the same time. 

A couple of other positive changes this year include:

Press Up Challenge (AKA #PUC2014) – The slab of Rowing Awesomeness that is Pete Reed has challenged everyone to do one more press up each day for the whole of 2014, no slacking. My upper body strength has always been abysmal so this is a good challenge for me.

Moving house – in itself quite stressful, but actually its lovely to have something else to worry about that isn’t running.

Acknowledging that what I do is good enough. Not to say I can’t get better, but for now it’s good enough.

Information Overload

Not many people are prepared to sit in a boat in all weathers, being shouted at through a megaphone, in front of not only the rest of their crew, but also all the other crew on the river at the time. Consequently, although amazing in most ways, rowing is still quite a ‘niche’ sport.

However, in the last couple of decades, seemingly every Tom, Dick and Shelia has donned a pair of brightly coloured running shoes and gone out to pound the pavements in a wave of endorphins/smugness (delete as appropriate).  Whereas 20 years ago, someone finishing a marathon was looking on with a slight sense of awe – the mass-participation of our sports has made it almost ordinary, especially when faced with such feats as Ironman, MDS, UTMB etc.

Now I’m not here to rant about running playing second fiddle to Ironman (a post for another time), but the explosion in popularity of running means that for the avid (read slightly obsessive) enthusiast, there’s never been more information available to digest.

You can read countless websites about running, you can subscribe to magazines about running, listen to podcasts on running, read books on running, watch DVDs on running, tweet about running, talk about running (and most of us do... a lot). Quite frankly it’s exhausting. 

Which each new information source comes that hope that this one tit-bit of information will be the key to unlocking previously unknown speed and potential in our running. Suddenly PBs will fall, Miles will fly by and hills suddenly flatten themselves. Of course, this doesn’t generally happen.

One of the reasons I got a coach was that I wanted to make sure that my training was the best I could be possibly doing at that moment. I’ve reaped the rewards of consistent, focused training and now run times I only previously dreamed of. Of course, I’m still not satisfied but I know that I can improve further with a bit of grit and hard work in the future.

Problem is I still find myself spending hour after hour still reading all the gunk on the internet. Wondering if Pfitzinger & Douglas’s plan is relatively better than Hal Hidgon’s? Would Yasso 800s  better for me than a 45 mins progession run? What’s the damn value of hills anyway?...Arrggh.

These questions are impossible to answer straight away, if at all, and certainly won’t be answered sitting on the sofa on a Sunday evening tapping away on the internet.

Sometimes you just have to go with the flow. The challenge for me is that I find it difficult, if nigh on impossible to drown out all that ‘running chatter’ that goes on and stay focused on what I need to.

So how do you do it?