Are you a runner, or is running something you do?

Is a runner something you *are*, or is running something you *do*?

Your bias can either skew or screw your ongoing progress...

Speed, distance and trophies don't define a runner. Intent does!

Having an aim, creating goals and letting your passion, persistence and patience fuel your steps out the door day after day for weeks, months and years; n rain, wind, hail or shine; over path, track and trail; dawn, noon, or dusk; over hills and across dale; through detours, potholes and setbacks; amongst your doubts and those of others; when you flow with ease or grate grind; by body, soul and mind.

Running Trap 6: Is More Better?

Through 2010-14 I have held discussions, meetings, race and program reviews, and constructed strategic performance plans with over 700 runners and coaches (and 350+ triathletes). Here are the Top Ten Run-training Traps as a summary. There’s also a cure or ‘get-out’, and a long-term prevention strategy for each.

Remember, what works for the pros and what are promoted as “the best”, “the most effective”, “the ideal”, “the latest” or “short-cuts ” are rarely what they are made out to be. They simply don’t work for most. Perhaps these are your traps?

Trap 6: ‘If some is good, more is better’:

With the accumulation of experience and training volume (and appropriate footwear), without an endurance background, you’ll improve for your first 2-3 years regardless of what you do. Unfortunately, there is no universal truth to ‘if some is good, more is better’. Most runners learn this the hard way, yet experience is often a great teacher. Just ask 2012 Hawaii Ironman World Champion Pete Jacobs, too. It took him a few years to figure out “for me, it’s best to train less than everyone else”.

Doing more – there is a time and place, and it changes. Sometimes, little and less is more.

Get out: Avoid aiming to simply do more each week or session. Indulge true hard training occasionally, and easy training more often. Respect all your commitments: time, energy and emotion, and balance ambition with (current) ability

Prevention: aim to find your individual “sweet-spot”. Not all training plans and programs, volumes, intensities and sessions work the same way for all people. They don’t even work the same way for you the next and the next and the next time around. Strategic and systematic variation and progression over time will allow you to find your own “sweet-spot”

Too much of the same type of running (or structured routine) too early. Running is an economical, efficient and effective way of getting fit. Running for health and fitness, is necessarily different to run-training for performance – although ‘good’ programs for each are based upon the same principles. The same type of running, on the same terrain (flat), on the same surface/s (even, hard), at the same speed/s, in the same patterns teach and train us to get better at that. Running hill repeats makes you better at that hill, not necessarily a better hill runner. Your body adapts to routine and habits (and your mind to myths, fallacies and beliefs) too, not just training

Get out: Learn and use other speeds, surfaces, terrains, hills, structures and even time of day., even if initially as warm-up and warm-down. They’ll add spice, variety and options to training. Think about some non weight-bearing (pool, bike, elliptical), and targeted or functional strength training too.

Prevention: See a run coach. Record your running. Ask & find out the differences between run mechanics, technique and form. They’re not the same things, and too many people and lay magazines and books use the terms interchangeably. Review, analyse and train to improve them. They’ll improve your “feel”: feel more comfortable running; feel of running; and feel how changes in your posture, stride, head position, arm-action, pace, and breathing can and need to be catered for in different run-situations. Use ‘Other Run’, ‘Medley’ and ‘Strength’ blocks or cycles in relevant phases of your multi-year and year plan(s) to guide your program and sessions.

For the record 'doing better is better', not necessarily 'doing more is better'.

Which are you better at? 

Run Training Traps - 1

We all got into running for one reason or another – some of you recently, a few of us many years ago. You enjoy the active and running lifestyle for your own reasons: health, fitness, wellbeing, state-of-mind, participation, performance, perfection or podium and, in some sense, pride.

Some things have changed; some things haven’t. Your training comes to reflect the reasons why you run. The basics haven’t changed: you still need to run to get running’s benefits: swim, cycle and gym are good, but not as good.

You want training to be what you want it to be, and effective. Yet, amongst the technology, self-professed gurus, and Coach-google, basic training errors are still made: many out of running’s present culture, some out of habit and ego. Are you trapped by these?

Remember, what works for the pros and what are promoted as “the best”, “the most effective”, “the ideal”, “the latest” or “short-cuts ” are rarely what they are made out to be. They simply don’t work for most. Perhaps these are your trap?

Through 2010-14 I have held discussions, meetings, race and program reviews, and constructed strategic performance plans with over 700 runners and coaches (and 350+ triathletes). Here are the Top Ten Run-training Traps as a summary. There’s also a cure or ‘get-out’, and a long-term prevention strategy for each.

Trap 1: Training habits: Many do what or how they were training when they started. You’ll improve for your first few years regardless of what you do, so you keep doing it.  Some habits are positive, some aren’t. As your body and experience change, so must your training.

 Get out: read, ask, listen, learn and, importantly, educate yourself about yourself and how you respond to different types of sessions, and how your body adapts to accumulated sessions (training)

Prevention: keep a log and journal. Use these, with race and test results to review, revise and re-work your training, races, and macrocycle or year. Plan to do differently next race (or season). Then act.

How have you been  'trapped' by your training?

What did you do to get out?

Running addiction drug found...

You started running for a reason. Perhaps two.
They're more than likely different to the reasons that you continue to run.

You run. I run. Often separately, yet as a group...as one.

Some say that running can be addictive. Of course, the scientists will pontificate that it's probably not the running you become addicted to, but the neuro-chemicals produced by "...frequent and violent agitation of the body" (James Fixx 1977). 

Apparently, regularly searching for those neuro-chemcial goodies is a key to what keeps you putting one foot in front of the other.

I re-read a 2003 New Scientist article by a pontificator today. It was about addiction to (high sugar, high-fat, high calorie) fast-food, also known as take-out or take-away food. I'm about to come-down from a successful 2013 New Year's Resolution...to eat (at least) one Kit-Kat a week.

I found myself answering the following questions, as posed by DSM-IV guide of the American Psychiatric Association for substance addiction (with my re-emphasis):

1. do you take it larger amounts or over a longer period than intended (do you often run more than planned, or more than you should)?
2. do you have a persistent desire or unsuccessful efforts to cut down or control use (particularly on easy days, unloading blocks, or a taper)?
3. a great deal of time spent seeking the substance out, using it or recovering from it's effects?
4. important social, occupational or recreational activities given up or reduced because of substance use?
5. continue use despite knowledge of harmful consequences (particularly when ill, or injured)?
6. increased tolerance with use (experience a need to do more?)
7. withdrawal symptoms?

With many injured runners more worried about not being able to run rather than concern for the injury itself, it's not difficult to see addicted runners easily meet the minimum of 3 of the above.

Allowing myself to pontificate it's easy to see the guilty party: u-runethanine,2.

Whether addicted or not, I wish you all the best for a faster, further, fitter running New Year.