OK, this week's workouts were a great success - I'm really excited about how well everyone's doing, across the board. I am particularly excited and proud of the effort and the willingness to push that I'm seeing out there.
Now I've got to rein you in a bit.
Training for a half marathon or a marathon is a six-month long process for several reasons. For one thing, it makes your foundation of mileage and form more of a normal state for your body. Physically, your body can better take the exertion and the punishment and the impact because it's become habituated (used to) and hardened to it. Mentally, you will know that you can run distance as a matter of course, not just that you've done it once or twice.
The long time span of training is also important because it allows for a gradual build-up of mileage. What we do is hard. I don't care how macho you think you are, every extra mile or two a week will register on your body, and your brain. The rule of thumb across running is the Ten Percent Rule: increase your total mileage by no more than 10% every week, or suffer the consequences, those consequences being injury, fatigue, and mental and physical burnout.
Burnout happens, to almost everyone, at every level. Again, some of you think you're mas macho, but there are extremely tough athletes who love running, but they find themselves hitting points where their body and mind will cease to improve or even maintain performance. As gung-ho as I am about running, I didn't think it could happen to me, and it did. I went from training for my first marathon for 6 months, getting a two-week break, then going into a speedwork group for several months, then going straight into six months of training for the Chicago Marathon (during the summer!), going straight into training for the 2007 Austin Marathon, and running my fastest half marathon three weeks after Chicago.
I was toast. I wanted to run, but the body, and in a weird, unexpected, and uncharacteristic way, my mind, were just freakin' done.
My point - trust the training program. I don't pull this completely out of... thin air. I'm taking it from multiple credible sources, and infusing it with my own opinions and experience. Despite all that, all those sources and my own experience dictate similar, controlled increases in mileage, and properly-timed differences in intensity.
So, here's some rules, that I need you to trust me on, and that I will enforce:
- None of you should run two quality workouts a week.
- You run no more than the mileage on the schedule, unless I tell you to.
- You ask me before making up a run - the runs are specifically timed.
Something I don't want to reduce to a bullet point: If you have a pain that affects anything about the way you run, you tell me, and you stop running. You will all learn to run with discomfort, but if you continue to run with discomfort that is structural (unusual muscle pain, or any joint pain), or gets into the realm of dizziness/nausea/believing you are the reincarnation of Olivia Newton John (who's not even dead, of course), you're not being tough, or commited, you're just being DUMB.
We talk about playing hurt, but any good coach will tell you that they also expect their athletes to have the discipline to know when to stop, and to wait to the proper time to make their comeback. There is no point in running at 60% for weeks or months, and then not being able to run the event you're training and paying for, if you can take several weeks off early in the training season, and come back at 90-100%. It's... just... dumb.
And yes, maybe you don't get to come back in a month. Maybe you don't get to run this race. It's rough, but that's all a part of the experience of running, and athletics. Jordan had the discipline to sit out almost his whole second year, even though it drove him insane and he had to watch his team flounder without him. He rehabbed, trained, and took on a cross-training and strength program that made him one of the most injury-free players in the league.
Paula Radcliffe sat down on a curb at mile 22 in the Olympics and cried. She had tried to run, despite being extremely ill the week before, and being dehydrated and on antibiotics. Fat, stupid British journalists said mean things. She went, retrained, and came back to win the New York Marathon. After that, running the London Marathon, she stopped after mile 20. People thought, "oh no, not again." She ran off the road, took what the Brits called "a comfort stop", and went on to win the race by a full five minutes.
A friend of mine was ready for Chicago, and ready to make a run at qualifying for Boston. She got the flu on Thursday, and was wiped out. She chose to run, but she knew she was too ill to make her goal. She's working at it again, and she will qualify one day.
How you deal with your failures are more important than how you succeed as a runner, and as more.
So. Trust the schedule. The mileage will come soon enough, and there's no need to rush that. Don't take on more than you're trained for and habituated to. If you're hurt, you don't run.
OK?
6 comments:
Q: I was just wondering about this particular situation... this morning it was humid, and I was slow, and I was only able to get in about half the run that I wanted to get in the time I had before I had to get ready for work. I blame the slowness on still being a little stiff and from Tuesday. I was thinking of finishing the rest of my miles tonight, but I was wondering - is that beneficial to finish the other half later? Is it a case where I should re-do the whole distance because otherwise I won't get the cardio/endurance benefits, or should I leave off with what I've already done so as not to over train? I'm not sure what would be overkill, what wouldn't be quite enough.
A: Since today's run was only three miles (RIGHT?), if you only ran a mile or two, you're OK running three tonight.
After our quality workouts or long runs, you're going to be tight, and your legs will feel heavy. That's why that next easy, short run is so important - to get you loose again for the long run or the next quality workout.
You want the benefit of running the full mileage and time. At some point, you can look at running twice a day, if you like. It prolongs the boost to your metabolism, but you need to do it in a careful, controlled way so's not to increase your overall mileage too much.
And actually, if you got two or more of your three miles in, I'd say enjoy your evening...
Ok Rob define Quality Workout because all my runs are 3 miles long. Is it always the Saturday run? What else makes it different?
The "quality" workouts are the group workouts during the week. They're "quality" because we do drills and the workouts are more specific, focusing on building strength and speed. Saturdays are always be long runs.
Oh, and you know the runs won't always just be three miles. Obviously, mileage is going to increase...
Well said.
most of you won't read this since you may be "preparing" for the SAT A.M. run but this link will lead you to a short video. I think it is appropriate to what Rob is talking about. In a Nutshell, don't let your extra or excess running set you back.
Where I come from itis the Mission first and the weak will be weeded out. So if I were ever hurt I still had to run b/c I was a LEADER and LEADERS don't quit or slow up. Now I have all these aliments. So sit back and just work the 12 or 4 ounce curls.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMrG0iS4EzI
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