14 and away!

This weeks' training run was a 14 miler AWAY from the Newton Hills. We ran through Wellesley, Natick and Framingham, about a mile past Speen Street and back. Our overall pacing was fine, and I felt great. We finished in back of the speedier runners in our group, but I think overall we did just fine. I'll be posting about my upcoming present to Tim on later posts, but I think we'll soon have a more accurate way of timing our runs....

We had an interesting talk from our co-coach and sports psychologist Grayson Kimball about running faster. He mentioned that he had spoken with many team-mates about their goals with the Boston Marathon and especially their goals to become faster runners. The story he related was one about a woman he was working with who had run well in a race (and under her expected time!) and wanted to improve her time for the next one. He mentioned Yasso 800s to her and how incorporating speed work into her training would get her to the next level in her running. As time went on, he would check to see how she was progressing. Invariably, he would hear first that she didn't have time to start speedwork, that she had time for her training run, but not for the speedwork, and long story short, she never started working in that direction before the race. Her race results had been disappointing, and much slower than her initial race time.

Grayson's advice to us was: Run fast to run fast! Incorporate some speedwork into weekly training runs to get to that level. Of course, this should be part of a balanced training program that involves distance runs, rest, hill work, recovery runs, and speedwork, but I feel very motivated to try the Yasso 800s. To date, my speedwork has been limited to unstructured pick-ups during weekday runs. I think it would be to take a calculated risk in pushing the envelope for short repeats and see whether it helps.

This interests me as I have been reading the book Running Within, a book that deals with the body-mind-spirit connection of running and training. The portion that had been sticking in my mind was that of 'strengthening through taking risks'. The authors talk about how taking risks can result in breakthroughs with your running. As distance runners, we are often scared to put it all out on the road, for fear that our endurance will be lost along with burned muscles halfway through the run. We stick to what we know we can do and keep our training and running within those levels- which is difficult when we want to break through our existing performace times.



The authors suggest going through a process when deciding to take risks which involve: examining the risk, asking what the worst thing is that could happen (and deciding whether to continue), then making a plan to implementation. After taking the risk, the complete cycle is examination and application of the experience as well as a congratulations for having the courage to take the risk. Doesn't that sound great?



To me, Yasso 800's sound like a minimal risk way to try to reach new grounds with your running. Our coach will be sending out instructions for starting training with Yasso's, but if I recall, they talked about not having to run 800x10 to start if it were too much. I will see how it goes and my goal is to do one session at the track this week!



As mileage starts building up during marathon training, this is the perfect time to develop your routine. Figure out what to eat the night before your long run. Take care of your feet at least a few days out from it. Test out your drinks and fuel the way you would on race day. Be aware of any nagging injuries and address them. There is still plenty of time to adjust around training until the 2o miler!