It’s not hard to see so many very impressive workouts on social media. I actively try to avoid them and I still see workouts that I think must be from people who are significantly faster than me, only to find out that they are actually from people who are slower than me.
The real question we should be asking about any workout is simple: is this making you a better runner?
…
What do you do when something goes wrong? You have a long run planned but you’re fatigued. You have a workout but your legs are flat or the weather is creating difficulties.
Do you try to push through for the full distance or try to hit splits even in bad conditions or when not feeling fully on?
…
Back when I started running in the 1990s, the western distance running world seemed fixated on low volume, high intensity training.
During previous eras, there were periods of similar training focus interspersed with periods of high volume, mostly low intensity training.
Neither of these was ideal.
…
When I was in high school, I competed against people in my area. Mostly my conference, maybe other local schools. If I saw a team from a school that was a 2 hour drive away, I must have been at a big meet. With such a small talent pool, it wasn’t hard with a lot of hard work to be one of the better competitors and feel good about myself.
Now, I see my daughter and her teammates competing at times against runners from not just a 4-5 hour drive away but sometimes even runners from multiple states away. Even when they aren’t facing teams from far flung locations, every week they are facing some of the best teams in the state. And this seems to be the new normal. In fact, they don’t travel as much as some teams do. Plus, we have Mile Split and other results and ranking sites telling them how they stack up against every runner or team in the country.
…
A quick post this week because life is very much getting in the way for me right now.
…