Category: Training

I was just talking with a runner I coach about racing plans for this year. She’s not into racing frequently, instead picking and choosing races when she will be ready to really get after it. The easy call for her was to target a race this fall, build up to it over the summer and be in real good shape.

However, in talking, we commiserated about neither of us having run a real race in over a year and a half and I immediately thought she needs something else.

I told her to definitely pick out that target race in the fall but also think about finding something in the summer. Know she’s going into it not fully ready to race but practice the act of racing.

It’s definitely a frequently asked question and one I’ve seen even more frequently over the past month or so for some reason. “What shoes do you recommend?” Alternatively, someone might ask “What is the best shoe?”

Either way, the correct answer is the same: I don’t know.

Some time ago, I was listening to a podcast interview of a high school coach with a PhD in exercise physiology. He pointed out that his athletes could be using watches that measure heart rate, oxygen saturation, cadence, ground contact time, and a crazy number of other values. However, while some had these watches, he didn’t have them paying attention to those values while running. His runners learned how to run by feel.

I wrote down a few notes from that interview and came across them last week, which prompted this post.

Last week, in discussing strength training, I pointed out why I think most runners should probably not do what the elites are doing. I wanted to expand on that thought some this week because, while it’s good to look at them to get an idea of what works, it can be risky for several reasons to simply replicate what they do.

I’m going to tag the date on this because our knowledge changes and I’ll probably post an update every once in a while. Hopefully, more than once every 20 years.

I’ve been having discussions with a few runners on strength training recently and I’ve realized that my very old post about strength training, while not entirely invalid, is outdated. Of course, I wrote that somewhere around 20 years ago so what should we expect?

So it’s time for an update. Is strength training good for our running and, if so, what should we do?

The answers are yes and it depends.

Strava is a wonderful tool. It’s a great way to share your training with friends as well as keep up with what your friends are doing. It’s loaded with great ways to challenge yourself and your friends. It also has kudos. Who doesn’t love getting that little virtual pat on the back for a run well done?

Garmin Connect and others also have great ways to challenge yourself and your friends, from pre-built challenges you can join to the ability to create challenges with friends.

However, there are things to be careful about with these tools.

This past week, I got in some very solid training. I had my highest volume week in some time, I put up three consecutive days of double digit mileage and I had a good workout earlier in the week. What a way to end a very solid block of training.

The only problem was that, by the end of the week, I found myself thinking a lot about what I was doing 15-20 years ago.

“This is a challenge? I used to knock out twice this volume at a pace 2-3 minutes per mile faster and call it an easy day.”

Things are still hectic for me so I’m going to be writing a shorter post today. I promise I will make every effort to spend more time writing next week’s post.

I wrote about this topic recently but I can’t stress it enough so I’m going to write about it again.

I’m going through a rough time at work this week so this blog post will be short and less carefully edited than usual. I apologize in advance.

Last year was a mess. I don’t have to tell anyone that. Very few races happened in any way we would have pictured racing in 2019 or earlier. With that, for many runners, training changed significantly.

Maybe you focused on something you hadn’t done before. Maybe you continued training at least somewhat as normal (if so, I suspect you were in the minority). Maybe you took a step back. Some even took a step up.

Whatever you did, with some hope that racing will return to something more like normal by fall, if not (hopefully) summer, you might be wondering what to do now. Racing as normal might be some way off but it’s not too early to begin laying the groundwork, especially if you’re optimistic and holding out hope for some summer races.