Training

Last week, I discussed the importance of taking time off early if you feel something that might be an impending injury.

You might have left that asking how much am I going to lose? How much is that going to set me back?

Well, hopefully it goes without saying that a few days off before something is bad is far better than taking weeks or month off after it got bad but here are some details on what you lose and how much time it takes to get it back.

Time off: How much do you lose? How long to get it back?Read More »

Are you feeling beat up? Feel like you might have an injury coming on?

A lot of us try to push through these things. We don’t want to lose fitness, we don’t want to lose ground on our competitors. The problem is we try to push through instead of taking a day or two off early, then we end up needing weeks off later.

Take time off when you need itRead More »

We all know we should accept where our current fitness is when racing. If you don’t, you’ll go out over your head and the race experience won’t be good.

However, some of us have trouble accepting that we should also be training based on our current fitness level. We want to train to the level we believe we “should” be at or we want to train at the level we want to race at months from now.

This is a mistake.

Train based on your current fitnessRead More »

I once believed that strength training for distance runners could be minimal and weights were very overrated (note: that was originally written over 20 years ago). As the article I linked to in that post makes clear, I was far from alone on my belief and the science then painted a different picture (studying largely different exercises) than current science does.

As knowledge has evolved, so has my belief. This is how things are supposed to work.

EvolveRead More »

Your training is going good. You’re feeling strong. You’re killing it in your workouts and on your long runs. Your easy runs are fast, even though they feel smooth and relaxed. Everything is going great.

Then you push a workout a little too hard and you feel it. The hamstring tightens up, the calf cramps. Something gives and you know you’re looking at some time off.

How do you avoid this? Well, there are many ways but I’d like to focus on one of those things that has saved many of us and could have saved many more.

Stop one rep shortRead More »