"There's only one hard and fast rule in running: sometimes you have to run one hard and fast."








Sunday, February 19, 2012

Coach's Bag of Tricks

No one's more surprised than I am that this blog is over 4 years old. I've spent a lot of time discussing training theory and philosophy, because no one else does; I had made the deeper series searchable, but only two people ever showed interest. There's two types of runners and it's time to start addressing the one that I'm not.

Coaches spend half their time trying to motivate runners and the other half trying to keep a few motivated runners from injuring themselves. These latter are the ones that, told to run 10 quarter miles in 72 seconds, will start at 70, get bored and speed up to 66 and then bang out 12 to 15 of them (and wonder why they're always tired and injured). Obviously, I'm in that latter group. These runners have to understand in great detail exactly why they're doing a certain workout to keep them from turning it into a competition with themselves.

Most people, however, aren't like that. They want a coach to tell them what to do so they don't have to think about it. And they want variety. While some runners thrive on consistency (I know a woman who's run the same distance on the same route every day for decades), most are looking for something to break up what they see as the monotony of training. That's why there are magazines that are always touting the latest trends, why people sign up for different exercise classes every year, why programs that never tell you in advance what you're going to do are popular.

This time of year, bored runners everywhere are thinking "maybe I'll try to run a marathon in every state," "maybe I should take up triathlons," "I keep hearing about barefoot running; maybe I'm missing something by not doing that."

I think I'll do a series of posts on my favorite "break up the monotony" workouts for runners. I haven't really thought about it, but... isn't it time for a change?

4 comments:

pensive pumpkin said...

is she part giraffe?

today's captcha is Dame Jurali. which shall be my new p0rn name. LOL

sea legs girl said...

Oh my. Christian is falling in love with the women you post pictures of. Bet you didn't know "flot pige!" was a compliment.

Diana said...

I have never been one to do more for my workouts than planned. Must be why I have few injuries. :)
Who is the woman and is it a tattoo or a shirt?

Colin said...

Looking forward to seeing what workouts you come up with! Assuming they aren't of the "10 miles accelerating from 10K to 5K pace" category of insanity I'll try and slot one or two of your creations into my next training cycle ...