Someone surprised me the other day. It was a Saturday and everybody was leaving the store to do the long endurance run and somebody turned to me and asked, “How far are we going today?” That particular Saturday was a building week and, as such, the run was slightly longer than usual. I knew this person would have no trouble completing the distance, it did make me think about how long it took me to even prepare for even a 3-mile run let alone 13-miles?
For a 3-mile run I would have reviewed my calendar at the beginning of the week. I’d make a quick note of what I was doing the day before and the day after. This would give me an indication of the pace I would plan on running. If it were a tough interval workout the day before and an easy longer run or tempo run the day after it would mean this 3-miler would usually be performed at a recovery pace. If it were an easier run the day before and after, then the 3-miler would be a “sub-max” run and depending upon the time of year and the projected weather conditions, I would decide several days in advance what time of the day I would run. If it was the middle of summer, I would chose the hottest time of day to do this run so I could acclimate my body to running in the heat. Summer was always the best time to race because the weather conditions were more predictable than any other time of the year. If for some reason my schedule didn’t allow me to run mid-day, I would decide a day or two in advance the time I would run (generally late in the evening) and that I would probably wear extra clothes to increase my core temperature and simulate running in the heat. If this was going to be a harder effort, I would be mentally be preparing myself days in advance for it. You see, back in the medieval times when I raced, the majority of runners had two speeds for training… fast… and slow. You only ran slowly when you couldn’t run fast. What can I say? The night before my run the next day I would consider my fuel and hydration needs. It wasn’t so much what I would need, but rather when I would require it. A recovery effort may not require much in the way of fuel, but if you have stomach issues fuelling up on a long run, would it not make sense to practice fuelling on shorter runs to get your system used to ingesting liquids and solids on something shorter? I found this especially helpful, but like everything else I’ve done in the past, I took it to the extreme. I would on frequent occasion eat a full-blown 3-course protein and fat laden meal and immediately leave the table for a training run. This is more a formula for cardiac arrest than a well thought out training plan, but still, my point is it was thought out days in advance as to what I was going to do, when I was going to do it, and how I was going to prepare for it. And… that was for a mere 3-mile easy run. Crazy? Or preparation? You can decide. The point is a bit of thinking should go into every run you do.
Interval workouts were usually worked out several weeks in advance. Even as far back as the 70’s I had “hammer” days that I would mentally prepare 3 – 5 weeks in advance for. And, if it came to the day and I didn’t feel up to it, I would postpone the run to the following week. “Hammer” runs were solo races to see what king of condition I was in. Now I would liken it to a kid picking at a scraped knee to see it it’s healed underneath. As I’ve said in previous “Coaches’ Couch” editions, I’ve experimented with many different types of training to find out what worked and what didn’t. On the plus side, when I did find something that worked, I was in a new age category. The other thing I realized was as I got older I also had to get smarter because you don’t recover as fast as the younger guys. But it doesn’t mean you can’t be just as fast!
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