QOTD: What is the best advice a fellow runner has given to you?
Gosh, that's a tough one. To be honest, I haven't had many moments where people offered me advice in person. For almost the majority of my time running, it's just been me. I read lots of things (books, scientific journals, articles, blogs, etc.) but I can't think of anything anyone has offered me as advice in person. The only thing that sticks out is when someone told me "You can't run a marathon." It wasn't advice per se, but it was all I needed to get out the door and prove everyone wrong.
Now if I were to offer advice now after 4 years of experience, I'd say my top three are:
1)
Slow down. Every day shouldn't be treated as a race day. You're not going for new PRs on training runs. This leads to "surviving the training plan, and not thriving because of it". Don't worry if you've never run x pace for z distance. Race day is where you prove it.
When someone says they want to work on "speed", my question is always "why?". Typically what follows is, "well I want to be faster." To which I reply, "what are your 5K, 10K, 10 mile, HM, and M times?". If you find that by using a race equivalency calculator that your 5K times predict 10K, HM or M times that are faster than your PR, then you don't need "speed". You need "endurance". Almost 95% of long distance recreational runners need more endurance work, and not nearly as much speed work. And how do you best improve endurance? SLOW running! I won't dive into the science, but the benefits of running about 80% of your training at the following + paces or SLOWER have proven to me to be beyond astounding.
5K PR + 90-120 seconds to as slow as 180 seconds
10K PR + 75-90 seconds to as slow as 160 seconds
HM PR + 60-70 seconds to as slow as 150 seconds
M PR + 40-45 seconds to as slow as 120 seconds
2)
Run blind. Listen to your body. Learn to be able to run at effort levels with no GPS feedback. I've found I can be EXTREMELY negative during a race when I had a set pace and wasn't hitting it. This negative feeling would cause me to lose motivation. Based on my understanding of the Psychobiological Model once you lose your motivation, then your perception of effort increases. It truly becomes a mental block and not a physical block (while during running it's perceived as a physical block). By running by effort and not pace, it allows you to self-adjust for varying weather conditions based on how you feel. It becomes a valuable tool in the toolbox to be able to run without GPS feedback.
3)
Create a custom plan. While finding plans online is nice because it's helpful, the plans are just too generic for individual needs. Honestly when I started out I was SO lost. The miles made sense, but the paces at which to run the runs never seemed concrete. I just tried to PR EVERYDAY. Once I truly started to dive into running, is when I found that such a variety of paces, different types of runs, and thinking of running in terms of time and not miles is when the doors really blew off for me. Now, I'm like a sponge. I'm trying to soak up as many different philosophies on running to develop my own principles and ideas. I use myself as my own personal test subject with my custom training plans. Once I know I can do it and prove my ideas work, then I know that others can as well if they want to try.
I always wondered well if the elites are running 20, 22, 24, 30 mile training runs in preparation for their marathon, shouldn't I be too? But when I started evaluating Luke Humphrey's plan at the back of the Hansons Marathon Method book, the light came on. When they run these massive mile weeks (120 miles or more) or these massive single runs (20 miles or more), they're running them in 10-14 hours of time in a week or 120-150 minutes for a single run. It's because they are super fast that they have to run so far. For them to receive the same benefits as I do in 150 minutes at their relative pace, they have to run 23 miles and I have to run 14 or 16 or 18. Once I was able to comprehend this idea everything started to make more sense. Relative Fitness Effort x Time = Miles. Figure out the first two parts (Effort and Time) and the third part (Miles) will work itself out. This is the methodology I use to create custom plans. Figure out someone's relative fitness paces based on effort, balance those out throughout the week, and then add in their available time. Once I do that I can tell the person how fast and how far they should run each day.
Looking forward to rest day tomorrow (well, other than walking dogs at the animal shelter).
Looks like a late afternoon run on the TM. So exciting...
