This week the rain held off until the Weekend. Our Wednesday night run was followed by a great talk by endurance coach, Dave Latourette. He brought forth a number of points that bear repeating even for the hunter trying to get in shape for hunting season. After all that is our “event”.
1) Using the most of your time to achieve your best performance. This would start with having a running schedule or training plan that suits you, your lifestyle, your abilities and your goals. Having this as a foundation gives you the confidence you are doing the right thing to get to the start line of your “event” prepared. There is tremendous value in standing at that start line relaxed, knowing you did the correct things to prepare! Even if it is to just beat your best time around the lake with the baby stroller .
2) Are you focused on the things that matter to achieve YOUR best performance? This can start with technique and branch out to other items such as nutrition, health, recovery, and of course doing the right type of training. One of the biggest mistakes most of us can make is sacrificing consistency of training, day to day – week to week – month to month – year to year, for the short term, fast fitness that isn’t long lasting. Quite often “fast fitness” also brings about injury and illness!
3) Assuming you want to be a lifetime runner, your running plan should be thought out with the long term in mind. This item is an extension on item number 2 above. If you have a consistent, diverse and balanced training “system”, that meshes with your lifestyle, chances are you stay away from long term injury, illness, and potential burn out. Of course if you can avoid those three things, chances are highly likely your running will get better with age and you will continue to enjoy the process!
Dave brought up a good point in his talk, that just getting your body used to “time on your feet” is as important as the intensity of your training. I got to thinking about it, and it makes sense.
Why do we expect five days a week of a high intensity exertion,for an hour or two, to prepare us for five days straight of hiking, climbing and glassing from dawn until dark? So a Weekend carrying a pack on a scouting trip in the mountains is just as valuable as that hour long tempo run. The tempo run improves your aerobic capacity, while the weekend hiking prepares your body for the long days that make up backcountry hunting.
You can find more information about Dave at www.traintoendure.com and www.davelatourette.blogspot.com
I had one of my best runs Friday. I was slated to run for an hour. 15 minute warm up 30 minute Tempo pace and 15 minute cool-down. I knew the Walker-Pepper- Bodega loop was about 7.2 miles so I headed out to see if I could do the loop in an hour. While it took me an hour and ten minutes, I had a great tempo pace of 8:40 per mile (fast for me). Considering that there was a 200 ft hill in the middle, I made good time.
Sunday the skies opened up and rained. We lucked out and had about a two hour window of drizzle to run in. Thanks to good training partners I was able to knock out 10.25 miles in an hour and 45 minutes. Part of our training run was on the course we will be racing on March 21st at the Pirates Cove Trail run.
Running along the ridge at the Marin Headlands.
