30 September 2011

Achieving Maximum Improvement

Tomorrow will mark the end of my first 3 weeks of my new training plan.  I talked to my buddy Brant on the phone this morning and we were talking about how my training was going and I'll tell you the same: It's going really good.  I really feel like it's exactly what I need to be doing.

I'm basing a lot of what I'm doing off of the training plans in the book Daniels' Running Formula.  It's a book that explains really all the specifics of training; why you do easy runs and why you do them at a certain pace, what pace to do them, what's the purpose of the tempo/threshold run, how fast to do repeats with how much rest and why that's how you should do them and on and on.

I've been doing two workouts every day, 3 miles each for a total of 6 miles each day and 36 each week.  I don't run on Sunday, it is a day of complete training/running rest.  I run at 7:34 per mile and that's how it's been going.  I've consistently been hitting my times easily and I feel really, really good.  I've had a couple of realizations as I've been following this plan.  In high school we went on an easy run or a long run and I couldn't tell what pace we ran it, nor could I ever tell you if my coach ever told us how fast to run.  I think when I was a Freshman I probably went to slow, but as I got older and started running with the faster guys I think those "easy" runs turned into hard runs.  I think there's a common misconception out there that in order to get really good you have to train incredibly hard as often as possible.  That may work for people like Steve Prefontaine, but for most that's a good way to get frustrated, injured, depressed, sick, and fatigued.  On the same token, if you go so slow all the time then it'll be hard to see improvement and you won't see even close to the results you're wanting.  I feel like Daniels' Running Formula does a good job at explaining what you should be doing and why.   I know I already said that, but I'm realizing that there's a balance to achieve for maximum improvement.

Not too hard, but not too easy at the same time.  That's how it's gotta be with everything, even the hard stuff.  Let's say you have 3 hard workouts one week.  Each hard workout has a specific purpose.  One is to improve speed, another to solidify race-pace, and the last to improve anaerobic endurance.  Well, if you go too hard on the speed, then you may not be fully recovered by the race-pace workout, and unable to complete the set. Maybe you were going to do 7 x 400 m, but because your feeling really tired, by #4 you're falling off the pace, which means you shouldn't be doing them etc.  Anyways, if that doesn't make sense, sorry, ask me some questions, but I think that explains it.

So next week I'll be doing 4 miles in the morning, 3 miles in the evening with a 9 mile long run on Saturday.  The long run shouldn't be more than 25% of the total weekly mileage, so because my total weekly mileage I want to be about 44 miles,  I shouldn't do more than 11 miles on my long run, and since I have been doing 6 miles every day, I thought it would be wise to start out at 9 miles.

On top of that, and I probably need to do a separate post on this, but I'll be testing my new maxes for push-ups, sit-ups and pull-ups, along with increasing my plyometric duration time and the time I spend doing trunks, or core strengthening.

Good night.

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