On pushing limits
As I was hiking up Mission peak this morning, an important realization came to me. After my marin headlands half marathon I had rested for a while before resuming running. My first run after that was on the Stanford dish. And it was a breeze. But after about a week the Stanford dish runs became as difficult as they used to be before the marin run. What happened?
My belief is that my body adjusted to the marin headlands run, which was tough for me. So the next time I went running, my body had kind of preparted itself for a “marin” run, so the stanford run was fairly easy. But when it only got the stanford level of exercise for a few days, my body realized that the “marin” run preparation was no longer needed and went back to its old ways.
The lesson is that one’s running cannot be the same every week. It has to vary(increase, unless you are post-run recovering). When you push yourself hard, your body’s ability elevates. You have to pick it up from there and take it higher. So every week one’s mileage must slowly increase, and so must the difficulty of the one “hard” run you do every week. Here’s what my current schedule looks like(just a typical example):
Sunday: long run
Monday: recovery
Tuesday: alternates
Wednesday: recovery
Thursday: tempo
Friday: recovery
Saturday: Rest and party!!
If you are unfamiliar with running lingo, alternate is running one minute sprints followed by 2-3 minutes of rest. Tempo is a fast run but not so fast that you have to stop. You try to run at a fast constant speed, for say 45 mins. Recovery are easy relaxed runs, maybe 30-40 mins. My Sunday long runs are usually about 10 miles, with a decent part of it on a steep hill. I also run my alternates and tempos on hills, but thats because I am preparing for a mountain marathon. There are many benefits of hill running, but you can follow the schedule above without running on hills.
As far as schedule is concerned, for me easing into a schedule works much better than jumping into one. If I decide that I’m going to follow a particular schedule(which I never do), and I don’t I feel guilty and discouraged and eventually do nothing. Instead of doing that, I just create a schedule and keep doing my running as usual. Over time I can see that I do some of the things in the schedule, though not in that order or that extent. So when I’m feeling energetic, I go ahead and push myself a bit to reach the schedule target. Eventually the number of things on the schedule that I’m doing increase and at one point I exceed the planned schedule.
I added 4 minutes to my Mission peak best round trip time of 1.30. Because I forgot to carry a powerbar and enough water. It was sweltering and I ran out of water towards the end. Lesson: if you plan to run for an hour, definitely carry a power bar. You need fuel.
Also friends, carb is not your enemy. People planning to lose weight often just forgo carb and try to work out like crazy. Well thats fine except that right after a workout your body needs carbs to quickly rebuild your muscles and bring you back from tiredness and hurt. A powerbar in the middle of a workout or right after(even 2 if your run is long) is just perfect. Just don’t eat the carb before you have done at least 30 mins of running. Make carb your ‘best fraaand”. Just don’t give your heart to it.
Speaking of giving one’s heart away, I fall in love with the sights everytime I am on mission peak. Its the kind where you keep falling more in love every single time you meet the person. Just an utterly blissful experience it is to look around and admire the curves and contours of the hills all around, with two sky blue lakes in the middle and Mount Diablo far away in the hazy distance.
I feel I tend to get shallow if I don’t run regularly. As I near the peak and the really steep incline starts, my mind becomes free and creative and I start getting high. All the worries and thoughts of life start floating clearly, as in a soup. From a cream soup, it becomes a minestrone and I get all my answers. Being close to nature restores me to my natural self and clears out the fake from the genuine in my life. Its something that has to be experienced to be understood.
With commencement coming up this Friday, I’ll probably do a run along the Charles that I once loved so much. It will be a nice pleasing ego boosting glory run in celebration..
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