Saucony Kinvara

This is one of my old routes from before my motorcycle accident in 2007. This was before I had a GPS so I measured out distances using my bicycle and then stuck to routes I'd measured. I measured enough segments to give myself a reasonable amount of variety when running, but it still felt very modular: if I want to add a half mile, go to the end of the Municipal Pier and back.

I read recently that it was a good idea to run without first eating. It made sense at the time; something about glycogen and fat stores. It made sense at the time, though now the googling I've done on the subject is confusing at best. I'm starting to think that taking it seriously was a mistake.

Saturday's 9.6-miler was run without benefit of fueling, though I ran that fairly early in the day. Today's 5.7 miles was in the afternoon, with no food all day. That's just plain dumb. No wonder I bonked hard.

This tells me two important things: first that I should at least read up on the crackpot theories before training based on them, and second that I may need more rest than I had anticipated as I enter my «cool-down» period before my race this Sunday. Yes, it's a tad absurd to have a cool-down period after training for only one week, but I've proven that I'm (probably) capable of doing the distance, so I need to keep my legs fresh for Sunday.

There's an excellent training program for beginning runners called Couch-to-5K. It takes people from zero to running a 5K race in nine weeks. It builds confidence and form without much risk of injury and countless people have used it or some variant to get their running legs. I've been on the couch for some time, but as I've previoously described, 5K and shorter distances are dreary for me. It's the time I need to get warmed up so that I can start to run comfortably. So for me, that would be nine weeks of negatve reinforcement—not the sort of thing that keeps me motivated.

I've seen faster variants on this theme. There's a six-week version and a ten-week couch-to-10K program out there.

Me? I'm going for broke. Hitting the road and pushing my limits because that's what's fun. I may be risking injury but I've now done couch to 15K in one week. The concessions I'm making to safety and sanity are: I'm not going fast, and I'm not heelstriking. Not going fast means I'm following LSD: long, slow distance. So I'm not giving my body any sudden jolts, just increasing the load and maintaining that for a while. If something begins to hurt I can adjust or rest or both. I have always found that my body has a tremendous capacity to recover. When I get tired I can get back on track if I just stop for a short while. It doesn't take long for me to feel like I'm at 100% again.

I started off with calves that still hurt from Sunday's run. I started by going uphill instead of down. I only got about three blocks before I had to drop down to a walk to make the top of the hill I was on. By all indications at the start, this should have been a very short run—maybe two miles—with a declaration of victory just for getting out on the road and doing a little hillclimbing.