A good running start to 2009

I planned to skip exercise yesterday in support of my resolution to do one rest day a week. I even thought about it as a good bookend to the beginning of 2008 when I wasn't running. However, I gave in and ran about 1.25 miles after dinner. Despite the short distance it was an extremely taxing run, I had a lot of cramping, probably due to running after eating a full meal. Earlier in the day I was talking to a friend who came by about the benefits and liabilities of training every day. This friend is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist® (CSCS®) who teaches high school students about training, nutrition and physiology. He told me that there is no right strategy for training but that I should listen to my body. If I'm exhausted I should not train. If I have energy there's no reason to skip a run. The point is that a person can recover overnight provided that the day's effort was at a recoverable level. I'd expect that anything over 5 miles for me would require more than an overnight recovery at this point in my training. This morning I ran 3.7 miles at a 9:31 overall pace. I was happy with that and I felt very strong up until the end. I could have easily run another 15 minutes but I want to run tomorrow and didn't want to overdo it.

My poll to collect preferences for what the Emerging Runner should cover has closed. Motivation and running technologies came up most often (although with 5 responses it's not exactly statistically significant). But for those who chose to vote, thank you. I will concentrate more on those areas.

I hope everyone had a great New Years and are planning to do some great running in 2009!

That darn metric system

Earlier this week I had a conversation with my nephew, a member of the local High School track team, about the actual diameter of the HS track. I discovered that I had made a bad assumption about the distances I was running as I had assumed the measurements were in quarter mile increments. He told me the track is measured at 1600 meters around. That explained why my Nike+ Sportband was off when I thought I was running my measured distances. What's puzzling is that when I measure the track using the extremely accurate Google Earth ruler tool the distance around is actually .26 miles or about 4% longer than a quarter mile. It should actually be shorter than a quarter mile, not longer. Either way I now know the actual distance so I can calibrate accordingly but I'm obviously missing something.

Today I did 25 minutes of upper body work to rest my legs but later in the day I went over to the track with my wife and kids because the kids wanted to run. Instead of doing laps I did sprints to work on my fast twitch muscles and anaerobic conditioning. I'm not used to running that fast and started to develop some tightness in my leg (different from my previous muscle pull). I stopped right away and iced it when I got home. I'm not taking any chances. Tomorrow I plan to run 3+ miles as my training for the April race continues.

Recovery run

I have been hampered with a slight leg muscle pull so I've backed off on runs since Sunday. After two days of upper-body only workouts I decided to run this morning but maintain a more moderate pace. I was concerned that after two days off I'd feel underconditioned and that the layoff would impact my performance. In fact the opposite was true. I actually needed to rein in my efforts and (for safety) maintain a slower pace than I felt I could handle. Although it felt great I stopped after 1.5 miles to head off further aggravating the injury. I certainly could have handled much more distance and I felt much stronger at the one mile mark than I ever had before. My leg felt no worse for the run but I needed to be careful.

So today was a lesson for the Emerging Runner. I learned that one or two days break from running actually helps performance and stamina. I no longer feel that skipping a day is a challenge to my committment or a setback to conditioning. I will try to incorporate a more balanced program and include skip days (every beginner's running guide recommends them but I thought I knew better). Although my 5K is still far off I've been thinking about my approach to conditioning for race day. I'm definately thinking about not running the day before. Maybe even skipping two!

A new way to use the elliptical

A combination of pushing too hard and stretching too little this weekend aggravated a muscle in my leg. My wife told me I should skip today's exercise but I just couldn't. Mondays are elliptical days for me and although I felt it had less impact on my muscle strain than running I decided not to use it for my legs. Instead, I straddled the elliptical machine but only worked the arms. Unlike the normal use where resistance is minimal at the first level, this experience was more akin to cross country skiing. Increasing the resistance made the effort very challenging. I ended up doing 15 minutes which was enough to get my heart rate up for a while. It wasn't the same amount of exertion as running but today was scheduled to be a light to moderate workout. Besides that, my upper arms are not used to working that hard and I didn't want to pull a muscle there either. I had not heard of anyone using the elliptical this way but I plan to use it for upper arm training even after my short break from running.