My book of simple one-line recipes of what-not-to-cook will start with “chicken soo gui for breakfast”. The moment of Chinese ecstasy is not worth the entire day of self loathing and bloating that the crunchy, chickeny, gravilicious meal will give you. Trust me on this one, hmkay?

I’ve been thinking about that a lot, lately, with respect to my run training; between work & home life i’ve little time left to run, so my current training plan is focused on frequent, short, manageable runs designed to maintain durability in my legs… because my schedule will eventually open up… and when it does i’ll be glad i played a solid defense (against atrophy).

“… reached 8 alarms with 20 departments responding…”

To be clear: i don’t think abandoning shoes will suddenly make you a better runner. (frankly, it’ll likely make you an injured runner long before it makes you a better runner.) Though that video pushes barefoot running i think it’s primary value is its demonstration of efficient biomechanics. Emulating Dr. Mark’s gait is, i think, a great way to take the sting out of running – regardless of what’s on your feet.

If your knees, feet, shins, lower back, etc are on fire after a few kilometers, regardless of the speed you’re moving… perhaps your gait is an issue. Here’s a solid flash demo of efficient VS inefficient gait:

newton is a little bit right

That’s what kept me coming back down to the river at 5:15 each morning while every other 15 – 25 year old was sleeping – a chance to smile at the rising sun.

What else does your training plan give you?

smile @ the rising sun

Last night was my first ride on a Keiser spin bike.  The computer attached is quite nice… and it displays the wattage the rider is putting out in big block numbers. This is a bad thing – it immediately turned what would otherwise have been a lovely gentle workout into 45 minutes of flogging myself to keep the wattage up. I barely engaged with the instructor, thinking only destroydestroydestroy as my legs pounded away and i stared down at the wattage output, striving to maintain a ’3′ in the first digit position.

ouch! a word to the wise – if you hop on one of these bikes, do so with some self control!

Your first marathon is a big project.  Realistic planning and execution of training are critical to success.  Start with a goal – a finishing time – and work back through the training you believe necessary to build a road map that reaches from that day… back to today.

In short: build yourself a set of expectations to rise to. Call it a training plan, call it whatever you like, just make it realistically doable and then rise to it.

A further analogy:

In my professional life I’ve discovered that people don’t rise to compensation. That is: paying staff more doesn’t guarantee productivity. Rather, setting high expectations and applying social pressure, while giving team members the space and dignity to deliver on their job in their own way is the greatest way to drive productivity.

A visual reminder follows. Canadian readers won’t need a description to arrive at the point I’m making here – there was a very serious expectation that both the men’s and women’s hockey teams would win olympic gold.  Both teams rose to those expectations.

and they’d better do it again in 2014.

hockey gold: the expected result.

That is: slow down, but go much, much further.

Instead of running to the point your lungs burn and you count the minutes until you can stop, or running to the point where your knees hurt the following day, or to the point where you sweat through multiple layers of heavy clothing, or even ‘just’ to the point where you find it difficult to carry on a conversation while running…. slow down.  Run at a speed where you barely notice a deepening in your breath beyond the depth necessary to walk.

That’s running easily!

However, your goal is to wear yourself out, nonetheless. At the end of the run you should discover that you’re actually quite pooped. It should be a bit of a surprise, “that didn’t feel like work, but man i’m tired”.

Two things:

-first- running this slowly keeps the stress off both your body and mind.  You’ll be able to chat with running partners, to pay attention to your surroundings, to organize your thoughts, your schedule, or to just enjoy being and using your body.

-second- your body has ‘time’ at this low level yet extended amount of stress to build itself up. To improve the machinery you’ll use on race day to go much faster.

The third secret to marathon success? In training: Slow down & go very, very far.

where's the finish line, again?

So, you want to be a runner?  That’s really all it takes – running.  Don’t worry about running fast, or far; just run every day.

It’s not that the details of a complex training plan don’t matter or won’t make you run faster. Rather, my point here is simple:

The one thing that you can do to ensure success on race day is to run frequently in the months leading up to it.

In practical terms this means that the priority of your training plan should be to get out running often.  If you’re finding yourself injured, too tired, unmotivated or bored by running… slow down, don’t go as far and do whatever else it takes for you to leave each run wanting a little bit more…

Marathon secret #2: frequency of run workouts is the most important factor in your training plan.  run often!