Tuesday, January 31, 2012

A Gentle Guiding Push, or Backhand Upside The Head

Back for another hastily written post while taking a break from work.  Amid all of the folders and sketches and calculations flying around my office, I have managed to come up with something to post about to close out a very boring January.

In addition to talking about running here in my blog, which is meant more as a rambling personal journal and means to keep me focused, I often contribute (waste time on) to the running section of Yahoo! Answers, Yahoo's question and answer forum.  Typically, it is a regurgitation of the same handful of questions, which at first seem helpful, but after you've done it over and over again, you start to wonder how anyone could be this dumb (you don't "loose" weight, there phrase "workout regiment" has no meaning).  It is also a good opportunity to fight back against many of the prevailing myths about running and training that have persisted for years because so often people will blindly do as they are told without thinking for themselves - breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth...

Now that we're into the new year, we're at one of two critical times for young runners - preparing for high school track (the other is preparing for high school cross country).  This means the same handful of questions asked over and over again with poor (or nonexistent) punctuation and grammar, getting more frantic and anxious the closer they get to the first day of practice.

The point?  Oh yea, I'll get there eventually.  Did I mention rambling in this blog?  I often wish I had gone into teaching.  If not for the lousy pay, I would have.  I enjoy mentoring, and tutoring, and any opportunity I get to pass on things that I know to others (especially topics where I really know what I'm talking about).  I am certain that if I ever change directions and go into teaching, I'll probably try to coach running as well.  And based on the endless stream of questions and pleas for advice that I've seen on Yahoo, I think my philosophy for both will probably be similar.

Coaching, like teaching, is an exercise in psychology.  You can't coach someone you don't really know.  Some athletes respond well to being pushed hard, negatively reinforced, motivated by being reminded of their own failures.  Others don't, and negatively reinforcing those athletes is a fast way to drain the life out of their running career.  You can kill a person's love of running if you handle them improperly when they come to you, whether it be for coaching, simple advice, or even to have a single question answered.  It takes time working with someone to determine if they need to be coached with a firm hand to get their best, or gently guided to keep their head and heart in the proper place so they flourish.  It's hard to coach someone you don't know.  You can get in the face of a professional football player and scream at them if they screw up.  You can't do that to a 13 year old girl.  Too many people try to do too much when answering these young runner's questions.  I was guilty of this for a while.  I've since learned that this is a "less is more" situation, and to save the hard blunt responses for adult runners who think they know it all (like me!).




A little update on my training.  I took 5 days off.  Why would I do this, when things were going well?  Because I'm not as agile and graceful as I like to think I am.  Thursday evening, the teapot began to whistle.  I bounded through the house like a little kid (as I often do), and as I hopped up the step into the kitchen I slipped.  My trailing foot caught the step right on the knuckle of my middle toe - it felt broken.  I've broken pinky toes before (note the plural), you yank hard once to set the bone (TWSS), then tape it to its neighbor for a while.  So I did the same for this one.  It didn't hurt nearly as much as I expected, so it probably isn't broken, just deeply bruised.  I tested it out each morning afterwards, and today was the first time it felt like I could push off of my right foot enough to run.  So aside from my own clumsiness, training is going well, I'm still pretty consistent, I just need to get a lot faster.

Monday, January 23, 2012

Weekend Adventure!

Don't let the exclamation mark fool you, it isn't as exciting as it sounds.  And it wasn't this weekend, it was a couple of weekends ago when the weather was nice.

Weekend adventure

While randomly searching for something completely unrelated on the internet, I came across Wine Cellar Park in a nearby town.  It is a little park with trails and a stocked fishing pond, with a pre-Civil War stone wine cellar.  It is no longer in use (sadly), but acts as a tourist attraction.

The Wine Cellar, Very Old, Kind of Spooky 




There are a good number of trails, a few paved with asphalt leading to the pond, but many many more unpaved and randomly running through the woods.  I took the time to walk a bit farther than Kim to check a few out, and get a few pictures of the pond.  I doubt they would be much use for running (I'm not going to drive 25 minutes for a training run), but maybe we'll go fishing at the pond later this year.




Kim Being Cute on One of The Trails
 

The Pond, Seen from The Hill Top







And before we left, we found a purple travel coffee cup.  I always find the weirdest things.  When I was in Mississippi on inspections, I found a pair of hunting pants in the middle of the road, folded, that were randomly my size.

So what have my running shoes been up to the past few weeks while giving you the silent treatment?  The name of the game right now is consistency.  Rather than going too big too soon, as I am often wont to do (I don't think people use the word "wont" enough these days), I scaled back to mileage which is manageable to be done 5 or 6 days per week, and am slowly pushing it back up as my body is ready.  I just knocked out a 26 mile week, and my legs feel great.  My only hard workouts are twice weekly fartlek runs where I pick up the pace for about 20-25 seconds.  During this morning's run I finally felt the early parts of my conditioning coming together, the solid form that the fartlek gives, the added speed and power from the gym, and my aerobic conditioning helping me recover between bursts.

Eventually, when that site redesign that I've been talking about for... cough...a year... finally gets taken care of, I'm going to include something for weekly mileage.  I'm also working on my racing schedule for the year, I don't have it all figured out yet, but I am planning to try to start the year with a half marathon in late April.  I'll have more about that next time though.

A closing thought:  Experts don't know shit.  An expert is someone who knows enough to speak from authority to those who don't, and that authority is derived from their confidence.  Never let someone tell you that you should do something if they personally don't do it or haven't done it themselves, which is really the only way to know what works.  How do I know this?  I'm an expert, stop asking questions and do what I say.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Too Long Between Posts

I know I'm taking too long between posts.  Things have picked up at work, so I'm juggling work and training and other stuff I want to do, and the blog has suffered.  I'll try to write more, really...

This is just a short little check in to say hi, and tell you that my running has gone well so far.  I haven't skipped any workouts, I'm on track to build my mileage back up slowly after a long December of very little running.  I'm pretty out of shape.

I'll post again later in the week with pictures from my weekend adventures...

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