#3 - Going Easy

One frequent mistake that beginners often make is going too hard too often. I was guilty of this for years. After not running for a while, I’d get a wild hair and set off on my quest to run a marathon. Inside of a month I’d be broken and battered on the couch, dreams shattered as I faced the “reality” that my legs couldn’t handle the training. Ultimately what I learned is that I was making two critical mistakes that derailed me every time. For starters, I was a forceful heel-pounder. Every stride terminated with me putting the brakes on with my heel, sending the force of my momentum through my lower legs and into my knees. Shin splints and inevitably stress fractures were the result. Eventually I will dedicate some writing to changes I made to my footwear and stride that helped solve this issue.

The other critical mistake I made was attacking every training run like Rocky on Drago. If I failed to return home breathless, drenched in sweat, and exhausted, I assumed I was leaving gains on the table, or some similar nonsense. It turns out that all I was doing was needlessly overtaxing my body, leading to a swift shutdown. After a long process of research (kicked off by the classic Born to Run) I changed my whole approach. As it turns out a slow and steady approach to most training runs leads to  significant gains, mainly because it allows you to train consistently. Running day in and day out (sometimes twice a day) provides a consistent stress that your body can quickly recover from, and it’s this frequent stress/recover cycle that develops into strong running. For more information on this training, Matt Fitzgerald’s book 80/20 Running is a great introduction to this type of training methodology.

Training: Fairly easy 3 mile run with one set of strides thrown in.