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Archives for May 2016

3 Great Things About Starting and 5 More to Keep You Going

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Everything you need is already inside

There is magic in beginnings. And when people sign up to Learn to Run I get to be a part of the story of people’s beginning, which is a great privilege and an inspiration as well. There’s something pretty amazing in the story you haven’t written yet.

You Decide

The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.

The cool thing about the beginning is that the only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be. And that thought is more powerful than you probably think it is. Every morning when you get up you get to write your story. And it doesn’t matter what happened yesterday, or last week. It’s a new story and you are writing it.

In the beginning, everything is a personal best

It doesn’t matter if you’re returning from training after a break, or it’s the first time you’ve started. If you haven’t run before, everything is pretty new. And if you have, it feels new. There’s a promise in the beginning and the promise talks to you.

You are always proving how amazing you are

When you do things that you didn’t think you could, you prove to yourself that you can do other things that you didn’t think you could. And it starts to take over other parts of your life as well. All of a sudden, so many more things seem possible.

running-capable

The beginning IS amazing. But what happens after that is even more important.

Motivation will get you started. Habits will keep you going.

You know what giving up looks like, you get to find out what happens if you keep going

The mistake of all or nothing thinking is buying into the idea that success or failure have end-points. But there is no end-point. Your health and fitness are not about finishing a program. It’s your entire life. So it doesn’t matter where you are, your only focus is to keep going. Keep going no matter what.

Fitness is a lifestyle, not an end-point.

Goals give you a framework for progress and a path forward

There might not be an end-point, but there are markers a long the way that are going to give you the drive to keep going, when it doesn’t seem easy and effortless. Goals should be specific, measurable and realistic. Don’t make goals with an idea of your ideal week where everything goes exactly to plan. Make goals based on your average week. You want to feel like you are kicking those goals, not barely struggling to hang on.

To start with work on goals for:

  • Four weeks
  • 2 Months
  • 6 Months
  • 2 Years

And review those goals every four weeks.

And remember: If the plan doesn’t work, change the plan – but don’t change the goal.

Little steps

Celebrate your achievements

Notice those small wins. Celebrate them. Did you do all of your sessions for the week? It’s not something, it’s the beginning of a big something. Don’t downplay it.

Make decisions based on your goals, not how you are feeling

It’s easy to decide not to go out for that early morning training run, if you go by how you are feeling. I usually feel like staying in bed where it’s warm at 5am. But a goal will get me out the door.

Ask yourself: is this decision going to take me closer to my goal, or further away?

Challenge yourself to get out of your own way

Your biggest hurdle is usually yourself. That inner monologue that tells you that you aren’t good enough or strong enough or worthwhile enough. That inner voice will convince you that you are just lazy. That you are never going to be able to run. It will convince you that it’s not who you are.

But you decide.

It’s ok to hear that voice. Everyone has one. But just ignore it and do what you are going to do anyway.

The biggest fear anyone has is that the inner voice was always right about them. But it isn’t. So don’t let it get under your skin like it belongs there. It’ doesn’t. And you’ve got work to do.

never too late

How we learn is key to moving forward

One of the most important things for learning is feedback. And although for most of us we don’t think we need it as much for running and fitness. But it’s exactly where we need it the most. Without there is no context for what we are doing. No way of knowing if we are doing things well or doing things poorly. And in a vacuum it is very easy to get discouraged, focus on the wrong things and miss our opportunities.

And even more than that, taking what we know and teaching others is also really important to being able to internalise our own learning. This is why we have group coaching in Learn to Run, Run Club and Far and Fast, because support and mentorship will change the way you think about yourself.

Find your tribe and you’ll always have a reason to keep going

Find your tribe. Love them hard.

All the best things in life are based on people connecting to one another and connecting to a sense of belonging. Once you find your tribe, all sorts of things that didn’t make sense before start to fall into place.

Your tribe will teach you that the reason you could never fix yourself, is because you were never broken. Your tribe will believe in you, before you believe in yourself. They will show you that you are capable of so much more than you think you are. And on a bad day, the tribe will show you more consideration and understanding than you have ever dared show yourself.

The tribe will take you wherever you want to go.  All you have to do is show up.

Podcast: Episode 6 – De-mystifying types of running training

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Episode 6 (1)

Tempos, Fartleks, Intervals! And what about low heart rate and base training?

Today we are talking about types of training. It can be hard with all of the jargon out there.

Here is a guide we put together on running jargon that might help you out too. And we also talk a bit about Run Club, which you can find more about here.

We start with some basics about low heart rate training and base training and why they are different. And we get into some specifics of what is easy, what is tempo and how to tell if you are running intervals fast enough. Most people naturally drift towards the middle and run their easy too fast and their fast too slow, so it’s all about getting the most out of your training.

And the big thing we talk about is about why speedwork, really has nothing to do with speed and everything to do with developing aerobic capacity.

Head over to iTunes to listen (and subscribe!)

You can listen and download episodes in Itunes here.

The trap of pace-based running apps

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Running - lifelong activity

You know the one’s right? You enter your fastest time over a certain distance, what distance you are training for, what date? And all of a sudden you have a custom training plan. But do you?

The trick about running apps, is that they are addictive.

And not in a good way. Anything that gets you out the door is worth it, right? Well not quite. The reason why they are addictive is they feed this idea that progress is linear. Every run should be faster. If your easy pace was 6:30 min/km last week then next week it should be the same, or probably faster. And when it is faster, it gives you that rush of reward hormones. You feel on track and in control. And sure that the predicted time that keeps getting quicker is a sign that you are on to a sure thing.

But are you?

Let’s start with the really basic problems with this:

  • Progress isn’t linear. You might want it to be, but it’s not.
  • Forcing yourself to run at a certain easy pace will mean that some days you are running at a comfortable pace, but other days you are running at a faster, less comfortable pace.
  • The pace requirement misses the whole, entire purpose of slow running which is aerobic development.

The worst part is that on days where your body isn’t feeling great, those are the days that you end up demanding the most of it by pushing yourself to run at a pace that just isn’t comfortable.

But isn’t pushing yourself, what it’s all about?

Pushing the boundaries is where all the advances in fitness are, right? Not quite.

  • If you push yourself too hard on easy days, you won’t have anything in the tank on fast days.
  • If your pace isn’t comfortable on easy days, then you aren’t going slow enough to develop your aerobic system and you aren’t going fast enough to benefit your threshold or your anaerobic system, so you are literally wasting your training.
  • Pushing yourself when your body isn’t feeling it is a fast track to injury
  • True fitness adaptation happens during periods of recovery. If you aren’t recovering well, you won’t be gaining those advantages.

So instead think about this: is this pace for your training, or is it for your ego?

But wait, it gets worse.

Yes, there’s more!

For the most part the runs are as repetitive and boring as batshit. 

The problem with boring and repetitive isn’t just that it’s boring and repetitive. It’s actually a lot more complicated than that.

  • Without variety, it’s really easy to lose interest in your training
  • With repetitive runs it’s even easier to feel pressure to be faster than last time and fall into that linear progression trap
  • If there’s a particular type of run that’s repeated that you don’t like, all of a sudden you are dreading it.
  • If you are always doing the same type of runs, you are not getting the same benefit because your body becomes too accustomed to it.

The first rule is it has to be fun. The second is that you never want to do something that your body can become too efficient at.

Most of the apps have about three types of runs – easy, tempo and intervals. But that isn’t even scratching the surface of the types of runs that you should be incorporating into a well-rounded program.

Even worse, it assumes your goal is speed

Fair enough, this IS probably a lot of people’s goals. But it’s not everyone’s. And when you put in a goal time that is slower than your fastest time it will tend to ignore your goal time and go for the faster time. Now this is probably more a quirk of the app than a real issue. You could always put down a slower time so it doesn’t make that assumption. But if speed isn’t your goal, the nature of an app like this will turn your focus to speed pretty quickly and it might rob you of a whole lot of the enjoyment in your training.

Is it really that bad?

The thing is you aren’t going to do yourself any damage by following one of these apps. They are free. And you get what you pay for. As long as you ignore the pace requirements for easy runs, it’s not going to do you any harm. But you aren’t going to get the full benefit of all your hard work either. And it’s a lot of hard work. So that seems like a real shame. But the real shame is that it might not be as fun as it could be. You might feel more pressure than you should. You might compare yourself a bit too much. And you might waste all of your energy on training and have nothing left for actual racing.

And if free is what you are after, there are far better places to go. Funner places. More interesting places. You can’t measure joy in minutes per km. But you can run yourself into the ground if you are a slave to a set pace.

Podcast: Episode 4 – Perils of Comparison

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Episode 4

This week we are talking about comparison. And not just comparing yourself to others – but comparing yourself, to yourself. It’s so easy to do and most of us do it without even thinking about it – it becomes like second nature. So in this episode we talk about challenging some of the ideas around comparison – like do you really want to be faster, or do you just think that is what you should want?

Posts we talked about include:

Speed isn’t all it’s cracked up to be

Run the day that you are given

My Marathon is not more impressive than your 5km

Head over to iTunes to listen (and subscribe!)

You can listen and download episodes in Itunes here.