Wednesday, March 8, 2017

Secret ultramarathoning plan

I found a copy of “Primal Endurance” at the library and snatched that baby up immediately. I told M.H. it’s probably the most dangerous book I’ll read all year, and he agrees. In fact, he’s extremely concerned that I’m going to catch the ultramarathoning bug like some sort of dread disease, but I assured him that wasn’t the case.
Me: I promise you, I have no current plans to take up ultramarathoning.
Him: Weasel words! Weasel words!
I mean, who knows what I will decide to do in the future? What if the book’s magic training formula makes me discover that it’s fun, easy, healthy, and convenient to train for a 50-mile race?

Anyway, I’m thinking this is a book that is best owned and studied if one were really serious about using it to train for an endurance sport, but the takeaways I’ve gotten so far are interesting. It makes a very strong case for ample rest and a long aerobic base training period in which you never exceed your 180-minus-age heart rate. I really want to see what happens when I run with those guidelines in mind, so here are my rules:
  • I can run only when I feel rested and enthused about it.
  • I can run only as long as I can still breathe through my nose (I don’t have a heart-rate monitor anymore, and that’s a decent way to make sure I’m staying fully aerobic).
  • I have to stop the minute I feel any hint of tightness or injury.
  • I don’t set a time or mileage goal before setting out, but train entirely based on feel and go where the wind blows me.
If that gets me into amazing running shape, well, I can’t be held accountable for what might happen next.

1 comment:

  1. Hahaha, I'm currently training for a 50-miler - it's super-fun except when it's not! (Main problem as always just being that I hadn't accounted for life stress/complexity - there has definitely been a bit too much overload.) NB I have a great, great running coach who plausibly recommends that 90%+ of running should be very easy. I did a "100 runs in 100 days" challenge this summer that I liked - it can be as short as 10 minutes, and should be almost all very easy. I still think that for running a long time happily that run frequency is very important - so as to say running 10-30 minutes every day is preferable to running an hour 3 times a week. Anyway, have some fun with this, sounds good to me!

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