This ain't No Thinkin' Thing

This ain't no thinkin` thing, right brain, left brain. It goes a little deeper than that...

You might not be a regular reader of this blog (not too many people are!) but if you do venture out to read it every once in awhile, you might notice that I get a bit philosophical in my writing. However, I always bring it back to my running. Typically my runs give me that time to think, theorize, philosophize or just plain vegitate. A hard training run doesn't afford this free thought. That was my run on Saturday. I went out to run a hard 10 mile tempo run where I wanted to push the pace for at least half the run. When pushing the pace, the focus is on running - form, breathing, adapting, arms, turnover. It becomes relaxed and natural at a point but I am still in a focused, race-pace zone - a focused, race-pace zone "ain't no thinkin' thing"! Thus, you won't get any philosophy or meaning of life in this entry.

The first couple of miles were for warm-up - easy 8:45 pace and then I kicked into a 5 mile 15K-pace tempo run around 7:30-7:45 . I know for you speed demons out there that your warm-up might be in the 7:30's! I pushed the pace both up and down the hills. To me, rolling terrain is the best for training and racing. Your muscles get to rest as the terrain changes. I think it is much better than running on flat surfaces. Using the same muscles over and over again for a long period of time fatigues them. Of course, one might like a flat 5K or 10K where there is more interest in flat-out speed but I will take a rolling course anyday for any distance over a 10 miles. I am sure the elites and locally competitive runners will disagree since they actually have a shot at winning!

Anyway, I brought it home after the tempo portion at a medium pace and then cooled down in the last mile. I need these hard workouts when I am going through race withdrawal. I do at least two harder workouts a week - one typically hill repeats. I love the hills! As Frank Shorter said, "Hills are speedwork in disguise". The other hard workout is usually a tempo or fartlek run.

Hard training runs - This ain't No Thinkin' Thing!