To me, reading my favorite running authors can feel a little bit like religious people reading their sacred text. Like, it's not that you don't already know what's in it. You don't read it expecting shocking new revelations, and you read it in part because you're already on board with the big ideas.
That said, coming back to those same ideas in different situations or at different points in your life can hit you in different ways. Sometimes something is phrased or explained in a way you hadn't considered and it's somehow just what you needed in that moment. Sometimes you read something you absolutely 100% already know and it just convicts you in your heart a little bit and inspires you to make a new commitment to walking the walk (or like...running the run, or whatever. Sorry not sorry.)
Earlier this year I grabbed Matt's newest title, which he co-wrote with Ben Rosario, then-head coach of the famous NAZ Elite running club. Interestingly, the original project was something different, another book called Running The Dream, in which Matt convinces Ben to basically let him come join NAZ Elite for a season and chronicles his summer training with and like the pros for the Chicago marathon.
Out of that relationship with Rosario was born this second book, which attempts to answer two fascinating questions:
(1) Why, when decades of science and practical knowledge are so exceedingly clear about what works for distance runners, do adult recreational runners by and large continue to do things almost completely differently?
(2) What should they be doing instead?
"Any athlete seeking to get better should take their cues from the champions....Having been taught early on that athletes at all levels should emulate the pros, I hadn't realized [until he started coaching normies] that most athletes...know little about the methods they use to prepare for races."In observing such discrepancies, the sociologist in me couldn't help but wonder why amateur runners do just about everything differently from professional runners."
I know what you're going to say. "Uhhh hi, hello, the pros are different than Joe and Jane Hobby Jogger. That's why they're pros. If most of us tried to run 100+ mile weeks and double most days and lift three times a week and also shoe-horn in multiple massage and PT and chiro sessions for more than a week or two, our souls would probably literally leave our bodies, which is probably for the best considering we'd probably already have been fired from our jobs and abandoned by our families. On what planet is a normal person 'training like a pro' remotely feasible, let alone advisable?"
Well the joke's on you, it's a trick question.
Should most of us normies be running triple digit mileage and squeezing in 10-12 runs a week and quitting our jobs to make recovery our full time job? Definitely not. Fortunately, that's not what Matt and Ben are talking about when they say "run more like a pro."
Each chapter covers a particular element of running:
- Plan like a pro
- Manage mileage like a pro
- Balance intensities like a pro
- Pace like a pro
- Stride like a pro
- Recover like a pro
- Eat like a pro
- Think like
- Sleep like a pro
As you might imagine, the chapter called "Manage Mileage Like A Pro" doesn't say, "Go out and run 100 miles a week." Instead it says something like, "Carefully experiment to find your mileage sweet spot where you run well and don't get injured, and here's a hint, it's probably more than you're running right now."
Though, there are other caveats. Like, maybe you could run 20 more miles a week than you are currently and you'd get faster without getting injured, but you just don't want to, or you literally don't have the time. (Both totally valid!)
And if you're not doing a bunch of other things on the list "like a pro" (like prioritizing sleep, eating to support training and recovery, etc.), your current sweet spot is probably lower than it could be.
Like I said, I've read enough books by Fitzgerald and his ilk that I already know the big ideas they're probably going to cover and the implications for runners who want to get faster. I'm like the good [pick a religion] dutifully reading their [pick a sacred text] murmuring a self-righteous "Yes, lord!" here and a self-congratulatory "You tell 'em!" there.
But, also like any good [pick a religion], I am woefully imperfect, and some days staying on the Path tests my soul. There are temptations. Distractions. Little white lies I can tell myself to justify doing not-quite-the-right-thing, even though I know better.
And, as any good [pick a religion] will tell you, this is part of why it's good to regularly revisit your sacred text. Sometimes being directly confronted with it, perhaps in a way you haven't heard before or haven't heard in a while leaves you no choice but to go "Ahhh, shit. Welp." And then you recommit to doing just a little better.
What, in particular, did I find myself convicted by this time around? Find out next time!
No comments:
Post a Comment