There is NOTHING you can do with your running time that is better for you than running. Any other activity only pulls you down and erases passion.
When you hit a certain spot you Sprint no matter how you feel inside or what your co-runner thinks. You just go! In training as a nickel, you sprint because you need to sprint! You just do it! In racing people see it and call it courage, but it is attitude; determination; duty.
I always enjoyed the training more than I did the racing. There was a high level of anxiety in racing that I did not enjoy. Training runs set me FREE. I could imagine the race in my mind and race as if it were the actual race.
I should be doing that too. I should be out there running and racing. I should be taking care of my body.
Setting goals that have already been achieved is a cop-out.
Set a master goal for your running and for your life...
I had on my team a girl who at age twelve just missed the world mile record for her age group. But at 20 she just couldn't run.
If I performed poorly, I knew the eyes of the sports world would be turned away from me. In that situation I knew the NCAA would crush me for sure. But if I could run well, they would not dare to hit me with everyone looking in my direction. I HAD to have a good race.
News people were holding me up as a symbol of defiance to the boycott and I couldn't even run.
If you look at your life and compare your life to that of an evil person, you will find that in most regards both lives are the same. You don't live a longer life or live forever by being virtuous.
Ideally I would start by racing my athletes once every two weeks. But, such a program has to be flexible because some runners improve better with weekly races or even bi-weekly races. A coach has to adjust to what is best for the runner.
I started running in Junior High School. I was so slow and uncoordinated the coach set me up with a paper route so that instead of going to work out after school I went to the corner of Providence Ave at Crestline St. and picked up a bundle of 15 newspapers.
I thought perhaps people with injuries could be subject to a starters gun to cure them.
After college I picked my races to be one race every two weeks. That gave me time to recover. I raced just as fast as my legs would carry me. At the end of every race there was nothing left. I walked off the track completely spent!
Kids as young as twelve CAN run 90 minutes, and they can train hard to run fast, BUT they lose something in training hard at that early age.
