Training for a marathon can be
boiled down to two essential things.
1. The first is obvious, the running. Run fast,
run slow, run long, run up hills, run races and keep on running.
2. The second thing is the recovery of which
there are also two essential things.
The first part to the recovery is
how you need to be able to allow the body to recover having pushing it towards
its limits in tough training sessions. In general runners don’t do recovery
well. We are happy to push, push, push but taking a day off. That can be a hard
one.
The second part to the recovery
is how you recover during the run itself. And this is at heart of whether you
will run a personal best or not. To make it simple you need to understand that
as you run you produce bad stuff. We could call this bad stuff toxins, but that
sounds too dangerous while calling them shite is probably a little too vulgar.
So let us just call them, crap.
Now imagine you are in a room
with a kid who is throwing crap onto the floor and pretend you can’t stop them
from throwing crap onto the floor. So you need to clean it up. If you can clean
it up as quick as the kid is throwing it on the floor then there is no problem.
However if more crap is being thrown out than you can put away, and there is no
end to the crap that your kid can find, then sooner or later the room is going
to become so full of crap and you will find it difficult to move. Well that’s
what running a marathon is like.
Instead the scientists like to
call the crap – lactates and they are produced not by your one-year old but by
your muscles. And if you are producing more lactates running than your body can
process well then sooner or later you will hit the wall and find it difficult
to move.
And ultimately that is what
training is all about. You are pushing your body to the level where it is able
to process as much lactates as it is producing. The only trick then on the day
is knowing where this maximum level is. Otherwise you will be joining the crap
on the floor.
In other news, as I reach the
toughest week of running, boy am I tired.
Yesterday’s training
Recovery (thank goodness)
No comments:
Post a Comment