A Passion for Running

Meet My New Coach

I’m absolutely loving my new Polar Running Computer. Being able to look down, know my pace+distance and make immediate, accurate adjustments is wickedly awesome. In fact, it didn’t take me long to realize it’s like having a coach along for my runs.

“Coach” yells at me when my pace is to slow or fast. She (hehehe) tells me precisely how far I’ve gone and have to go. She even gets me thinking about my running form. When she tells me to go faster, and going faster seems more difficult than it should be, I automatically analyze what’s wrong and correct things with thoughts like “quick steps” and “lean forward”.

Only one problem. I don’t have a name for my coach. Think you could come up with one?

Visions of Racing
You may recall the problem I was having picking a time goal for my upcoming October 10 marathon. I was deciding between the original 3:36 plan versus weather I should up the ante to a 3:33. Richard even suggested I stop being a “wuss” (ouch) and shoot for a 3:30 finish! (hehehe, it’s all good Richard)

I’m not yet committing to changing the plan but I have had a vision that will definitely affect how I run the race. The vision was of having my as yet unnamed “coach” with me during the marathon and in seeing the flexibility she’ll give me during the race. The flexibility comes in not being tied to a pace band+distance markers and being able to make changes during the race. Let me explain…

I got a great piece of advice from a runner I really respect. My friend Doug told me to start out even slower than 3:36 for the first 10k. He told me to pace a 3:38 until the 10km mark thereby reducing the possibility of prematurely burning off glycogen stores. Then, he told me to quicken the pace so that I was at the 16km marker in a 3:36 pace and THEN to build speed from there if I was feeling “on”.

This strategy sounds great but is not easy to pull-off if you don’t have an innate sense of pace and are not great at math. I have neither of those talents plus it would be pretty tough to carry three pace bands.

But, with the new monitor, I’ll be able to accurately adjust my pace on-the-fly and will only have to write down goal times for the 10 and 16k markers!

Of course, I’ll still wear a 3:33/36 pace band so I have a back-up (just in case the technology conks out) but the bottom-line is that I’m really excited to have this new-found flexibility.

Too cool.

Today’s Run
Just so I can dispell the notion you may have that I am completely nuts for geeky gadgets, I’m here to tell you that today I ran without doing any speed, distance or heart rate monitoring.

Honest.

I did use my timer though. Instead of my regular four-hill route, I decided it was time for some drills. I spent twenty minutes doing twenty sets of high-knee and mulekick drills – ten sets of each. Each set consisted of 30 seconds of drills followed by 30 seconds of easy running. Then I ran easy (cuz I was bloody tired!) for another 25 minutes and finished by running up all 220 or so of the MacDonald hotel stairs making sure to emphasize high knees and rapid turnover.

It wasn’t the same work as the four-hill route but it was quite a good workout just the same.

I hope you had a good run today.