Caren, a good friend from Maine, recently presented me with an apropos gift, Christopher McDougall’s book, “Born to Run”. Took a few chapters to get a groove, but I found this to be a remarkable story around ultra-running – the central theme is a refreshingly human story, buttressed with a lot of information I am now trying to validate. One of the disturbing revelations was that modern sneakers, by virtue of cushioning your feet so effectively, set runners up for knee injuries, etc.
This news has me concerned that I am running my body into oblivion, but there are so many runners out there who don’t seem to have suffered irreparable harm that I trudge on…although I have adopted some techniques suggested by the book. I am trying to run with a more erect posture and taking shorter strides. This seemed to serve me well through week two of the serious new regimen to prepare for the fifty mile run coming up in July.
The setting was Dayton, Ohio, as I was in town for work all week. At my reserved pace I managed to eke out a bit extra for the Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday trio which becomes de rigueur for the next fourteen weeks. Took eight miles to nine on Tuesday, six to six-and-a-half Wednesday, and four to five on Thursday. The motivation was to hit a total of forty miles for the week, which is only scheduled for thirty-six.
Today I was back at home and ran a ten mile route, but didn’t extend things due to a backlog of accumulated chores to tackle. Tomorrow wraps the week with an eight miler and we’ll see whether I am up to extending that to 9.4 miles and achieve the stretch goal. I’m not too concerned about achieving the bonus miles, partly because of the concern around over-training, although the point seems to be logging miles now and at my relaxed pace it doesn’t strike me that I’m stressing myself.
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