300th Post!! 7.5 mile recovery run

Wow my 300th post!

Here is my 100th post!

Here is my 200th post!

It is fun to look back at the blog and see where I have been.
I ran farther today than both previous posts, I also ran slower today than both previous posts.
Today was a recovery run from the 2.5 hour run yesterday. I ran 7.5 miles averaging about 8:30 pace. It took about 6 miles to feel loose again, but I guess that is the reason for the run. It was a cold but beautiful morning.

For my 300th post I am giving my readers a sneak peak at the article I wrote for the next High Desert Runner newsletter. Hope you enjoy it.


Consistently Consistent
by Karl Stutelberg, PT

While at the Boston Marathon in 2008 I sat in on a Q & A with some athletes and coaches that included Coach Greg McMillan of McMillan Elite out of Flagstaff, AZ. I already knew of Greg and frequented his website, www.mcmillanrunning.com to use his pace calculator and read his blog. I was excited to meet him and hear what he had to say about the training of his group in AZ. After the presentation I asked Greg what he would recommend I add to my program to better my marathon PR, knowing quite well that there was no right answer. He told me consistency is the key to improvement.

Just being on a consistent program will overtime improve fitness and lead to PRs. The human body’s adaptations to the cardiovascular system and aerobic fitness change slowly over time. These cellular changes include increasing the number and size of mitochondria (the energy producing cells) and capillaries (the small blood vessels that surround and bring oxygen to muscle). This doesn’t happen after a day, week, or month of training. It happens over years.

Consistency means avoiding injury and illness, listening to your body, planning a training schedule and sticking to it. It simply means avoiding any setback that will keep you from running. It means getting up early for that 10 miler on a winter morning when the bed is warm and comfortable. It doesn’t mean that you must run every day. My training schedule involves running four days a week. It is not consistent if I run one day the first week, then three days the next, and then skip a week. It also is not consistent if I train for four months for a marathon, and then take three months off before starting to run again for the next race.

Olympian Ryan Hall said in an interview, “It’s about hitting this big block…it’s not just about that one big week [of training], its about weeks and months leading up to that to set up the ability to be able to do that week [of training]…People think it is just about what you did in that build up [for a marathon], its about what I was doing out in the forest in Big Bear when I was in high school logging miles and doing hard workouts…it is all cumulative.”

In Malcom Gladwell’s book Outliers, he discusses the key to success or greatness in any job or activity as requiring 10,000 hours of practice. He calls this the 10,000 hour rule. This means that it could take years of training to reach your true genetic potential.

Coach Jack Daniels PhD. says, “The worst person on the team may have the best potential. There is no way of knowing and you won’t know in a year. You probably won’t know in four years. You might know in 8 or 10.”

The key to any running program is a consistent gradual progression of increasing mileage and intensity of training over many years. Set your goals high, think ahead even a few years, and keep pounding the pavement.