The Basics

Within the past few months I have become a huge letsrun.com and flotrack.com fan. Honestly, with all of their hype about the Olympic Trials Marathon, it makes me check them daily. These sites have provided me with some of the motivation to get out of the rut that I am.

You see, like I said in the last post, I have just graduated college where I ran for 5 years. Before that, I competed on a pretty good high school team (7 all-Americans in track, 2 state titles, 2x national champions for relays indoors,etc all in one year) for 4 years and I did one year of modified track. Thats 10 years of racing every weekend. It starts to take its toll on you but, it was this past year that broke the camel's back.

This past year I was named captain of the men's cross county and track team for the second year in a row. I take great pride in this position and did my best to see the continuing improvement of my team, just like any good captain would. I also balanced 15 credits of 300-400 level college courses in the fall semester and student-taught in the spring. During this time I also had the pleasure of moving into my first apartment off-campus with my girlfriend and a teammate. This was a pleasure, but at times it was stress when it became that time of the month; BILLS (stop thinking about that other thing). On top of everything I just decided to become a vegetarian and train the hardest I have ever in my life. When race time came sometimes it wasn't easy to let go of everything.

The two things that I really had going for me were my newly acquired eating and training habits. My training had always been inconsistent and, cove your ears, with relatively low mileage. Yup, that's right anywhere from 20-55 miles a week. That barely cuts it on the high school level these days. So this past winter I put in a great base and peaked at 80 with most of my 5-6 weeks at 60-75 miles in 6 days (one day off).

This base did huge thing for me. I was able to do my workouts much better because I was much more aerobically fit and my race times dropped big time. I ran a 19:58 for 4 miles in a stiff, cold wind. I dropped my 5k time from a 15:22 (indoors freshman year) to a 14:59 (indoors) and 14:42 (outdoors).

So, I believe in building your base with really large quantities of aerobic based work. I actually have been doing plenty of research on Arthur Lydiard's training philosophy and I am going to give it a go. I figure that if I can survive (good choice of words, huh) this higher mileage than I may have something going for me. It's sort of an experiment and this blog will highlight most of that journey, as well as, what is out there for us middle guys.

Most of my inspiration comes from my inner drive to keep improving. However, the whole blog idea came from doing my research on Lydiard. I came across this gentlemen named Mike who as document his experiment of following Lydiard's training along with working, being a husband, and being a father. You should all check out his blog at Running With Lydiard.

Training:
Wednesday:
Duration: 01hr 00min 04sec
Distance: ?
Comments: Was a bit sore from the first two days running. Had to ice my right hip and left hamstring. Second half of the run I felt awesome.