Many on MTT spend an inordinate amount of time setting their watches, waiting a signal,
downloading the data, feeling good & bragging to everyone around how their run went,
or feeling bad and vowing the next run will be harder. We have become a slave to our
times to our gadgets. A run isn’t considered good enough unless our training run is faster
than the day before.
I remember conversations with our youngest daughter when she ran cross-country and
track in high school. Unless she PR’d in her mind she was a failure. In her mind course
conditions, heat/humidity, what she ate the day before, how much sleep she got, how her
training went the week prior, or how much time she had to spend on the books, had no
bearing on the outcome of the meet. She either ran faster than the meet before or she was
a failure and let her team down. There was no amount of fatherly advice or father as an
experienced runner/coach advice she would listen to.
I found the below & encourage you all to “Run Naked.” Not Naked as in no running
clothes, but Naked as in NO GADGETS. Leave the watch, the GPS, the music, or
whatever you think you need to run behind and just “feel it.”
In the movie Bull Durham Crash Davis, catcher, tells Nuke La Loosh, pitcher, - “don’t
think just pitch.” Same to you all “don’t think, just run.”
Run By Feel – Logic of the Long Distance Runner
What is "running by feel?" I think there are three related features to this approach to
training:
1. "Primary experience" is privileged over "secondary experience." What does this
mean? It means that when there is a conflict between the immediate experience of
running and the reflective experience of thinking about running, the immediate
experience is given priority. For example, I might decide after reflecting on my running
that what's best for me to do tomorrow is to 8 x 800 at 10k pace. I head to the track and
try the first one at 10k pace and struggle to make it. The immediate experience is telling
me that this pace is too fast. Instead of clinging to the idea that I have to run 10k pace, I
back off and listen to the primary experience of the workout. The reverse is sometimes,
also, fortunately true. We can have good days and beat our expectations.
For running by feel, the "problem" of training is always to bring the secondary
experience of reflecting about running in line with the primary experience of running. A
physiological approach reverses this direction.
2. Running by feel is radically experimental. This is the sense in which running by feel
is more scientific than physiological science. Physiology can only deal with the human
species as a whole. Training requires a more radically experimental method because each
runner is a singular individual. What works best for me, today, most likely won't work
best for you--and might not even work well for me tomorrow. The runner must be willing
to try new paces, new intervals, and new intensities on a daily basis. In order to measure
the effects of this radical, ongoing experimentation, the runner needs an instrument that is
as singular as his or her running. This instrument is "feel," and it is built up over time
through experience with the multitude of possible sensations that running brings.
Training is an experiment of one and needs an instrument that is adapted to that
singularity.
3. Running by feel is comfortable with uncertainty. The great attraction of
physiological science is that it pretends to certainty. Everyone has a clearly defined and
measurable VO2max. Easy running means keeping your heart rate at exactly 140. Tempo
runs should be 20 minutes at 10k pace because that leads to the greatest gains in LT.
However, because running is an experiment of one--and that one is constantly changing,
sometimes developing, sometimes not--there is no certainty to be found in running, and
for this reason any training methodology that pretends to certainty is a bad methodology.
Paradoxically, running by feel more precisely measures progress in running because it is
vaguer. What does an easy run feel like? How much should a 5k hurt? No one can tell
you; it can't be done perfectly. But sometimes, by chance, we capture glimpses of how it
feels when it's damn close to being right. We hold onto those glimpses and use them
hopefully and uncertainly to guide our training.
Running by feel respects the mystery and risk of running by not demanding that it
conform to the demands of certainty.