Odds and Sods

News and notes from RP

We’re going to be a bit more informal this week because it’s the offseason. Hey, sometimes you need to give yourself a recovery week from work too. It also dawned on me that I’m a little more than two weeks out from a fairly epic adventure, and I haven’t done nearly enough preparation. 

Here’s the plan. If weather, health, and God knows what else holds steady in our favor, my friend Brad and I will be making our semi-annual pilgrimage to the Appalachian Trail in mid-November for a full day of bad-ass trekking across the state of New Jersey. 

We’ll get into more details on the trip next week, but for now I wanted to take a moment to address a few housekeeping topics. As Twitter continues to implode, I am winding down my presence on that cursed app. Twitter has never been a good traffic driver, and now it’s essentially useless for independent media outlets like this one. 

So, where can you find me? 

• Running, Probably has an Instagram account with workouts, photos, and a dash of running wisdom/motivation. One of my offseason goals is to update this feed more regularly. 

• After much internal debate, I’ve elected to make my Strava profile semi-public. Just shoot me a follow request and I’ll approve it. 

• And, of course, you can find me right here every week with a thoughtfully written essay about running, training, life, and whatever else is happening at the moment delivered right to your inbox. 

Over the past few months, RP has attracted hundreds of free subscribers without turning enough of them into paid subs. While I certainly appreciate the interest, it would be wonderful if we could increase the number of folks willing to pay me for the effort. 

As a reminder, paid subscribers have access to three years worth of RP archives as well as the ability to post comments and engage with other subscribers. (Everyone’s super cool and welcoming.)  

This newsletter only survives with your patronage. Thank you.  

Morning light in the Blue Hills.

Running as strength training 

As part of my AT training, I’ve been pumping iron in an effort to prepare my body for the rigors of the trail. My goal is to get my body physically stronger to withstand the strain that I know is coming from carrying a 15-pound pack for over 14 hours. 

If you’ve ever been on the section of the AT that runs through Jersey, you know it’s rocky, relentless, and almost completely devoid of charm. You have to want to do this, and that means keeping negative thoughts at bay for as long as possible. 

The second your pack gets too heavy, or your ankles start to weaken is the moment when your mental focus begins to slide. The longer I can stay strong and delay the inevitable, the more I’ll be able to enjoy what I’m doing. 

Good times.

Strength training is about more than hammering weights, especially for long outings on technical terrain like the one we have planned. You have to prepare your legs – as well as your mind – for what you’re about to face. To wit: steep hills, uneven footing, and more rocks than you ever knew existed in the whole universe. 

To get me AT ready, Avery has included 2-plus hour treks on some of the toughest and gnarliest trails we have around here. Namely: Skyline Trail in the Middlesex Fells and Skyline Trail in the Blue Hills. (Fact: If you’re on a trail named Skyline, you’re in for a world of hurt.)  

Pace is not just secondary on these trails. It’s non-existent. However long it takes to get from Point A to Point B is however long it takes. You can’t rush through something like this. You have to feel every bit of movement with each and every step. 

If you estimate taking 20,000 or so of those steps to cover 10 miles of relentless up and down, you can make a rough approximation of a killer lower-leg workout. 

• 5,000 step ups

• 4,000 forward lunges

• 4,000 squats

• 4,000 split squats 

• 2+hours of dorsal and medial ankle flexion

Not bad. Plus the views are spectacular. 

Doesn’t get much better than this.

Goes to show, you don’t ever know 

And finally, allow me to leave you with a bit of running wisdom: Thou shalt not put too much stock in thy warmup. 

I relearned that lesson earlier this week after a less-than-stellar warmup left me questioning whether A) My body was ready to run fast, B) If it was a good idea to run fast, and C) If I even wanted to run fast in the first place. 

At issue was some tweaky soreness in my right knee. My hope was the 2-mile warmup would loosen up my joints and allow me to run a set of four 1-mile repeats with reckless abandon. Instead, I felt constricted and cautious while searching in vain for an elusive rhythm. 

After a few moments of internal debate (see the list of questions above) I decided to give it a go for no other reason than I was already out there, so what the hell. Not the most well-considered rationale to be sure, but the one I had to work with at the moment. 

My goal was to run 7:20 splits, or right in the sweet spot between tempo and threshold pace. You can imagine my surprise when I ran sub-7 on the first mile with no issues and proceeded to run just a little bit faster on every rep until I was dropping 6:43 miles like it was my job. (Weird revelation: It kind of is my job these days.)

Boooooooooooom.

I mean, holy shit. What a workout. I haven't had one that good in months. In fact, that may have been my best workout of the year. Not only did the high-end speed feel smooth and relaxed, I didn’t sense any of the tweaky soreness that defined the warmup. 

Here’s the truly crazy part: I haven’t felt any pain after the fact either. It was there and then it went away … like magic. I’m sure the troubles will come back again in the near future –  the pain wasn’t totally in my head – but I’m happy to keep them at bay for the time being. 

Point is, sometimes you can feel less than 100 percent early in a run and still come up with a clutch performance. All you need to do is give yourself a chance.

Have a great weekend, everyone. I know a lot of you either have races coming up, or just had them in the last few weeks. Let us know how they went! Give yourself some kudos in the comments, or share some of your misery if things didn’t go according to plan. We’re all in your corner.