I was a hobby runner from about 1979 to around 2006, a runner not a walker, as most of the old school runners I wouldn't think of walking during a race. Jeff Galloway's teachings were for the newbie without the stamina to keep up the pace. Walkers in races were just runner wannabees or worse in the way. Then one day while running down the hill at WKU, I tore some tissue in my left Achilles tendon. Being a purest I still tried to continue my running. A slow three miles would require a 3 day recovery, PT helped but as soon as I tried to resume running the pain would begin again. My last attempt at running was a local 5K on grass, half way through I could no longer tolerate the pain in my tendon and I had to limp in.
We have a few race walkers here in my town and I would see them doing their race usually prior to the run portion and sometimes along with the runners if there wasn't a separate walk race. I decided to give it a try. So I taught myself to walk within the rules of the sport. I was pretty good at it to and did well in local races. So I decided to go to the state Senior Games that are held every year.
I arrived at the track, at the KY Wildcat's sports complex, in Lexington Ky, ready to do my first judged competition. I signed in early and was doing some easy walking to warm up when I heard a group mention race walking. There was a group from a Louisville race walking school there to compete. I walked up to them and introduced myself. The coach, teacher, of the group asked me where I learned to race walk and I told him I was self taught and this was my first judged event. He said, "Well this is the qualifier for next years National Senior Olympics and my students are going to get the slots to go. The best thing for you to do is watch us and learn and then practice for a year then come back, you don't belong at this level of competition."
I slinked off and kept up my continual slow walking laps around the track to keep warm before our race. Then when it was time we lined up for the race. The judge gave us the rules and then we were off. I was dead last and pretty discouraged, at that moment I made a decision, I was going to go as hard as I could go till I couldn't go anymore and see what happened. I decided it was time to find out if I belonged out there or not. So I did the race walk equivalent of a sprint and started passing other walkers and at the finish I was third and had a slot for the Nationals.
The other walkers were a lot friendlier after the race. I took what happened to heart and vowed to always encourage other walkers especially ones new to the sport of race walking. I went to the nationals the next year and placed 8th in the 5K and 9th in the 1500m. Then life kinda had it's way with me for a few years and this year I'm ready to qualify again for next years nationals and hopefully now as a much better and more experienced walker, try for a medal.
Thanks for reading.
Friday, March 16, 2012
Thursday, March 15, 2012
The High
You hear a lot about that elusive feeling the 'Runner's High'. Just what the heck is that and how does one make it happen more often. Everyone who has been involved in endurance sports for a while has felt it. Your running/walking/biking along and suddenly the pace becomes so much easier, your flying along like your not even touching the ground and it feeling effortless. You realize that you are a lot farther along in your distance than you realize and your energy level is amazing.
It's almost as though someone stuck your mind in the body of a stronger athlete. Like there really is a stronger more powerful person inside you and you are finally letting him/her loose and letting them run. You can't believe how far along you are in your distance, you don't even remember getting this far. You're moving so effortlessly, like it was what you were born to do.
Everyone has probably experienced this,' you are going home from work, your tired and the drive is long, all of a sudden your home and you realize you don't remember the trip, like you were transported there'. That is because when we do something that we've done a lot of times like driving at night on a long road that we have driven many times, the auto pilot portion of our brain takes over, the same part of our brain that controls breathing and the other automatic functions of our bodies.
We are uniquely wonderful design, we have way more to us than we understand. It's said by those that study that sort of thing that we only use about 10% of our brain power. I believe that is true for our bodies also. I think we have way more potential than we realize. Were it not for that we would never have athletic records broken the way we do. I believe that when a new athlete starts breaking records that they have somehow learned to stop controlling their every action during their performance and let go.
When we are experiencing that 'High' we have let go and turned our body loose to just do and not be controlled like a puppet on strings. When records are broken and broken badly, often the athlete has made it look effortless. Perhaps it was effortless and that athlete had a peek into that magic that we all posses inside of us.
Thanks for reading
It's almost as though someone stuck your mind in the body of a stronger athlete. Like there really is a stronger more powerful person inside you and you are finally letting him/her loose and letting them run. You can't believe how far along you are in your distance, you don't even remember getting this far. You're moving so effortlessly, like it was what you were born to do.
Everyone has probably experienced this,' you are going home from work, your tired and the drive is long, all of a sudden your home and you realize you don't remember the trip, like you were transported there'. That is because when we do something that we've done a lot of times like driving at night on a long road that we have driven many times, the auto pilot portion of our brain takes over, the same part of our brain that controls breathing and the other automatic functions of our bodies.
We are uniquely wonderful design, we have way more to us than we understand. It's said by those that study that sort of thing that we only use about 10% of our brain power. I believe that is true for our bodies also. I think we have way more potential than we realize. Were it not for that we would never have athletic records broken the way we do. I believe that when a new athlete starts breaking records that they have somehow learned to stop controlling their every action during their performance and let go.
When we are experiencing that 'High' we have let go and turned our body loose to just do and not be controlled like a puppet on strings. When records are broken and broken badly, often the athlete has made it look effortless. Perhaps it was effortless and that athlete had a peek into that magic that we all posses inside of us.
Thanks for reading
Monday, March 12, 2012
Planning
To race your best and peak when you want to for important races it helps to have a plan. Most of the famous runners and race walkers will sell you a plan off their web sites. The problem with those are that they are for that "average' person, whatever that means. They also are on a set time table that probably will not fit your personal schedule. I know a lot of people that used a canned marathon plan and it took so much time out of their lives to train that they never did another marathon.
It's good to have a plan but it needs to be customized to you not that average person. to start with you need to decide how much time you can comfortably spend training and still have a normal life. You shouldn't have to give up having a life to make a life style change. You have to have time for a normal family life, working full time as most of us do and have plenty of time to sleep and recover from hard workouts.
Sounds impossible doesn't it? Well it's not. Making life style changes can be Incorporated into your normal life so you still can enjoy all the positive things you don't want to have to change. To start with look at a daily schedule of you current life obligations. I find that if I do my hard workouts on my days off that I can get everything accomplished and still train. Next look at your goal races. If your only going to be racing 5Ks then you don't need a lot of distance workouts. You also don't need to train like an olympian if your plan is just to finish a half or full marathon.
Even if you want to train to race and be competitive there are really only three basic workouts that you need to make sure you get in every week. The first is a track day where you do measured distance at speed. The next is a long slower day to build endurance. The last is kind of a mix where you go further than your target race, unless it's a half or full marathon, and mix in speed ups. An optional good fourth day for competition training is to do your planned race distance with each mile faster than the last. A fifth day of training if it fits into your schedule is a free form day where you just go for a run/race walk of 3 to 5 miles at whatever pace you feel like, even untimed, just let it flow. Then the last 2 days at least should be active rest. Those are the days you get errands done, do family things and get the chores done.
For marathon training you can combine workouts to get the time in motion. Like doing a slower 10 miler and then your yard work. Or a 10 miler and a walk/bike ride with your spouse. Give it some thought and you can come up with more ways to make a life style change fit your life.
Thanks for reading.
It's good to have a plan but it needs to be customized to you not that average person. to start with you need to decide how much time you can comfortably spend training and still have a normal life. You shouldn't have to give up having a life to make a life style change. You have to have time for a normal family life, working full time as most of us do and have plenty of time to sleep and recover from hard workouts.
Sounds impossible doesn't it? Well it's not. Making life style changes can be Incorporated into your normal life so you still can enjoy all the positive things you don't want to have to change. To start with look at a daily schedule of you current life obligations. I find that if I do my hard workouts on my days off that I can get everything accomplished and still train. Next look at your goal races. If your only going to be racing 5Ks then you don't need a lot of distance workouts. You also don't need to train like an olympian if your plan is just to finish a half or full marathon.
Even if you want to train to race and be competitive there are really only three basic workouts that you need to make sure you get in every week. The first is a track day where you do measured distance at speed. The next is a long slower day to build endurance. The last is kind of a mix where you go further than your target race, unless it's a half or full marathon, and mix in speed ups. An optional good fourth day for competition training is to do your planned race distance with each mile faster than the last. A fifth day of training if it fits into your schedule is a free form day where you just go for a run/race walk of 3 to 5 miles at whatever pace you feel like, even untimed, just let it flow. Then the last 2 days at least should be active rest. Those are the days you get errands done, do family things and get the chores done.
For marathon training you can combine workouts to get the time in motion. Like doing a slower 10 miler and then your yard work. Or a 10 miler and a walk/bike ride with your spouse. Give it some thought and you can come up with more ways to make a life style change fit your life.
Thanks for reading.
Monday, February 13, 2012
New World Of Knowledge
We live in a very interesting age. Every single person who wants to start an exercise program, lose weight or just heal their body of a life time of abuse has a world of information available to them. So ummmm, how come we are fatter and more out of shape than ever before in the history of the human race? We sure can't use the excuse that we don't know how. Or can we?
Let's just for arguments sake that I just wrote a book about losing weight and getting in shape. The main change you have to make to follow my program is to sit on the couch and watch TV while you eat chips and drink beer. However you must buy my supplement that absorbs all the fat and extra calories you are taking in. My supplement is made up of grass that is processed into powder form. Will my supplement work, I don't know but I can with good conscious tell you it will do you every bit as much good most all the other supplements out there. I'll just get me a couple of well muscled people to say they use my product and look what it did for them.
So ummmmm, there might be some information out there that's useless? Yes the above scenario is not that uncommon. There is a lot of crap out there promoted by people trying to get your money and make you think that they have the magic pill that you have been looking for. If you have never heard this before, the magic pill doesn't exist. Oh there are steroids but they are dangeous and they don't give you the body you desire without you doing the right stuff along with taking them.
So what is a person to do? To start with you have to start moving. No lifestyle change begins on the couch. Motion has to be the corner stone of your program. If you haven't exercised for a long time or ever, start with walking. Do not begin a running program if you haven't exercised for a long time. Begin walking 30 min, 5 times a week. Every two weeks add 5 min to your walk time until you are walking an hour at a time for 5 times a week. By the time you get to that point you are ready to look at branching out into another form of exercise if you want to, like running or race walking. If you try to go right into running you will probably hurt yourself and quit, so walk first.
Along with motion, start cleaning up your mind. Sweep out the negative. Start teaching yourself to look at things more positively. If you have friends that drag you down, stop hanging around with them. Stop watching so much TV, there is a lot of crap on there. Reality shows are filling you with the wrong outlook on life. Spend more time improving your knowledge of the good in "REAL" life instead of the made up world.
I just read something written by a champion race walker that just won a major world competition. His advice to others, stop drinking soft drinks and eating junk food. Gee what a concept, wonder if that helps? Yes start eating food that is fresh and fresh frozen rather than highly processed to the point that it's not really food anymore. Those soft drinks are chemical mixes, they are made to taste good but give us no nutrition value at all and very likely cause a lot of the health problems we civilized people are plagued with.
Get in motion, hang with positive people, improve you knowledge of the real world and eat fresh food. That sounds simplistic but that is the real magic pill to becoming a healthy, strong and "well" person.
Thanks for reading.
Let's just for arguments sake that I just wrote a book about losing weight and getting in shape. The main change you have to make to follow my program is to sit on the couch and watch TV while you eat chips and drink beer. However you must buy my supplement that absorbs all the fat and extra calories you are taking in. My supplement is made up of grass that is processed into powder form. Will my supplement work, I don't know but I can with good conscious tell you it will do you every bit as much good most all the other supplements out there. I'll just get me a couple of well muscled people to say they use my product and look what it did for them.
So ummmmm, there might be some information out there that's useless? Yes the above scenario is not that uncommon. There is a lot of crap out there promoted by people trying to get your money and make you think that they have the magic pill that you have been looking for. If you have never heard this before, the magic pill doesn't exist. Oh there are steroids but they are dangeous and they don't give you the body you desire without you doing the right stuff along with taking them.
So what is a person to do? To start with you have to start moving. No lifestyle change begins on the couch. Motion has to be the corner stone of your program. If you haven't exercised for a long time or ever, start with walking. Do not begin a running program if you haven't exercised for a long time. Begin walking 30 min, 5 times a week. Every two weeks add 5 min to your walk time until you are walking an hour at a time for 5 times a week. By the time you get to that point you are ready to look at branching out into another form of exercise if you want to, like running or race walking. If you try to go right into running you will probably hurt yourself and quit, so walk first.
Along with motion, start cleaning up your mind. Sweep out the negative. Start teaching yourself to look at things more positively. If you have friends that drag you down, stop hanging around with them. Stop watching so much TV, there is a lot of crap on there. Reality shows are filling you with the wrong outlook on life. Spend more time improving your knowledge of the good in "REAL" life instead of the made up world.
I just read something written by a champion race walker that just won a major world competition. His advice to others, stop drinking soft drinks and eating junk food. Gee what a concept, wonder if that helps? Yes start eating food that is fresh and fresh frozen rather than highly processed to the point that it's not really food anymore. Those soft drinks are chemical mixes, they are made to taste good but give us no nutrition value at all and very likely cause a lot of the health problems we civilized people are plagued with.
Get in motion, hang with positive people, improve you knowledge of the real world and eat fresh food. That sounds simplistic but that is the real magic pill to becoming a healthy, strong and "well" person.
Thanks for reading.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Not Entirely Tamed
We see a lot of movies these days about were wolves, creatures that are people with a wild untamed side. The animal within. Perhaps that isn't entirely fiction, perhaps there is a part of each of us that has never been tamed.
Wild things must move and endure more than humans. In wild nature, the swift escape being eaten and the swift predator eats. There is no lazy in the wild. Those of us that choose to become athletes have a lot in common with the wild things we share our world with.
We learn to push ourselves to accomplish more and more, not because we have to, not at first anyway. Later after we have hardened our will and our body, yes we have to, we are no longer satisfied unless we have our time of play and motion, our wild time. That wild time puts us in touch with that part of us that has not been tamed by the good life. We tend to get lazy with all the ways that society has made life easy and comfortable for us. But for adult athletes, we crave our wild time.
Work is a necessary fact of life for most of us. It's easy to get in a routine of work, TV, eat and sleep. When we are in that mode we still have that wildness inside but we become very good at ignoring it. But once we discover the joy that comes from regular motion we can never entirely go back to the couch. It's like for a short time we are set free, free to be wild and untamed.
Thanks for reading.
Dave
Wild things must move and endure more than humans. In wild nature, the swift escape being eaten and the swift predator eats. There is no lazy in the wild. Those of us that choose to become athletes have a lot in common with the wild things we share our world with.
We learn to push ourselves to accomplish more and more, not because we have to, not at first anyway. Later after we have hardened our will and our body, yes we have to, we are no longer satisfied unless we have our time of play and motion, our wild time. That wild time puts us in touch with that part of us that has not been tamed by the good life. We tend to get lazy with all the ways that society has made life easy and comfortable for us. But for adult athletes, we crave our wild time.
Work is a necessary fact of life for most of us. It's easy to get in a routine of work, TV, eat and sleep. When we are in that mode we still have that wildness inside but we become very good at ignoring it. But once we discover the joy that comes from regular motion we can never entirely go back to the couch. It's like for a short time we are set free, free to be wild and untamed.
Thanks for reading.
Dave
Sunday, January 29, 2012
I will not win because I have better stuff than them, I will not win because I have a fancy health club to go to, I will not win because I'm more talanted than they are, I will win because I train harder than they do. When that starting gun sounds it doesn't matter who you are, what matters is what you did to earn this day.
War Panda
War Panda
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