^^^This. Didn't run my first Marathon till I was 40 with 4 kids. I think I could have been 30 minutes fast if I had trained and run one 15 years earlier.
What's the Worst running advice you have ever been given?
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"Sugar is bad"
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Do yoga. Eek. So bad for your hip joints!
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WOW, people are so stupid. However, that is actually pretty funny though don't be giving me any ideas gosh. JK
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Don't eat or drink water less than an hour before you race because it will slow you down. I also had pain in my knee and i was told to suck it up and deal with it and I didn't need to worry about it turns out it ended up being tendinitis and I had it all summer long after I found out i had it because it didn't heal properly.
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Who is giving all this great stuff? I mean, nobody gives me running advice at all, ever. As a kid, my dad said maybe one thing. I ran quite a bit with a few guys in my teens but I just don't remember anyone lecturing each other. I realize most of you ignored this nonsense, but there still must be some self-appointed all-knowing running guru lurking around out there do dish it out. Although from the length of this it seems like there are a lot of them out there, I guess I've never come across that type. Do people stop you on the side of the road?
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Precious Roy wrote:
Always stretch before a run. Started running in the early 80s when everyone thought that you had to stretch all the time. Some of my worst injuries were from stretching.
Meb's book has an entire chapter on it, between 15 and 20% of the book I believe. The way I understand it, he spent more than an hour a day stretching. Not just before and/or after running, but a whole session by itself too. His prime was since the turn of the century, with the book written near the end of his career.
In Running With The Buffaloes, the Colorado team stretches before running. The reporter recounts the runners in the 'stretching circle'. This was also comparatively recent, taking place in 1998. I am guessing Wetmore approved.
Has this kind of thing stopped by now? Did Salazar tell Rupp not to? I am guessing that he told his star pupil to stretch, but that is, of course, a guess. Do we know? -
-Eat before you run
-Negative split the marathon -
"Train hard. Win easy"
"1 more mile/1 more rep"
"To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift"
... basically and and all of these "rah-rah" quotes to get you to push yourself to the limit and hammer every run and workout during training.
I lived by these mantras for the bulk of my years of running, and I'd find myself getting burned out and/or injured 1-2 times per year. I'd have knockout workouts, and then bonk in races just a couple of weeks later. Running was constantly frustrating.
Post-collegiate running, with my focus now on the marathon, I take a different approach. I don't have access to many training partners or even a track to hammer fast intervals, so I've spent the last few years just doing very basic fartleks, hills, and steady tempos week after week. No single workout is ever super taxing, and I never really push to race effort, but I get something in every single week. The only times I ever run at or faster than race pace (outside of races) are for short (10-20 sec) strides, 1-2 times per week.
I've destroyed my collegiate 5K and 10K PRs, and went from a 2:35 first marathon (big blowup), to a 2:22 3-years later. No signs of slowing down, and I've never enjoyed running as much as I do now. No more blowups, and I haven't had a major injury since college. It's much easier to notice injuries before they get too serious, and there's less of a risk of amplifying an injury when your workouts are just medium effort stuff...
Basically a farmer strength mentality to training. Multiple years of consistent, medium-effort workouts >>> sporadic seasons of on and off again max effort workouts. -
"Go check out letsrun.com. They have all the answers"
