Think about your most successful season(s)-- PRS, wins, or breakthroughs. What did you do in training or in your lifestyle (eating, sleeping, etc.) that you think precipitated your success?
Think about your most successful season(s)-- PRS, wins, or breakthroughs. What did you do in training or in your lifestyle (eating, sleeping, etc.) that you think precipitated your success?
In HS, my teammates and I started massaging each other. It helped to get us excited about coming to practice and we all eventually scored!
Consistent higher mileage w/o getting injured.
Before my big breakout (senior) year in college, I spent the entire summer living in my deserted college town, and training mostly solo with very little distractions. I got a student worker job in one of the offices and I just worked, ate simple self-cooked meals, and ran.
It's surprising how much a jump you can make in your performances when you do a long block of training with minimal distraction and solo running. The solo running was good in that I ran my paces and my own efforts, rather than being coaxed into efforts that aren't entirely under control by running with others.
Started training with people faster than me and shortened/quickened my turnover.
Did both of these at about the same time so I'm not sure which contributed more, but after almost 20 years of running, I went from running in the 17:30-18:00 range for 5k to 16:00-16:30 in less than a year, and subsequently dropped well below 16. Maybe it was neither of these things but just the years of hard training and high mileage finally catching up and taking me from a really really bad runner to a just-normal-bad runner.
Ran more. Then some more. Then some more.
Stopped getting injured.
Did so by: running more mileage, running twice a day, quickening cadence, running on grass.
The biggest factor was running twice a day. the first run was always quite slow and would work as a shakeout to loosen my easily tweaked muscles up for harder/longer runs.
$10 indiglo watch starts beeping at 5:30 am
struggle to turn on the first 3 tracks of the prefontaine soundtrack (...cliche yes)
suited up for a new england early morning jog in january before the outro of baba o'reilly while contemplating first block ap english.
MTWRF AM - 2-3 miles - no questions asked
running every single day. made a big difference.
I made a big breakthrough in the 1500 right out of college.
I added mileage.
But when I tried to add more mileage the next year I flattened out. Even regressed.
And had my final PR after a big taper with just speed.
Lesson learned - it's never easy.
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High mileage. Did 100 mpw base building for about 10-12 weeks. PRs at every distance from marathon to 5k. Wish I could do it again, but lack of time and age have taken that option away.
meticulously planned out where I was going to do what workouts, what parks were best for tempos, intervals, and long runs, and how they would fit into my schedule. And eliminated all crap from my diet. I've had some prs since then, but the biggest change then was the area I was living in allowed for very hard off road running and road running which you won't find in most suburbs.
oheo wrote:
Stopped getting injured.
This
Nordic skied for 20hrs/wk the previous three weeks.
I got serious in the weight room.
I was injured last winter and i started basing for xc in april. This allowed me to slowly bumped up my mileage to around 100 MPW. I also sucked up my pride, followed a plant-based, high-carb diet and dropped about ten pounds.
went from a 27:58 8km to 26:06 8km in one year. i know that's nothing spectacular, but i'm living the dream and that's all that matters.
Long stretch of higher mileage.
Lowered mileage to avoid injury, ran 5-6mi tempos/sub LT runs everyday on grass. Made it through the summer without injury. Ran a 2.5min pr in my first 8k race that season.
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