Hi, I had a great run this morning guys with one of the boys I’ve been training with for about four years now, Dave Kennett, who qualified for the Hawaii Ironman for the second time at Ironman Malaysia not so far back. Hey, great run.
Just an endurance run, but lots of hills for us, and Dave even commented in the run he said ‘well I wonder what the elevation gains was in that run?’ I mean that’s the sort of shit I know all you guys measure on your Garmins or whatever but it’s not something I really think about myself.
Apparently, the run had plenty of elevation but I think Dave learned a thing or two about how I run the hills myself, and how I advocate running the hills, especially in the long run. And he was probably slowing down more than he usually does, so it was really good for him to run alongside of me. We’re very very similar in paces, you know, thresholds, Ironman speeds, you know, so it was good to run together. But, as I was saying to him, it’s just so undervalued, running long, running with some variable terrain, I stipulated within the session that when I’m coaching a lot of athletes, especially those without the same level of aerobic development, I’m typically not saying to run a course like we ran today because they don’t yet have the capability to stay as aerobic as we can on the hills. And I’m not saying right up to an aerobic threshold, I mean staying pretty low-aerobic, very controlled, you know, not much of a lactic acid lift off the base line level, it’s just we’re still getting the muscle tension and we’re getting a strength endurance benefit from the run. So, look I was also thinking while I was running that if you can consistently run around four or five hours a week over a very long time frame, hey, without anything particularly fancy in your plan…man, it’s the way forward. A lot of people don’t even run enough.
So, you know, crack that five hours a week. Run it consistently. I think, or close to that. Over time, a great benefit.