..easy ....'once a runner'......

laker, yes I have spent time in the Keys and could barely get myself on the plane to go home. By 2008 there will be a continuous bikeway from Key Largo to Key West, 106 miles in all, so you can run from island to island. As for hills, there are none aside from bridges where I live now, so I lose nothing. I do 20 milers on a rail-trail with precious little besides cornfields around me; running on an old railroad bridge with nothing but ocean on all sides would be a nice step up.

Key West would hardly be a retreat away from all worldy distractions, but Big Pine Key can be.

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quote:<HR>Originally posted by KudzuRunner:
Inspirational stories, please. <HR>

Well, there's always me.

I ran (badly) in high school - I never broke 18 in 5K. I stopped in college, but never fell too far out of shape. In July 2004, before my senior year, I went for a run with a high school kid who ran me into the ground. Embarassed and inspired, I took up running again. My progress was pretty much as one would expect that fall, going from non-runner to 17:36 5K. My first marathon was that February in 3:03, and in April I ran 2:54. That was a great race for me and representative of my level of fitness. This was all fairly reasonable progress, but the real strides didn't come until after this.

As of April, 2005: 2:54
As of October, 2005: 2:42
As of April, 2006: 2:35

What happened? I increased mileage considerably from about 50-60 to 75-90 by October. This winter, I was actually doing 90-100 consistently. I didn't race often, except for in short bursts leading up to and a few weeks after a marathon. Sometimes I felt extremely tired. But my body adapted to the mileage and when it was time, I was able to run a few workouts as well.

My opinion is different than that of many people in that I don't see racing as a great way to gauge your fitness in the off-season. For example, I raced three times in June, running 17:36 for 5K, then 17:01, and then running 38:35 for 10K. It was 88 degrees in the first and third races and great conditions in the second one. I raced once in July, and ran 50:00 for 8 miles. Once again, it was in the mid-eighties and humid. Unless conditions are fairly consistent, I just don't know how much you can learn from that.

Just a little background on the "woodshed" term. The musician working on a piece would drill the various sections so repeatedly that he/she was not 'welcome,' shall we say, in the house, and was sent to the woodshed to practice. If you can imagine someone playing the same 3 measures of some difficult piece in excess of 100 times, you will get the picture. Musicians will often say things like "I'll have to woodshed that section of music..."

-Symphony musician and (slow) marathoner

I just posted something to this effect on another thread but thought it appropriate to speak about here as well . . .

About five or six years ago, I got into marathoning. That said, I have been a runner since the craze kind of began in the 70s. It was actually my Dad who got me started when I was about 12 or 13. Through the years, I had always been a good runner, but mostly a recreational runner who would run about 30 miles a week for fitness.

When I finally got into marathoning, that changed. I got really serious and quickly progressed from running about a four hour marathon to flirting with, but not quite managing to achieve, a sub 3. I began working with a coach, and improved a decent amount, but nothing earth shattering.

Then, last year, I made what I consider to be the most profound change I've made to my program . . . I lost weight. A bit of a gym rat as well, I did this in part by laying off the strength training, but I also paid very close attention to my diet, using some well respected formulas to calculate my caloric needs then restricting my intake by about 250 calories per day.

Frankly, running 60 to 70 miles per week, I'd been under the impression that I could eat as much as I wanted, and it turns out that this was definitely not the case; turns out it is possible to run A LOT and still not shed excess weight.

In any case, the result of this loss? Not only did I run PRs at every distance in my run up to Boston, I PR'd on that storied course, breaking 3 hours by 4 seconds on a 70-degree day. And since then, I've continued to run a PR in almost every race I've run since.

Admittedly, I definitely intensified my training a bit as well, going from 2 longs a month to 3, upping the mileage a bit more, and adding some additional tempo runs, but I know that the weight loss has made the biggest difference. I went from finishing in the top 30 sort of thing to finishing in the top 5 to 10 at most smaller, area races.

The rule I've heard is 3 secs per mile faster for every pound lost, and I would agree wholeheartedly.

All this said, I do have on lurking suspicion, and that is is that the most important catalyst to growth is change. Weightlifters know that if they don't change their programs every six weeks or so, it's all too easy to simply plateau. Even if you're working hard, the body seems to adapt and hold fast once it has gotten used to a certain set of stressors.

I'm beginning to notice a similar effect in my running. More specifically, the first time I had a breakout marathon preformance was when I bumped my mileage from about 600 to about 900 miles in preparation. Prior to that I had been bonking and running 3:09, 3:05, that kind of thing. The first year I upped the mileage, I ran 3:00:25 and would have broken three but for some intestinal distress that caused a little slowdown. But most importantly, I finished strong for the first time ever. I was elated. I figured just a bit of fine tuning and I had it, but in the five years that followed, despite the fact that I was running the mileage more comfortably than before and racing at shorter distances better than ever, I just went back to my old finishes and times. Not until I upped the workload again and kind of shocked my body did I finally break 3 and then go on to run an even faster marathon 6 months later. Sadly, however, despite having had my best training season ever in the run up to this year's Boston--again, with PRs in every prep race--I bonked again trying to run 2:54. What all this makes me suspect is that we are a bit like junkies, that once our body gets used to a certain workload, we need to really up the ante if we want to exact a greater performance. I'm not certain of this, but again, it's becoming a bit of a suspicion.

With that in mind, I stand by the fact that the only word I can use following my weight loss is "turbocharged"; it's the best thing I've ever done for my running!