Every morning my freshman year of high school, I’d hop in my friends car, an old Volkswagen beetle with a broken speedometer, to head to cross-country practice.
Great article! I think that metrics and gadgets can provide feedback and help us reflect on what our body wants to tell us. The issue is twofold: 1. many gadgets are not reliable and valid (like sleep trackers), providing wrong feedback. 2. People tend to rely on the metrics presented without reflection.
"When in town, windows down," is a useful mantra to repeat when driving in a built up area. The breeze makes me realise how fast 30mph is compared to when I'm cocooned in the car with the windows up.
Yes, the same does apply to running (can't anyone just go for a run anymore without posting it somewhere and telling everyone about it?)
I myself used a Casio from June of 2020 when I started running till November of 2021. Since then I have been using Pace Pro. Main reason to use watch is I generally get lost on the routes of trail races impacting my performances. Since, I have run with casio for 4 years, I am highly attuned with feel & effort based training.
It goes both ways, training is both Easy & Complex. If we are into starting phase meaning we have started any activity we need not focus on zones as our first priority should be we should have the drive to do it for at least couple of years to see some significant gains in physiology. And yeah at the start every kind of training works as a stimuli, it comes after a couple of months or one can say a couple of years as well when they need to focus on 1% improvement markers. Fundamental is the key meaning putting in the work, nutrition during the workout & for the whole day for months on and recovery in terms of sleep. Sticking to basics does wonders but in this era of information overload & easy access to it, we are focusing firstly to 1% improvement markers rather than 99%.
But even I myself have learned this the hard way, I have read tons of books, listened to almost fifteen thousand podcasts. When I read Scott Fauble & Ben Rosario's book Inside a Marathon, then I got a glimpse of how much of just running people like myself are doing, meaning just running and not training. People want to just run fast in just a couple of weeks or months, but this not how our physiological & muscular adaptations take place. As Kilian Jornet said it takes months and years for your bodies to adapt to the stimuli and our cells and mitochondria to adapt and get the stimulus to get fast and build a huge aerobic base. People don't want to run easy, they just see it on multiple social media platforms and then come to a conclusion I am no where near what people run, I need to run this fast but they need to study multiple coaches from Arthur Lydiard, Renato Canova, Jack Daniels, Joe Vigil, Ed Eyestone, Mike Scannell and others as well.
And isn't mileage just a by product of showing up with consistency to put in the work? Racking up miles is just one form of consistency. Eating enough food through out the whole day to fuel the body while training for any endurance activity needs consistency, sleep also needs consistency, strength & mobility work needs consistency and mental fitness also needs consistency. All these things need consistency and needs to be done in balanced manner, if one thing gets under done- then either the body crumbles or we will not be able to perform at our best level. If we take care of our bodies and listen to it, it will provide us with great performances but if we just keep banging the door w/o listening to it, somewhere down the road it will crumble and then we will think we were more focused on racking up miles which was just a small part of training.
There is one thing told that work harder than everybody else in the room but one doesn't tell it all boils down to mental component a lot as well, what kind of internal monologue goes b/w our ears is a great predictor of either limits or propels our progression, the amount of improvement we can do in any domain/walk of life.
Franz Stampfl, coach of Roger Bannister said-The great barrier is the mental hurdle.
If Roger Bannister's coach knew it 70 years ago, then there is for sure people need to know that yeah mental component is a huge chunk of whether one succeeds or not.
There is one thing told that work harder than everybody else in the room but one doesn't tell it all boils down to mental component a lot, what kind of internal monologue goes b/w our ears which either limits or propels our progression, the amount of improvement we can do in any domain/walk of life.
There is a lot of unraveling that can be done in terms of one's psychology. No one lays much emphasis on this thing b/w our ears. Iga Swiatek might me the first lawn Tennis player to have full time sports psychologist travelling with her. When Madison Keys won Australian Open this year, she was asked what lead her to win her first grand slam, her straight away answer was Lots of Therapy. Francesco Puppi has talked about therapy & Jennifer Lichter also.
Invert is what one needs do once in a while & life is majorly lived by inner scorecard rather than outer scorecard because we are playing it by the rules of other rather our own rules. And looking out for the environment & people around has to be done consistently to gauge where one is & is this where one wants to be, how much of chronic dissatisfaction is because of the immediate environment.
Love this, very topical for me at the moment. I am a 200 & 400m split checker on each and every interval! I've moved onto the roads (which are messy - curvy and undulated) and I decided to let go of splits and I have had multiple breakthroughs already, including a 5k PB - on a Wednesday mid-Marathon Block!
This is exactly why I created the Breath Runner Method. Training by tuning into our internal landscape, guided by the immediate feedback our breathing gives, allows for better, healthier adaptation to our efforts in my opinion.
Great article! I think that metrics and gadgets can provide feedback and help us reflect on what our body wants to tell us. The issue is twofold: 1. many gadgets are not reliable and valid (like sleep trackers), providing wrong feedback. 2. People tend to rely on the metrics presented without reflection.
"When in town, windows down," is a useful mantra to repeat when driving in a built up area. The breeze makes me realise how fast 30mph is compared to when I'm cocooned in the car with the windows up.
Yes, the same does apply to running (can't anyone just go for a run anymore without posting it somewhere and telling everyone about it?)
p.s. in a serendipitous moment, I read this in the Big Issue this morning: https://www.bigissue.com/culture/film/herbie-volkswagen-beetle-film/
Amazing reminder and great analogy. Thanks for the effort. Well done.
I myself used a Casio from June of 2020 when I started running till November of 2021. Since then I have been using Pace Pro. Main reason to use watch is I generally get lost on the routes of trail races impacting my performances. Since, I have run with casio for 4 years, I am highly attuned with feel & effort based training.
It goes both ways, training is both Easy & Complex. If we are into starting phase meaning we have started any activity we need not focus on zones as our first priority should be we should have the drive to do it for at least couple of years to see some significant gains in physiology. And yeah at the start every kind of training works as a stimuli, it comes after a couple of months or one can say a couple of years as well when they need to focus on 1% improvement markers. Fundamental is the key meaning putting in the work, nutrition during the workout & for the whole day for months on and recovery in terms of sleep. Sticking to basics does wonders but in this era of information overload & easy access to it, we are focusing firstly to 1% improvement markers rather than 99%.
But even I myself have learned this the hard way, I have read tons of books, listened to almost fifteen thousand podcasts. When I read Scott Fauble & Ben Rosario's book Inside a Marathon, then I got a glimpse of how much of just running people like myself are doing, meaning just running and not training. People want to just run fast in just a couple of weeks or months, but this not how our physiological & muscular adaptations take place. As Kilian Jornet said it takes months and years for your bodies to adapt to the stimuli and our cells and mitochondria to adapt and get the stimulus to get fast and build a huge aerobic base. People don't want to run easy, they just see it on multiple social media platforms and then come to a conclusion I am no where near what people run, I need to run this fast but they need to study multiple coaches from Arthur Lydiard, Renato Canova, Jack Daniels, Joe Vigil, Ed Eyestone, Mike Scannell and others as well.
And isn't mileage just a by product of showing up with consistency to put in the work? Racking up miles is just one form of consistency. Eating enough food through out the whole day to fuel the body while training for any endurance activity needs consistency, sleep also needs consistency, strength & mobility work needs consistency and mental fitness also needs consistency. All these things need consistency and needs to be done in balanced manner, if one thing gets under done- then either the body crumbles or we will not be able to perform at our best level. If we take care of our bodies and listen to it, it will provide us with great performances but if we just keep banging the door w/o listening to it, somewhere down the road it will crumble and then we will think we were more focused on racking up miles which was just a small part of training.
There is one thing told that work harder than everybody else in the room but one doesn't tell it all boils down to mental component a lot as well, what kind of internal monologue goes b/w our ears is a great predictor of either limits or propels our progression, the amount of improvement we can do in any domain/walk of life.
Franz Stampfl, coach of Roger Bannister said-The great barrier is the mental hurdle.
If Roger Bannister's coach knew it 70 years ago, then there is for sure people need to know that yeah mental component is a huge chunk of whether one succeeds or not.
There is one thing told that work harder than everybody else in the room but one doesn't tell it all boils down to mental component a lot, what kind of internal monologue goes b/w our ears which either limits or propels our progression, the amount of improvement we can do in any domain/walk of life.
There is a lot of unraveling that can be done in terms of one's psychology. No one lays much emphasis on this thing b/w our ears. Iga Swiatek might me the first lawn Tennis player to have full time sports psychologist travelling with her. When Madison Keys won Australian Open this year, she was asked what lead her to win her first grand slam, her straight away answer was Lots of Therapy. Francesco Puppi has talked about therapy & Jennifer Lichter also.
Invert is what one needs do once in a while & life is majorly lived by inner scorecard rather than outer scorecard because we are playing it by the rules of other rather our own rules. And looking out for the environment & people around has to be done consistently to gauge where one is & is this where one wants to be, how much of chronic dissatisfaction is because of the immediate environment.
Love this, very topical for me at the moment. I am a 200 & 400m split checker on each and every interval! I've moved onto the roads (which are messy - curvy and undulated) and I decided to let go of splits and I have had multiple breakthroughs already, including a 5k PB - on a Wednesday mid-Marathon Block!
This is exactly why I created the Breath Runner Method. Training by tuning into our internal landscape, guided by the immediate feedback our breathing gives, allows for better, healthier adaptation to our efforts in my opinion.