When the year winds down and runners take a break from structured plans and training cycles, it’s the perfect time to plan your running goals for the next year. Running goals can be anything! Your goals can be more objective; a PR in a certain distance, run 2 marathons in the year, stay injury-free, etc.
Are you having fun when you run? If you are becoming stressed out and unhappy due to your training cycle, take a step back and re-evaluate the goals you’re chasing. For many runners, training is a way of life, but it can slip into feeling like work.
Marathons were a part of the first international Olympics in 1896, but it would be almost 100 years before women were allowed to compete. Before 1984, there was no women’s marathon category in the Olympics.
Do you run with music? We think of running with music as just a personal preference, but what if there were certain conditions in which running with music could improve your running to exhaustion time or help you forget about the environment you’re running in?
I am amazing at high-level training and at being a couch potato, but I basically fail at everything in between. At the height of my running career, I had 2 training cycles that consisted of 6 days of activity, 3 brick workouts (triathlon training), and 2 strength days, and I didn’t miss one day.
Running isn’t all about the lower body. Yes, you run on your legs, but what about the upper body? What about your spine? Think about this for a second: if you hunch over or extend backward at your spine does your core work?
I LOVE anything with pockets. Any article of clothing with a pocket gets me excited (with the exception of cargo shorts), so you can imagine how I was thrilled to try out Lululemon’s new Fast and Free 6″ shorts on my long run.
Iron deficiency is a common problem, is even more common among endurance athletes. Iron is lost through sweat, urine, the GI tract, and menstruation.
When you’re training, experiencing sudden post-nasal drip, fever, headache, or any other initial signs of an illness can really throw a wrench in your plans.
It’s been a busy summer of running, dinner with friends, weekends away, and maybe even a much-needed vacation.
