Saturday, January 10, 2009

PBG's Cardinal Rules of Training

I was asked for some advice the other day, and it made me start thinking. There are lessons I've learned along the way (often the hard way unfortunately) that lead me to feel very strongly about certain things. I thought it would be fun to make a list of them, so here are the first three. In no particular order:


1) WEAR GOOD SHOES. I say this all the time. It's worth repeating! Your shoe is the buffer between you and the ground. If you're going to be out there pounding the pavement, you better be doing it with the right equipment.

2) ALWAYS GO BEHIND. When you're running across an intersection, do not assume that the car at the stop sign sees you! If at all possible, always go around behind the car even if you have to go out of your way.

3) ONLY RACE ON RACE DAY. This is a big motto of mine. Training is mentally and physically different from racing. If you push yourself at race pace every day in training, how are you going to get yourself fired up for your races? Not only do you risk injury and burnout by racing your workouts but you probably won't improve. The day to really test your limits and see what you can do is race day. Training days have specific goals, and they're not to set a PR or to beat that guy in front of you on the bike path. Training should be challenging, more so for some workouts than others, but remember that you want to peak on race day, not on your Sunday morning training run.

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