The Coach PH Plan

I met up with Coach PH for dinner a couple months ago and managed to get some free coaching from him. I explained to him my frustration with not being able to run more than 10-12 minutes without either 1) my shin muscles locking up or 2) My knee throbbing. His explanation was that I'm in much better cardiovascular shape than my body can handle . . or something like that. It seemed strange to think that after taking 8 years off running, I could still be strong cardiovascularly but it would explain all the stupid muscle injuries. He also said that the only way he's able to run now is to start off walking for 5 minutes and then rotate between walking/running.

My new running plan is to make sure I'm running very slow, painfully slow. I try to keep it around 9 to 9:30 pace. The walking/running intervals seems to be working better for me too. I'm up to 25 minutes of total running.

I'm not sure if I can stand this routine very long since my natural tendency is to make a countermove whenever some chick blows past me on the track. Next time I see him I'll ask him about adding a full-tilt 200 into the plan (barefoot of course).

Barefoot

Attempting my first week of completely barefoot running starting tomorrow. Went 30 minutes pushing the stroller today sans footwear as a warmup. Been back running for about three weeks after taking all of the winter/most of spring off for no other reason than it was cold and/or I was lazy.

Chris, I envy you your ability to run without the watch. I have to admit that I am completely the opposite for better, or infinitely more likely, for worse. Because I still dislike just going for a run, I find myself playing competitive games with myself for no rational reason. One of my frequent routines is to run the eight or so minutes to the local high school track, do 2 x 200 with the second one being all out, then running home. It's either that or run with a radio. So far my best is roughly 32 seconds with the running start. I do not anticipate improving on this significantly and it hurts way more than it should. But for some odd reason I enjoy it.

I've also been known to run a three mile loop starting from my house as hard as I can, for no other reason than the weird satisfaction I get from having pushed myself really hard just because I can. I like to time these as well, not because I'm trying to match what we did in college, but because I enjoy competing against myself from two weeks ago, or whenever I ran the course last.

The important difference between what I do now and what we did in college is I don't really care about the result beyond it being a sort of hobby. Thankfully, I know I will never go into some dysfunctional roast set off by my running fortunes ever again. That's probably where Chris and my approaches intersect. Running is just something I do these days, not really who I am. And yes, I'm aware that last line reads like it was taken from a Lifetime movie script about hoarding or taking in stray cats or something.

So there.