Just how important is your running ability in an event like this? Do you need to run a blistering fast 5k if you want hope to put up 50+ miles in WTM, or is toughness all you need? I set out to answer this question by analyzing self-reported running times from a sampling of WTM athletes. I polled athletes to investigate the correlation between running ability at various distances and WTM performance. Effort was made to get accurate and recent race results or honest best-effort estimations based on recent training sessions. If you’re interested in the computations or how I acquired the data, see the “about the data” section at the end of the analysis.
Read MoreI really do love traveling - seeing new places, immersing myself in different cultures, and stepping outside of my comfort zone. But as with any adventure, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. Some aspects of travel are challenging.
I knew at the beginning of the trip that I’d have to do a totally different workout regimen if I wanted to maintain my fitness during my month away from home. And boy did it work!
Read MoreThere’s plenty of ways to turn your indoor & asphalt workouts into trail specific training and become a trail running monster. But first, we need to understand what makes trail running so dang hard. While the differences between running trails and pavement are many, the most significant fall into one of three broad categories: Rhythm Disruption, Muscular Demand, and Elastic Energy Return / Impact Forces.
Read MoreFinding the right pace for your easy runs is important; running these too fast may jeopardize future workout quality and dampen training adaptations to recently completed sessions. Properly paced easy runs enhance recovery, bolster adaptations to hard training, and prepare you for the next hard workout. Easy runs promote blood flow to healing tissues, stimulate beneficial hormone & enzyme release, and improve general cardiovascular & structural endurance. So, how should you find your easy run pace?
Read MoreNowadays, we know our VO2 max, race times, how much weight we can lift for a variety of exercises, how many calories we can eat in a day, how many steps we take, how many minutes we sleep, and even have devices that tell us how stressed we are (this is laughably ironic), but are we really healthier, happier, or fitter for it? In a culture whose lack of natural movement and diet has finally caught up with us, we’ve turned to science to explain our modern problems, extracting the “best” or most “important” components of health & fitness, turned them into quantifiable numbers, then focused more on these metrics than the deeper physiological states they’re intended to represent. No wonder we’re in trouble.
Read MoreA lot of strength athletes, endurance athletes, and coaches of all kinds really hate on group fitness. They either feel that they are athletically superior to the “gen pop” you often see at group classes, or they are so infatuated with their own coaching style that they have to assume the worst of any group class, without even taking the time to try a class and see what it’s all about; what kind of person it could benefit, what kind of workout it really is, or how any of these classes could be potentially be integrated into an intelligent program to offer your clients some fun, variety, and social interaction into their training plan.
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