3 DAYS A WEEK?

A while ago I had an entry about a guy at work who told me that running so much was bad for my knees. This is the same guy that doesn’t run because his knees hurt from playing too much basketball. Anyway, the other day he gave me a copy of a Runner’s World article regarding how to run a marathon on 3 days a week. Links to the program as well as discussions on letsrun and Runner’s World can be found here.

I was a little surprised by how “catty” the Runner’s World responses were. It was almost like I was reading letsrun. One thing that stood out to me in the article that I didn’t see mentioned anywhere is that the participants in the study lost an average of like 8.5% body fat. That’s great, but I don’t have 8.5% body fat to lose. How much of their improvements can be accounted for just because of their weight loss? I’d like to see the same study with, say Boston marathon qualifiers who are fit, lean and have been running for 10 years or more. I'd be willing to bet that the results would be much different.

Since I’m “racing” tomorrow I just hopped on the treadmill over lunch for an easy 5 mile run. I did drop down to 6:40 for the 4th mile. Maybe it was because I felt guilty about not doing a speed workout yesterday.

I put racing in quotes because it looks like we’ll be facing less than ideal conditions. I’m guessing it’ll be at least 75 at the start with dew points in the low-to-mid 60s. Later in the day it’s supposed to get up to 96 with a heat index near 105. My plan is to go out much easier than normal (6:30-6:40 range) and just pick people off as they melt into the pavement.