FARMER'S MARKET

In Self-Made Olympian, Daws talks about Ron Clarke (or was it Ron Hill?) training with two other guys under Lydiard. During the base phase they went out for a run at 7:00 pace. After they got in better shape, Ron picked up the pace while the other two guys stayed at 7:00 pace. They all improved, but Ron went on to set a bunch of World Records. The moral: listen to your body. When you get more fit, you pace should naturally come down.

With that said, I pushed the pace a little more than “normal” during my nice 5 mile run over lunch. It wasn’t a tempo run, but rather one of the “comfortably exhausting” workouts. One of the things I have to work on is getting my head around the fact that while the pace feels fast, I’m really not working any harder than when I wasn’t as fit. I have to turn off the “I’m going too fast” switch in my head.

Jim sent me a rebuttal email regarding my Letter to the Blogger post.

JIM: You know, I think runners sometimes confuse standings and statistics as values rather than symbols: symbols are supposed to represent achievement of the values we hold dear; the down side is that symbols are ephemeral and corruptible. I am a satisfied and successful runner, not because of standings, but because of the values that were important getting into this activity and what it has done for me personally: physical conditioning and athleticism, challenging myself to reach higher, opening myself to make friends, peace of mind, getting out of doors, genuine affirmation/validation, etc.

ME: You couldn’t be more right about what running has brought to my life as a whole. And if my blog was about all the benefits I’ve received, people I’ve met (especially the last 2 years), experiences I’ve enjoyed, then it'd be nothing but positives. But I try to focus my blog on the competitive side and obviously that’s not all positive. Maybe the “other stuff” would be a good post for next week – just to remind me and my readers that there’s more to running than the competitive side.

My Guidant race report got so long that I decided not to mention what we did afterwards. My friend Eric was playing with his band at the St. Paul Farmer’s Market. My family and I met Jim there. Eric's wife took a group picture of us, as well as this cute one of Katie (if I do say so myself).

Other photos can be found here. Eric is the bass player and fiddler who’s wearing the Nike Frees.