THE TOTAL RUNNER

Ealier in the week Alison wrote an entry about what’s next for her. As I read it I thought “that’s exactly what I do.” After a goal race, when I’m just getting back into the swing of things, running comes first. Then as I get more consistent I start adding other “things” to my training, like eating right, stretching, strength training and mental training.

Last year I tracked my eating using Fit Day for awhile and I found my diet usually fell into the 60/20/20 range (carbs/protein/fat). Since I tend to eat a lot of the same foods, I’m pretty confident my diet is fairly healthy.

Stretching and strength training are the first things I usually slack off on. As I get older, I tell myself I need to pay more attention to them - more for a healthy lifestyle than to help with my running. Strength training is like coffee and sex, there are articles supporting and refuting all 3 when it comes to enhancing athletic performance. I tend to agree that strength training should be sport-specific. I also think there’s something to all this talk about core strength, core power, core performance, etc. So this is the first year I’ve done any type of ab work.

Since college, I’ve been intrigued by the mental side of sports. It’s interesting that we hear about it all the time with top athletes, yet very rarely read anything about it in the top running or triathlon magazines. To me sports psychology is more than just having a positive attitude. It’s about the ability to relax, visualize, focus, build self-confidence, etc. If you’d like to learn more, you can get a used copy of The Total Runner for less than a buck. Another option is Running Within.

I often wonder if the Tiger Woods, Michael Jordans or Lance Armstrongs of the world apply some of the techniques in these books or if the mental side just comes naturally to them.