I started really getting into fitness a little less than three years ago. At that time, I had zero experience with consistent exercise even though I knew that my body needed it. When I decided to make my lifestyle change, I went with jogging as my primary form of activity because that seemed to be something I could do easily with little barrier to entry. However, I knew nothing about jogging and couldn’t even go 1/4 mile.
Long story short, I kept with it, lost some weight, and started participating in local street races. I started with a 5K, then a 10K, then a 13K. I continually progressed to longer distance races without ever really focusing on my performance. As long as I could finish a race without dieing, I considered it a victory.
Last November, I crept through a marathon and checked off another box on my to do list. “So what’s next?” I thought to myself. Unless I wanted to progress into the strange world of ultra marathons, I had reached the end of the road… literally.
Also, even though I had achieved all my personal distance goals, I wasn’t really progressing physically. I wasn’t putting on much new muscle mass, nor was I continuing to drop any body fat percentage. In essence, I had plateaued.
Meanwhile, I began playing lots and lots of competitive Ultimate Frisbee. I know I’ve mentioned this awesome sport before, but in case you don’t know, Ultimate puts a ton of emphasis on sprinting. As I continued to play Ultimate multiple times a week I noticed that I was getting faster and faster without really having to punish myself with long distance running workouts.
This brings us up to my half-marathon that I completed yesterday morning. Even though I didn’t put nearly the time into training for it that I did last year, I met my goal of a sub two-hour race. I finished in 1:58:15 and felt great as I crossed the finish line. It was strange that although I hadn’t run farther than nine miles since the marathon last year, I was able to complete the 13.1 miles at a pace that was over two minutes faster than my pace last February. Needless to say, the constant sprinting I was doing with Ultimate seemed to really affect my race performance. While running farther distances is indeed challenging, running faster is a lot more fun to me.
I now plan to focus on performance in future races rather than trying to push myself into farther distances. This should definitiely help in getting better times at races but should also translate into better fitness as well.
“Super lean endurance athletes focus on performance.
If they run a distance, they’re training to run that distance again faster.
They have a structured training week hitting different adaptations from long low intensity endurance training, to high intensity speed work, to moderate intensity tempo work. Maybe even hill training.
Instead of trying to survive distances, super lean endurance athletes are trying to better their performance at distances.”
New goals:
- Run faster rather than farther.
- Pursue a lower body fat percentage rather than simply maintaining my current weight.
- Actually win a race someday rather than just finishing.
Coming off that great run yesterday has really been exciting. I honestly don’t remember the last time I was this pumped about running.
(photo via SaucySalad)
