Today kicked off the second week of my "accelerated" sub 3:15 marathon training in preparation for the Rocket City Marathon in December. Since I was unable to get in the easy 4 miles required on Sunday, I shifted my entire training routine by one day, eliminating my off day this upcoming Thursday. Oh well, who needs rest days anyway, right?
Rich and I met at my house for a late afternoon run around the UAH campus. We kept an easy pace around 8:30ish minutes per mile as required by my training plan. The temps were mild at around 72 degrees, but I'm not complaining. Discussing my new found desire to properly train for marathon races and ultras, I mentioned the fact that it has gotten harder to get up in the morning and go for that scheduled run now that we no longer just go our for an easy, long and slow run 3-4 times a week like we used to. No more "junk milage" as some might have called the majority of our previous training runs. Richard simply replied: "If it ain't hard, it's not worth doing it!" Quite profound and oh so true for me and probably all ultra runners, I thought. Next, I thought of Marshall Ulrich's memoir "Running On Empty" that I was currently reading and how this quote could have come straight from the lines of his book. It sure is reflected in his life. While Richard might not have been the first one to say this, it certainly resonated with me and I decided that it would be my new mantra whenever I would think about quitting...quitting a training run....quitting a race....quitting anything just because I suddenly became hard or difficult to do.
I finished the run thinking of what my training plan called for tomorrow, 3x 2 miles at a fast 6:50 pace average with 0.25 recovery jogs and a 1 mile warm up and a 1 mile cool down. Oh well, if it ain't hard, it's not worth doing;-)
Rich and I met at my house for a late afternoon run around the UAH campus. We kept an easy pace around 8:30ish minutes per mile as required by my training plan. The temps were mild at around 72 degrees, but I'm not complaining. Discussing my new found desire to properly train for marathon races and ultras, I mentioned the fact that it has gotten harder to get up in the morning and go for that scheduled run now that we no longer just go our for an easy, long and slow run 3-4 times a week like we used to. No more "junk milage" as some might have called the majority of our previous training runs. Richard simply replied: "If it ain't hard, it's not worth doing it!" Quite profound and oh so true for me and probably all ultra runners, I thought. Next, I thought of Marshall Ulrich's memoir "Running On Empty" that I was currently reading and how this quote could have come straight from the lines of his book. It sure is reflected in his life. While Richard might not have been the first one to say this, it certainly resonated with me and I decided that it would be my new mantra whenever I would think about quitting...quitting a training run....quitting a race....quitting anything just because I suddenly became hard or difficult to do.
I finished the run thinking of what my training plan called for tomorrow, 3x 2 miles at a fast 6:50 pace average with 0.25 recovery jogs and a 1 mile warm up and a 1 mile cool down. Oh well, if it ain't hard, it's not worth doing;-)
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