Sunday, February 22, 2009

Owie...

....my quads are killing me. Maybe not post-marathon kill but yeah, major ouch!! I managed to make it to the pool for a quick swim. No mile today and not even close in my 1-lap-under-water-holding-my-breath quest; but it felt good to get in the water and stretch my achy legs. As my favorite book of all times, Brain Training for Runners, states you should not wish pain away but welcome it as in indication of all the hard training you have done. Mentally tough runners accept pain - to the point of welcoming and embracing it and this enables them to run harder.

"Most people run a race to see who is the fastest, I run a race to see who has the must guts." - Steve Prefontaine

Steve's primary goal was to prove to himself that he could tolerate great pain in every race. He did not vaguely fear the pain before racing and deal with it during the race, as most runners do. Instead he consciously anticipated it and sought it out, and afterward used it to rate his performance.

Oh yeah baby, I must have performed well!!

If you're a head case runner as I am or mentally strong and want to become even tougher, the simplest way to achieve a greater habituation to suffering is to run as hard as you can in breakthrough workouts (not EVERY workout, Elaine (ahem) :) ) and tune-up races, according to my little book. So I will take my quad pain as a sign that I am getting mentally stronger. It all sounds good anyway.

I'm gonna go do a little quad stretching tonight and pray no household catastrophes develope in the next three hours so I can find my pillow before 10:00. THAT would be a wonderful treat to my aching legs.
Cross train - 1 swim

1 comment:

elaine said...

Who, me? You must know another runner who does this...Hey, I ran 9 slow miles last Friday, I really did. And the juice diet killed me off so I ran slow Saturday and Monday too. :)