The Hard Work

Today is going to be such an easy day.  No double runs and just a short trail run on one of my favorite COS city park trails around lunchtime.  After that, feet up till Saturday!

Getting ready for this race has been such challenge but thankfully the last few weeks of training have been very productive.  Especially since May 21, when I got the antibiotics which helped me to kick that coughing thing that had been plaguing me for nearly a month.

Lots of hard work... I read something this week that truly resonated with me.  It is from Hal Higdon's book Run Fast and he cites physiologist Al Claremont for this statement.

          "Too many people write themselves off as having bad bodies, when they posess
more potential than they realize.  They simply are unwilling to do the hard work, including speed training, necessary to convert their supposed bad body into a good one."

This sentiment sort of dovetails into another chapter from another book by Matt Fitgerald entitled Training Weight.

            "In our society, exercise is promoted as a means to achieve desired results.  Exercise product manufacturers and service providers compete by promoting better results through more efficient means.  It is assumeed that you can not possibly enjoy exercise;  therefore fitness solutions are marketed on claims of minimizing the amount of time the consumer is required to suffer through them to achieve the results that he or she wants."

Again just another indicator how people and or athletes regardless of their level of performance sometimes seek out the quick fix, the easy fix, that magic bullet.  Unless somebody is just insanely genetically gifted there is no away around it.  This thing of ours takes hard work and dedication, effort and sacrifice.  

As for me, I am still learning and that makes this whole running endeavor a lot fun for me still.  The part that cracks me up though is the complete and utter simplicity of the entire process.  I need to run faster so I go to the track which I loathe and work out there and guess what?  I start to run faster.  I suck at running in the heat and suffer greatly when the temperatures rise during a race.  So I start running in the heat of the day and take advantage of our mini-heatwave and now I feel more comfortable and confident in warmer weather. (But I am still not going to ever try Badwater.)

These were weaknesses of mine that for some stupid reason or the other I guess I ignored or just hoped would take care of themselves over time.  In regards to heat I have never taken a proactive measure to learn to deal with it but instead always relied on hope and faith for cooler weather on race days, which was never guaranteed.   Some hard work had to be done the past few weeks and I know that in the future there will be even more and I will probably discover some other simple thing or approach to work on something else.  But for now I know I have done all that I can to get ready for this one.

This video speaks volumes on how we disregard just the simplest concepts for being more fit and having a more healthy life.  And it is funny to boot!