inspiring stare and an occasional squeak on my part, but one thing I recall often from this conversation was him saying to me that each day you train you add another page to your book until eventually you have a very thick book or in a runners case a very good base...I was watching Lance Armstrong last night in the team time trial and the commentators were saying how he has slipped back into the fold with relative ease. Now I am pretty sure that along the way to slipping "back into the fold with ease" he has done a bloody great deal of work to get back such a high level of fitness.... The other thing that he has done, or got, and that the younger riders don't have is years and years of riding behind him. This base of riding which he is able to draw on is something that the body remembers...
This is also something that the wise old wombat ,who is guiding me at the moment, also said.." Don't worry too much about the volume initially, the body will remember" having just completed another week in the 70 mile region I am beginning to understand. While my first 2 hour run killed me and I was left weary after the second I am finding that I have begun to run efficiently over the ground again. Yes there are things that I need to work on, like running up hills and retaining my form but, as I regain my strength I believe this too will return.
Already the Wednesday tempo run feels like a more controlled affair even though the pace is still increasing, and will do so for many weeks. But the bottom line is that all that work (those pages in my book) which I put in over 20 odd years of running has not all disappeared, the body is remembering...
This week was tough. The end of term and the start of school holidays brought with it the dreaded cold and sore throat. taking advice from Mrs Wombat I backed off for four days with easy running over 3-4 miles, ate copious amounts of raw Italian garlic (home grown) avoided any vampires in the process and have eaten enough oranges, lemons, and mandarins to feed a small country. The end result was a fast recovery and fresher legs.
The next two weeks will provide an opportunity to increase the mileage, volume and establish a new routine before returning to work. Hopefully this will allow me to carry the new routine into term 3. Again time will tell.
Barrel on wombats...
And i quote the honourable members assertion; "But the bottom line is that all that work (those pages in my book) which I put in over 20 odd years of running has not all disappeared, the body is remembering..." unquote...
ReplyDeleteThe Lance Armstrong example is a good one, also he has decades of race smarts, which probably has a lot to do with why he was in the breakaway group at the beginning of this week that included 25 riders that streaked the rest of the field, when the cross winds shifted a little...
be interesting to study exactly what happens physiologically. I am also coming from this position having raced on and off since 1989 at least over 20km (mostly racewalking in the first decade, but I remember running state all schools crosscountry against Ingraham and Kolbe in 1991, was 16th in that one) or more...