Forums >Running 101>Why is my running not improving?
Stranger than you know
It's worth remembering that no-one gets faster/better slowly and steadily. One month you gain a little bit of endurance, the next you see nothing happening at all, then suddenly you have a breakthrough in speed and find yourself flying easily at a pace that felt tough two months ago ... only to stall once again for months at the new fitness level. Every now and then you will even go backwards and slow down. It's all part of the process.
#RunEveryDay
Thanks for this reminder this morning before my long run.
Half Fanatic #9292.
Game Admin for RA Running Game 2023.
A wise man once said this:
We want running to be what life is not. We want there to be a straight line between the work that one puts into their training and the times that result from that work. But there are no straight lines in nature. It's all curves and blind corners. Accidents and dreams. It's out of these raw materials that the runner is built.
I'll tell you the secret right now: being the runner that you want to be takes uncovering the rarest of combinations: the patience to work through injuries and sickness, in cold rain, across silent mornings, and beneath winter moons relentlessly towards your goal, and the almost reckless extravagance to reap what you have long sown in the right instant, at the Moment of Truth. It takes the confluence of chronos and kairos to ride the razor's edge, to run the perfect race, to be that guy--the runner. That's what it takes, no more and no less.
And yet here we find ourselves once again. We wring our hands like worried farmers gazing over dry fields. We chart the correlation between race times and weekly mileage, looking for some hidden truth. Believing perhaps that if we worry hard enough over it, God will have mercy, the drought will end, and the big heavy drops will start to fall.
"Good-looking people have no spine. Their art never lasts. They get the girls, but we're smarter." - Lester Bangs
Many components to running faster - But give me a big aerobic engine to work with and we can mold it into a faster machine. Before I really "ran" (13 years ago) I was losing weight being an animal on the elipcial machine. Every day doing 1-2 hours of high intensity exercise (160-190 heart rate). After 3 months of this I ran a for about a month and it was nothing to build quickly up to 15-20 miler at a good pace. I still believe the eliptical is one of the easiest transitions into running there is. After 6 weeks of running, I go bored and put back on the 90 pounds I had lost - So no more running for 5 years after that.
If you have to stop and walk, you are going too fast. Slow down as much as you need to in order to run more or less continuously. The shins should improve with time, and while nothing is as good for your running as running, any high end aerobic activity (biking, swimming) will help you to some extent.
If you have to stop and walk, you are going too fast. Slow down as much as you need to in order to run more or less continuously.
The shins should improve with time, and while nothing is as good for your running as running, any high end aerobic activity (biking, swimming) will help you to some extent.
Long dead ... But my stench lingers !
So what I was saying is running is not the only game in town - If your body is limiting the amount you can run - Just work on your general aerobic fitness with something less stressful to your body. Swimming, Biking, Stair Climber, Eliptical ... Build your engine!