I am reading a running book called Brain Training for Runners. It is very interesting so far, but I really don’t think it is for me. The program is a little aggressive and prepares you for a specific race, of which I am not training for anything right now. Still I enjoy reading about other people’s thoughts on running and it always gets me fired up to get better.

One of the concepts he has is talking about (and others that I have read) are the different types of runs that you can do. Here are a few of them he mentions:Intervals – doing alternating fast and slow running; Hill Repeats – sprinting up hills for a short distance; Temp Runs – Runs slightly slower than your goal race pace; Base Runs – the building blocks of any program, just your all purpose runs that get you to your weekly mileage goals, and others. So today I did a Tempo Run. Actually all I did was push myself to run faster. If I caught myself slowing down I would up the pace. It was a somewhat tough run but it felt really great. After a couple miles I was questioning whether I should do this, but I kept going. I know I slowed down a bit towards the end, but that’s fine. I think I got the benefits out of it that I needed.

I have done these in the past and have noticed some pain in one of my knees or sometimes hips. Nothing like that today. If I had noticed it I would have abandoned the plan and run a more basic run or if really bad crawled back home on hands and knees. This is another concept that Matt Fitzgerald (the author of the above book) discusses; the importance of listening to your body and following it’s instructions. This is a concept I wholeheartedly embrace. Your body is your best coach. More on this later.

One last note before I get to work. last night I managed to give myself a new sports injury. It is probably one of the more common sports injuries in America as it took place on teh couch as I was cheering for my Blazers. They hit a great three-pointer and I wildly shook my fist as I jumped off the couch. Well I think in doing so I managed to do something to my elbow, probably hyper-extended it a bit. I call it couch-potato elbow. To add insult to injury (no pun intended until I wrote it) the Blazers ended up losing the game on a last second shot by Orlando. Grrr.