Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Shop ‘til You Drop!

Not really.  “RUN ‘til You Drop” is more accurate way to describe this. 
Since our Coach Alem is Ethiopian, we, as Agonites, need to keep a close eye the rival:  The Kenyans.  This week, Canadian Olympic Marathoner, Reid Coolsaet drops some insight on how these guys train.  Reid is currently not-so-undercover in Kenya, training in high heat and high altitude for what is believed to be Boston Marathon (he doesn’t say…he just says a “marathon in April”).
On Tuesday, he did a little 7X2km Repeats (so it’s like our 1 mile Repeats) with a pack of Kenyans that were around his marathon pace group.  As with any group training, a few handful will go super fast and way over their pace.  (We’re looking at you Maharaja!)  Of course, they couldn’t keep up with the faster group, so most of the group will drop out after 5threpeat.  They didn’t even try to finish it at their own pace.  Similarly, during a cross country race Reid participated in, he saw a bunch of people just try their hardest to keep up with the lead group, only to DNF.
What’s interesting, and very different from how we train, is that these guys literally just run til they drop, and hope that next time, next day, next loop they will stay with the lead pack. 
The mentality is to stay with the lead group as long as possible and hope that next week they can stay up there longer. As opposed to completing the full workout and hopefully later on they can complete it faster.  (Float On)
So are we too paranoid of DNF?  Are we too scared to be looked upon as a quitter?  Are we too afraid to run with all our speed?  This needs some investigating. 
Some one quick!  Make every run “run til you drop” run and see if you will PR in the next race!!

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