The 8-mile run theory

When Stephen and I first embarked on our triathlon life style we were enjoying ourselves so much that we just trained and trained and raced and raced. The first year of competition for me was about 7-8 months after he raced for the first time at the end of the previous summer season.

 

We had both taken our own personal fitness challenge, when I hit 50 and started moaning about how we had both let ourselves go a bit and how much weight we had put on. We joined a gym and started going there three times a week and the improvement was almost instant. I ignored the tread mill for a month or more until challenged by the manager of the gym who stood working the controls as she intimidated me into running my first half mile. We were soon doing 10 km road run events and then ten miles, half marathon etc.

 

In my first year in triathlon with Steve and a younger friend, who was much fitter and better all round, than us, we competed somewhere in the UK every weekend for the entire season. We did that the next year also. The first Ironman came in under two years and at that time we were riding 100 mile bike rides every weekend between seasons, whatever the weather.

 

There was also a long run every weekend.  In later years we came to the conclusion that miles in the money box could be drawn out at any time and that there was no need to do the head-banger long rides and long runs repeatedly. In the fullness of time, we began to think that the amount of miles in the course of one week, could be gathered together comfortably, without risking injury by over doing the mileage, considering that neither of us was in the first flush of youth. So if you did three of four runs in any seven days and the total still added up to 25-30 miles you could still pull out a marathon even though we might not be running further than 8-10 miles as our longest run. This also seemed to reduce the strains and aches and pains.

 

We still work to that theory but we have a bit of variety with the Sunday run, being the main session on the week. This summer we have set ourselves a new set if ideas, that we are really enjoying and that seem to work. Our most common run right now is 8 miles off road and we are trying to get three 8-milers under the belt every week. If we have other things that stop us doing that, like work; we will throw in a four mile to ease the pressure. We are still after all these years hitting 25-30 run miles every week. Classes done in front of the TV at home are, we both firmly believe keeping us relaxed and supple. Ballet a couple of times a week and Qigong almost every day that also helps to keep us in a good frame of mind and spirit.

This morning we completed our fourth 8 miles in a row quite hard because it was so muddy.