"The ensuing is a message to my amigo Tim Luchinske. Lucho recently finished the Austin Marathon just this side---the dark side---of his goal pace. He has made the switch from being a professional triathlete (and a damn good one at that) to purely running. He has some high aspirations as a runner and thus he should: he's fast. Natch. But he sometimes slips into a rut with the way he thinks and trains. Often, he trains faster than he races.
I know Tim well and I know how he thinks. In many ways we think alike. In many ways we do not. Sometimes neither of us thinks at all. I'm trying here to get him to think differently. Perhaps you too can find benefit in this and think of things in a new light.
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Lucho, it's odd how you ended up at exactly 100 miles for the week once more.
Don't be enslaved to this number; it's meaningless. I mean really, what is a mile? And what are a hundred of them?
In Latin, it's "mille passus" (literally "a thousand paces" with one pace being equal to two steps). The Romans first used it and denoted a distance of 1,000 paces or 5,000 Roman feet as a mile.
Nowadays, a mile is 5,280 "feet" (as opposed to 5,000). Again, utterly meaningless, because "feet" are meaningless. So too are inches. Yards are also meaningless. The same goes for all those messed-up metric measurements too. Man makes up these things to get an idea of how far something is, but for the athlete it's far better to track time (or the elapsing of life) and intensity and intuition. Mileage is best as a reference point, not a goal.
I dare you to run 99 miles next week to prove it won't make you any less of an athlete. You'll free your mind up by not being enslaved to something that has no bearing whatsoever on your performance.
On the Pacific Crest Trail, I knew a guy who essentially walked the entire 2,659-mile trail, all the way from Mexico, only to cease progress just prior to his last step, the one that would've taken him into Canada. He didn't care to complete the trail, nor did he believe in borders, so he said, so instead he turned around and walked back to the nearest town in Northern Washington's rugged Cascade Mountains, a cool little settlement (that cannot be reached by car) called Stehekin, 80 miles south. Other hikers figured he was nuts. I personally thought it was pretty cool (or amusing at the very least) even though he still fell victim to the whole notion of believing in distance, since he didn't want to do the "full distance". This falls in a similar vein as: "He who resists society is himself a slave to it," or "A rebel is not a rebel if he tries to be..."
I coined a phrase on the trail---"Smiles, not Miles"---because so many hikers simply stared at their GPS units and guidebooks the entire way, overly concerned with "making miles" and "finishing the trail". Absolute nonsense I say! I would love one day to damn near reach the summit of Mount Everest and stop just short of it and then turn back, to honor all of man's meaningless pursuits.
My point is to give up the arbitrary aims like "mileage" and open your mind to a new (non)way of thinking. I know you pretty well and I think you'll raise your level of performance and progress because of it. And don't try to tell us all that reaching 100 miles was merely happenstance, because it's happened this way a few times now! Coincidence? I think not! Miles make champions not because of the miles themselves, but because of the time it takes to do them. Do them with some "quality"---the ever-ambiguous term---and they'll assist you in your cause that much more.
Tomorrow or in the next few days, I dare you to go run without a watch or a heart-rate monitor or your GPS unit. Don't even look at the clock when you leave the house, and don't look at it when you return. Or, better yet, go somewhere where you're unfamiliar with the layout of the land, so you don't think about the distance. Be a caveman for a day and run simply for running sake and not "training". Run because you want to and not because of some silly goal to be met. Stop when you're tired; eat snow when you're thirsty. Sprint when you want to; walk when you want to. Shit when you have to. Scream out a barbaric yawp because you mean to.
At week's conclusion, simply inscribe "Caveman Day" in your training diary or blog and leave it at that. The day of the caveman is the day that will help you attain your dreams, not those repeated meaningless ones aiming for yet another arbitrary number. Don't find meaning in meaningless means. Be a caveman and be your best."
http://chuckiev.blogspot.com/
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