Here’s the difference:
—BEFORE THE RUN–As I’ve written before, often it’s about the attitude at the start. Joy and gratitude help!
—DURING THE RUN–How I feel during the run is the result of a good warmup and proper stretching. Dressing right for the weather and being properly hydrated (instead of overwatered.) And for me, very little in the stomach.
—AFTER THE RUN–According to Dr. Steven Jonas in the Merck Manual of Medical Information, there are two possible types of muscle discomfort after exercise.
—–Desirable: delayed onset muscle soreness (doesn’t start until hours after intense exercise) Usually affects both sides of the body equally, more or less. Goes away after 48 hours. Feels better after the warm up for the next workout.
—–Undesirable muscle discomfort: injury, usually felt soon after it occurs, is worse on one side of the body, does not disappear after 48 hours and becomes more severe when exercise is resumed.

—Novice runners often interpret all muscle discomfort, even good discomfort, as a sign of injury.
—Experienced runners often advise “running through” or ignoring the pain. But that only works if the “injury” is delayed onset muscle soreness. A real injury may stop you in your tracks and trying to “run through” it will not work. Keep going, but if it doesn’t go away in a short time, it is a real injury. Fortunately, you won’t usually do any more damage trying to “run through” the pain.
—For some, a true injury is an opportunity to quit running. For the dedicated among us, it is motivation to proactively rehab the injury and to take greater care in the future with stretching and warmup.

Need a break? A short vacation? Read a thriller “The Milk Market.”
—Read some short reviews first at
http://www.themilkmarket.com

—So, is it enough to just keep doing the same thing day in day out, year after year? There is comfort in routine. (Unless you are overcome with boredom.)
—In my experience, you need to be seeking constant improvement just to maintain your fitness.
—As you age, if you are satisfied with the same old route, the same old pace, you will gradually lose your edge. I am not suggesting that your goal should be winning races, but if you keep pushing yourself, incrementally, to run farther, faster, better, you will at least maintain. At a minimum, maintenance should be your goal. And I hope you can do even better.
—How about a New Year’s resolution? Resolution means Resolve. By this time next year try to be a better runner than you are today. Aspire! Resolve!

—Why do you run? Each of us has a different reason. The motives range from fitness to fatness. Health to weight loss and points between like vanity. Face it; until they get that emaciated death camp look, runners look good. For me, solitude is important. That’s why I usually run by myself.
—Solitude is followed closely by concern for my heart. In my time I have attended too many congestive heart failure patients. I would rather die with my running shoes on my feet. And, in spite of 40 years of running, I have had two heart attacks. So for me cardiac fitness is serious motivation.
—Whatever gets us on the road, the answer for many runners is LSD, Long Slow Distance. Long runs with your pulse in the training range, aerobic, are best for your heart and for weight loss.
—Training range is a pulse between 70 and 85% of maximum. Maximum heart rate is best determined by a stress test, but the rule of thumb is 220 minus your age. So if your age is 45 your maximum heart rate is 175. Best cardiac training would happen at between 125 and 150 beats per minute.
—Keeping the pulse in the perfect training range for a long time builds the heart’s stamina, strength and probably increases collateral circulation in the heart, increasing blood flow to the muscle. And in LSD running your body learns to burn fat instead of readily available carbs. That’s what you want!
—Trouble is, sometimes it’s hard to stay in that range. It’s natural to want to run faster, to be better, to go farther. And I have always suggested that we should run the way we feel. If you feel good running faster, go for it!
—Fortunately, the more fit you become with LSD, the faster and farther you will be able to run while staying in the training range. Patience, patience! Win, win!

—The worst running advice…I’ve ever seen…was in a newspaper article some years ago. It quoted a high school track coach with questionable marathon qualifications. He suggested that all marathon training doesn’t have to be at a run. Of course, you need to put in the miles, but some of it can be at a walk.
—What? What did you say?
—To give him the benefit of the doubt, he may have been referring to interval training. Yet interval training is far more structured than just slowing to a walk when you feel like it.
—The value of running intervals is undeniable, particularly if you are working on speed. But training to run a long race like a marathon requires teaching yourself to endure, to keep going, to keep running! That is, after all, the challenge. For most of us It is as much an endurance contest as a race.
—In 26 miles you may have to walk, depending on how well you have trained. But if you train that way, I KNOW YOU WILL HAVE TO WALK! Actually been there, done that!
—Don’t be fooled! If you are going to run a marathon or a half marathon and you want to be adequately trained, you will need to put on the miles. Without stopping to rest!

—I know. You are tired from a long day at work; either from physical labor or stress that seems physical. Up and down stairs, in and out of the car, running back and forth, busy all day, you believe that work keeps you in shape.
—Truth is, ever since childhood you have learned to make work easier. You have been trained to use the most efficient tools, to rest periodically, to take breaks, to get help, to work in teams and to use any creative means to minimize effort. You get the job done, but in a way that makes it possible to keep going hour after hour.
—Exercise is just the opposite. Instead of trying to minimize effort we try to make it harder. Whether to lose pounds or to gain strength, speed and stamina, we intentionally add weight, reps and miles, ever increasing the difficulty of the work-out.
—So we try to make work easier and exercise harder. That means usually one can’t be substituted for the other. Sorry.
The upside? When you understand that work is not exercise, you have to believe that exercise is not work! Be happy to lace up your running shoes and hit the road.

—Atrophy, it’s not what you get for winning the race! No, just the opposite. It’s what you get for not running at all.
—Recently I skipped running for a few days. Well, 3, 4 then six days. By day 6, my body ached. Muscles were sore. I know my age is working against me, but is it the flu? Did I catch the dreaded H1N1? Or, my gosh, maybe this is what it feels like to get really old!
—Anyway, I felt like something your dog drops in the park. That’s not good.
—But now, after my run today, I feel great. These muscles need to keep working, or they start fading away. And they don’t go peacefully. They let you know. I decided long ago, that it’s better to feel a little tired and sore from a hard work-out than to have the kind of pain that comes from doing nothing.
—It makes me wonder, are the aches and pains that some older people feel just the result of not doing anything? With aching muscles from atrophy, it’s hard for them to get started.
—There are times when you may not feel up for a run. Physically. Could it just be a little atrophy? Maybe a run is just what you need.

Would you like to train effectively, avoid injury and really enjoy your runs? Without dedicating every day of your life to the sport? I have been running for nearly forty years and I think I have a system that provides just those benefits.

For years I worked as a firefighter on a 24 hour shift, basically one day on then one day off. Except for some futile efforts to train while on duty, my running had to be limited to every other day. Oops! There goes the fancy marathon training schedule!

Most of the published Marathon and race training regimens that I have seen demand obedience to a rigid work-out schedule. They must be designed by (and for) professional runners. They make sense if you have the time and energy to train full time. Or if you are so driven that you are willing to abandon your family, your friends and your spare time. Most runners will try to follow such a system, modifying it to suit their needs and to the time available.

But what I discovered was that my body liked the firefighter’s schedule. Of course some of my days off were for sleeping, but most often there was enough energy for a run. The advantage for my body was the scheduled 48 hour recovery. Instead of 24 hours between runs, my body had an extra day to get rid of the lactic acid build-up, repair overused muscles and rebuild my desire to hit the road.

Now I am retired, but I maintain the 48 hour recovery between runs. If it worked for me in my thirties, I knew it would work for me as I aged. So now, approaching 70, I am still running! But I don’t have to run every day. In fact I prefer to run Monday, Wednesday and Friday, taking the week-ends off. It happens that often a run gets pushed back a day, so I am running Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

Try it! You have to get past your Type A traits and realize that you can have intense work-outs without running every day. And with less pressure and anxiety, less chance of injury, you may look forward to your runs with new enthusiasm.

—I had to skip it this month, but in the previous two years I ran with a team in a 200+ mile relay. The race, or endurance contest, went from LaCrosse, Wisconsin to Minneapolis. (This year it started in Winona, Minnesota.)
—Here’s the program. Each of 12 runners does 16 miles, more or less. In about 30 hours, more or less. Simple enough!
—So, what’s different? For years, I ran by myself. Only rarely with a companion except in Marathons or organized events. So I always ran at my own pace. At times, I worked on speed. Sometimes distance. Once in a while, I just ran for a specific period of time. By myself. In fact, I am the poster boy for the “loneliness of the long distance runner.”
—Never before, at least before running the relay, did anyone else rely on my performance. Years of doing my own motivation was now replaced with teammates cheering? Now I had to feel guilty if I didn’t have a good run? Well, all the young people on the team were pretty gentle with their token old guy (some of them were my children.) And besides, it was a diverse team with some new runners.
—The challenge, besides the desire to run well for the team, was camping out in a van with 6 or 7 other runners and all their stuff. For about 30 hours! It is hard to eat properly and nearly impossible to sleep.
—But it is great fun. I missed it so I will try to sign on with a team next year. And it’s for charity.

— In case you don’t remember, Jim Fixx was the author of “The Complete Book of Running” a best seller in 1977. He did not popularize running but his book became a reference for novices. And for many, Fixx became a well-known symbol of the sport. Then he had a heart attack and died at the age of 52.
— For some of the multitudes of non-runners his death was an “I told you so!” moment. “See! I knew it! Running is bad for you!” Smug and self-satisfied, thousands climbed back into their couches and rocking chairs.
— But what the exercise-averse masses never learned was that before he began running at the age of 35, Fixx smoked 2 packs of cigarettes a day and was overweight at 240#. An additional risk factor—his father died at age 47.
— Ironically, “The Complete Book of Running” referenced studies showing that exercise and running helped extend life.
— As a heart attack survivor and Marathoner (before and after the heart attack) I can tell you that running, by itself, is not enough to prevent cardiovascular disease. In my case, slightly elevated cholesterol and incredible work-related stress combined to nearly kill me.
— So runners and others are subject to the heart disease risk factors. The main risk factors are elevated cholesterol, smoking and high blood pressure. Secondary, but critically important, are: being male, age over 50, sedentary lifestyle, obesity, family medical history and stress. Some of these factors are out of our control, but its clear we can control our risk.
— And we have to keep running until the doctor or the undertaker tells us to quit.

It ain’t where you start, it’s where you finish.

The early bird gets the worm—but the second mouse gets the cheese!