Kaizen

Some goals call for drastic action and innovation.  Others require constant and neverending small improvements.

My ultra-marathon goal falls in the latter category.  Quite obviously, working up to a run of 50 miles is something that requires a long and steady approach… considering I just started to run again.

The last couple of weeks, I have run only once a week, and walked on other days.  Each run was 50 minutes.. or between 4-5 miles.

This week, I’m increasing the frequency, but dropping the length.  I ran 50 minutes yesterday… and ran again today, but only 30 minutes.

I plan to keep most of my runs in the 30 minute time range for a while… with one LSD day.  The LSD day is quite important.  (LSD, of course, means “Long Slow Day”–  though I’m partial to the other meaning too

I estimate that it’ll take a year or slightly more to build up to running in a 50 mile race.   The general rule I follow is to increase my LSD day by one mile each week…  with my other runs slowly working up from 30 minutes to 60 minutes to a maximum of 90 minutes each.

Another important point about this training–  ALL runs are done extremely slowly, following the “slow burn” principle I wrote about earlier.

Running very slowly is the most important part of this system.  By running slowly, the body is spared stress.  It is not torn down.  It can, therefore, steadily adapt to greater and greater aerobic loads…   quickly increasing energy and endurance.

This method runs contrary to the “no pain no gain” mindset typical in most gyms…  yet it is a much saner and much healthier way to exercise.

I’ll post more updates on my progress in later posts.  For now, I’m near the starting point:

“Regular” runs of 30 minutes each.

1 Long Slow Run a week of 50 minutes.

…All done at very low speeds