50 Days of Runnng: Or, What Happens When Beth Actually Reads Jack Daniels
Monday, I finished fifty days of running in a row. Was this a good idea?
Hell yeah!
Most of the running was done sans Garmin, at easy pace, paying attention to form and working on running with ease. A few weeks into the experiment, I started added quality workouts, from Daniel's Running Formula.
Result: Three VDOT points. And I can probably safely give myself another one.
Stuff I learned:
-I like running every day. I've taken the last two days off and I don't like it. I feel like I haven't brushed my teeth, or something.
-There was technically one day of 50/50 when I did everything in my power to run, but didn't. I decided workout counted because NOT doing the workout was the right thing to cause the least amount of damage to my poor, not feeling well body. (It worked. I ran eleven miles the next day.)
-Running fifty days in the row melts your running shoes. I think I'm going to start rotating pairs. Any experience with this? Does anybody rotate kinds of running shoes?
-Pain is data. My running form is feeling way better for paying attention. I've also developed a new appreciation for my Triggerpoint set. Love the quad baller.
-If you are going to follows Daniels, you have to read the book. Otherwise, it is just weird, cryptic charts. Doing the math works!
-Other good Daniels takeaway: know the purpose of every workout. (So, RnP, be prepared for me asking a lot of "why" questions soon!)
-During Ironman training, I think I picked up the bad habit of thinking running was hard and their should be struggle. It was good to just step back a bit, run for fun and really fall in love with the act.
-I've been in a VDOT lull for a year. My body just wanted to run, so I did. It felt amazing to tackle something challenging. My favorite, favorite workout was a 9.5 miler than involved a 5-mile block of threshold pace running as the main set. Way harder than any running workout I've done previously. It was fun!
BIG THANKS to the Running Thread peeps - especially Dan, Aleksander, and John Stark. I've learned so much. Not bad for the off season! 
Comments
Rockin! Super cool experiment and challenge.
As far as your question on shoes. For the last 3 years I have always rotated at least 2 if not 3 pairs of shoes. I do this becuase when I was running higher weekly millage, I would burn through a pair every 4 - 6 weeks and I felt like I was always breaking new shoes in or running in worn out shoes. I typcially used the same shoes for each pair so it was just an activity around managing the wear of the shoes.
Now i switch the types of shoes around a lot more. I typically use more cushioned (heavier) shoes for eash runs and recover runs, very light minimalist shoes on the treadmill and for speedwork, and my race shoes (somewhere the middle) for most everything else including long runs. I also like to run just once a week in Five Fingers to keep my form in check.
Like everything else, I mess aronud more the further out from a race I am and when I get close to an A-race I start to get more specific and run in the shoes I'm going to race in.
For the last ~1.5 years, I've been running on Newtons, and I don't want to get started on that religious argument :-) but the one difference with those and the only reason I don't consciously rotate them as much is that the padding is fundamentally not built on foam of some sort like a conventional shoe. Nonetheless, I now even have a pair of them working at home and another at the gym so I'm still rotating them...just less consciously.
For me it is mileage that destroys shoes not frequency. But then I like buying running shoes so its all good.
This is so very interesting!!! Love it. Thanks for sharing your experience!
@Bill - Beginning: 40.7, Ending: 44. I'm racing Disney on January 8 (ish).
This shoe rotation and shoe choice makes sense. I'm especially liking the idea of getting a lighter pair for speed/treadmill/form work. I've been wearing the same shoes for a few years now. Okay to just start experimenting with shoes? Or worth a trip to the running store?
Beth,
Did you swim and bike during the streak or just run? I often wonder if taking a "tri-break" to focus exclusively on getting better in one sport would be helpful.
Minor biking, but nothing more than an ABC (always be chatting) -paced muffin ride. What is a swimming pool? I think taking a tri-break is a good idea. Trying to focus on three sports at once is challenging!
I definitely agree with Beth here. I saw great results when I spent a full year focusing on running (3:30 to 2:58 marathon in one season). I still swam and rode during the majority of the year, but the run workouts were always the focus and the cycling and swimming was not nearly as intense or frequent. The result was a huge gain in my run fitness without losing anything in the swim and bike. The following year I went back to training like a triathlete and saw continued gains in all three.
Congrats and great to be on the road with ya these past couple of months. Looking forward to hearing about your great results at Disney!
John
It took me about 3 years of experimenting before I really learned the boundaries of what I can and cannot run in. The best resources have been running shops (even when i doubted what they were telling me) and runningwearhouse.com, who's "if you like this shoe, you may also like this other shoe" system has been really helpful.
Contests on the 50/50! I'm jealous, having spend the last 100 days getting fat...