The 'oh'-effect of reading training literature...

It's really weird, Anne a friend of mine told me just last Saturday that I need to be patient, that speed is the last thing that comes long after I have a good endurance. And she has to know, she ran a lot of marathons in the 1990s. But did I listen, I mean really listen, to her? No, San knows better. I ran for 5 weeks now (I mean in this season, I ran before) and surely I have enough endurance now to do an ultra run.... ahem.

Until I read training literature. Well, two days ago I've started to read Joe Friels "The cyclist's Training Bible-Third Edition". I gave it to my dad as a birthday present, last year or so. He didn't read it. And since I needed something interesting and motivating to read without spending any money I took this. The book is marvelous, well as far as I can tell after 26 pages. Haha.

The point is, that Joe says, beginners tend to overtrain and be impatient. My body needs time to adjust to this training and guess what, it won't do in just 5 weeks! Bugger!!! Hihi. In fact this book is written for cyclists who were training and competing for at least 3 years. This raises a question, if you only ran sporadically, does it count? Probably not. I mean, I only have to look at my heartrate to know my body is just starting out in building the necessary inner infrastructure to run long runs and eventually compete. Even if I make fun of being always one of the last finishers in my races it bothers me. In fact I hate it to be last or second last. Argh. And since I'm chronically impatient, I want to be abled to run a marathon in under 3 hrs, NOW. I don't want to gall kilometers for years. I want to run Boston in April 2010, not in 2020. And thinking of it, I want to do Kona in 2010, too, and leave Chrissie in my dustcloud of black vulcanic sand!!!

Thanks to Joe I've decided to look at it realistically. And I've come to the conclusion, that my body isn't ready to compete in the race on new years eve, at least not on a level that I could live with. I certainly won't end 2009 as the last finisher in a darned 10k-race. So it's speed training at the track around the corner. But I'll do the new years run in the city.
And I've decided that 2010 is all about building endurance and changing my body to an athletes body. I'll lose the excess body fat, build up my muscles and do some races without any pressure, except getting to the finish line and not be last. Sounds like a plan?!

While all of you plan their whole racing year, I'll let my body decide, at least to a certain point.
I ate my last christmas cookies for breakfast, now I'll do the march I skipped on Tuesday due to tummy-aches. And afterwards I'll do some yoga. Enjoy your day.

I hope all of your holidays were nice and that Santa brought what was on your wishlist. I got my new nike sports bra and I love it.

Keep running and melt the christmas fat.