Day: March 14, 2019

Taking My Training to a Different Level – RunLog 3-14-19

by Harold L. Shaw, posted in Hansons Method, RunLog, Running

Over the years, I can honestly say that I have never had a training cycle quite like this one!

Yeah, I used an exclamation point for a reason.

Over the years I have been one of those haphazard training kind of runners, who depended more on natural ability than actually training. I did have a little ability, but don’t brag about it very often very often, since I have never been able to live up to the potential that some saw in me as a runner.

My issues were I seldom made a real effort to stick with a training plan when they got harder. Sometimes because the plans were  too aggressive for where I actually was physically or mentally, I got bored with it, found something else that sparkled in my eye for the moment and led me down a different type of training rabbit hole or more likely I injured something – at least that would be my excuse.

However, if I am honest with myself and with that 20/20 hindsight – I was a chicken.

I was not willing to do the hard work that is necessary to run well and found or made up excuses to not run well.

Since January, I have been using the Hansons Half Marathon Training Plan and something has clicked within this old fart’s mind and body. While I haven’t been perfect about following the plan, I have followed it better than I have any other training in my entire running career, even though it is probably the hardest I have ever worked as a runner.

Guess what?

I am running better than I have in years – like since the mid 80s.

Even though during my glory days I might have run faster, but I know without a doubt that I didn’t work this hard.

No, I will never be a great or even good runner, I do not have that kind of drive, but I am showing myself that I can do more than I thought I would be able to at over 60 years old. Sometimes it just takes some of us longer to learn what we need to do versus finding excuses on why we can’t run better. Continue reading “Taking My Training to a Different Level – RunLog 3-14-19” →

AOM Writing Prompt #2a – Conformity

by Harold L. Shaw, posted in AOM Self Sufficiency Prompt, Reflection, Running

Art of Manliness Self-Sufficiency Writing Prompt challenge #2.

I am going to adapt the writing prompts by changing the self-sufficiency idea that these prompts were based, to address my own questions or thoughts about running that come about as a result as a result of my thinking about the writing prompt.

After all to be a runner you need to be fairly self-sufficient.

I imagine that with a busy life that completing all the prompts will take more than 31 days, so I will take as long as it takes to complete all 31 and I am good with that. Especially, since I think that these prompts will force me to stop and think about some things with my running from perspectives that I would not have otherwise.

Day 2

 

A. “The virtue in most request is conformity.” ―Emerson

B. “People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.” ―Joseph Campbell

 

This writing prompt in my my mind is actually two different prompts, so that is the way that I am going to respond to them.

Wow, conformity and how it relates to running has so many directions that could be taken, however I do not want to write a post with several chapters or start a book, so I will paint a broad brush to keep the length somewhat reasonable, while attempting to maintain a certain focus.

Conforming to society’s norms and expectations is something that most of us do without really thinking about what we are doing. After all we have laws that are not optional to follow, certain social norms that we agree to (for the most part), had to conform to for at least several years of school’s rules, then for many of us conforming to the “military or company way” to earn a living.

Conforming for most of us is just the way it is.

Then you have us runners. Continue reading “AOM Writing Prompt #2a – Conformity” →