Reacting And Responding

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Welcome And Core Idea

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome back to another episode of Train for a Great Life. Reacting and responding. We're gonna talk through them a little bit. Not a new concept, I hope, to anyone listening. Um, the idea of taking time, thinking things through, not being emotional about things, responding to something versus reacting to something. Um, not a novel concept. You know, it's like write the angry email, maybe not in the email browser or uh window, just write it in a note or something, and just so you don't accidentally hit send. Uh do that and then delete it. Oftentimes you'll feel better, okay? Or or wait on it overnight.

Applying It To Race Fitness

SPEAKER_00 0:45

I'm gonna talk about it in a little different context. I'm gonna talk about it in terms of uh high threshold fitness. Um, I'm preparing for a high rocks race in less than a month, and one of the things that I have to learn and improve on is responding versus reacting when I get into this in high threshold heart rate that is not quite going over that edge where you know you just fly and die, you blow up, everything slows down, can't move. Um, but just kind of hanging out a little under that. So been doing a fair amount of work running based since it's a running based event.

Sub-20 Treadmill 5K Plan

SPEAKER_00 1:40

Um and I'll talk through one specifically that I did last week. It was a uh 5k time trial. I did it on the treadmill. The reason I did it there was well, actually, it was specifically in regard to to what I'm talking about now. I wanted something where I had an idea of what I could do, and I wanted to just set the machine to the speed and do it, and it was either, you know, it was so sub-20 or bust. I think I came in at 1955. Um, so I I completed it, it was incredibly hard. Um but it was either stay on and run or get shot off the back of that thing. That's sort of what I had committed to. Um and for me at least, like I have I have a lot of speed reserve in running that that type of thing. Like, I can run a lot faster than a four-minute kilometer, but the background that I come from is the longer it goes, just the harder it gets. For me, how I'm wired neurologically as an athlete, I've talked about that before. Um, but also just even as I say that, like there's a mental component that goes with that too. We often reach a mental limit before we reach a physical limit. It's very, very difficult to truly tap into the physical limits of your body. Um and and so uh specifically how this plays out, uh, you know, so the the plan that I had to run this sub-20 was um to negative split, you know, not start under four minutes. That's the hardest way to do it. You know, you're gonna just build lactic early versus staying a little bit more comfortable. And so I started at a I think I'll get the numbers right. I started at uh 405 for the first kilometer, and then brought it down to four flat, and then I think 358, 358, and then I think the last one was maybe 354 or something like that. I don't know if that maths correctly, but it's pretty darn close. Um and it might not sound like that big of a difference, but you know, if you take the spectrum of like, you know, maybe I could run a 315 kilometer or something like that, and that's like running my legs off, and then uh a five-minute kilometer is like, you know, pretty pretty darn casual compared to these five seconds, ten seconds difference in a split makes a huge difference. Uh anyway, so that was the plan. And it's not gonna feel easy, and so around, you know, like a few minutes in, um, you know, it's not slow running.

Doubt At High Heart Rate

SPEAKER_00 4:32

A kilometer and a half, two kilometers, you start to have that doubt. Creeping in, settling in. Um, you know, the heart rate's starting to climb into that zone where you're like, this is uncomfortable. I only have so long that I can do this for. Will it be enough? And you know, you get to the 3K mark, okay. It hasn't drifted into that, you know, no recovery, you know, no man's land where you're not coming back from it. For me, that's that's probably getting close to 180, 176 at 180 or something like that. Um, it hasn't quite gotten there. And so okay, well, you just have to you have to kind of walk yourself through it. For me, at least, I I I'm sure people are similar, but the the mental game, the head game that kind of goes along with it, it's it's hard to just kind of get lost in your running and not be thinking through and evaluating as you go. Um or maybe I'm crazy, but uh that the last two kilometers, like I it was not fun. Like, I had thoughts of stepping off, but I knew like whatever whatever discomfort is being felt right now, you are gonna be pissed if you step off of this thing. So committed to either just running through it or getting shot off the back of that thing, which I knew was not gonna happen, and we do, and we run, and so this is the reacting versus

Tools To Hold Pace

SPEAKER_00 6:05

responding. I'm teaching myself in those moments where I'm having the doubt that just try to relax, try to settle in. My reaction, and partly why I didn't do it outdoors to start, was you know, if I'm feeling that discomfort and I have to control my pace versus just stay on the belt, I might be, I might be a wimp, I might slow down, I might get off the pace. And if you get off by three, four, five seconds, it's you you can't get that back, right? And so um it would it in training for this thing, um, I had a friend ask me actually afterward, uh, he's like, Do you think you can do that outside? I don't know. I I want to say yeah, um, because I'm very comfortable running outside, but I think there's an there's the added variable that you have to kind of stay on that pace. Um I want to say yeah for sure, but as a training tool, these things where you set the pace. I have my my bike um my bike trainer can do the same thing where you can set it into erg mode where it it does an accommodating resistance, you know, you set it to whatever 200 watts and and it will equal that resistance no matter what sort of force you put into it. Um, and if you start slowing down the pedals, yeah, it's really hard to get going again. But anyway, um yeah, this is an example.

Using It In Daily Training

SPEAKER_00 7:40

We go through it every day in the gym. That respond versus react. Um, sometimes in the shorter sprinty stuff, you're not necessarily they're so fast that you're not necessarily met with the same sort of you know discomfort as like a 15, 20, 30 minute workout. You you you more so have to kind of make that decision what you're gonna do beforehand, but still, um, you know, sometimes how you how you feel in your warm-up can dictate that, right? Oh, I feel a little sluggish, I'm not quite quite there. Um am I gonna react to that or am I gonna respond that you know what I've had a whole lot of days where I felt that way, and then my mind was kind of tricking me just because maybe I wanted to be a little bit more comfortable than than not. So with that, I will see you in the gym.