Running Rules We Can Break!

#389 - I've done a few episodes about running rules we should follow. This week, I'm turning everything around and talking some running rules we don't have to follow, at least part of the time. Take in mind, not everything is right or wrong, so it depends on the situation and whether you're an experienced runner or just beginning. But many times, we don't have to follow those running rules "they" say we have to follow. Which is kind of nice, because I hate following rules. LOL 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

In the West, share stories you might not hear anywhere else. Want to know why the last chance grade might be the most dangerous bit of highway in California? Why did the Japanese drop bombs on the western part of the US? And where is the state of Jefferson? All these stories and more about what makes the Western US so great are here. There's a new story published every week. Check out Hidden West on YouTube. Welcome to Martha Runs the World, a podcast with a new take on running, fitness, and all things health-oriented. I'm Martha Hughes, your host, and each week I present a new topic that is of interest to all runners. Hi, and welcome to episode 389 of Martha Runs the World. Thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate it. I always appreciate it each and every week. So I've done a couple episodes, probably two or three episodes, of what you should do on every run or what every beginning runner should know, or what we all should be doing before runs and during runs and before races and all that stuff. Well, this week I'm flipping the table over and saying why we don't have to always obey these running rules. Yeah, I'm gonna be a troublemaker this week. I'm gonna break my own rules. But you don't always have to follow rules by the letter. Rules are made to be broken, right? Okay, I was a troublemaker as a kid, just letting you know. But sometimes we can um we can skip many hard and fast running rules if we know what we're doing at least part of the time. Nothing is ever black and white, and there are always gray areas. So let's talk about those gray areas. Now the first one it will be the 10% weekly mileage rule. The rule says that you should only increase your mileage by 10% each week. And that's a good rule to follow if you're a beginning runner. Stick to that for a year. Don't go more than 10% per week if you are a beginning runner, but if you're an experienced runner, you can go longer than that. If you've had steady mileage buildup and want to jump uh a lot in mileage during one run, it's not gonna hurt your running. It probably won't hurt your running. I'm not gonna say it it absolutely won't, but it probably will not hurt your running. Let's just say if you've done 25 miles steadily for uh for a few weeks, and you maybe you go up to 30, and you want to do a run that takes you up to maybe 40, you're gonna do an extra five or six miles on your run, one day on your long run, I don't think it's going to hurt you. Just don't do it, just don't up your mileage on all your runs. Just do it on one run and then the next week go back to your normal distance. I would not increase your run that much every single week. Just try it on one week and see how it goes. And I think you can safely, if you're doing strength training, if you're doing most of your runs at low aerobic running, slower running, I think you can increase your weekly mileage more than 10%, maybe 20, 25%, but just be careful with that. Strict hard day, easy day rule. The rule says that you should after har every hard run, you should do an easy run. That doesn't work sometimes if you're training for an ultra race. Now, to be clear, new runners should stick to this rule. If you haven't been running for at least one year, then stick to this one at all. As a matter of fact, if you're a brand new runner, you shouldn't run two days in a row anyway. You should run one day and the next day do strength training and then run the day after that and maybe take a day off and that kind of thing. So you really shouldn't be running two days in a row. But if you do decide to do two days in a row and you have enough time in it under your belt, if you've been doing it for a couple months and you want to do two running days in a row, make sure that after your hard day, you do an easy day. So don't go quite as long on your second run as you did on your first run. Now, if you are training for an ultra race, you probably will have to do back-to-back long runs at least a few times before your race, and those are really hard. Those are considered tough hard runs. So you're gonna have to do that. So that breaks that rule. And let's say you're training for a 50 miler, you're gonna have to do a couple really, really long runs back to back, and maybe one of those long runs is gonna be in the evening in the dark, so that's it makes it even harder. So that breaks that rule. And the next rule is eat before your morning run. Well, if your morning run is an easy one, one that lasts an hour or less, you don't have to eat. Now, uh, for a note here, I am not a big fan of fasted running. I'm not into starvation mode running, I'm not into starving oneself a whole day or anything like that. So this is just basic nutrition here we're talking. Um if you run in the morning, like say you run three miles in the morning, then I don't think you have to eat before you go run, maybe have a cup of coffee. I will would not leave my apartment without a cup of coffee, but that's me. Or just gulp down some water or something. Um, and then you can go out and run, and then when you come back, you can have breakfast. So you don't always have to eat before you run. If you have a longer run, of course, if you're going out and your long run for the week, then yes, you should eat something. It's advised to eat a proper uh a decent something like a piece of toast with peanut butter and jelly, or um even a scrambled egg works well if you want to do that on a piece of toast. That works very well. I like that once in a while. Or a smoothie or something like that that will sustain you enough to keep you going on your run um so that you aren't completely starving when you go out for your long run. And that's a long run. And short runs, you don't really need that, you can just do that fasted, as they say. That's fine. Now the next one, mandatory pre-run stretching. Well, we I've gone over that many times on the show. The static stretches should never be done before a run. And I don't think the majority of runners stretch anyway. I don't think we do. I forget about it. I do. I I do I I do forget completely about stretching. If you want to stretch at all, do dynamic stretches like walking lunges, leg swings, high knees, that kind of stuff. Um, so you want to do those kind of moving stretches rather than the static stretches, which save until after your run when your body needs it, when their muscles are tightened up from all the running you've done, and then they will really help you more. They're not gonna help you at all during your run. They may hurt you when you run if you decide to do static stretches before you run. They're not not a good thing to do beforehand. This one, I'm gonna do a whole show on this on walking. Um, the old way, the old way, quote unquote, way, when I started running in the 80s was you never walk during a race. You always had to run. And that that was just a um a philosophy that was very popular at the time. There was a certain uh snobbery uh uh in running at the time that if you walked you weren't a very good runner, and um so this is an old, old rule that still stands to some people. It doesn't for me at all. As you know, I've had walkers, I had walkers on as guests earlier when I had guests on, and I do walk myself a lot. Sometimes on my runs, I walk more than I run. So, and I still call it runs because it's just easier that way. There's nothing wrong with walking. And if you're going to do ultra races or trail races that go uphill, you want to walk on those hill uphills, you don't want to run it. Roadrunners don't seem to understand that when they start trail racing, they don't have to run up each hill. It's like, no, if you do that in an ultra race, you're gonna wear yourself out, unless you're someone like Courtney Dalwalter, and even she walks up the real steep hills. And even in a race, if you want to walk for a while, like if you get tired out and you just need a couple minutes just to gather your senses and take a rest from running, that's fine. That's not a big deal. Just walk, keep going. There's nothing wrong with that at all. Following your training plan perfectly. If you've done more than one or two long races, like a marathon or an ultra, you know that life doesn't care what we're running for. Our lives don't care. Things around us don't care if we're training for a really important race. It becomes nearly impossible to stick to a training plan or schedule exactly the way it's printed. Yes, we may have a training plan set up, we may have set up our training plan perfectly and says this is great, I can stick to this, and then all of a sudden life says or fate comes in and throws a wrench and says, Ha ha, no, no, you're not gonna stick to it at all. I'm gonna make things really hard for you. And that's where this comes in. It's nearly impossible if you're taking three or four months to train for a race, things are gonna happen in those three or four months. How often do you have it where you go through three or four months and nothing happens in those months? Something always happens to try to crush our plans, to try to disrupt our plans. Do you remember those old Jason and the Argonaut movies? Now I loved those as a kid with acclamation and stuff. Do you remember the um they the gods would be sitting up in the clouds and they would just be looking at the humans down below and laughing at them? That's what I see this as. I see this as as the gods or fate or whatever looking at us saying, How can we screw up these people's running plans? I really do sometimes. It's like, really? You're gonna mess up this plan? I have this perfect plan and you're gonna screw it up. Well, this happens, and it happens all the time when we're training for a big race. Just be flexible enough to realize that you're gonna miss a training run once in a while, or you're gonna have to shift things around on occasion. It's not gonna be perfect. You have to be flexible and you have to deal with it, and you have to be ready for change, and don't fall apart if things change. It's just how things are. And there ain't no getting around that. Running earlier in the day is better. This is to it to each person's personal choice. If you have the capability to run early in the day, like before your job or something, that's wonderful. If you don't, then run after your work. Or if you really have it good and you can run during your lunch, do that. But just find a time that you can run in. And if you can't make the the commitment to run at the same time every day, then run at different times. It doesn't matter. So as long as you get your running in, what difference does it make? I love running early in the day, but that is not always possible. And at my last job, it was really not possible because I worked 12 hour days. So that wasn't gonna happen. And then on the days off I would run. And on the the weeks where I worked a lot, I couldn't run, and on the weeks where I didn't work a lot, I made up for it. So it was like this off and on thing. It didn't make for some regular running, that's for sure, and I couldn't really train for anything very well because it just it was so such a weird schedule that I just it's hard to plan anything around that kind of a schedule. I'm pretty happy about not having that schedule anymore, but uh yeah, so I can get back to maybe earlier running or at least running after work. That that would be nice. You have to go harder all the time in training. Well, no, you don't. This is a mostly a new runner thing. I do hope that more experienced runners know that every run isn't gonna be an all-out run. Sure, you can have extr extremely intense runs and do that once or twice a week, but it's good to mix them in with less intense ones, with more slow the 80-20 mix, and I'm gonna talk about that a little bit later on as well. There's no strict formula to follow. There really isn't. You want to do mostly slower runs than the fast ones and the harder runs. You want to do mostly easier runs or easy-ish runs than harder ones. Listen to your body about how you feel during and after the an intense workout. That will tell you what's going on. See how you feel the day after an intense workout. Because the it's the intense workouts they're good to do once or twice a week, twice at the most, but you don't want to do them too often because that's risking injury and burnout too. That is how you burn out very quickly in running if you do too many of them too quickly. You can finish a race with less training than you should. Now I'll say this with a caveat. You should not plan to be under trained for every one of your races. But life happens. It does. But sometimes you're gonna miss training runs, and you may miss important training runs. Should you completely abandon your race because you weren't able to get in that one important long run that you wanted? Well, it's really up to you. If you don't think you can do it, then see if you can defer to the next year. Or if it's a trail race, try to drop down to a shorter distance. Or if you don't mind a little bit of extra pain, okay, a lot of extra pain, and it will probably be okay, and you think you can finish, then go for it. It's all up to you and your choice. I have tried to go for races when I should have deferred or dropped down. I have done things like that. Um, so that that wasn't a very smart thing on my part. Oops. But what are you gonna do? I mean, you just try to do the best you can, and then if it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. And you learn from that. Every failure or every uh incomplete or DNF is a learning experience. You don't have to get faster. Now, this is one thing that you really understand as you get older. As you get to be an older runner, you probably aren't going to get faster. Well, you might win your age group. That's the thing, the age bracket. You might win that. If you're still relatively fast, you may win win that. I have won it because I've been maybe one of two people in that age bracket. So yeah, yeah, go me. But no one said you have to be a fast runner. Not all of us care about how fast we are. Some of us just like to be out there and run. Not all of us are looking to be uh a top runner. Now, if you want to compete with the elites, then speed is important and will be important to you. But if you don't care, then relax and enjoy and don't stress over how fast you are, and you still might win your age bracket. And the older you get, the more chances you have to win your age bracket. Just remember that. And you don't have to get your long run in on the weekends. Not every runner's weekends off, and if they do, maybe their weekends are busy with family stuff or responsibilities around the house. You can run your long run on a weekday if you have that capability. If you can do it, it's just as good as as on a Saturday or a Sunday. Sometimes I w when I worked at my old job, I worked every other weekend. So when I did work on every other weekend, I tried to get the long run in on a Monday or Tuesday. I just have to fit it in as best as I could because that job was not any help at all as far as trying to get my runs in. Oh, that was really difficult. It was just really, really a hard experience to to be a runner in. It's like, no, I'm glad I'm not doing that anymore. Now, this is really important. I really and I need to listen to it myself because I do this myself all the time. You don't need to apologize for a crappy race on social media. It seems all of us runners, including myself, seem to feel the need to confess about a terrible race on social media. On Facebook, on Instagram, on where wherever we go, we have to say, oh gee, I had a terrible race, yada yada yada, whatever. We don't have to do that. Is it guilt, the expectation, and the desire for sympathy? I don't know why we do it, but I I know that I do it I I I don't know it i i I don't know if it's an excuse. It's not an excuse. I I don't make excuses for bad races. If if I had a bad race, I had a bad race and like the cool moon. I was totally uh unprepared for that race and undertrained. That was all my fault. It was 100% my fault. I know that. But maybe it's because we just want some reaffirmation that we're still good, and we shouldn't have to look for that in social media. But we still do, but I would say you don't need to. You don't have to do that. If you had a bad race, you had a bad race, and you don't have to look for outside affirmation about you being a runner. You're a runner, and that's just it. You just had a bad race. What's a problem for me is that a lot of my okay, most of my friends, most of my closest friends have moved out of California. So the only way that they know I've done things is if I text them personally one at a time, or I post it in Facebook or Instagram. So in that way, it's my way to communicate with everybody and tell me tell them what's going on. So that's why I do it a lot of times. I it's not out of guilt or anything or shame or anything like that. It's just telling them what happened to with me in my run. Because they are interested. They're my friends and they're interested in what I've been doing. So that's uh that's why I do it. But you don't have to. Okay, you don't need to race multiple times a year. And you really don't need to race every weekend. I mean, how can people afford to race every weekend? I don't get that. I understand that some runners love to race. It's a social thing with them. They can meet up with the friends, they can go out after after the race for breakfast. I I talked about last week on my show about extrovert and introvert runners, and I'm an introvert in that I don't really like racing much. Racing isn't a fun activity for me, like it is most runners. I find it stressful and just not much fun. It it causes a lot of um a lot of sleepless nights for me, shall I say? I just it's it it's okay, but I don't like doing it all the time. But I see these some of my running friends, they race every single weekend. And it isn't just local races, they travel out of town all all over the place. It's like, geez, how can you people afford that? I don't know. But here is another one. You don't need to race at all. There I said it. You never have to race ever. You never have to do a race. If you run, you're a runner, regardless of whether you race or not. Who cares if you don't race? That's not why you run, right? You run because you love running and you love being out there and you love being by yourself on the trail or a road. Now I haven't done a race since last Thanksgiving, and I probably won't do another race until Thanksgiving again this year. I just I I'm just probably not going to. I I need to save my money. Well, right now I'm not I need to find a job, but besides that, um I need to save my money so that I can move out of state next year. Now, not all your workout weeks will follow the 80-20 rule. And this is where I was I will revert back to uh the 80-20. Now, the 80-20 rule of running is a good one to follow. What it means is that your most of your running is about 80% at a low aerobic pace and 20% at a more intense pace, but you don't have to follow that. If you're training for an ultra and you find yourself finishing um a couple weeks when you're training, and you find yourself maybe it'll look like 60-40 for a couple weeks, or you're training for uh a um half marathon, so you might go 50-50 for a week and then go back to 80-20. And then if you're tapering for your race, it may look 90-10 because you don't want to push yourself too hard that last week, you just want easy runs, or maybe it's gonna be a hundred easy uh a hundred percent easy runs. You don't really have to follow that. I would just say don't do uh lots and lots of uh hard runs in multiple weeks. If you want to do a couple a few hard runs in one week, that's fine, but take a rest the next week and just do easy runs. Don't do lots of hard runs many weeks in a row. Okay, you don't need a group to run with, even if you're a female. One of the things that sets me off right away is when I hear someone, usually a man, but I've heard some females say it too. They say women shouldn't run by themselves. Just stop it. Just please stop it. If these folks live in an area that's that dangerous, maybe it's time for them to move. No one is forcing them to live where they live. They can move. I run every single one of my training runs alone, and I'm not going to. Stop. If you're a female runner, you shouldn't stop either. Enjoy your running time by yourself. Just make sure you run in a safe area that you're not going to get hurt in. And just don't listen to your music so loud that you can't hear everything around you. And for goodness sake, wear uh reflective clothing at night. They don't do that in San Francisco. It's weird. But don't let some non-runner who watches too much mainstream media while he or she is too afraid to leave their home tell you what you can or cannot do. I know that was a long sentence, but I had to get it out. Sometimes there are more important things than running. I'm going to repeat that. There are more important things in life than running. You heard it here first. I won't say that very often on this show, but I said it today. Sometimes things happen and our running takes a back seat. It is inevitable. It will happen, it will happen more than once. It's perfectly fine to feel bad about it, but never feel guilty. I always say running is our best friend who waits for us patiently. He's never cranky at us when we come back. They're always there. Running will be waiting for you when you're ready. DNFs are not the end of the world. If you're an ultrarunner and haven't gotten at least one DNF, you're not trying hard enough. And that's my philosophy. It's my opinion. Every ultrarunner should get at least one DNF. And from that DNF, they can build their training, their understanding of ultras, and what they need to do for the next race. You learn from DNFs. You don't learn from a race finish. You learn from races you do not finish, and DNFs are a perfect way to learn. Now, if you get a ton of DNFs, way, way too many DNFs, I would say you're probably trying to finish something too quickly, and maybe it's time to stop attempting that race or that distance and put more time into training before you try it again. I've seen a couple people who just get DNF after DNF and it's just like Wes, slow down. Don't keep trying that one. Maybe do a a shorter distance race or maybe more training. Because these races are not cheap. So you're putting hundreds and hundreds of dollars into something that you're that you're not even finishing. So take your time to train, take your time to to um to understand that distance, and then get back and then you can finish it. But it is a vicious circle sometimes because you just want to finish that race after DNF. It's like when you took a test in school and you got a bad grade and you and you want to go back and take it immediately again. But you have to wait a little bit of time and you have to study a little bit more to take it again to get that good grade. You don't need a training plan. You really don't. I'm gonna go completely against the grain here, but if you are an experienced runner, you should be able to put together a loose idea of what you need to run each week leading up to your race. Now, this is not for new runners or for runners who haven't been running for at least a year, but if you've been running for a while, you shouldn't have to put together a training plan. Understanding what you need for your race should be enough for you to know what you need to run as it leads up. You look at your calendar on your phone going, oh yeah, it's this week, I need this, okay, so I'll do this. That should be enough. Now, some people like things all nicely planned out for them in a grid of what and they they like to know what they need to do ahead of time. But uh just remember, like I said earlier, that not all plans turn out the way we want them to. Now, here's a really big one, and I need you to understand this. You won't always be glad you went for a run. Now, this is a huge one. I've grown very tired of hearing over and over again you'll never regret going for a run. Wanna bet? I regret the day I went for a run when I tripped and crushed my shoulder. I really regret that day. I wish I had never gone out for a run that day. Look, not every run is gonna be great. Not every run is even gonna be good or halfway okay. Some runs are gonna suck. And some days maybe you would have been better just staying in bed. That's reality. That is how it is. So you're not always going to be happy you went for that run. That's being unrealistic. That's being Polly Ann-ish, and I refuse to be Pollyan-ish. If you don't know who Pollyanna was, that that was a story. It was a book, it was a kid's book, and Disney made a movie about it about a little girl who always thought optimistically about everything, and she was sickeningly sweet. Even as a kid, I didn't like it. It's like really, how can a person be like that? I was a strange kid. The thought that everyone is going to make everything better is false. Sometimes it's not gonna make things better, sometimes it might make things worse. I don't know. Maybe you have uh a niggle that uh pain and you go out and run, and then it's now it's a full-blown injury. Who knows? But it's not always your I would say maybe 95%, 99% of the chance you nine 99% of the time you're going to be glad you went for that run, but there's gonna be that 1% that maybe you're not. So just just keep that in mind. But I refuse to end on a negative note. So this is the last one on a positive note. You're not going to experience a runner's high all the time, but when you do, you won't always get a runner's high on every run. Some runners never experience one, but one day, even if you've never experienced it, you just might. It might be on a really hard training run when everything else seems to be going wrong, but you push through and boom, there it is. That's what it feels like. And then you remember why you run in the first place. And that is my list of rules you can break. So just think of that on your next run, or think of that. And if you you can think of any other rules that can be broken that I didn't uh include, let me know. And you can email me at MartharunsTheWorld at gmail.com. And if you didn't guess, it's kind of early morning here, and I was still half asleep. So all right, I need to go for my run. Okay, well, that is it. So um, on that note, have great runs this week, and let's tie up our shoelaces and go for a running.