Two Sides of the Brain – Week Beginning 20 November
Runners are a strange species. The amount of training we do skews our perceptions of what is a normal amount of exercise for a human being to undertake. Only yesterday did the following exchange occur:
Runner A: “How’s training been?”
Runner B: “I’ll only hit about 70 miles this week.”
Runner A: “Oh, how come? Is everything OK?”
This being the case, it is often difficult to make sensible decisions when it comes to training. The ‘runner’ part of the brain and the ‘normal human’ part of the brain often act in conflict. On Wednesday this week, I had endured a long day of work that ended with a meeting at the university, the journey home from which involved a 30 minute train delay that meant I arrived home well after 7 o’clock. The plan for the evening had been to get a good 10 miles in. Instead I stopped athought about the best course of action late on a freezing cold, rain drenched evening and the result of this contemplation was a conclusion of “fuck it, I’m having a sandwich.” The normal human part of the brain had won. Rest day.
I suppose we need both sides of the brain; the runner part to ensure we do insane amounts of training in order to be as fit as possible, the normal human part to stop us from overdoing it. The difficult skill is knowing which one to listen to.
My Week:
Monday: AM 10km easy / PM 12km easy, drills and hurdles (22)
Tuesday: 10*2:30 hill reps (20)
Wednesday: rest (0)
Thursday: AM 10km easy / PM 16km progression run at 3:42/km (26)
Friday: 17km easy (17)
Saturday: road session 5:00,10:00,10:00,5:00 off 2:00 at 3:11,3:18/km (17)
Sunday: 26km moderate (26)