When you get to be my age, pretty much everything counts as
cross training. Say, taking the garbage out, going for a walk with the dog,
wrestling with the top of a pickle jar . . .
Seriously, though, it’s been a long time since I’ve been
able to just run out the door. Now that I’m in the pre-training period for my
fall marathon, I’m beginning an every other day training regimen. That means on those off days I dedicate at
least twenty minutes of stretching and massaging sore and strained leg muscles
on a roller and twenty minutes of working with machines, mostly core and leg,
with some upper body. Nightly pushups (which I've been doing for the past five years).
And I feel it the next day. On the treadmill, where I’m slowly
starting to ramp up the miles and the incline, and on the long, outdoor runs,
the hour-plusses. You need to cross train to build strength and endurance, to ease your mind into thinking that yes, God dammit, you can do this, if done in a way that's smart, that embraces slowness as a contributing principle (see recent post), you can keep pace, you can reach that next plateau.
Next: Running for Your Life: Firefly Season
