post the twenty-fifth, 2013

when it comes to running, you can measure time, distance, or both. like, you can run for an hour, you can run six miles, or you can run six miles in an hour. miles per hour is pace, and pace is generally considered a key measurement of fitness. if you're training for a race, you generally have a goal for that race, and the most common goal for a race is a finish time. particular finish time goal requires specific pace.

other race goals include: beating a particular person, simply completing the race, or racing the race without a time goal to test ones fitness. the latter is really only for experienced runners because to race without a time goal, you have to know how to push yourself without an external impetus. and the key to THAT is effort.

effort is how hard you are working, and it's quite difficult for novice and even intermediate runners to get a handle on. i'm trying to get a feel for it, myself, and i find it helpful to use pace to measure effort, and i find it helpful for my coach to tell me what pace represents what effort. not that she knows when i am working hard. all she can tell me is, based on my running record and based on her experience, what pace she thinks would represent hard work for me. or, easy work, as the case may be.

if you're out of shape, you're always working hard. if you're fit and hippy jam jogging around, you're not working hard at all. one is working hard and one is hardly working, but neither has a feel for the effort. to have a feel for the effort, you have to pay attention.

on my run yesterday, i thought about this quite a bit and concluded the ideal effort is an honest effort. honest to yourself and to your daily run.

some days you have a workout, and workouts call for a hard effort. they are intended to be difficult, to leave you tired and breathless, to make you hurt. a wise man once said to me: it's not a wedding, it's a workout - put on your hard hat and get it done! when you are doing a workout, you should be putting a lot of effort into your running, your focus and concentration. workouts make you stronger, faster, more fit. during a workout, an honest effort is putting yourself in a place where you feel pushed, uncomfortable, weak. you have to run faster and think more than on other days. if you aren't honest and don't push during a workout, you are only shortchanging yourself.

some days, you have an easy run, and easy runs call for an easy effort. for some reason, the running community seems to be consumed right now (maybe it always is?) with easy run pace -- "how fast should i run my easy runs?" -- which of course misses the point. it's not about pace, it's about effort. the problem is that it's easier to measure pace than effort. to measure effort, you have to be honest with yourself. if you run your easy runs too hard, you'll end up hurting yourself, literally, like injuring yourself right there that day. or, you'll hurt yourself in a less immediate way - you'll overtax yourself and end up injured later. you have to respect the day and what it calls for, and you have to be honest. if you are uncomfortable on an easy day, you're trying too hard.

on the hard days, ask yourself: really? is this the best you can do? c'mon.

on the easy days, ask yourself: where's the fire?

just be honest.