Finish of Couch to 5k

This week is the final week (9) for the couch to 5k program. The past couple weeks has been solid running during the workouts, no walk breaks - starting with 25 minutes, then 28 minutes the next week, and this week being 30 minutes.

Fortunately, there have been no ill effects aside from a minor ache here and there that has gone away within a day or two. Although the running time of 30 minutes isn't that long compared to what I was doing last year, I'm surprised at how stiff my muscles are the next day (which is not to say its a lot, but enough to notice). I attribute it to not running for a few months, as well as getting used to a higher cadence.

Which brings me to another aspect of the couch to 5k that I've been taking advantage of - cadence and foot strike location. Multiple sources I've researched indicate that the optimal cadence is 180 footstrikes per minute. In short, the benefits are: 1) less impact on each strike, 2) it becomes very difficult to maintain that turnover rate unless your up-down movement is minimized, so form inherently improves. Last year I started paying attention to cadence mid-season, and I found that there was a certain overhead to the extra leg motion that I wasn't used to, and my HR would increase. I had also started paying more attention to foot strike location mid-season last year, making an effort to get used to landing mid-sole or even a little farther forward. However, this increased the degree that my calves were used, so it came with a HR penalty.

Since I had to essentially start over by doing the couch to 5k, I figured this would be a good time to incorporate both aspects of form change into my training. So that is what I've been doing.

Once the couch to 5k is over next week, I'll be starting on building up to the training plan I'm going to use this year. Last year I followed Galloway's plan, and while I liked the running 3x per week, I wanted to give another plan a shot, based partially on feedback from other people, as well as the philosophy used.

The plan I'll be following is Jack Daniels running formula. Last year, a friend followed it and was very impressed with the results - saying he was running better than he did even in high school. In talking with him, it was obvious that the philosophy used by Daniels is radically different than most training plans or philosophies. Even still, the philosophy makes sense.

Essentially, it all comes down to this: train at the intensity level that your current performance dictates.

A future post will go into more detail on how this training plan works, but for now I'll just say that while this philosophy sounds like it would be common-place, it is not. Many times, people have a goal time in mind and structure their plan around that end goal. However, this approach does not take into consideration the current level of performance. So under/overtraining is a common result.