The Runners' Thread - FAQ in 1st post

[incoherent grunting]

just went for a run

[conductor]

that's great (tone: sincere)

[npc]

for pronation try standing in front of a mirror and self correct your foot placement to neutral and hold it there for a minute. then do this for like five to ten reps a session til its more aligned

[badhat]

this morning i did a 10 miler with the first half chill (8s) and the second half at just over my planned HM pace of 6:55 (6:45-6:50)

it felt real real good and i now feel more confident i can stick that 1:30 half.

it also makes me feel like a sub three marathon by december is plausible.

i ordered two new pairs of shoes last week cuz i’m around 800 miles on these pegasus 39s. stuck with another pair of pegasus 39s and also picked up some infinity run 3 premiums (both on deep sale).

[Kuboaa]

if you are seriously considering trying for a sub 3 marathon I'd suggest getting something with a carbon plate, if you want to stick with Nike you can get the vaporfly 3s
I'd get them sooner than later so you can make sure they agree with you and you can receive the benefits of the foam in terms of recovery because you are going to need to up for volume to 50-60 miles likely

[incoherent grunting]

just went for a run

[gallits]

About to go on my 3rd run of the week.

[goldsoundz]

after running very little at all in 2022 due to burnout, i'm back to my typical 25-30 miles a week this year

trying to avoid chasing times and just enjoying it has helped a lot. more rest days to keep my legs fresh and doing longer runs slower has helped too even if i sometimes get bored with a more meager pace. been going to the track once a week to get that speed craving satisfied

just happy to be enjoying this activity again at a sustainable rate, last year i was so frustrated and disgusted with running i was wondering if i'd ever come back to it lol

[incoherent grunting]

About to go on my 3rd run of the week.

[badhat]

ugh

so following my fall on tues i wasnt feelin too sore so i didnt pivot my week plan which was a 5k test on wed (which went great and felt great) and then on thurs a 10 miler with a half marathon pace back half. that also felt great but then friday i woke up with a groin/glute pull that i’m now figuring out probly snowballed from compensation for a bruise on my OTHER hip from the tues fall.

friday sucked, i took saturday off from running (couldnt fully rest bc of work) and today- sunday- i went for a dog walk and still felt sore but manageable till my dumbass dog lunged at a skateboarder in trail and i repulled my injury and had to limp home on it nearly in tears.

top all this off, the primary injuries from rhe fall (both wrists strained and ribs bruised) and also persistent and mean like, gym is out, swimming hurts.

granted its only been a few days and itll be good for me (and of course- i have zelda to keep me engaged) but i feel so crappy.

[Barthes Starr]

oof sorry to hear that badhat, sounds really annoying/painful

i raced the brooklyn half on saturday, which i learned after the fact is the biggest half marathon in the usa
finished in 1:07:28, so missed a PR by like 30 seconds (albeit on a much harder course than where i ran that PR) but super happy with how i raced, and ultimately placed 11th overall out of 26,000 runners

[badhat]

its also a getting old thing. i was in my thirties when i was routinely crashing my bike at 25mph and losing half the skin on my leg and being back to spinning in 2 days and back to intervals in 4. i’m fuckin 47 now. i’m sure i’ll be fine in a few days but this feels (however embarrassingly) like not just a running setback but a health setback where i find the lack of activity is making me itchy to stress eat. so like the whole thing is just a house of cards thats one jagged patch of asphalt away from me dying of a heart attack at 50.

the irony is of course i know as well as anybody the forced downtime is gonna be so good for my speed once i’m recovered (my best ever bike TT was 2 weeks after my worst ever race crash- wearing a brace!), i just dont know what recovery looks like yet for this age and this sport.

[Merciel]

Congrats Barthes Starr!! It must be so awesome to find yourself flying at the head of such a massive pack like that. Look ahead, it's 10 guys. Look behind you, it's 25,989. (I do hope you stole a second to glance backwards at least once, especially from the top of a hill, because holy shit I bet that's a crazy view.)

That must be absolutely nuts, like real escaping-the-zombie-horde vibes.

I'm sorry to hear about the setback, badhat. It does suck. I wasn't good enough yet for forced downtime to do jack shit besides set me back several months the times I got hurt, but yeah, it was very annoying to think "this would not have happened if I were in my 20s."

I just had to cling to the thought that as much as it sucks now, it would suck a lot worse 20 years from now, so since this is the best window of opportunity I'm gonna get, might as well do my best to stay the course and grind through it when I can.

[incoherent grunting]

just went for a run

[Hal Jordan]

just went for a run

i did this about 3 hours ago.

[Jefferson Zeppelin]

awesome result, BS!

[incoherent grunting]

yeah that's insane, well done!

[Damien Amadeus MetalWind]

Posting from the podiatrist
Had a couple lower mileage weeks and jumped right back in…at the start of my long run yesterday my foot was already sore (plantar fasciitis) but I said fuck it. It got increasingly more painful but I kept going because I’m dumb. By the end I could only run a couple blocks at a time because it hurt so bad and now I can barely hobble around. Luckily it looks like I just really aggravated it, nothing a little cortisone shot won’t fix, fingers crossed.

Also that’s incredible BS. It must be so fun to be so fast.

[badhat]

today was my first attempt at cardio in a week since things got bad

i did 45 min of 3mph on the steepest grade in the treadmill. seemed like a good start bc its legit hard cardio + good strength work but less impact than a jog or a run.

it felt good. no nagging pain and just make me really happy to get my heart rate up.

i also bought a foam roller bc of you clowns so my morning routine now includes doing as much of my morning call time as possible crushing the roller and that felt real good today too.

if things go ok tomorrow i might try running in the road this weekend. very relieved to feel progress.

[Barthes Starr]

foam roller solve all problems

[Jefferson Zeppelin]

foam roller solve all problems

[incoherent grunting]

just went for a run

[Merciel]

I'm reading Once a Runner (1978), the famous/infamous Running Novel, and it is pretty pretty good.

It seems like a lot of reviewers knock it for not being super well written, but I think that's unfair, and probably speaks more to their insecurities than the novel itself (you see this a lot with any kind of vaguely genre-ish book where people are embarrassed about liking it for the subject matter). It's totally fine. The writing is perfectly good.

It is definitely a Running Cult book but obviously that's the entire point and the primary reason for its charm. As best I can tell as an outsider to the world of serious college running, it's pretty damn true to life, and there's still a whole lot of that cultural DNA evident in today's elite and sub-elite crowd.

I can't really figure why people think it's snobbish. I mean yeah Parker goes in on casual joggers a couple of times, but, like, speaking as an extremely slow hobby jogger, that doesn't make his assessment untrue. Besides, he acknowledges that runners are runners, even if it is a pumas-compared-to-housecats situation, and fair enough, we all know that's the score. (It does make me wonder what in the hell his narrator would think about the state of the world today if he was going in on hobby joggers being out of shape in fucking 1978, though. The average marathon time was like 3:15 or something ridiculous back then! lolololoolll pal you ain't seen nothin' yet.)

Anyway it's a fun read in much the same way that reading Faubs's training log was a fun read: a really vivid glimpse into what the world looks like at that level. It's a little bit dated (it's about college sports in the '70s, what can you expect? that's how it was, anything different would be dishonest) but so far I am really enjoying it.

[Barthes Starr]

ruh roh my feet are kinda hurting this week after the race i wonder if it's plantar fascitisToggle Spoiler

[Jefferson Zeppelin]

I'm reading Once a Runner (1978), the famous/infamous Running Novel, and it is pretty pretty good.

It seems like a lot of reviewers knock it for not being super well written, but I think that's unfair, and probably speaks more to their insecurities than the novel itself (you see this a lot with any kind of vaguely genre-ish book where people are embarrassed about liking it for the subject matter). It's totally fine. The writing is perfectly good.

It is definitely a Running Cult book but obviously that's the entire point and the primary reason for its charm. As best I can tell as an outsider to the world of serious college running, it's pretty damn true to life, and there's still a whole lot of that cultural DNA evident in today's elite and sub-elite crowd.

I can't really figure why people think it's snobbish. I mean yeah Parker goes in on casual joggers a couple of times, but, like, speaking as an extremely slow hobby jogger, that doesn't make his assessment untrue. Besides, he acknowledges that runners are runners, even if it is a pumas-compared-to-housecats situation, and fair enough, we all know that's the score. (It does make me wonder what in the hell his narrator would think about the state of the world today if he was going in on hobby joggers being out of shape in fucking 1978, though. The average marathon time was like 3:15 or something ridiculous back then! lolololoolll pal you ain't seen nothin' yet.)

Anyway it's a fun read in much the same way that reading Faubs's training log was a fun read: a really vivid glimpse into what the world looks like at that level. It's a little bit dated (it's about college sports in the '70s, what can you expect? that's how it was, anything different would be dishonest) but so far I am really enjoying it.

I'm amazed you even found out about this! It's the type of book that gets handed down quietly from runner to runner, usually from an experienced vet to some high school kid with promise who is ready to enter a larger world. That's how it happened for me.

Yes some of the writing is overwrought. But it is absolutely the best description ever put to paper of what it's like to be an elite level runner. Nothing else comes close.

The stuff about "playing track" -- yes, that happens, on every college team there is, I have stories of my own. The weird bond between throwers and distance runners -- absolutely true. The tendencies toward absurdist humor -- absolutely true for any high level cross country team. The 60 quarters and pissing blood? Not so much these days, people are smarter about training.

Fabulous book if you care about running.

[Jefferson Zeppelin]

also fun fact, my dad went to junior high with John L. Parker in Orlando. (In the book, Southeastern is UF, the pro runners are the Florida Track Club, Bruce Denton is Jack Bacheler, Frank Shorter is Frank Shorter, John Walton is Kiwi Olympic champion John Walker.)

[Jefferson Zeppelin]

I mean yeah Parker goes in on casual joggers a couple of times, but, like, speaking as an extremely slow hobby jogger, that doesn't make his assessment untrue. Besides, he acknowledges that runners are runners, even if it is a pumas-compared-to-housecats situation

And yeah, this is absolutely true as well. Once in a while some rec runner would try and keep up with the college team on an easy run, and boy did things escalate quickly.

[Barthes Starr]

speaking of running books, idk if this one's on people's radar yet or not, but i'm friendly with the author and have hipped a bunch of my training partners to it to great effect. spends a lot of time thinking critically about canonical examples of 'writing about running' and actively attempts to do something different, largely successfully imho
https://www.dukeupress.edu/running

[Merciel]

Once in a while some rec runner would try and keep up with the college team on an easy run, and boy did things escalate quickly.

ahaa I can imagine

hopefully someday you'll feel like telling a couple of those stories, because I'd love to hear 'em

It was very funny reading the part in an early chapter where Cassidy decides to go hard to teach some freshman a lesson about pushing the pace on an easy run, both because I was like "yeah that sounds like something pulled from life, gonna bet he didn't make that one up" and because I'd just read Inside a Marathon and couldn't help but compare it to Fauble just straight-up dropping himself off a Bagel Run because the college guys couldn't resist trying to push him (and each other) to 6:45 pace on an easy run where he didn't want to go harder than 7:30 or thereabouts, so he just noped on out of there.

To me it really brought home the difference between a grown-ass adult vs. college runners, and also a guy who has his actual livelihood and career on the line, vs. kids who are basically just running for bragging rights and fun ("fun").

Also it's such a dude mentality. That made me laugh too.

[badhat]

i ran a mile in the middle of my morning dog walk and it disnt hurt. i did feel the strain so i know i need to keep taking it easy for a few days but it felt nice to bounce a lil.