September 18, 2007
Heads up
Starting a new job is busy ... there are going to be a lot of cheater blog entries with pictures. Really, Wellington is a moderately sized city, but it's very attractive to be able to reach farmland in about 15 minutes easy running while still living 5km from the central city.
Running on the hills and trails around Wellington has made me reflect on the importance of training environment. As I discussed a few weeks ago Lydiard's hill repeats are not in vogue in a city like this. The other aspect of Lydiard's ideas that I think is more local than he makes it out to be is the preference for smooth road runs. Again, this makes sense if you lived in Auckland where there are a lot more smooth, flat road runs near where his athletes were living. If Lydiard had lived in Wellington I'm not sure he would have suggested the smooth, flat road run was the universal ideal. It would condemn you to doing the same run round the waterfront all the time.
I ran a smooth, flat road run on Sunday. It was meant to be a half-marathon at marathon pace. I have a sneaky suspicion it was about 400m too long. The only 5km in the race entirely with a tailwind was the slowest 5km ... and the last "kilometre" took 4:44 with a mild cross-wind. I'm glad I didn't race this sorry excuse for course measurement.
Posted by eroberts at September 18, 2007 12:07 PM