Good judgement is the result of experience, experience is the result of bad judgment. -Mark Twain

Today I ran a tempo run, 40 mins. Instead of running to a set pace I decided to run according to my Heart Rate. With having used my Heart Rate monitor for the last month or so I felt confident using this as guidance. I kept my rate at 160 which turned out to be a good tempo pace.

Not long to my next race. I feel as though I've not done enough races recently but there is plenty of them this winter.

That's all folks.

"Effort is only effort when it begins to hurt" [José Oretega y Gasset In Search of Goethe From Within, Letter to a German]


Effort

The motto on Wrexham Athletics Clubs' badge is Ymdrech which is Welsh for Effort. Whilst running one day this caught my attention and made me think a bit more about the word Effort.

Think about the following sentence: “It is an effort to run.” How does it make you feel? Positive or negative?

It's an effort to have a running life: diet, sorting out clothes, arranging times, thinking about the right way to train, book races, travel, etc...

Often the phrase “it's too much of an effort” is engraved into our psyche and leads us to dread the activity and not bother. Effort has become a negative word. But it should be positive.

Effort is an achievement. When you run you use physical energy, effort, to achieve.

Almost every part of the mile is tactically important: you can never let down, never stop thinking, and you can be beaten at almost any point. I suppose you could say it is like life. -John Landy

Today I didn't run but I did cycle about 50 miles. Work had a conference which was 25 miles away so I decided to cycle there and back. The strange thing was that it didn't feel like any more than my usual commute which is half the distance. I think that's because once I'm out on my bike I switch my mind off and it doesn't matter how far it is. My legs also don't get tired on a bike because I don't go fast enough.