Making Every Mile Count

Hi all,

Since my last post, I've added a countdown timer to this blog showing the number of days left to Berlin 2010. It's a great method to see at-a-glance how many days I have left to the event that I'm targeting for sub 3-hours.

At the time of writing, 259 days does sound like a lot of time. However if you factor in the days for the mandatory taper period, rest days, easy days, missed days of training for whatever reason, and days when you are sick, tired, don't feel like running, or even injured (hopefully not!), then these things can eat a huge chunk of time out of those available 259 days in my training bank.

Hence, each training session should have its purpose, whether it's to build aerobic endurance, increase lactate threshold or develop leg strength and faster stride turnover. When approaching a training session keep in mind two things:

• Keep the purpose of the training session in the forefront of your mind.
• Make every mile count.

A training diary recording the specifics of the session helps a lot! I record things like the type of training, the average pace, the length of time I spent training, distance covered and any other notes related to the training session. The idea is that in a future training session for that type of training, you should be able to move up to another gear, e.g. increase the pace, increase the distance or shorten the recovery.

So when you (and myself as well) are training for a particular goal, for every training session make every mile count. It's the sure-fire way to get closer to your goal.

Best,

Aaron