The truth about running
Acentral, indisputable truth of running is there are no shortcuts. OK, let me clarify. Sure, some people literally cut corners, and some people find other inventive ways to cheat.
What I mean is that if you really want to reach anywhere with running, there’s no easy way to get there.
And that applies whether you’re shooting for the Olympics, aiming to run your best ParkRun time, or even just reach the point where you can go around the block without feeling like you’re going to collapse.
Anyone who tells you there’s some secret to getting better at running is lying. There are no elixirs. There is no magic wand.
You just have to run, even if that means starting out by running to one lamp post, and walking to the next (then repeating, and repeating).
And, yeah, sure, when you start out, it’s hard. It feels like it’s never going to get easier, like your legs are never going to stop hurting, and your lungs are never going to stop burning.
But you know what? They will.
The more you run, sensibly, of course – slowly and not far at first – your body will adapt. As the late, legendary coach Arthur Lydiard once told me, it’s an aerobic sport – the only way it’s going to get better is to improve your aerobic capacity (the body’s ability to use oxygen more efficiently – basically, getting incrementally faster without puffing so much). It’s the base on which you can build other things, like speed.
Lydiard also talked about the approach you have to take when you’re coming back to running after a break, or, especially, after an injury. It’s easy to try to slip back to where you were before, and to quickly get frustrated or, worse, injured.
Instead, said Lydiard, you have to try to forget what came before. ‘‘Imagine you’re an old man,’’ he once told me. In other words, start out slooooowly. Don’t rush things. Improvements will come in good time.
On the podcast this week, we talked to runner and elite rifleman Gareth Morris about just this thing – patience.
He had competed in shooting for about 25 years, eventually reaching the top level, including bagging a silver medal at the