90 Day Running Reset: The Objective
Why 90 days? What’s the point? What do I hope to get out of this?
Massive improvement.
Of course I don’t expect to see massive improvement all at once. But what I do expect is to be able to build some habits into my running that result in changes that affect what I feel are my weak points.
Identifying the weak points…
There was a week about a month ago where I did a stress test on myself with a few different types of runs. This didn’t originally have anything to do with the 90 Day Running Reset, but when I was reflecting on the project it became relevant. The first was a mile test. The object was to run it as fast as I could, but at a constant pace. I ended up with a 6:30 mile, and very short of breath.
A couple of days later I wanted to test my uphill climbing at a steady rate. I could climb at around 300W for maybe 5 minutes total before my heart rate got way too high to continue long term. This was discouraging at the time because I’d been practicing uphill running for months, but 5 minutes was what I could comfortably do.
On another run I attempted to hold 180 cadence for 3 minutes at a time. I developed shin splints and lateral foot pain early on. When I got home I took a look at the bottom of my shoes (I thought to do this when something similar happened the previous year). The lateral parts of my shoes were worn down more than the rest of the shoe. To confirm what I thought I recorded my foot strikes running at 180 cadence from the front, and then from the side. The lateral parts of my feet were striking before the rest of them.
Bringing it all together…
Feeling pretty discouraged I decided to take a break from running. Nothing permanent. I just needed a week to breathe and come up with a plan for attacking this problem with my foot striking (Coach Eric had some great tips on knee driving that helped a ton). In that week I read two books that generated this entire idea. “Atomic Habits” and “Born to Run 2”.
“Atomic Habits” is a great book by James Clear that covers building good habits, breaking bad habits, and how incremental progress can lead to HUGE change. When I first started reading the book I thought “okay I’m already doing this stuff. This’ll be a waste.” But the more I read, the more I realized that I was wrong. I needed a refresher course on habits and processes BAD. This was an awesome read that got my wheels turning on how to apply this to my business, my personal life, and to running. I won’t do a full breakdown of my thoughts here, but I’ll leave off with the main nugget that I took from the book: If you can get 1% better each time you do something, those small results can add up to big change over time. It’s a pretty low buy in to build better habits and attain massive results.
“Born to Run 2” was a joint effort by Christopher McDougall and Eric Orton and serves as a practical guide to the information in “Born to Run” and “The Cool Impossible”. The book is full of diet tips, training drills, shoe recommendations, fuelling best practices, and all sorts of other practical knowledge. A lot of what is in there are things that I picked up directly from reading the two previous books, and from input Coach Eric gave me. But when I came to the “90 Day Run Free Program” in BTR2, something clicked.
Why don’t I do my own 90 day reset?
I started thinking about the principles in “Atomic Habits”, the practical knowledge in “Born to Run 2”, and how to make them overlap in a structure that could benefit me the most.
What are my bad running habits? What are my weakest points in my running? What knowledge can I take from the resources that I have to really nail down a fix for them? What information do I NOT have that I need in order to fix some of these habits/weaknesses?
Going into the lab…
When Tony Stark needed to create a new element to power his new Arc Reactor because he was slowly being poisoned to death, he gathered the resources he needed, buckled down in his workshop, built a particle accelerator, and created exactly what he needed.
Rocky knew that Adonis needed to find himself again.. What did he do? The two of them headed off to Purgatoria El Box. An isolated boxing gym in Death Valley (actually New Mexico) where fighters go to rediscover themselves in the harshest possible environment.
AM, easily the Arctic Monkeys most successful album, didn’t happen overnight. They blocked out 6 months at Sage & Sound recording, revising, creating, and repeating. Every song on the album had to be crafted over time through changes, large and small.
Going into the lab isn’t a new concept. When you need to focus, solve a problem, or get your mind right, you head to the lab. But before you head to the lab, you need to have an idea of what you’re working on. For me, that means identifying those bad habits/weaknesses in my running.
Honesty is an important part of this. I needed to sit down and really look at my training log, my metrics, and my mindset. If you can’t acknowledge the pain points, you can’t fix the problem. These are the points I came up with:
Cadence: I need to spend more time at 180 cadence if I want to get faster and climb better. This will keep me from overstriding, and if I can keep picking my knees up while doing so, can help with the overpronation of my feet.
Breathing: More effective breathing should help with long term performance, and more efficient output uphill also. What can I do instead of sucking air through my mouth for hours at a time? It’s time to put some effort into training this.
Mindset: I’ve slacked on consistency and gotten soft. It’s time to recommit to consistency. This doesn’t mean training for a race or jumping on a program. This means being consistent with the small things, and building from there. Make consistent efforts daily on these habits/pain points.
Additionally, can I find it in myself to run with no goals, and enjoy the progress of getting better incrementally. “0 Goal Running”. Running in its purest form. If you get 1% better every time you run for the rest of your life, what does that look like? What does that mean?
Diet: My diet is a relatively clean one, but when I was in my best shape my diet was all pescatarian. I’ve found that there is a good reason for that, so it’s time to get back to it.
Form: Leg extension is something that I’ve been working on for about a month now. Both uphill and on flat running. It’s getting easier, but is still a little unnatural. If I want to maximize my power output and efficiency I’ve got to master this.
What can I accomplish in 3 months…
The goal is 1% progress on each of the above points every time I drill to work on them. On Mondays and Thursdays I’ll highlight progress, resources I’m using, the drills I’m doing, and any other useful info. The idea is that at the end of 90 days, I’ll have conquered my bad habits and pain points, created some new good habits that will regularly benefit my running, and become a better overall runner when all of the elements are put together.
This isn’t about performing a task, meeting the goal, and then stopping because I’ve met it. This is about attempting to build the foundation of a system that can create results continuously for me over time. So while this is a 3 month case study, my hopes are that what I find will be used for a lifetime.