Regrouping – RunningWell

Hi Everyone!

For races this past weekend we had Carol McFarlane who did the Barrelman Half Ironman and crushed it as a “training through” for NYC effort! Way to go. I think everyone else is training hard and there were some solid long runs completed over the weekend. Excellent job everyone! For people training for fall marathons, we’re really in it right now and it’s ok if you feel tired and it feels hard. That means you’re doing it right and are on track.

Along that vein, the theme I’ve been thinking about this week is the concept of regrouping. I believe the term comes from a military definition of pulling troops together after they’ve been dispersed in an attack.It’s pulling them all back to start again from a place of strength. It’s a reset of sorts, with all your resources coming back together so you can push on.

I think of regrouping in running in a few ways. One is the obvious– pausing and finding the people you started with mid-run or mid-workout. It’s natural to get dispersed throughout an effort, and as we’ve discussed before,there is clear energy to be found in other peoples’ presence, so pausing and physically regrouping can help to reset that energy.

The other way I’ve lately been thinking about it, is in personally regrouping. Like sometimes in the middle of a hard training block, or a hard effort, we need to pause, take a deep breath, rally our mental, emotional and physical resources and reset. I recently just did this during one of my ‘peak’ training weeks. I just needed a little slack, so I paused the effort for a couple of days, pulled myself together, and then got back out there. Regrouping might take a little longer than a couple of days – depending on your situation.But most importantly, it doesn’t mean you’re stopping. You’re just rallying your resources and taking a breath so that you can keep going. In the middle of last spring’s London Marathon, Sifan Hassan stopped running and stretched out her quad. She lost the pack she’d been running with and then resumed on her own. Then she went on to win the whole thing. She paused, regrouped, and continued on. It is clearly often in our own best interests to do this when we need to. Sometimes I regroup within a race or workout just by pausing the “pushing it” feeling, and allowing myself to relax for a few minutes. I often find I can take a few breaths and then resume the effort without noticeably losing much ground. So if you’re in the middle of a hard block and need a little pause to regroup, go for it. You are not quitting or stopping – you’re rallying all of your resources so you can pull together your best effort. I think it’s a winning strategy.

On to tomorrow’s workout! We are dividing up here:

1. People who are running the New York Marathon have hills on tap. I think a little mix of hills and tempo is good here. Let’s do sets of: 2 x Pottery (or 400m) hill, 3 min tempo. Not a super long tempo –just getting you in the habit of resuming your running post hill effort. Take 1min bw the hills and tempo, and just cruise easy back down the hill once you’re done the tempo. 3-4 sets is probably the number.

2. People running Chicago or TCS (or other) full or half, we’ll do 600’s on Lakeshore. Many of us have longer work in our legs so this is a way to get a bit more pep and smoother rhythm back. 6-8 of them with 1:15 rest.

The purpose here is to run smooth, relaxed,and faster than race pace. But smooth and relaxed are the primary objectives. If that feeling isn’t there, slow them down. This is about a feel more than an objective time measure.

3. If you’re running 5K’s, you can push a little harder in these (you have fresher legs than the rest of us). 5K effort/pace is a good target.

4. If you’re not sure what you want to do, come out, do some drills, see how your body feels, and if it’s 2 reps or just a run and cheer, do that!

That is all – see you in the am!

Seanna