Dr. Strangesport; or how I learned to stop training and love rest days.

Endurance sports are incredibly rewarding yet enigmatic when you compare them to other sports. In fact, they are straight up strange. The same people win just about every race, why bother? In a soccer game, half the people walk away victorious. At a local 5k, there’s one winner and hundreds of losers. Why not just go do a 5k training run instead of that race? What drives people to run 5k after 5k, to push their pace and limit and strive is not their performance relative to others. Most people want to be better than they were last time.

That drive to be better is innately human, it can be witnessed in all performances, music, sports, and in the workplace. But endurance sports are raw in a way that playing the violin is not. I say that as someone who has learned to play an instrument. It requires Excellence in endurance sports requires attention to training, hours of running, riding, swimming, but also meticulous attention to the state of the body and to nutrition. It requires attention to sleep schedules. The best athletes even change their address, moving to places like Colorado to live at altitude in order to be better.

I’m one of those people that loves to push myself to be better. But I’ve treated the sports of triathlon, cycling and running like learning to play an instrument. The more focused time you spend doing that thing, the faster you’ll learn. As it turns out, most endurance sports are not much like that. I would train to the point of injury and then barely be able to race. It was a recipe for frustration and futility. I felt like I was putting the time in, but plateauing again and again. But I’ve learned. I have a plan now. I’m getting faster.

You need more than just miles and miles of running to be better at running. You need a plan. You need to rest, train, fuel and prepare for races better. There are a million choices between you and your next race. The way you make those decisions will determine whether or not you’ll improve. I want to help you make better decisions. If you have an aspect of training, please comment or shoot me an email at brycoward@gmail.com.