Verwandte Artikel zu Getting Real About Running

Getting Real About Running - Softcover

Bakoulis, Gordon

 
9780345447272: Getting Real About Running
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0345447271 ISBN 13: 9780345447272
Verlag: Ballantine Books, 2002

Inhaltsangabe

Explaining how to make running an important part of every reader's life, a competitive runner and coach outlines a practical training program for novice and expert runners, discussing workout schedules, cross-training, nutrition, mental preparation, motivational strategies, and such pitfalls as injuries and overtraining. Original. 35,000 first printing.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Gordon Bakoulis is the author of Cross-Training and How to Train for and Run Your Best Marathon. She competed in the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials in 1988, 1992, 1996, and 2000, represented the United States in the 1991 World Championship Marathon, and has twice placed among the top 10 finishers in the New York City Marathon.

Aus dem Klappentext

LIFE

In more than twenty years as a runner and a coach, top marathoner Gordon Bakoulis has tackled almost every problem a runner can face. Now in her accessible, inspiring new book, Bakoulis becomes your personal coach and mentor, preparing you to meet the exhilarating challenges of running. She discusses everything a runner must know, including:

SETTING UP A PROGRAM: Three-month, six-month, and one-year training cycles; the importance of rest and downtime.
CHOOSING EQUIPMENT: Foot types and finding shoes that meet your unique biomedical needs; the latest apparel for hot-and-cold-weather running.
COMMON INJURIES AND HOW TO AVOID THEM: Runner?s knee, heel spurs, shin splints; the benefits of stretches, massage, and yoga.
FUELING YOUR BODY: Diets for different lifestyles and fitness levels; easy, nutritious recipes.
THE SCIENCE OF RUNNING: the ?hard-easy? approach to training.
RUNNING WITH (AND FOR) YOUR HEAD: How running can make you feel more sa

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You’ve Started Running—Now What?

When you first began running, you probably found lots of how-to-start advice. Yet despite this plethora of information, research shows that more than half of new exercisers (in all activities) quit by the six-month mark. Why is this so? People start exercise programs with the best intentions—why do so many fall by the wayside?

I believe it’s because so many beginner exercise programs leave people high and dry. Naturally, getting started is the most important step. I know from my own experiences, and from listening to and reading people’s stories, that new runners are asking their bodies to undergo vast changes. I know how discouraging those first workouts can be, when it seems as though the body will never cooperate, never feel fluid, never resemble the lean shapes that seem to be everywhere. I know it’s important to give beginners precise instructions to help protect them from injury and overexertion, both of which can easily sabotage their efforts. Given the challenges and obstacles, perhaps it’s not so surprising that half of exercisers drop out by the six-month mark.

HOW THEY BECAME RUNNERS

Most people start running as a means to an end. They may want to stay in shape, have a healthier lifestyle in general, or lose weight. They may want to meet people, impress people, or spend more time in the company of a particular person or group of people. They may run as part of their conditioning program for another sport, such as skiing or soccer. It’s rare that someone will tell me, “I started running because I wanted to be a runner.” Even those people who take up running with the intention of doing it regularly and consistently may not consider themselves “runners” for months, even years.

When someone sticks with running, however, something happens. Running becomes an end in itself. It’s not that the original motivations for running no longer matter. New runners lose weight and keep it off (often without dieting), lower their cholesterol levels, gain fitness, and make new friends, and they are pleased with these changes. But on top of all that, the activity of running itself becomes a reason for heading out the door. It may take a few days, or it may take months or even years. But at some point it dawns on the runner that she would do this even if it didn’t help keep her slim, healthy, and connected to a close-knit group of friends. She is drawn to the simple activity of putting one foot in front of the other, breathing harder than normal, and feeling the wind in her hair and her feet rhythmically hitting the ground. She has become a runner.

Runners love to talk about their early running experiences. They share these stories before runs, on the run, after races, and at social gatherings. Running is almost always a wonderful, health-promoting, life-affirming pursuit. But for those who have made running a regular part of their lives, running is something more. It is a part of their essence. It is not just something they do; it is who they are. The stories that follow (starting with my own) illustrate how runners at all levels became real runners.

Finding Myself

I spent my childhood developing a love of running, though I had no idea that’s what I was doing at the time. I played very actively, roaming our wooded suburban neighborhood on foot from age six or seven on. Once when I was 10 or 11, my dad and I went together to plant bulbs in the courtyard of my elementary school as part of an ongoing school-beautification project. We arrived and realized we’d forgotten the trowel. My dad was all set to drive home for it, but I offered to run home for the tool. I set off across the playground and through our neighbors backyards, covering the half mile or so to our house without stopping to walk. I dashed into the garage, grabbed the trowel, and ran back. I remember being in awe of myself. I was breathing hard and sweating, but it felt wonderful to move swiftly and silently through the woods, pausing only to climb over fences. I arrived back in the schoolyard panting and triumphant. In the spring of my sophomore year in high school I started playing lacrosse. I’d joined the team because that was what the most popular girls did, and more than anything at that age I wanted to be popular. Unfortunately I had no eye-hand coordination, so although I could run up and down the field all day doing drills, when it came to tossing and catching and cradling and scoring, I was hopeless.

In the middle of the season, we had a fund-raising event for the team. We all got sponsors to donate money for each 100-yard lap we ran up and down the field while cradling the ball in our sticks without dropping it. I signed up my sponsors and showed up with my ball and stick. Predictably, I dropped the ball on about the eighth lap, well before most of the other girls. Glumly I watched the others run up and down the field, lap after lap in the warm spring sunshine, while I fretted over how little money I’d raised. Amazingly, one girl ran 17 miles without stopping or dropping the ball, raising more than $200 (a lot of money in those days!) for the team.

That summer I decided to run to get in shape for field hockey in the fall, a sport in which I was similarly limited by my lack of coordination. I ran for 30 minutes at a time around our neighborhood, wearing tennis shoes. I imagined I was doing at least four miles, but when I clocked my run on the car’s odometer, it was less than three miles. Discouraged, I ran new routes and purposely didn’t measure them to avoid disappointing myself, and eventually worked up to running close to an hour at a time.

I failed to make varsity that year, and performed poorly in lacrosse again the following spring. I simply didn’t have the skills, no matter how much I practiced. That fall the coach finally put me on the varsity field hockey squad, but I spent most of my time warming the bench. I went to her office once after practice and announced I wanted to quit and go out for cross-country. She gave me a well-meaning lecture about the virtues of perseverance and determination, and I ended up sticking it out. As soon as the season finished, I asked my friend Amy, who’d captained the girls’ cross-country team, if I could start running with her. Amy had done winter track the previous year and hated it (she preferred running outdoors, and three seasons of competition was too much), but was delighted to have someone to help her stay in shape for the spring track season.

We lived about a quarter mile from each other, so our plan was simple: meet at the corner midway between our homes every weekday morning at 6:30 and run for 30 to 45 minutes. That first late-November morning it was pitch black in my bedroom when my alarm clock jangled me awake at 6:10. I burrowed deeper under the covers, planning to go back to sleep for another hour. But then I thought about Amy out there waiting for me in the cold and dark. I knew she’d be there, and would do the run whether I showed up or not. I thought about her voice on the phone the previous evening: “Okay, see you in the morning!” I hated letting anyone down, and I hated the thought of what Amy might think: that I wasn’t reliable or, worse, that I was a wimp.

So I got up, stumbled around looking for socks, shoes, sweats, hat, and gloves, and tiptoed downstairs and out the door. Amy was waiting for me at the corner, her breath clouding the air as she gripped the pole of the stop sign and stretched. “Hi. Where do you want to go?” she asked. We ran slowly toward the elementary school, then cut across the playing fields, coated with thick white frost. My eyes teared, my fingers and the tip of my nose tingled. At first I...

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Verlag
Ballantine Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2002
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0345447271
ISBN 13 
9780345447272
Einband
Taschenbuch
Auflage
1
Anzahl der Seiten
343
Kontakt zum Hersteller
SC
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/

CL MODESTO LAFUENTE 41
Madrid
Madrid
Spanien