Learning, Diet, Stretching, Stride and the Banquet

[now for a little sorbet to cleanse the pallet]

While golfing, Scott reminded me on a regular basis that Confucius said "Hit the second ball first."  Funny how after you lose the first ball in the water, woods or rough the second shot is fabulous!  I thought about my running and trying to hit the second ball first.  So instead of making mistakes while running, just assume you have made the mistakes and you want to open up and become a student that gets better.

Learning this week:

COOL BLOG: Alan from (Pounds Off Playoffs) has an ingenious idea.  Take a bunch of eating plans and diets, and play them off against each other for two weeks at a time, and then take the one that helped him loose the most weight.  All I can say is if you love graphs and humor, check it out!

STRETCHING: I found this interesting piece of [Internet-certified] information on Does Stretching Before a Run Help Prevent Injuries?  There's some stuff in there that does align with stuff I have observed in myself.  You mean closing the door and starting the stopwatch is not considered an adequate warm-up?   There has to be some metric for a warm-up no?  Like a certain heart-beat level, body temperature, sweat appearing, minutes of warm-up, distance of warm-up?  I don't stretch much - tell me how you stretch if you do.

STRIDE: This Runner's World Article on changing your stride to run faster.  I tried to download the original material from the journal (not Runner's World), but I felt the price was a little too high.  What disturbs me is the claim seems to be, if you lower your stride length you will run faster ... like Zeno's paradox, we can keep shortening our stride until we are going nowhere!  What it seems to suggest [but not the writer's view], is that people in the survey were not running at their optimal stride length - and on average people have strides that are a little too long.  Don't know maybe you read it differently.

So what does this all tell me, I guess Chris (from BQ or Die) has an answer - find a coach!  I think it tells me I'm still pretty dumb, and I have trouble differentiating between Core and Tuning.  Core is the stuff you absolutely have to do, while Tuning is the stuff that makes you just that little bit better.

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Jesus, and the Bible reading for this Sunday raise some questions about personal holiness.  Don't sit at the best seats at the banquet, sit in the worst and wait for the host to call you to the good seats in front of everyone.  To the humble the Lord reveals his secrets.  That tells me that if you want to learn about life and running, you will be taught by the master ... IF your are prepared to be a student - prepared to try, experiment, wonder, understand and be in awe.  We need to watch that we do not think that our treasures and knowledge give us security, but that the invitation to life and health comes from God daily.

In the last 3-4 months I've had so many people to help me along.  I'm very blessed to be continually called up to a better seat.  But I haven't let that go to my head.  Currently, my time places me in the last spot in my age group for the target race.  I have a lot to learn ... and a lot of invitations to accept to get better.  See you on the run!