Reading Roundup

This weeks recap of what ive been reading and my thoughts on it.

First off i started with musings about the difference between a runner and a jogger. It started off with Stephens discription at his blog runlikeyoustoleit which if i understand correctly seem to bassed about your own internal perception bassed on how fast your running. I then went on to find another couple of descriptions at simplethoughts, I think peters own description bears a lot of merit, that a runner runs for runnings sake while a jogger has some ulterior motive like weight loss or fitness. Google will turn up a whole bunch of other descriptions including this one at runners world... ultimately i think the last one on their list is probably the best. "I am a runner because I say I am."

I stumbled over a post at Diary of a Rubbish Marathoner talking about running too fast during 'easy runs', id been thinking about what pace i was running at on my Aerobic Training Runs, even posted about the improvement ive seen, But it prompted me to look again at how fast i should be training at. Lydiard uses effort to regulate pace and prescribes a good effort.  This article at active.com suggest about 20bpm below lactate threshold. I beleive the improvement Ive seen shows that my training pace is ok, but the second question here at ask the coach from the washington running report demonstrates clearly what is meant by going too fast during a LSR.

I also found myself reading a few articles about strength training, it all started with the article Everything you know about fitness is a lie in Mens Journal. From there i found my way to a really interesting article about the inefficiency of stability training at The Science of Running, before rounding it out with another article there about strength training for endurance athlettes. I have to admit ive tried doing core strength exercises on an instabile base, following video's at runners world. but not long enough to know if they bring anything. Ive since gone back to simple and according to Steve Magness of The Science of Running better exercises on a stabile base for my core strength workouts.