Being a Better Runner

I've always had a voice in my head that continually tells me I can't go faster and it's been a different reason at different moments in my life. In high school, I couldn't get my legs to turn over quick enough but my lungs always felt fine. The result...I could run a 2:00 1/2 mile but never get faster than that. Now that I'm older it's the fact that I can't sustain high mileage weeks because my body is broken down from flat feet and years of punishment.

But are these physical limitations or mental limitations? Is my mind interpreting the signals my body is delivering it correctly or is it going into "protection mode"? My guess is that it is going into protection mode.

Because of this, I've spent the entire year setting myself up for this winter running season. In order to run the marathon as I want to (sub 3:10) I knew I needed to put in much higher mileage per week than what I have in the past. 30 miles a week won't bring about a 3:10 marathon. 55 miles a week might. I started by increasing my mileage but making sure I had plenty of time to recover between runs. Then I focused a bit on speed to rev up my engine and shake up my training. This also allowed me to focus on more running days per week but less miles per day. And now, I've moved onto more running days per week and more miles per day. So far, I've run injury free all year and seen wonderful improvements but I'm sure my mind will start to tell me otherwise...

Here's a great article that talks about the "mental" aspects of exercise...

I'm Not Really Running, I'm Not Really Running...(nytimes.com)