New Year, New plan, New Goals.

With 2012 drawing to a close, it's time to think about not only what we did in 2012, but what we plan to do in 2013.  It's time to think about what we can do to get us fired up and do better. Here are a few tips to help plan and improve for the new year:

1) What are your goals for 2013? Write it down, and put it in a place where you have to look at it every day. Put the plan on your phone calendar. Look at it every day. Tell other runners about your plans, so that they know as well. A training plan will not work if it's ignored or not discussed. Also, be realistic about your plans, you should see it as a goal, it shouldn't scare you to death when you look at it.  Your 2013 goals should be a very logical improvement on your 2012 goals. Be realistic. 

Here's my 2013 plans. It's on the fridge. I do have to eat every day.

2) Plan your year right now. Want to run the Chicago Marathon? Great. July is not the time to start thinking about it. Training starts now. Every race is an investment of your time, effort and money, if you don't plan well, it's just going to be just about having a very expensive running shirt, and your disappointment that and you've squandered your investment. Plan you training days and your mileage. Make sure vacations and holidays or work don't interfere with training, and if they do, what adjustments can you make to keep training. Make sure you can train properly for the races you want to excel in. Also, plan your breaks from running as well, allow yourself to rest, saves you from injuries and illnesses.   Many races already have their race dates and schedules already up for 2013. Once again, be realistic. 

3) Fix the issues that screwed you up your 2012.  Didn't run the pace you wanted? Time to invest into speed work. Had injuries? Time to see a doctor, chiropractor or a massage therapist. Lost interest or got distracted?  Time to join a running group. Need Strength work? Work on getting stronger. Improvements will not come if you don't realize there might be an issue.  No runner is perfect, every runner has had an injury or a set back. But the improvements should come now, not in the spring, not when you start racing again. It starts now. This is the time to really work at it. Runners call it building a base. The base is what supports the running that you want to do. Bigger the base, the more that you'll achieve.

There is always something to work at, and the benefits of improvement, make the investment of hard work even more worthwhile. There's no better feeling when it comes together at a race.

Warning: Running can kill you!! (Again)

In the last few weeks many have my friends have sent me a article about how a medical research has discovered that by running farther, and longer can kill you. Of course my friends knew how I would respond, and well here we go:

It's complete horseshit. That's it.

If you take a look at the article, written by Dr. James O’Keefe, head of preventive cardiology at the Mid America Heart Institute at Saint Luke’s Health System, says that extensive working of the heart causes damage, and scar tissue and releases dangerous chemical that is released during heart attacks. Dr O'Keefe believes that the heart was not made to work at that volume for long periods at a time, and that can causes serious damage.http://todayhealth.today.com/_news/2012/12/03/15625246-running-farther-faster-and-longer-can-kill-you?lite

Now, I could go further in the article and find it's major, major faults in it's scientific reasoning, I'm not going to do that, but I'm going to post the article that does scientifically rebuke's Dr. O'Keefe's article: http://www.runnersworld.com/health/too-much-running-myth-rises-again

What bothers me is not only the laziness of the article itself, but really bothers me about Dr' O'Keefe's article is it's bland mediocrity when it comes to running. It's clear he doesn't like running very much. That you can should run only 1 hour of running a day, any more is too much, doesn't really makes sense. Even Dr. O'Keefe cannot say in his article what is deemed to be strenuous.

So what's the point of the article? To scare you to death, and to give some of those non running friends some ammo at Christmas dinner about how running kills you, this is of course, after you pass them the potatoes. For a lot of people who we know, runners have a death wish. And for those of us who know people who make fun of us, or joke, about our running, they have to feel better about making the wrong decisions.

But why pick on running, it has an extremely low death rate.  The overall mortality rate from running the London Marathon in the 20 years is one in 67,414, or roughly one death for every two million miles run. That's unbelievably low when you consider that nearly 600,000 people died of heart attacks in the US in 2011.  Thanks, but I'll take the run, over Lipitor any day over the week, thank you very much.

I run to be free to compete, to test myself, to push myself, and to leave it out on the road. I don't give a rat's ass about my heart rate and is what I'm doing is enough, that answer belongs to me alone, not to some doctor telling me to back off. 

And another thing. No one ever said that running was the key to the fountain of youth. We're all going to die. Runners die of the same issues as the rest of the population, heart attacks, cancer, and strokes. Ultramarathon legend, Micah True died of a heart attack this year during a training run. Marathon great Alberto Salazar almost died of a massive heart attack, and was without a pulse for 14 minutes. He survived, and he still runs.

So why do I do it? 

Because it's about the quality of life, not about quantity, It's about getting to an older age and looking back, and having no regrets. It's about climbing the stairs to the "L", and not being out of breath. It's about a fear of being pumped full of meds sitting in an retirement home. It about choice. I choose this life and my fate. I choose to run whenever and whatever. 

That's for me to decide.