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July 24, 2005
Day off, part VIII
No strenuous exercise today. Continuing to read Lore of Running I notice again that all coaches and serious athletes recommend rest as a key part of training.
One obvious addition to that is Tim Noakes's view on how to conduct training, one that he got from an earlier expert. Noakes suggests that all training is an experiment, and turns out most effective if conducted as a scientific experiment. You begin with a hypothesis such as, "This training program can allow me to run 5% faster for 10 km at 80% of max. heart rate." Then you test that hypothesis. An additional hypothesis may be that these improvements will let me run a marathon 5% faster. That would be tested less frequently but nevertheless tested.
I realize I've been training for a long time without testing hypotheses like these. Hmm.
Posted by Mark at July 24, 2005 04:34 PM