Nice Weather For Ducks

This has been the worst spell of weather for runners that I can ever remember - day after day of rain and wind for big chunks of the time. It is also a time when you get up in the dark, go to work in the dark and come home in the dark and do most of your running in the dark. The weather has been so bad recently that even in the daylight it has been pretty murky! One runner I used to coach - a very good athlete and a Scottish Internationalist who ran in the World Championships in the 1980's - used to come to me in the last week of November or the first week in December every year and say "Brian, I don 't know why I'm doing this!" The answer was always the same, and he knew it as well as I did. "Because if you don't do it tonight and this week, if you take a day or two off or worse still a week off, then you'll really regret it in January and right into the National Cross Country Championships and the early road races!" Training needs to be regular and done regardless of the weather. Colin Shields took the title of his history of the cross country union of Scotland from the old Clydesdale Harriers fixture lists. The title? "Runs will take place whatever the weather." When I was living and doing most of my training in Lenzie we used to start preparing for the SAAA Marathon Championships the following June in the first week in October doing an hour at a time in full track suit and if necessary wet suit as well. As time passed we went further and further in the hour and as the weather improved in March and April the trackie bottoms came off. Alistair McFarlane who won the Scottish Marathon in 1979 reckons that he only missed three days in the three months leading up to the race. If you are a runner, you need to do the work all year round; when the Christmas holidays come round, it is a time to get more miles in not a time to take a week off and stuff your turkey with rich foods and non alcoholic lager. Do your Christmas Day run at 8:00 in the morning and then enjoy the rest of the day - if you don't train that day, the opposition will. Meanwhile to get the running done between now and then it is best to have someone to do the running with - it is easier to make yourself do the run if you are committed to someone other than yourself to do it. Get the miles in! Especially when it is difficult. It pays off.