Ordinary training, ordinary results
Allow yourself to be weird
For the benefit of people who may be new to my writing, I am a bit of a hybrid athlete. I’ve been doing martial arts for most of my life in the summer of 2020 I picked up running. In April 2021 I entered my first running event (a full marathon), which I cleared in 3 hours 37 minutes and 8 seconds.
If someone who has not done any exercise before picks up running most of them would not be able to manage a 3:37:08 marathon after only 8 months. Of course, it’s possible with sufficient effort, but it’s unlikely in most cases. (I would love to be proven wrong on this, by the way. Anyone who can go from zero to a sub-4h marathon in 8 months is worthy of respect).
It is clear to me that my martial arts training gave me a good base level of fitness to get me to where I was after just 8 months. Karate practitioners (good ones anyway) must have a good cardio base, must be able to move even when they are tired (they tend to get their heads kicked off if they don’t), and must have the strength and flexibility to do high, technical kicks. All of these things are quite transferable to running.
Totally unusual training set me up to be a bit more than an ordinary beginner. And it’s that that I’d like to focus on that today.
Train for your goal
A while ago I was listening to a book on Audible titled, Training Essentials for Ultrarunning: Second Edition by Jason Koop, Jim Rutberg and Corrine Malcolm. This book is an absolute gold mine for people who are interested in how to train for an ultramarathon.
One important lesson I took from this book is that if you are entering a race, the bulk of your training needs to mimic the conditions of the race. That means if you are training for a road ultramarathon you will need to spend a lot of time running long distances on the road. If you are training for a trail run with a lot of climbing, you are going to need to spend a lot of time climbing and descencing.
As the old saying goes, if you fail to prepare, prepare to fail. Someone who is good at running on roads may find themselves tripping over roots on trail runs. Someone who is good at trail runs may find their knees giving up on them on long road runs that require the same repetitive motion.
This is a bit of an extreme example, but if you train for a long jump by doing nothing but sprinting (and no actual jumping), you are probably going to be better at the long jump than untrained individuals but you are not going to be as good as people who specifically train for the long jump.
Similar but different
On December 8th, 2024, I will be running the Izu Trial Journey in Shizuoka Prefecture. The run is a 69.1km trail with 3,242m of ascent and 3,162m of descent.
I live pretty much at sea level. There are not too many trails in my area but there are a few small forests where I can just run loops and mimic the ascents and descents required over that distance (on average anyway).
I’ve recently been running around this forest regardless of the weather. On cold, rainy days, I’ll be running around the woods, just in case it’s cold and rainy on the day of the Izu Trail Journey. This is very much in line with the previous section.
While doing these trail runs I’ve had a pack on full of my gear and I’ve been trying to keep my pace going while running up hills. And when doing these hill runs the thought crossed my mind that I feel similar to how I feel when I’m suffering through my weekly parkruns. More on this later.
Improving without thinking about it
Speaking of parkruns, last weekend I was cycling over to do my 5K race thinking to myself that I don’t actually care about my time. I just wanted to do the run without putting too much stress on myself, because parkrun times are not my primary goal right now.
When I started running my parkrun I wasn’t going all out but I was still managing a decent pace. The level of the other runners was really high on that day so I felt myself being pulled and pushed along by everyone else. I also tried a new strategy with the hairpin bend on the course by running wide and through some trees so my momentum could be conserved instead of coming to an almost dead stop at the turn.
As the run continued I felt some familiar burning in my chest and limbs. It was exactly the same as the feeling I have when running up the hills in the woods. When I feel like this while running up hill I adjust my stride so I’m using less brute force to run and can focus on simply using appropriate technique to get through the terrain. Recognizing this helped me keep my cadence a bit more in check (which I controlled by altering my stride length) and stopped me from totally burning myself out.
So on a day where I didn’t care about my time at all and didn’t want to put too much stress on myself, I actually ended up getting my fastest parkrun time of 2024 (19:38), crushing my previous time of 20:01. I was getting a bit worried I wouldn’t get under 20 minutes during this year so I was glad to get over this hurdle. Looks like all that training in the woods helped me improve in a way that wasn’t obvious.
Transferable skills
Those of you who follow me will know that I have been doing beach running a lot this year. When I run on sand I run barefoot. It is totally different to the road running and trail running that I do. But I have friends that swear by doing this, including my friend Sakamoto-San who is an elite runner who has either won or placed very highly in marathon events around here. (Yokohama marathon 1st place, 2022 and Yokohama Marathon 3rd place, 2024).
When running on the beach you need to take the soft sand into account. The sand gives way as you step on it so it is important not dig in and kick the sand backwards. It’s also important to keep your legs high and drive your knees forward to maximize your stride.
Keep your legs high and drive your knees forward? That sounds a lot like something I’ve been doing for years.
While a kick/knee strikes might not be exactly the same movement as a running stride, they are similar enough to be transferable. If you are good at kicking you might be good at running with a bit of practice. Likewise if you are a runner that is thinking of taking up martial arts.
Realistically, when people lift weights, people do it for the strength gain. Not the 1-to-1 practicality of the movement. If you happen to have a job where you are not a professional weight lifter but are required to lie flat on your back and lift heavy metal discs on a stick please let me know…because I have some questions for you.
Training prepares you to be ready for tasks. I run on the beach to become a better overall runner, not just to be better at moving bare foot on sand. I sometimes think that all these different things I do are unrelated, until one day things just click. I crushed my parkrun time last week not just due to the road running I do (though road running is important if you run on roads), but due to the fact that I trained my engine by running up hills in the forest, and trained my form by running on the beach. Plus all the additional martial arts training leaving me with an overall conditioning base.
So it was my ordinary training PLUS my unusual training that got me the win this week. Let’s hope all this preparation on the road, trail, beach, and dōjō are enough to get me through the Izu Trail Journey.
Final thoughts and take home messages
When I entered my first marathon in 2021 I simply wanted to finish it. When one of my friends who has been running WAY longer than me heard that I ran a 3:37:08 marathon with 8 months training he referred to me as a monster. But when I think about my past training, I wasn’t going into that marathon as someone with 8 months running experience. I was going into that marathon with 8 months running experience AND more than 20 years of martial arts experience. And that’s totally different.
When you are getting ready to do an event, event specific training is incredibly important. That means if you are doing a road ultramarathon you have got to put a lot of road miles in, and if you are doing a trail ultra you need to get out on the trails and annoy your local spider population by running through all of their webs.
It shouldn’t be news to anyone that event specific training is important. At this point it’s ordinary advice that will lead you to ordinary results. But if you want extraordinary results you need to do extraordinary things. Some of which may be considered “weird” by other people. But who cares if it’s weird if you are getting the training you need to succeed?
Last weekend I mentioned to a fellow parkrunner that I don’t expect to be that fast because I’ve been doing nothing but trail (and beach) running recently. I was in the mindset that I was focusing on event specific training, and parkrun wasn’t the event.
After completing my fastest run of the year (and getting an overall 2 mile PB), I realized it was all of the unusual training that got me to where I needed to be quicker than usual.
Is that weird? Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. But it is cool. So keep being weird.
Thank you very much for reading. If you enjoy my work please share it with someone you think would also enjoy it.
If you aren’t subscribed, please sign up to keep up to date.
If social media is more your thing I’m active on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
And if you are looking for ways you can support my work please check out the page below:
Osu!
Anthony
Cover image:
