In Which an Uneducated Person Attempts to Teach You Something (and Alaska!)

Workout: 4 miles, 10:51 average

You Lower 48-ers (slash foreigners) will appreciate the "Alaskanness" of this morning's run. As I was driving to the dog park, I hilariously saw a musher mushing his/her dogs through a tunnel beneath the road. Okay. Then, post-run I ran (walked) into some ice fishers. Don't ask me why they chose a 40-degree day to go ice fishing. I kind of wanted to swim out there and rescue their dog before he broke through the ice. Poor guy. Then, to top it all off, we ran into a moose before returning to the car. Today, safety came before photos.

First creepy attempt at a photo

Second and reasonably successful attempt

Reenactment

There wasn't anything very interesting about this run. It was a gloomy, gloomy day (in stark contrast to yesterday's awesomeness), I ran where I always run these days,

Yep. I spend a lot of time here.

and it was slow going.

Thanks, phone, for mistakenly thinking I wanted you to focus on the tree reflection - so alternative.

 A clearer display

For anyone who's wondering about my recent obsession with 10:52 and 11:38 miles, let's review, shall we? To your seats, please, and no questions because I don't have any answers.

So, the cult leaders that are the brothers Hanson (no, that moniker never gets old and no, I won't stop using it) argue that most runners train too little during the week, and that the runs they do are too fast and therefore require too much recovery time (to prevent injury). By running easy runs at a truly easy pace, you allow your body to make all the physiological changes that will allow you to safely run the higher mileage required by the Hansons. It will also make sure you're sufficiently trained for a marathon and, of bigger concern to me, surviving phase two of the plan, which adds in speed work as well as significantly upping the mileage.

They also say that running really slowly (slower than anaerobic threshold pace) allegedly improves your body's capacity to burn more fat, which is good because we've got more of it than glycogen (glycogen? I'm no scientist). Or maybe they just put that in there because they knew the fat burning-obsessed laaaaaadies would come running.

As always, I don't know what I'm talking about so don't listen to me. It is entirely possible that slow training runs just lead to slow marathons. Who knows. This is why I've volunteered myself as a guinea pig.

Am I allowed to be teaching you guys this shit? Am I going to go to jail? Preserve my liberty by buying this "renegade" training plan (their words, not mine).

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I'd like to do some sort of weekly training re-cap, but I'm not sure what day to do it. Should I do it Friday, as I used to do, Saturday, when my calendar's week ends, or Sunday, the end of the Hansons' week? Probably Sunday. Okay, Sunday it is. Here's my check in:

Plan started Thursday. Completed 10 miles, all easy.

Hey, that was a breeze! Okay, body check:

• head: still there
• legs: working
• torso: upright. Core work has been a failure. Must get back on it.
• swag: lacking, as always

Now it's your turn!

• Did you do anything really [insert state/country here]-ish today? You know, something that reinforces stereotypes, like ice fishing.
• Should I trust the Hansons with these slow miles? Am I setting myself up for disaster?
• Happy Chinese New Year! I hear you're supposed to clean a bunch the day(s) before - did you do that? I did! So if I have a bad year, I'm doing the logical thing and blaming it on that.