Saturday, December 7, 2013

Under-estimating A Good Warm Up No More

Lately, I've begun to appreciate a good warm up before a run. Considering I've been running quite a while, I'm surprised it took me this long to learn this, but better late than never.

The simple truth is that I have discovered that I run better when fully warmed up than when not.

A good warm up had never been that important to me. I'd get to where I was going to run and...well, start running. If it was a fartlek run, I'd get off the car and start fartleking. If it was a tempo run, I'd get off the car and start tempo-ing. You get the picture. I'm sure I'd been risking injury all this time by just starting cold, but I guess I'd been really lucky.

No more Mr. Don't Warm Up guy!

When I say warm up, I'm not talking 1/2 mile or a mile. I'm talking a couple miles...maybe even 3. Yes, I've noticed (that for me) the longer the warm up, the better the run. Some of my best runs have been after a nice and easy 3 mile warm up.

When I finally decided to give warming up a try, my thought was that I shouldn't get too fatigued - I still had my workout/run/race to do. I needed to be "fresh" before starting. Nothing could be further from the truth. I've discovered I can warm up at a nice/decent pace and still have plenty in the tank for when it counts.

I'm still trying to incorporate more stretching into my routine as well, but, for now, this'll have to do. Little by little, it'll get done - it's a work in progress.


2 comments:

  1. I used to have a whole warm up routine too. Then I got lazy and stopped doing it. Now I'm dealing with a horrible case of PF. Never again skip the warm up.

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