How about a little sand bag run?
Running, or its proxy, longer, lower intensity metabolic conditioning workouts, is a topic we revisit periodically. Many many people come to CrossFit with endurance backgrounds and they worry that additional muscle or too much strength work will slow down their running. Many people, especially many of my women out there, wish we did more running and less lifting (I like you all even though I don’t understand you all…). I want to revisit a few things about running and longer workouts in this post. The first element of this conversation has to be:
1. Why do you workout?
If the answer is “to be a competitive endurance athlete” then you must do some training especially for your sport (although if you are a distance athlete it has been researched and demonstrated many times empirically and anecdotally that you can improve your times without training so many hours in the longer time domains).
If the answer is “to live longer and healthier and be as fit and well as I can” then long slow/moderate workouts do not have much of a place in your repertoire.
The second element of this conversation is:
2. What should drive my trainers and instructors in their coaching methodology?
Hopefully the answer to this one is “They should strive to make me as fit as possible while minimizing negative impact on my health due to exercise methodology”.
There is a new study about the cardiovascular health of runners discussed on Dr. Kurt Harris’ website, www.PaNu.com. This website is where Dr. Kurt Harris discusses why he, as an MD, believes eating a Paleo Diet is the healthiest way of eating. As an aside, Dr. Harris advocates a version of the Paleo Diet closest to the one I use here at CrossFit Works (he likes butter too!). Dr. Harris has written before about research regarding the health of runners (like a German study showing that in groups matched for age/behavior/sex sedentary people had healthier arteries than runners). I hope you all will click on this link and read what Dr. Harris has to say.
I encourage you all to fulfill your desire to run more as your outside-CrossFit workouts. The majority of you train here only 3 days per week. This leaves 4 other days in which you need to find action. Even I ran a 10k the other day (and Lorna, I don’t think your “Oh a 10k isn’t so bad” quite matches my feeling, but you were right, it wasn’t as bad as I thought). Ultimately, remember that CrossFit methodology prepares you to tackle whatever comes your way including running. Make sure you are hitting your shorter CrossFit workouts with actual intensity. Do you require a few minutes before you can pull yourself together and talk and unload your barbell? Or do you stroll to your water bottle while chatting to your neighbor? Sometimes I see the second thing in the gym, so check in with yourself. If you do our short workouts without the intensity they don’t give you the same powerful results. And, we will do some longer workouts in the near future while we have the weather for it. Before the inferno hits.
