The Core and Fear

I didn't get my final figures for last weak up along with many things I neglected on friday but I did:

ending weight 79.6kg (no difference)
running: 33km (1 x 10km, 1 x 20km, 1 x 3km)
sprints: 0
cycling: 150km

All in all a pretty light on week. The only new thing was I started 'strengthening my core' which is all about injury prevention. My right knee for reasons unkown tends to take all the cornering impact in my running and I must have a muscle imbalance.
It gets sore but not seriously so. Infact it stops getting sore the more I exercise it. At any rate knees are not good things to have on your mind. I don't want to spend the rest of my life hoping around on a gimpy leg.

So I started working out my core stability muscles, glutes, abs, obliques and back. I hate doing crunches and shit, so doing the running exercises like 'superman' and 'bridge' and the dreaded 'metronome', 'plank' and 'side plank' are less painful for me because it isn't strength building exercise just stability building.

That said they aren't pleasant and I've been tardy. But I have done two full sets of the exercises and will endeavor to do at least 3 sets per week. So from here on out I'll record my core sets.

The second aspect is the relationship with fear. This is probably the thing that running has been most instructive in above and beyond any other activity I've engaged in.

Going to state meets like I did back in highschool, you competed with a very different field of athletes to school. In my own school I was the fastest for anything over 3km and generally knew the level of competition and was comfortable with all the expectations.

Lining up at a meet with strangers though made me feel sick, every minute that ticked away before the race started was met with incrementally increasing dread. Much like getting injections, you end up just wanting it to be over.

If it was possible to run a cross country course with your eyes closed, state level meets might have actually been as pleasant as getting an injection.

Intimidated I would hang back rather than engage in shouldering my way into a good starting position. I just wanted to see the rest of the field take off and find a comfortable space to run within.

This strategy allows you to observe the runner getting pushed into the mud on the start line and trampled by two or three sets of spike shoes once the gun goes.

I never wanted to risk that in order to be competitive. Back then I was a poontang.

Reading Vagabond the other day though, I found a particular quote quite profound 'fear and strength are not necessarily contradictory'

From that I know that understanding fear is a key part of strategy. It is how we differentiate winning from losing. Engaging in an activity that contains no fear is rather pointless. Like jogging my way to victory in school competition. It was only when runners like Ben and Tim pushed me that I really pushed myself.

So too fear of injury means you can adjust your training to become stronger, rather than blindly pushing on and ending it all prematurely. So really the 800m is as legitimate a pursuit of knowledge as any other.

I shall extrapolate this lesson out into all aspects of life.