Brian Clarke

That seems to be how long it takes for me to become semi-human after a hard training session.

Lately I've realised that training is not really all that simple.

I mean, we go out, train, come back, recover, then do more training. After talking to Hawaii-based coach Brian Clarke -- and reading his other book "Running by Feeling" -- I started to pay attention to my feelings between training sessions. He has a state of mind/fitness that he calls "ready to run hard"; I used to think that this was just a matter of will-power, but actually it's not, it';s a function of how well-prepared you are, how rested you are, what your level of life stress is -- and how well you have recovered from the last training session.

... what a shame I've only done 36.

Mu left Achilles hurts, my right knee has a mobile ache, this morning my back went into spasm. Oh yes, and it's sub-30 degrees and snowing, I guess just to make sure we here can fully appreciate Bobby's North Pole run.

I wouldn't mind, but this was supposed to be an Easy Week.

I've just stumbled in from a one-hour, six-mile "run", that was actually great fun apart from my guilt about it being so slow. I'd seized the moment as soon as the snow stopped and sun reappeared, but by the time I got out on the trail it was so muddy that I was soon running like Frankenstein's monster. I had to abandon the trail and do my return loop on the verge at the side of the highway, finally detouring through a new housing neighborhood. See, we can do "urban" in Boulder, too.

I've finally found a way that I think will let me get an objective comparison of training runs and races so that i can see if I'm really making progress or not.

Comparing runs is difficult. Even when they are on the same route in much the same weather conditions at the same time of day. Time isn't enough. Time and heart rate is better. But how about heart rate and distance -- as in beats per yard?

It sounds a bit odd, but I've started using it and am finding it useful. I got the idea from Hawaii-based coach Brian Clarke, who writes about it in his book "5k and 10k Training" (Human Kinetics 2006).