recovery

Wow!!! What a run and in the sun too! Near 80 degrees and perfect weather. I took it easy today and did a recovery run with a time of 22:36 for 2 miles. I did lower than normal cruising speed in the flat areas of the route. I wasn't out for any records today, just to enjoy the run and the sun. I kept the speed off on purpose today aside from the fact of what type of run I was doing. I just wanted to enjoy the run. The run consisted of a hill at the very beginning of the course, followed by about 1/4 to 1/2 a mile of a flat road. Then an up hill incline to a bridge followed by a down hill to my turn around and then back the same way except for the end, I went up one street more and then intersected where I started from.

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.

Having just seen "300", the comic-book style film about the Spartans' stand at the battle of Thermopylae, it seemed almost too much of a coincidence to come across a study about the benefits of being a "manly man".

The Spartans were the original inspiration for the famous Monty Python depiction of the armless, legless knight screaming "I've had worse... come back and fight!" It's a character trait we are all familiar with as runners. Athletes of both genders have taken a lot of stick from experts who've asserted that the "suck it up and suffer" routine puts us at a disadvantage when it we're injured.

Product: The Stick's Sprinter Stick

Price: $32.95

Rating: Excellent 8.9/10.0

Pros: Improves performance by accelerating recovery; portable; good value; versatile

Cons: Difficult to use on arm muscles and feet without a partner.

Overall: This is a one-of-a-kind self-massage tool that can reduce muscle soreness, prevent injuries and even make you a better runner.

For those who have never seen it used, The Sprinter Stick is likely to seem quite peculiar. As a matter of fact, when one of our product testers first received it, he thought we had sent him: "Some type of a hybrid between a rolling pin and a weapon from 'The Karate Kid'".