Zeegwun and Bebon

Yesterday, it was 8 degrees and sunny; today it was -10 with the windchill, and there were flurries. Guh. Reminds me of the Ojibway story of Bebon (winter) and Zeegwun (summer) that Basil Johnston tells in Ojibway Heritage. During spring and autumn, the two fight over a beautiful woman – sometimes Zeegwun gains the upper hand, sometimes Bebon. Yesterday, Zeegwun must have landed a nice combination on Bebon, but today, the feisty man of winter had recovered and put Zeegwun on the mat. I know Zeegwun is going to take it eventually – I just wish he would put the fight away with a quick flourish.

Alas.

Alex, Nick, and I took advantage of the mild sunny weather (Zeegwun’s good fortune) yesterday to do our long run in Shubie. We took it easy – just did pleasant, conversational-pace running – and I managed 23k without too much trouble in order to cap off my first 100k week in a month. Felt good to get back into triple digits.

Today, Alex and I braved the cold for 14k. We did our best to run recovery pace – to run agonizingly slowly – and we didn’t too badly. We still averaged faster than Haile Gebrselassie does on his recovery days (see my previous post), but we weren’t as fast as we sometimes go when the conversation is interesting and we forget to pay attention to our effort levels.

On the run, I was thinking about that tendency amateur runners like me have of looking at what the pros are doing in order to get training ideas. And I was thinking today that maybe it’s not such a good idea after all. I mean, guys like Haile are outliers – the very best of the very best – so it could well be that what works for their bodies may not really work for a body like mine. There’s this assumption that average runners are the same in kind as elites – that we only differ in degree. Maybe that’s not true.

Of course, I have no evidence to say yes or no to the assertion that average runners are usefully comparable to elites, so the discussion can’t really go any further. But I wonder if it would make more sense to study the training habits of a range of successful average runners in order to gage what might work best for the majority of road warriors.

Just a thought.