Tuesday, March 09, 2010

Long Distance Relay Training

I got this from the MC200 yahoo group, which for some reason I am still on, probably because I feel the need to put my two cents in every once in a while. It is sadly only attributed to someone named "Chris" but I think there are some wise relay training tips to be found.

Long Distance Relay Training
General Training:

1. At least one day a week, live on bagels, bananas, and some form of energy drink.

2. Practice rapidly entering and leaving a van without banging your knee or any other part of your leg or anatomy on the van. Work up to at least 23 of these in a row, one for each exchange. A variation of this would be to jump out of the van while it is moving and run to some imaginary starting point several blocks away. (Make sure the van is not moving too fast and you are not the driver.)

3. Practice bladder control. We will need some semblance of order for this during the race. For the experienced relay runners… practice waiting in line while exercising bladder control at the porta-potty, add some jumping around, fidgeting, and holding yourself while waiting.

4. Learn to live with (while keeping your mouth shut) all forms of discomfort, griping and criticism, especially when you are tired. A possible workout would be get really tired, preferably not running (see Run Training below), then have someone criticize you for being smelly, for failing to pickup stuff that isn't yours, for running too slow, for leaving sweaty cloths around, or needing you to run some more right now, etc. Also have this person consume or hide your favorite food and drink before you get back from the workout. You can vary this workout each week to make sure it has all the elements that piss you off the most. This is probably the most important workout in this training plan so don't skimp on it. NOTE: Married runners should be able to shorten this training.

5. Once or twice, stay up all night and act normally the next day. A variation would be to go to a party in some park on the second day and have a few beers without falling asleep.

6. Sleep without a pillow. You can substitute a roll of toilet paper or a pile of sweaty cloths, preferably a little damp, if needed. Make sure it is on a hard surface where you do not have enough room to stretch out. If you must stretch out, try an asphalt parking lot on a cool humid night. As an add-on, after a sweaty workout try sleeping without changing cloths.

7. Find a traffic jam, or, get a couple of cars running in your driveway and enjoy the gas fumes. You might include this with workout #4 above.

8. Open a can of tuna and keep it within smelling distance for at least 24 hours. This is optional depending on the diet of your fellow runners. You can substitute tuna with other odiferous products. An alternative to add into this workout would be to go to the airport (or other public facility), grab a book and head to the "head". Have a seat and ignore the aroma. Resist asking "Who did it".

Run Training
1. Borrow or buy running shoes and try them on.

2. Find a T-shirt and some shorts you can run in. Cutoff's will work. Get a pair of socks, preferably not black.

3. Get up at 5am every other day, turn on the air conditioning to get the temp down to about 45 degrees and spritz yourself with a cold water spray bottle and run a 4 mile fartlek in pitch dark with several cotton rolls tucked into your cheeks. Throw some dust around and bring in some sound bites of semis and cars honking with flood lights flashing to help make you run a bit faster.

5 comments:

Al Dimond said...

Brilliant.

There should probably be something in there about practicing returning incredibly dirty rental cars without looking ashamed. Using one's own car as a race vehicle is never a good idea. It took my brother a couple solid years of smoking and fishing to mask the runnersmell in our old wagon.

peter said...

LOL! I took out Seasons 1-3 of 3rd Rock from the Sun from the library and have been watching those shows non-stop (cos I ain't running) and this post made me laugh out loud non-stop just like those shows do. Stretching out on some nice blacktop for a nap using sweaty clothes fopr a pillow is just like something Dick would do.

BrianFlash said...

And to think that I wanted to run in a relay. Now, not so much...

C said...

Is is sad that this actually makes me want to run a relay?

Yes. Yes it is.

sanjeet said...

its excellent
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