Excerpt: Run Fast FLYING WITHOUT WINGS The Thrill of Running Fast

THE FEEL OF THE WIND IN YOUR HAIR. That's the best way I can describe running fast. Doing it provides almost a sensual pleasure. Simply stated, running fast feels good. It doesn't happen in every workout, or in every race, but on those special occasions when you're rested and eager and ready to run and you've found a perfect course featuring good footing and great scenery or a pleasant running partner, nothing could be better. Our ability to run fast is what pushes a lot of us out the door and down the road or into the woods each day. We like running, and we especially like running fast.

"When you're running fast, it's pure joy," says Julie Isphording, a member of the 1984 U.S. Olympic Team. "It's the exhilarating moment-the moment when you are breezing by the world. It's hot-blooded ecstasy, soaring intensity, when you can't feel the pavement, you can't hear your heart pounding and you're flying without wings."

Can anybody be taught to run fast? I think they can.

Fast, of course, is a relative term. Fast for one runner is slow for another-and vice versa. Recently, I competed in the Vulcan Run, actually a weekend festival of races (5-K, 10-K, half-marathon, marathon) in Birmingham, Alabama. It was my second trip to Birmingham for Vulcan. In 1984, I had competed in the 10-K, running somewhat around 35 minutes. On my second trip 15 years later in 1999, I competed in the 5-K, running slower than 25 minutes. Speaking at a dinner after the race, I joked to the audience, "As I age, my times for the 5-K have begun to sound like my former times for the 10-K."

But it didn't really matter. I felt fast on both occasions. You should have seen me coming down the final straightaway of the 5-K: I was flying! Jack Foster, the New Zealand Olympian, once commented: "I feel like I'm running as fast as always-as long as I don't look at my watch." You might not be able to break 30 minutes for a 5-K, or 60 minutes for a 10-K, but you can still feel fast doing so.

CHANGE YOUR ATTITUDE

Running fast doesn't take special talents. You don't need expensive equipment. You don't need to hire a coach or train on a track-although good coaching certainly can help, and tracks are where a lot of fast runners do hang out. Some skills are required, but the average runner can learn those skills. You don't need to participate in 5-K and 10-K races every weekend, although many runners enjoy doing so. No, running fast requires mainly a change of attitude and a willingness to experiment with different workouts and training methods.

If you're a beginner, running fast means merely getting started. If you've never run before, except when you were a child (when running was perceived as fun and not as hard work), simply to jog for a few hundred meters is to move faster than if you were to walk that same distance. Improvement comes easily when you begin from a base of zero fitness.

Consider for a moment beginners, who have not yet even run their first 5-K, much less begun to worry about running it faster. If you are an experienced runner who bought this book to help you set a PR (Personal Record) or qualify for the Boston Marathon, forgive me a moment while I address the newcomers to our ranks.

The best advice anyone can offer a beginner is: Just do it! Begin easily. Take a few fast steps forward. Walk and jog without worrying whether there is anybody looking over your shoulder. Don't be shy. Don't be embarrassed. Stride forth with purpose. Anybody looking at you-specifically non-runners-probably does so in envy. Not everybody has the courage to begin.

Beginners occupy a unique-and fortunate-position in the running world, because every move is upward. "One of the joys of being a beginning runner is that you continue to get better," says Mary Reed, a coach with the Atlanta Track Club. "Everything is improvement until you reach that first plateau. It's an innocent time of joy in any runner's life that a lot of us would like to go back to."

GET MOTIVATED

How do you begin? The answer to that question is both simple and complicated. Let's start by talking about motivation.

One winter night some years ago, I was changing in the locker room of the local racquet club near where I live in Northwest Indiana when a tennis enthusiast inquired about the group of people that surrounded me. "What are you doing?" he asked.

I explained about the beginning running class I was then teaching with my wife, Rose. At that time, we met with the group once a week to run together around the racquet club's indoor track.

The tennis player seemed surprised: "I didn't know you could teach running."

He was right, of course. You don't need to teach running-or shouldn't need to. Children learn to run almost as soon as they learn to walk. Visit any elementary school playground, and you'll see kids running all over the place. An athlete who goes out for any sport in high school-football, basketball, tennis-runs as part of the conditioning for that sport, or should! It is only as adults that people forget to run and sometimes have to be taught again.

Running is basically a simple movement. To quote 1976 Olympic marathoner and Runner's World senior writer Don Kardong: "First you put your right foot forward. Then you put your left foot forward. Then you do it again." It's that simple.

When Rose and I taught people to run, we tried to get them to start slowly. Some beginners (particularly if they're overweight) need to walk first, beginning with a half hour, three or four days a week. In starting, we suggested that they jog a short distance until they got slightly out of breath, walk to recover, then jog some more. Jog, walk. Jog, walk. After a while, they would achieve an ability to run a mile without stopping. (Interestingly, the jog-walk-jog-walk approach used by beginners mimics interval training, a very sophisticated method for improving performance. I'll cover interval training in detail in a later chapter.)

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