Recovery time is something that I never really understood before I started kicking up my weekly mileage for running. I wasn't running enough to make it much of an issue and I also just didn't know any good techniques to help prevent and treat injuries. My lack of knowledge on these extremely important facets of training and my decision to up my mileage has put me on a crash course to learning about just how important rest days are and ways to maximize that rest and recovery

One of the things that I have long prided myself on is that if I decide I want to do something, I can often make it happen - within reason, of course. That mentality is really how I got into running with The Bear run on Grandfather Mountain and more recently my three running goals. Over Thanksgiving, I was talking with my brothers and mentioned in passing that I had thought about trying to train myself to dunk a basketball on a 10 foot basket. One of them immediately said

It has been a quite a busy, but enjoyable week and I hope your holidays were as fruitful as mine! As I've mentioned before, Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday because it centers around three Fs for me: family, feasting, and football. I handily accomplished all three this past week seeing all of my immediate family and some of my extended family, watching more football in a three or four day span than I thought was possible, and eating my weight in sweet potato casserole -

I'm unfortunately still having issues with my hamstring. I got a run in on Saturday and felt pretty good, but I tried to get one in on Sunday and I didn't make it a half mile before I could feel something was wrong and knew that I didn't need to be adding to the strain. I mentioned in a previous post that I'm doing a 5k with some family and my girlfriend on Thanksgiving morning and I'm pretty stoked for that race. It will be my first "official" 5k race so I think it'll be

Last week, I listed out my three goals for running that helped put me in a position to get into better shape and to start getting to be a better runner. This week, I am listing out the equipment I've started using that has, in turn, helped me towards those goals. Some of it I have used before, some of it is pretty much brand new to me, but when I used them as part of my targeted training regimen, it changed the results I was getting from them. 1. Hal Higdon training schedu

I've still got a couple days left to go on getting my hamstring back into good order for running, but nice, clear days like today make it tough to stick to that. I know that if I pushed it too soon, I'd be right back in this situation and maybe a worse one moving forward though, so I just focus on getting back to 100% for now. On Thanksgiving morning, I'm running a 5k with my girlfriend and some of my family so that gives me another incentive to get my body ready to go soon

I'm having to take a few days off from running to try and get my legs back in order for training. From the looks of the weather, though, I'm not missing a whole lot. Don't get me wrong, I love a good run in the rain, but it does take a bit more drive to get out the door when it's starting to get cool out and it's raining. The cold weather is a time that I have let my running lapse in the past and it has always set me back significantly. This year, my goal is to not change

Hello and thanks for checking out my very first blog post! I plan to cover some different topics, but running has been so firmly in my thoughts and schedules lately that I wanted to start with that. Recently, I discovered just how much I enjoy running. Finishing college and looking for a job has left me a good bit of down time and a feeling that I need to be spending every minute more productively; so I decided to get into better shape. I have run on and off in the past, st