Intro: Hello my name is Josh and I’m addicted to running.

Hello my name is Josh and I’m addicted to running.

Hello readers,

I’m excited to be able to share my workouts and general running thoughts with you all!  My name is Josh I am a recent University of Guelph graduate.  My time at Guelph was spent doing a lot of running, eating, sleeping, and every now and then some studying.  The city of Guelph has a very strong running community focused around the University team (multiple national titles over the last decade) and a strong post-collegiate group (currently boasting 2 Olympians and 3 World Championships participants).

You can likely imagine I’ve taken part in some pretty epic workouts, for example 14x400m with 75 seconds rest averaging 63s/400m or 5x Mile with 5 minutes rest averaging 4:45.  Each workout you experience a pain like no other but for some reason at the end of everyday it’s worth it and you wouldn’t trade anything in the world for it.

I’m currently living in Ottawa and enjoying all the amazing activities this city has to offer: snowshoe running, skate skiing, long blades on the canal and the occasional spin class.  Of course all these are fine and dandy but deep down more often than not I have that urge to just run some fast intervals!

For my first Blog I wanted to introduce myself but I also wanted to share one I had written last week after a workout that was sort of a sample but I really like the topic.

The word of the day is Sandbagging!

What is Sandbagging you ask?  Let me put it this way: saving ones energy during a workout so that your final interval is fastest.

The Workout: Jog warm up followed by 3 sets of (4x 200m, 1x 1200m/30sec rest between each interval) 3 min rest between sets.  200’s were at 33 sec until the final set 34 sec and the 1200’s were 3:39, 3:39 & 3:33 respectively.

Now I’ve been working out with some of Canada’s best young runners for the past five years and Sandbagging is something that you will get mocked mercilessly for (see also winning the warm-up).  I’ve been training on my own for a while and I guess I felt like I owed myself a good final interval and so last night at the end of my workout yes I put down an awesome last interval at the expense of a few 200’s that could have been faster but now my confidence is SKY HIGH!

Here’s the question (there are likely a few schools of thought) is it better for me at this stage to do what I did and take the confidence boost or should I have drilled all my intervals and thrown myself to the wolves on the final one risking a potential blow to my confidence?

Whatever you decide make sure you do your own little cost/benefit analysis, some need the confidence from numbers while some can take confidence away from knowing they emptied the tank for a full workout.  Next time I will empty the tank and let you know what works for me!

Thanks for reading and please pretty please never hesitate to comment with thoughts and concerns!

Josh Roundell