100 KM In Patagonia
As you may or may not know, in December 2022, I did something I never thought I would do: a 3-day 100km race/trek.
I decided a bit over 13 months prior to sign up for the race, which is called El Cruce, in Patagonia, Argentina.
Never have I trained or done much distance running beyond doing cross-country and soccer in jr. high, a time from which I distinctly remember the wonderful feeling of being able to run fast effortlessly.
During and after we all had to re-arrange our exercise routines due to the societal and governmental responses to COVID, I began running more, as it was an easily available training modality I could use and was interested in re-developing.
I had the thought around that time that, probably over the course of all human history, bipedal locomotion was the movement we as humans have burned more calories doing than any other.
As a percent of overall energy expenditure via movement of the human body, it’s way up there, yet in my own training at the gym, it was a very small percent.
I definitely wouldn’t call trudging away at a few 400m ‘runs’ between kettlebell swings and pull ups ‘running training’.
One thing I’ve realized the more I train is you are either getting better at moving your body or worse, like time pushes you ‘into a corner’ and through choice you can expose yourself to a wide variety of physical stresses in a world in which you are otherwise not required to do so.
This takes you out of an ever-tightening corner of available movement options.
Similarly with running, I see it as you are either getting better at moving your body in space via your legs, or you are getting closer to not being able to walk. A bipedal locomotion polarity continuum.
After my experience doing the 100km race, I realized I actually don’t know much about training running other than what I was exposed to through youth athletics.
I was visiting my family in Washington shortly after the race, and someway, somehow, the legendary Chris Johnson, PT lives just 1-mile away from them.
If you are unfamiliar with Chris, he is my go-to human when it comes to running programming. He is a physical therapist, ironman triathlon competitor, endurance coach, and running encyclopedia.
I mentioned to Chris about my race, the training I did (I also trained a group of 6 others. We trained 2x/week for 12 months), and how after that experience, everyone wanted to keep running, but we needed actually good programming.
Through discussion, I realized with Chris that I can call myself, if I so choose, a ‘recreational distance runner’.
A recreational distance runner is someone who:
- Runs 3-4x/week for 30-60’
- May do an occasional race for fun
- Wants to use running as a modality to develop the locomotion, cardiovascular, and aerobic systems of the body.
I told Chris I personally would love to have access to running programming from him designed for the ‘recreational distance runner’ that I could plug and play into my overall training.
Today we are making that publicly available – and it is called ‘Run With Chris’.
Chris writes the programming and I’m assisting with implementation.
I’ve been doing the programming for 6+ months and have both learned a ton from doing the workouts and drills Chris programs (there are weekly drills to do in addition to the running workouts) and my running is definitely improving.
Each week I find I am running smoother and in a more coordinated way. Every part of my body feels better during my runs now than when I started.
I also noted that my resting heart rate has dropped since starting, and is now on average lower than it has ever been in my life:
I’m personally combining the Run With Chris programming with my own strength and movement training and am loving it.
People always say ‘running sucks’, but I’ve found for myself that was only true because I sucked at running.
If you are like me, and partly identify as a recreational distance runner, or if you just want to make sure you are intelligently training your bipedal locomotion ability, Run With Chris is worth trying out for a few months and a great opportunity to get expert run programming for a very low price.
Until the end of Monday, Run With Chris is $14/mo for the life of your subscription (it will go up to $19/mo on Tuesday).
I hope you decide to test it out and move yourself along the bipedal locomotion continuum!
Click here to learn more about Run With Chris.