The search for fastness

People who exercise can have different goals. Some train towards certain venues: The next marathon, their first 5k or their first Grand Fondo.

Others exercise in order to obtain more personal goals; Loose that 5 kilos that has been stuck since last winter, improve their overall health or because exercising help them fight the stress over everyday life.

And then some exercise in order to improve earlier merits or obtain certain times: 20 secs faster on the 5k PR that they set last year, getting under the 1.45 on the half marathon or beating your obnoxious friend who has always been that 1 minute faster that you on the 10k.

I train for the latter reason, especially when running (though when I bike a large part of it is also enjoying other aspects, such as the surroundings, the mental getaway etc). Most of my exercising is done in order to measure myself against the clock or my earlier results.

Thus I also spend quite a bit of time analyzing my training and my gear in order to improve: I experiment with speedwork trying out different types in order to see what works best for me. I keep a tap of my heartrate during my sessions to make sure that I don’t do my slow runs too fast. I keep and eye on my weight to make sure that I don’t get to fat and thus slower. I basically keep and eye out for all the usual things that most runners do.

Another aspect of this is also looking a ways of improving times during those critical races/competitions that comes up once in a while and here things such as the weight of the shoes plays a big part.

During most of my training sessions I run in heavy neutral shoes from Asics, more specifically the Asics Nimbus.Now these come in exactly 396 grams pr shoe when measured in my size 46.5.

I do my speedwork and intervals in another Asics shoe, the Asics DS-trainer. Now they come in at a reasonable 330 grams pr shoe.

So that more or less saves me 66 grams pr shoe. Not much you would say, but according to studies made those 66 grams could save me around 40 secs on my upcoming half marathon. And if I go to an even light shoe like the Asics Gel Hyper Speed or the very sexy Adidas Adizero Feather I could cut off another 40 secs.

Of course these racing shoes always comes with a lesser cushioning and thus some would argue I would be more prone to injuries, but that is another conversation that can be taken when I have obtained my new PR