Sunday, November 7, 2010

An Interview with Ruth England, Rogue Coach

Workout
Yesterday: 16.2 miles at 8:31 pace (6 miles over technical trail)
Today: Rest day!


I capped off a great training week with a 16-miler yesterday morning.  I met up with my friend Zach at 6:45am and we ran a 10-mile loop around the town lake trail, followed by 6 miles (out and back) on the Barton Springs trail.  The Barton Springs trail is very rocky and technical, which I think is good preparation for my upcoming Mule 30K trail race.  Because yesterday morning was the last day before day light savings, we were able to run for about the first 30 minutes in complete darkness.  Surprisingly, neither of us had any spills on the trail.  The weather was very cool (as compared to a previously humid 14-miler) and I felt great!  My pace was faster and I felt much less tired when I finished.  Glad to have this cooler fall weather to train in.  Also, it was very nice to have Zach to distract me and chat with.  Thanks for slowing down and running with me, Zach!  This run topped off my week with 51.25 total miles.  I'm aiming for similar mileage next week.


On November 4th, I had the pleasure of interviewing Ruth England for the 105th episode of the Runners Round Table.  You can listen to the interview here or download it through iTunes.  In 2004, Ruth and two others founded Rogue Running in Austin TX with the mission of applying elite level training concepts to everyday runners. They are an integral part of the Austin community, operating a specialty store, hosting race events and training hundreds of runners every year for marathons, half marathons, ultras and other goal races.  I first found out about them because every spring they host a 3-part trail race series.  I have now run four of their trail 10ks and will be doing my first trail 30k at the end of this month.  I have also met a lot of people in Austin who have taken part in their training programs.  I was curious to learn more, and Ruth was kind enough to chat with me.  For those of you in the Austin area, I think you will really enjoy hearing more about this major part of our running community.  For those of you outside of Texas, I still think Ruth's interview has a broad appeal.  We talk about trends she has observed in the specialty running store, training techniques, the kind of runners that come to Rogue and even their new elite training program for professional runners.  I hope you will give this a listen!  I also welcome any feedback you have.

No comments:

Post a Comment