Pushing out of your comfort zone

Many of us drive home after racing on Saturday morning and wonder why we don't get any faster. We are doing the workouts. We are eating the right foods. We are trying to get a much rest as possible.

But for some reason, we just cannot seem to get any faster.

The human body is one of the most adaptable organisms on our planet. It can withstand scorching heat and cold temperatures. It will continue to work for days on limited food and water.

But best of all, it has the remarkable ability to adapt to the work being asked of it.

But sometimes as runners, we are trapped by this behavior by always doing the same workouts, running on the same roads, and running at the same times. Our bodies get into rut. They have adapted as much as possible given the existing demands placed upon it. Fortunately, this is not difficult situation resolve.

What the body really needs is something to shake it up. Something to provide a new stimulus that it is not accustom to doing.

Maybe instead of running on road, we try moving our workouts to the trails. Or instead of running mile repeats on the track, we find a nice long mile hill to run our repeats.

This is what I mean by pushing out of our comfort zone. By changing our existing training routines, our bodies work harder in different ways which builds new strength and surprisingly, might just allow us end up running faster on Saturday. Then, everyone will be asking what has changed and where did the speed came from.