If you would have asked me a year and a half ago what it took to run half marathons and marathons, I would have responded "you gotta run a lot." It's not that I would have been wrong but what I have learned is that I have a lot to learn about running. You don't have to become as information hungry as I have but I like to play the role of a 3 year old and ask "why?". As I spent more time running I had more time to think, why am I running this far? Why am I running this fast? Do I need to run this fast? Am I training too hard? on and on and on. I didn't become obsessed with answering these types of questions, but I wanted to at least have some reasons other than the parental "because." I won't bore my thousands of readers with everything I think I know about running now but it's been a process. Just like anything in life, right when you think you have it figured out you uncover something completely new and the process starts all over again.
Before I started training for my first half marathon, I asked a lot of questions of the person who suggested I run the race. He suggested a heart rate monitor. So the same day I decided I was going to run the half marathon I was dropping $135 on a heart rate monitor, I didn't know why but I wasn't going to argue with the person who suggested it who's done multiple distance races as well as Wisconsin IronMan. I didn't get much out of the heart rate monitor at first, it was more of a "oh that's cool, I ran for 35 minutes at 160 beats per minute." It wasn't until after I finished the half and hurt my knee from over training that I dove head first in to learning what a tool the heart rate monitor can be. Now even though I don't constantly look at it while running, it's the information I get from it afterward that is invaluable.
The best example of what a heart rate monitor can do for a distance runner is; let's say I have a special car and I need you to drive it from my house in Madison Wisconsin to Minneapolis Minnesota. I hand you the keys and ask "how long will it take you to get there?" You knowing the general distance or google mapping it can confidently say "about 5 hours." I wish you good luck and send you on your way. Then you sit in my car and turn the key only to find out that my special car has no speedometer, GPS, or gas gauge. Now how long do you think it will take to get to Minneapolis? That's jumping in to distance running, without a heart rate monitor. I'm not saying it can't be done, I know someone who's qualified for Boston, finished an IronMan and has never trained with a heart rate monitor. My point is, there's tools that can make running easier to understand.
