All posts tagged: Training

Beyond Resolutions: Why I Have no Idea Where This Progress is Coming From

New Year’s res­o­lu­tions are a curi­ous thing. Lucky for me, I don’t real­ly need them to aim for more or less in my life. For instance, I don’t have to push myself to exer­cise; it’s such a nat­ur­al part of my dai­ly rou­tine that it’s not even nec­es­sary. But of course, I have goals and desires too. Like run­ning pain-free – after near­ly two years of a nag­ging Achilles ten­don. Or build­ing strength – after tear­ing my bicep ten­don last fall, it’s not just a wish, but a necessity. 

A man leans on his arm, revealing the agony of a headache.

A Hangover Called 2023

When it comes to run­ning, the years of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic were actu­al­ly pret­ty good for me. Not that I enjoyed the lock­downs, and I don’t want to down­play the suf­fer­ing of so many peo­ple and the con­se­quences. But when it comes to the flex­i­bil­i­ty of work and the rise of remote work, I have to say, all of that had a pos­i­tive impact on my train­ing. I could run more reg­u­lar­ly, be more flex­i­ble, and, as a result, more consistent. 

A female runner is running on a path in the mountains amidst a yellow-green meadow.

Intuitive Running

I don’t want to run like this any­more. It’s not doing me any good. More than that: it’s jeop­ar­diz­ing my health. I’m jeop­ar­diz­ing my health. And my joy of run­ning is at risk too. I owe this real­iza­tion to a gad­get, not my own insight. But let’s start from the beginning.

Program code is projected on a woman's face.

«Running is about finding joy in the journey»

In the world of run­ning, trends come and go, but some have the pow­er to shape the future of the sport. From the grow­ing focus on recov­ery and self-care to the con­tro­ver­sial debate around trail run­ning and mega events, there is no short­age of top­ics to explore. In this inter­view with Chat­G­PT*, a cut­t­ing-edge AI lan­guage mod­el, we delve into the lat­est trends and hot-but­­ton issues in run­ning, and dis­cuss the poten­tial impact of tech­nol­o­gy on per­for­mance opti­miza­tion. But beyond the data and ana­lyt­ics, we also touch on a more fun­da­men­tal ques­tion: what does it mean to find joy in run­ning, and how can we strike a bal­ance between the pur­suit of excel­lence and the intrin­sic val­ue of the sport? Join us on this thought-pro­­vok­ing jour­ney into the heart of run­ning, and dis­cov­er what the future might hold for this endur­ing passion.

A person wearing running shoes is sitting on the floor, only the upper legs visible.

Only assholes do that

As I step out into the chilly air, I can feel the weight of the past year bear­ing down on my shoul­ders. My Achilles ten­don still aches, a con­stant reminder of the injury that has slowed me down for so long. And yet, despite the pain and the set­backs, I lace up my shoes and begin to run. It’s the first day of a new year, and I am deter­mined to make it a suc­cess­ful one.