Floris Gierman tells runners to stop chasing pace and instead focus on the feel of running: your breath, the sun, the ground beneath you. Slow down intentionally, build a habit of low-intensity training, and speed comes later without forcing it. He's collecting short videos from runners about their MAF training wins at extramilest.com/submit.
Chapters
Hello everyone, Floris Gierman over here, and in this video I want to discuss two different topics. The number one piece of advice that I have for different runners looking to improve, and I want to talk about a little community video project that I would like to include you on, and I'll share more about that project in a little bit over here. But I first want to start out with— I see many different athletes obviously running at a higher intensity than what their current fitness level is. Many athletes are running out there many times a week at a high intensity. And the thing is, when they have to slow down their pace, they get quite frustrated, they get quite annoyed, challenged, because all of a sudden they might not be able to go on their group runs with their friends. They might have to start taking walk breaks. All of a sudden they get passed on the bike path by other runners. I totally get it. Having to take walk breaks, especially when there's heat involved, when there's hills involved, when there's wind, humidity, altitude— all of these different things can be challenging. However, here's the one piece of advice that I would give you. Instead of getting frustrated by having to slow down, by having to take walk breaks, try to find enjoyment in actually slowing down. What I mean with that is instead of really realizing like, oh, I'm not hitting certain splits, I'm not hitting certain paces, I'm not going a certain distance, start looking at the time on your feet. Start actually going outside and feeling the wind, listening to your breathing, like feeling the sun on your skin, like truly listening to your surroundings. What's going to happen all of a sudden once you start paying attention to where do I put my footsteps, how is the trail looking, all of these little things, you become much more aware of your overall running. And all of a sudden there's different elements that start to become important. Like I said, you don't look at the distance or pace anymore, but you just spend time outside. And eventually when you can turn that frustration into excitement, into joy, yes, the pace is going to improve over time. It's going to take some time, but don't try to rush that, don't try to force that. Just try to truly find more awareness and more joy in your running, and it's much more manageable that way versus becoming frustrated and challenged by it. So the other thing I want to talk about is our video project, community video project we're working on. I would like to ask you if you have had any positive experiences with MAF low heart rate training or any other type of low heart rate training, and you've actually noticed benefits, because there's quite a few people that are challenged with it. However, I would like to ask you to record a short 15 to 20 second video. Just hold your camera like this, horizontal, and share with me like what is your one piece of advice that you would like to give to other people who might be experiencing some challenges, some struggles on their low heart rate running journey. What we're going to do is we're going to collect all of these different videos and we're gonna make a nice little compilation video from all different runners around the world. And I truly think this is a great way for you to actually help inspire and motivate some other runners who are on this journey and who might hit certain struggle blocks, who might not be progressing at certain points. And so what you can do is record that video and send it over to extramilest.com/submit. You can go over there just punch in your details and record, or like upload the video through that little form over there. And yeah, I'm excited to hear from you guys, and I truly think that that's going to be a fun little video project there. So yeah, for anyone looking to improve in their running and who is experiencing certain challenges, make sure to keep your eye out on that video. But also just go out there and learn to enjoy slowing down. There's a lot of beauty if you just learn to slow down and look around you. So have fun out there on your run, guys. I'll talk to you guys later.
