Sunday Coffee & Chat and Some good stuff!

Sunday, June 25, 2017 · Mike Davis

Good morning,

Yesterday, I had an early meeting with Exponential Squared CEO, Rob Levey, who is our NFLR marketer. Rob is a great friend and certainly a valuable contributor to the NFLR goal of presenting what we do to the world. It is quite challenging to market all the resources we want to share with runners near and far and having a limited budget adds to that challenge. Rob is a unique individual beyond his crazy beard, as he is one of the areas better ultra-runners, while still embracing our NFLR philosophy of running being bigger than race results and finish lines. In the days ahead we are going to reshape our NFLR marketing, with a goal of helping new and current runners understand what we do and how we can benefit them in making running a lifetime activity. I am pumped to find new ways to share important resources such as: gait analysis, personal coaching, online training plans, nutrition, and functional strength training. All our resources are important aspects of strong, efficient, healthy, and enjoyable running. With Exponential Squared we not only want to better market these resources, but also educate runners through outreach and our website.

Because of my early morning meeting yesterday, I missed our NFLR training group run and with the humidity level being near 100 percent, I was probably fortunate. Anyone that has run with me, knows that I am a sweater and no doubt, I would have been drenched by the first mile of the run! However, I knew I needed to run yesterday in-order to finish of a successful week for me personally. Last week in one of my chats, I commented that I had put my plan for the week on the my NFLR training calendar, to motivate myself and that was on my mind all week. I am happy to say, as I finished my run yesterday evening, I completed my entire plan for the week! Yay me!! One of NFLR’s best tools is our online training plans/training log and while it was created to help our runners, there is no reason I shouldn’t utilize it to keep myself focused.

My run last night was one that I was quite happy with; the evening temperature was ideal for running and I showed some improved discipline in my running. My goal from the start was to keep my heart rate below 140, thus hopefully keeping my pace easy enough to enjoy a longer run. I am not really a patient runner and typically that characteristic leads to picking up my pace after mile one and then having to struggle to comfortably to run a longer distance. It is not that I do not get the distance, it is just that it is not as enjoyable as I would like it to be more often than not. As a coach, I preach and direct easy pace, as a runner I am not very disciplined. Last evening, I paid great attention to my Garmin, more specifically, my heart rate. I focused on a pace for the first 35 minutes that kept my heart rate around 135 and only when I hit some of the rolling hills did it climb to 150, but even then, I eased my pace to bring my heart rate down to the mid-140s. This strategy paid off well for me, as I ran 70 minutes and did not have to labor until the last 8 or so minutes. 70 minutes is a great accomplishment for me at this point and I am not sure I could have run that amount of time, has I not controlled my pace as I did. It was not easy early, as I was getting a little impatient, but I settled in and took in the beautiful evening and nice New England back roads. Definitely a run that I want to learn from.

Time to get ready for church! Have a great Sunday and a super week!

God Bless!

Mike