Noon now and resting after 6 miles on the beach. Uploaded workout data from my Garmin to my ancient Apple, drank my chocolate milk and icing and enjoying a cocktail of green tea and pure tart cherry juice. It has become a delightful spring like day.
Wow, what a difference two days can make! Doing the right thing is pretty f****** important. I should have that figured out by now. Rested and prepared properly today and had a wonderful run. With apologies for repeating I have to say the beach was flat and firm, and the cloud covered sky and cool breeze made it just perfect. Today I felt pain free, powerful and most importantly pretty. My athletes often laughed when I told them to run pretty. But I am perfectly serious about the importance of running beautiful. I guess coaches call it running efficiently or with good form but to me it is just pretty. One of the things that made me proudest while I was coaching was that a number of people I respected told me that most of my runners looked similar in their running form,that they were smooth and under control. I call that pretty. I reminded kids frequently of how often they would hear someone say after a race that the winning athlete looked like he was hardly even trying. A very nice gentleman from Scranton Pennsylvania approached me one year at the New Jersey Meet of Champions practically with tears in his eyes to tell me how disappointed he was that Brendan Heffernan was not competing that day. He said he only came to the meet from Scranton to see Brendan run because of how much he enjoyed watching his beautiful running Style. I don’t think I have ever told Brandon that story, and I hope he is reading this because it would be a very nice thing for him to hear.
But I digress as I frequently will because that is how my brain works these days.
Preparing properly allowed me to have a comfortable and productive run for which I am very be grateful. I was able to concentrate on a shorter stride and soft, firm foot strikes. I was also able to put in 10 surges of from 50 to stride. I am more comfortable counting strides of these days been trying to keep track of the duration of the surge because it helps me to synchronize my strides and my breathing. Speaking of breathing, I have become a strong proponent of belly breathing while running distance these days. The concept of belly breathing is relatively new to me but not totally new.. It was introduced to me recently by coach Mike Paul who is a friend,a former assistant coach of my mine and arguably one of the most knowledgeable coaches in the state of New Jersey. Mike suggested that I consider trying to belly breathe during my runs after watching me in a race at Hillsborough about 2 years ago. I have tried it during training and racing and I found it to be quite helpful to me. I will probably speak a lot more about this in the future but there is also an interesting story to go along with that. Way back in the eighties, when I was coaching with the legendary Bob McGivney, I would hear him constantly telling his girls during training and racing to belly breathe. Now Bob was one of the most successful girls cross country coaches in New Jersey history. North Hunterdon girls basically owned the sport throughout the 1980s. Bob and I spoke frequently about coaching training and distance running. I don’t remember ever asking him about the belly breathing thing and I don’t know why. But I can only say that his girls employed the concept and were ridiculously successful. So I guess Mac knew what he was doing. So when Mike Paul brought the concept up I began practicing it and have been belly breathing now for the better part of two maybe three years. It has helped me to improve my training and racing. Thank you Michael Paul.

Enough for now.