Sunday, June 04, 2006
Always take the break... or else!
Half a lifetime (and a few pounds) ago, I ran Track and Field. Specifically I was a sprinter.
I loved the feeling of going fast. I had less affection for practice, which tended to be repetitive and tiring. But I must admit, they made me faster.
During our daily drills, I started to notice a pattern with our coach. He was always having us run lots of quick drills where you might sprint for 200 meters, then 300, followed by 400, and then back to 300. I'm sure the goal was to build up our endurance as well as our quick twitch muscles.
But that wasn't the unusual thing. In the midst of the workout, he would often gather all the sprinters around himself and he would tell a story. I can't say I remember any of them all that well because they tended to be rather dull and had nothing to do with sports. Often they involved long lost relatives and car repairs. Time after time, as we were trying to get our second wind, we were a captive audience for his stories.
One day, one of my fellow sprinters asked the question we'd all been thinking.
"Coach, why are you telling us these stories?" he asked.
The coach smiled and said, "If you don't like my stories, then you can get back to running right away."
No one ever complained after than. Sure the stories were unimportant in a entertainment sense but they played a huge role in our training.
I loved the feeling of going fast. I had less affection for practice, which tended to be repetitive and tiring. But I must admit, they made me faster.
During our daily drills, I started to notice a pattern with our coach. He was always having us run lots of quick drills where you might sprint for 200 meters, then 300, followed by 400, and then back to 300. I'm sure the goal was to build up our endurance as well as our quick twitch muscles.
But that wasn't the unusual thing. In the midst of the workout, he would often gather all the sprinters around himself and he would tell a story. I can't say I remember any of them all that well because they tended to be rather dull and had nothing to do with sports. Often they involved long lost relatives and car repairs. Time after time, as we were trying to get our second wind, we were a captive audience for his stories.
One day, one of my fellow sprinters asked the question we'd all been thinking.
"Coach, why are you telling us these stories?" he asked.
The coach smiled and said, "If you don't like my stories, then you can get back to running right away."
No one ever complained after than. Sure the stories were unimportant in a entertainment sense but they played a huge role in our training.
# posted by tvguy @ 2:13 PM
