Tempo means rythym

Quick lunchtime update:

I know, the silence this week has been deafening. Been working on a couple of longer posts, one for here (musings about the illusion of mind and body being separate; maybe a bit dry but it’s a topic on my mindbody lately, especially considering the strange dreams I’ve been having) and one for the political blog (a review of “All The President’s Men” that’s turning into a fairly long critique).

So, hang in there and I’ll be back. I’ve also been slowly working on the site re-design but I don’t want to jinx myself by announcing anything yet.

Also the constant sleep interrupted by nightmares kinda take a toll.

I’m going running tonight and will more than likely post about that, too. Funny: I keep reading in Runner’s World about how beginners shouldn’t start “speed work” until they’ve been doing “tempo runs” for a while. For instance, a recent article says that a runner should be comfortable running for 45 minutes at a stretch before beginning speed work.

I thought I understood what “tempo running” was — I thought it was mixed fast and slow running. Makes some sense, right? “Tempo” is a synonym of “rhythm”…

But this week I decided to actually go looking for a definition; and it turns out that a “tempo run” is just sustained running at around what I would run in a race, sandwiched between shorter, easier, warm-up runs. That’s, um, what I’ve already been doing, although I haven’t been pushing myself for more than 30 minutes at a time. That’s a bit difficult (but not impossible) because there’s time limits on the treadmills and it’s been too freakin’ cold to go running much outside lately. At any rate, I’m going to to try (availability of treadmills being the primary factor) tonight to do a 35-minute “tempo run”.