A day of strange coincidences

Day 250 - September 7, 2009

Talk about strange - First, as I was preparing to write today's post about my 250th run of my attempt at 1000 straight days, I noticed that today's date is September 7th. Why is that strange? Well, if you recall, my first attempt to run 1000 days began on September 7, 2007.

The second coincidence of the day occurred right after that. I was going to write about how sore my legs were today and how I figured it was the result of lactic acid from Saturday night's tough 6.5 mile tempo run. As I logged into my computer, I noticed a new post was up over at Just Your Average Joggler. For those of you who don't know Perry, he is a joggler (think running + juggling) who has started a streak of joggling everyday for 1000 days. Perry also writes articles on nutrition and running science. Today, his post was all about the myth of lactic acid.

Most runner's have probably heard that exercise at a high intensity, leads to lactic acid build-up which impacts performance and causes muscle soreness. I've been told this for years by coaches, Runner's World magazine, and fellow runners. It was just the way it was. Our coaches even encouraged us to run right at the edge of our aerobic threshold to keep our lactic acid levels down. Now this Perry guy is telling me that we've all got it wrong.

Perry's post was based on this article from the New York Times which claims that lactic acid is really a fuel our cells use for energy. I won't go into all the scientific details here, but if you are interested, check out the work of Dr. George Brooks at UC Berkley. Thanks Perry for the post and the link.

Since I mentioned the first attempt at 1000 days, I figure this is a good place to compare streaks. The first time I reached 250 days, I had run 840 miles in a little over 103 hours of running. Not too bad, 3.36 miles per day. This time around, I've run 978 miles in 127 hours. Just 22 miles short of averaging 4 miles per day. I'm really pleased with my progress and hope to keep it going and make up those 22 miles by the end of the year. Be sure to check back and see how I'm doing.