As runners we are creatures of habit and nothing confirmed this more than the Strava heat map attached below.  ( http://www.strava.com ) What Strava does (if you pay for premium membership) is take all your recorded runs (in my case well over 1,000 and rising 2 a day !) and map them onto a map with the different colours indicating the runs you run the most. The bright red lines show where I spend all my time.

As you can see I spend all my time running around Kings Park and the Bridges on my lunch time runs and then up and down the coast on the weekends.  You can also see my go-to run of choice, a 10k loop from my house to Star Swamp and back through Carine Park that I run 4-5 times a week minimum. This run is normally my recovery run and I can just about give you a breakdown of kilometer times to the second of each one of the 10k’s. For example the first kilometer is always between 4:40 – 4:50 min/k and I run k2 at 4:37min/k (this one is normally within 1-2 seconds) etc. etc….  These runs are built for time on feet and as I discussed yesterday recovery runs. A run you can run in your sleep but one where sometimes an autopilot is just what you need to rack up the kilometers without the need for mental engagement.

Golden rule number 8 is about consistency and this heat map shows me that I am Mr. Consistent. As well as establishing your go-to runs consistency is also about maintaining a good foundation, even on the off-season. (not really sure what an off-season is in my case?)  The biggest threat to this is of course rule no.3, injury. Once injured consistency is no longer an option and it’s back to rule no1 , distance, to rebuild.

No one said this running was easy..