Spring Running: Allergies, The 3 Essentials

It's Spring, and you know what that means: fun running in mild temperature. Not too cold. Not too hot. But there is one major downside to running in the spring: allergies. 

Having allergies while you run is awful. Runny noses make it hard to breathe properly and backed up sinuses make for excruciating headaches that make it terrible to try to run. Luckily there are a couple things you can do to make it a little easier for your sinuses and yourself.

1) Get Yourself Some Allergy Medication

Allergy medicine is very personal. Some work very well for some people, and the same medicine can have no effect on others. Your best bet is to buy a couple different over the counter allergy medicines in small doses, and see what works for you. When you find the right one it will make a huge impact on your allergy symptoms. My personal favorite is Zyrtec-D.

2) Get Yourself a Neti Pot or Other Nasal Rinse

I can not stress how important this is. I believe this is the best non-medicine allergy relief solution out there. There is one major downside: to operate one of these products, you are essentially clearing mucus out of your sinuses by squirting hot salty water through one nostril and then blowing it out of the other nostril. This is exactly as disgusting as it sounds, and as you would imagine, this is incredibly horrible to carry out. But, this is the best thing you can do (besides medication) to clear your pipes out and get rid of those pesky spring allergies fast. After completing these rinses you will feel undeniably great.

3) Tea

This is the most classic remedy, but it is a timeless one. Get your favorite tea out and add local honey and some lemon. this soothes your throat and clears your sinuses, Drink it as hot as you can muster the courage too. My personal favorite is chai tea, but I like to add 1 or 2 shots of expresso instead of adding lemon. This is an easy and effective remedy.

I hope these tips help you with the awful spring time allergies.

2 Week, 5 Day a Week Training Plan for Casual and Track Runners

Here is are two training plans to get your weekly miles in. There are 5 workouts listed for each week, and they should be completed in the order presented. It does not matter what day you start the first speed workouts on, but you should always leave a 2-day gap between subsequent speed runs. The first 10 workouts are optimized for people training for a long-distance track event (3200,1600,800,400, 4 by 4) while the bottom 10 are for a casual runner looking to improve his/her running.

Refer back to the last post to understand what speed, recovery, and distance mean. Track runners should always begin and end speed workouts with a mile to a mile and a half warm up and warm down, while casual runners should do the same but with a half a mile distance.
Happy running!