You know, if you make your Virtual Partner (I think you are giving him an identity crisis by constantly changing his name) slower, you can still be competitive and beat him by a lot, while simultaneously not killing your heart and calves.

For instance, if you make him run at 10 minute pace / 6 mph, you can run 9-minute miles and still beat him by six minutes, or .6 miles, over the course of a six-mile run. That's quite a margin. And it's much easier than 8:20 miles.

Since when was running fast bad for your heart? You just have a high heart rate. Running fast is good for your heart.

Yes, I know that I can make my Virtual Partner slower and thus beat him by more, but I can guarantee that if I set him to a 10:00 pace, then I'll still run just as fast. I guess it can be called a personality quirk.

I have a feeling that running fast would be bad for your heart if it made it explode or stop beating. And sometimes when my heart beats too fast, it stops beating for a beat or two. So I'm assuming that's not good for it...

You're 20 years old, and in good shape. Your heart is not going to stop, or explode.

If it's beating that fast, then who cares if it skips a beat or two? It's beating so much that it will catch up pretty quickly...

How about this:

Make it a competition to exactly run along with your Virtual Torturer - ahem, Virtual Training Partner. It's pretty simple - make your success metric the absolute value of the difference between your split and your partner's split, with lower numbers better.

Here's an important thing to remember: In order to succeed the best at any sport, the athlete must be disciplined. Not rabid. In basketball, it's important to be aggressive (don't let that guy steal the ball) but not vicious (don't eat the other players, that's a foul). And in rowing, I'm sure you know -- if you pull too hard at the beginning, you won't be pulling very hard indeed at the end.

I know you want to run fast. Good for you. But you have to make reasonable decisions about your running splits, and stick with them, otherwise you will injure yourself. But you know that already.

Thanks for the tip, as running exactly the same pace as my Virtual Buddy is a competition in itself. I am somewhat skeptical that the suggestion came from a man who hasn't done any real physically demanding activity in over four years, but I guess you had to be pretty smart to get into MIT. (I don't know, though... Man, they took your teeth out!)

"And sometimes when my heart beats too fast, it stops beating for a beat or two. So I'm assuming that's not good for it..." -rgutwin

From Runner's World:

An arrhythmia is a change in the sequence of the electrical impulses that cause your heart to beat. Four million Americans have the condition, according to the AHA. "Most arrhythmias aren't serious," says [a qualified guy] "IT's when you start stringing multiple beats together that you get into trouble." This so-called sustained arrhythmias can make the heart beat too slow or too fast, or erratically, leading to stroke or heart attack. Though runners with atherosclerosis and high blood pressure are at greatest risk for sustained arrhythmias, even athletes with no discernible danger can be susceptible, especially during runs of 15 miles or more. "On long runs you can become significantly dehydrated, leading to changes in the blood's levels of potassium, magnesium, and calcium," says [that same guy]. "These chemicals play a vital role in starting and conducting electrical impulses in the heart." Which makes the fallowing hydration guidelines all the more important: Drink 16 ounces of sports drink two hours before a long run, eight ounces every 20 minutes during your run, and 16 ounces of sports drink afterward.

Can you believe I typed that whole thing up for you? That said, I'm not sure that six miles would qualify as a "long run." On the other hand, I ran 15 miles this morning after jumping out of bed, with no sports drink or other source of fluid or chemicals, and nothing happened to my heart.

I agree with Karl about that whole thing he said.

Oh goodness. I apologize for the typos.

This is better. Forget that first comment.

Do you know of Paula Radcliffe, the world record holder in the marathon, who lowered the world record by two minutes (from her other record) in one go? Who just ran to a smashing four-second victory at the very same NYC marathon that you said you were going to run? This is what Runner's World has to say about her:

"For Radcliffe, that [the basics] means running long -- as much as 140 miles a week -- and hard (much of her training mileage occurs near race pace, with her heart revving at just under 200 beats a minute)."

Did you hear that? She runs 140 miles a week with her heart rate just under 200. If you assume she runs a 5-minute mile, that is over 11 hours a week at just about maxiumum heart rate. Hmmmmmm.