A Visit Home - Running For Dad

This week I'm 1200 miles physically  - and apparently a decade emotionally - removed from my state of normal.  I'm back in my home town out west to spend a few quality days with my father, fresh out of the hospital.  My home town of Deming, New Mexico is one of those municipalities which, if you sneeze as you drive past on Interstate 10, you are likely to miss by one-half.

For me, there's always some sort of literary, historical or musical touchstone which aligns to the immediate present; that's what my wife always tells me.  My first visit home, five years after I left high school, was something akin to meeting back up with an old lover.  There's memories of the really good times and a recollection of where "everything" is located...there might be a few cosmetic changes here and there, at the worst.  My previous visit seemed more like I was watching a video of Bruce Springsteen's "My Hometown." Springsteen sings of the melancholy reality of a place you thought would never change, where your kids would be able to have the same degree of stability and mobility, depending on what they desired...but it all changed.

This trip has an entirely different feel.  Two different songs weigh heavily on my thoughts:

The first is the Beatles' "In My Life."  Things have changed in my home town, and the "old lover" is now nearly-unrecognizable.  I had absolutely no difficulty finding my way to the place my parents have called home for the past nearly-three decades, but the brief tour around town found very little to be unchanged. Perhaps the big churches, a couple of restaurants, the hotel where I worked my first job (where I'm staying this week); not much else.  Even a pass through the local major retail chain store which crushed most of the mom-and-pop businesses we patronized when I was young placed me in the "Ebenezer Scrooge" role in a southwestern remake of "A Christmas Carol."  I didn't see a person I recognized.  At all.  And nobody knew me from Adam.  God bless us, every one.

The second song is John Mayer's "Stop This Train."  Mayer talks in the song about his fear of "getting old," as if he only can be successful at being young.  Spending time with one's elders, especially when they are in frail health, can shake the hell out of your own wrongly perceived concept of immortality.  So far, the real joy has been able to have the "help me understand" talk with the "old man."  And the counsel is much more than the "hang in there and renegotiate when you hit my age." platitudes and b.s.

Dad asked me what I did this morning.  I described in a nutshell the distance and duration of my scheduled jaunt, which was less sprightly than originally planned, I dare admit.  Forty-two hundred feet of elevation change will do that, just in case you wonder what it's like to jog near the Continental Divide.  But his questioning had not so much to do with intellectual curiosity or making small talk.  He really and truly misses his daily walks, a habit he took up not long before he retired about eight years ago.

I described the "new" (to me) rails-to-trails path which was once the train tracks running just west of our house and south of town protecting the Country Club members from those of us who were genuine working-class stiffs.  I joked about the 15 mile-per-hour (for Deming residents, better described as "what") wind blowing gently on my face and cooling me for the last two and a half miles back to my hotel.  And, I realized that my running tale might have well been the tonic he in his housebound state needed to have, even if in a small dose.

So right now my training sessions and recovery jaunts are as much for him as for me.  I will no doubt be overjoyed when he's able to take his dog out for a stroll up the back road to the supermarket, and I think he'll look forward to the next time I'm able to toe the line, racing fit.

That's Not Karaoke. That's My Shower.

The low level groan of discomfort quickly turned into a yowl of pain, pure and simple.

All I could do to dissociate from the pain was try and remember the technical term used by triathlon coaches Roch Frey and Paul Huddle, but to no avail. At least, not until this morning

I remembered it was something along the lines of "Extended Low Frequency Moaning." It's a disorder caused by extended contact and friction between the skin of one's more-tender nether regions and seams of fabric covering those same nether regions. There are cases of this being also caused by skin-on-skin friction, too, but we'll stay with the former for this moment in time.

Some pairs of running shorts are more likely to cause this discomfort than others. Cotton and cotton-blend fabrics are definitely high on the list, at least as far as I'm concerned.

Some other reasons that have been bandied about as causes of chafing include a lack of hydration - which supposedly leads to a lack of sweating. Any person who knows me well enough can attest that I don't have any problems with a lack of sweat.

How about clothing that is too tight or too loose? Well, I'm not quite certain one would classify a pair of high-cut running shorts as "tight" or "loose." From difficult experience I can say I have a pair of "more" loose running shorts which invariably lead to uncomfortable days; and I did walk about in them during the previous day; the seams in about three locations are particularly painful after a few hours.

Another source suggested that a sudden increase in my workout duration might be the root cause.

Very well, I'll buy that one for a dollar; I've been doing anywhere from 30-to-60 minute runs or hikes.

The half marathon I completed the other weekend didn't cause me this much pain, in spite of the fact I took in less fluid than during a "normal" Sunday eight-miler.

Is it possible that I would be better off wearing a pair of compression (or triathlon) shorts during longer run workouts?

There are some benefits to using tri-shorts: Most materials are breathable so there's not as much sweat against the skin. The really good quality shorts have tightly-knit material which may decrease the degree of muscle vibration; when it comes to shorter distance running sprints, where explosive efforts are a plus, compression shorts have been found to increase power. And the shorts are sewn with flat-lock seams which aren't in areas which are going to rub the more tender skin. So depending on the short length (I've pairs which range in inseam lengths from two-inch to eight-inch) the chances of skin-on-skin and skin-on-seam contact are greatly minimized.

While the jury is out on the performance benefits of compression clothing they are a sure guarantee when it comes to post-workout recovery. A pair of compression tights or calf sleeves can make a long plane flight a little less uncomfortable; and a pair of triathlon shorts can make that post-workout shower...something to not scream about.

On Your Rights, Track

Grass.  There appears to be not a more-forgiving training surface than running on a field of grass.

If this is true, than why have I stubbornly stayed on polyurethane or asphalt tracks for the longest time?  I'm not certain, save for the fact that most grassy fields are used for other sporting purposes, and I'm (really) not into conflict.  Soccer coaches are often very protective of their space; the coach of the women's team at the university where we trained for several years became so used to our presence - and the fact we stayed out of their way or shagged the occasional errant kick - we'd greet each other on Tuesday and Thursday evenings during season.  I'd tell my folks to swing wide of their bench area on repeats and trot their recovery jogs on the back side of the goalposts.

At the beginning of the summer I saw a sign which gave me hope...of a sort.  The university was closing the track until the beginning of August, in the hopes of resurfacing.  I moved our Saturday workouts to an asphalt track located at a middle school just up the road from my home.  Eight weeks, to me, was a short enough time to suffer through training on harder surfaces; adjust the effort levels accordingly and make certain nobody's wearing old shoes.

During the last week of July, Gil (the father of one of my younger athletes) mentions the track has been finished.  I asked him how it looked.  "Well," he said, "Alex took a couple of laps on it but couldn't really tell much; he's been a little beat from racing."  I took a drive after the workout ended to look at the surface myself.  To my horror I found the track was not resurfaced but merely recoated.  We're talking the same type of coating companies use to re-do parking lots.  I reached down to try and press the surface, which did not budge a bit.  Thumping it with the knuckle of my index finger found it completely unyielding.  In essence, the track is now asphalt with a polyurethane core.  The "Tootsie Pop" of running tracks.

In the past ten years I've seen three tracks either torn up and redone in this way, or torn up and redone as narrow jogging loops...sure, you can use a jogging loop for speed work, but it just seems to violate the laws of god, man and nature.  Why do schools take out perfectly-decent, well-worn but almost serviceable all-weather tracks and replace them with (unprintable) asphalt surfaces?  And, to add insult to injury, these tracks end up fenced-off from the public?  Tax dollars pay for this travesty, and the schools feel justified in locking the financial supporters out from the opportunity to at least TRY and use the surface?  If your town doesn't have jogging paths or sidewalks, the motor vehicle operators can be complete jerks about using the shoulders of public roads (which, YES, are also paid for by the taxes of people who bicycle and jog on them)...what else is a runner to do?

Schools feel justified on many occasions to close off their tracks because the average exercise enthusiast FAILS TO READ THE GUIDELINES posted at the track.  Most of the time the (common-sense) guidelines are posted for safety and courtesy reasons.  Occasionally, especially when the track surface is all-weather, the guidance is intended to even the wear-and-tear on the surface.

Skates, skateboards, strollers, bicycles - most, if not all tracks, prohibit the use of these implements for a number of good reasons:  First, they're often being operated by persons who lack situational awareness skills, and are being operated at speeds which are dangerous when placed in the context of confined areas.  If you're a stock car racing aficionado, putting a couple of five-year-olds on bikes, skateboards or skates on a 400-meter track is the equivalent of a race at Bristol, Tennessee; the driver who wins is the one who avoids the most accidents.  Strollers are the other end of the speed continuum, but the situational awareness deficit remains.  Top that off with the fact the stroller users often occupy the inside lane of the track.  Which leads me to...

Inside lanes for faster running, outside lanes for walking - using the inner-most three-to-four lanes for speed workouts and racing, with the outer lanes for easier running or walking has, what I believe, two good reasons.  First, walkers and slower runners place greater pressure on a broader swath of the track surface, whereas faster runners contact the track with a smaller "footprint" and a longer distance between "footprints." If you're getting passed by more runners than you pass it might be a good idea to move a lane farther out than you're running.  And if you're in between repeats, or laps, or miles, please don't stand and stretch on the inside lanes of the track,  Especially if others are really hammering repeats.  And if you hear the cry "track!" Look to the direction of where the runners are approaching, and get out of the way.

There are many persons (especially slower runners, walkers, and stroller users) who say "but I don't want to do more distance per lap of the track," and consider it as a justification to stay in the way of faster runners. If I rightly recall, the difference between lane 1 and lane 4 on a 400-meter track is pretty much the difference between a 400-meter track and a 440-yard track; four laps of a 400-meter track is 1,600 meters, about 31.06856 feet shy of a mile.  Four laps of a 440-yard track is a mile.

Spike lengths - most PU track surfaces have a maximum spike depth of (I believe) 1/4-inch.  How many times have I seen soccer players traveling across the track surface in their boots ("shoes" would be the  American term) onto the pitch.  On tp of this, driving their golf carts (refer back to the ground force reaction/"footprint" stuff when I was talking about inside/outside lanes), setting up their benches and Schwinn Air-Dyne stationary bikes on the track.

So when schools start to complain about the damage to their facilities from the general public, often they fail to see that what passes for convenience for one program can place irreparable damage or harm to another. And sometimes the only real victim of the conflict is the people who are eventually tapped to foot the bill for something they cannot enjoy.

So if you see a person engaging in an activity which violates basic track etiquette, let them know that it's not only a violation of common courtesy but could eventually lead to damage to your local track facility. Explain to them why their actions could place the entire running community in a world of hurt.

That is, unless you like running on the shoulder of the road.

Can You Say, "Bake Sale?"

So you want to raise money for a "worthy cause," huh?

And, because you have an active vibrant running community you think the easiest way to get a chunk of change will be to put on a five-kilometer run?

First of all, let me tell you the exact same thing I have told well-intentioned true believers who called or e-mailed me when I was the state representative for the Road Runners Club of America:

Hang up the phone.

Hold a bake sale.

In the same manner as a business, the would-be event promoter has to understand it takes money to make money; in the case of most running events it takes money to (if you're lucky) to break even in the first year.

My wife, as always, is not easily dissuaded or readily swayed by my words of counsel. She believes that hard work, persistence, and serious "outside-the-box" marketing strategies can win the day. And, rather than tell her "no" I agreed to take care of the technical aspects of the run; I would deal with anything that had to do with the actual run itself.

If you really, really want to put on a running event here are some of the things you better be prepared to do or have at your disposal...

AN ORIGINAL CONCEPT: This town is what I have occasionally called (in a derisive manner) 5K-saturated. A cursory scan of the local running club's yearly calendar of events showed at least 50 events within a one-hour drive of my home...with another dozen 10Ks, 21.1Ks and 42.2Ks. Open dates for races are either in the hottest part of summer or in conjunction with a holiday...which means more often than not your planned event is competing with at least one and maybe two others in the area. I've seen three events in a ten-mile radius of my home. No kidding.

AN AGGRESSIVE MARKETING PLAN: We had an event presence in social media from the outset, but don't be lulled into equating "likes" with participant numbers. I know of a second-year race which had 600 people the first year and 150 the second, all because of what could be kindly classified as desultory marketing. When a banner for a 5K a week after the event is posted mere blocks from the start line and you don't see a flyer about the event you're planning to run until the day before, well, the marketing committee chair screwed the pooch. It has to be a mash-up of e-mail marketing, paper-based forms in places where the target demographic can be found, and electronic advertising of any sort. Just because "it hasn't been done before" doesn't mean it cannot be done; only that it hasn't been figured out yet.

SUFFICIENT LEAD TIME: A well-meaning friend of mine works at the local running emporium. We chatted at a local run club get-together, at which we happened to be marketing our run. She told us to not worry about the possibility of low participant numbers because we planned our event on such a short notice. Part of me gave her the "blah, blah, blah..." look, but lead time is everything for an event planning process. It gives you the opportunity to get all that important paperwork out of the way, to talk to the (potentially-) affected (and potentially-aggreived) parties whose life or livelihood might be temporarily inconvenienced. Some times it takes more than one schmooze session to win over a potential sponsor or overcome a potential barrier. In some municipalities you might be thankful for that extra month of time, especially when dealing with bureaucrats.

SPONSORS: If you pick up nothing else from this piece, know this: Without sponsorship, participatory recreational athletic events are impossible. It takes money to do everything. The municipality will not let you use their roads and their public safety infrastructure without money (up-front in some cases). Unless you (as in the words of Jean Knaack, executive director of the Road Runners Club of America) are willing to lose your house because someone gets hurt on course and sues you (or your not-for-profit organization...you do have one of those, correct?) you're going to need event insurance. T-shirts cost money. Bib numbers cost money. Timing companies cost money. Awards cost money. Food and beverage costs money.

If you're going to go after sponsors, you better have a thick skin - because you're going to hear a lot of "no" - and a clear message as to what the money is going toward...and what the sponsor will receive in return. If all they're getting is a pat on the back then you're going to need a whole lot of sponsors.

There's different levels of support for an event:

In-kind sponsorship - this is the least painful for most businesses, like a grocery store providing fruit or bottled water. You're not going to turn it away, naturally, but the local constabulary usually doesn't take payment in gift cards.

Participatory support - sometimes there are schools and other civic organizations who don't have a lot of money but like the cause; they know showing their face makes for good marketing. These groups are also a good "in" to get persons to show up who otherwise might not have participated in the first place.

Monetary sponsors - the folks you are looking for. If your event is a non-profit organization these fine persons will be glad to write off some of their taxable income, as long as they're keen on the social benefit. Not every monetary sponsor gets the same degree of "love" from a race director. Perhaps every sponsor gets a logo on the shirt; bigger sponsors might get placed on bags or have signs prominently placed along the course. It's up to you, the race director, to determine up front what you'll do in exchange for what you get.

PHYSICAL HELP: Unless you are gainfully-unemployed or independently wealthy you are going to want to lighten the potential workload from the outset. Many hands make light work and all that. Because putting on a race, even a small one, is going to consume an inordinate amount of your time, energy...and yes, your own finances. Be prepared, if all else fails, to do EVERYTHING yourself that doesn't violate the laws of physics. You will find, as you walk into this kind of endeavor, just who your friends are.

As well as the people you mistook for your friends.

You've heard the phrase, "a friend will help you move; a good friend will help you move the body," correct? A running event is like an Irish wake; everybody's good to go with standing around an getting drunk but nobody's going to stick around and pluck the cocktail napkins wedged between the guest-of-honor's hand and torso. Don't be afraid to enlist friends-of-friends-of-friends; they might not show, but if they do a good job at cat-herding they'll probably become your friend for life.

SPECIALISTS: People who possess specific knowledge, skills, and abilities are a plus when developing your race production team. Someone smart with money; either an accountant or a really-honest person who won't pay ANYONE until the say-so at the end. Someone graphically-skilled to develop clean, uncluttered race print materials. Someone who knows how to sell ice cream to Siberians in winter, or gas grills in the nether regions. A person who doesn't get flustered by anything. And I do mean anything. You're going to need them when you have to deal with the bureaucrats. A course measurer (a first year event doesn't need to be certified, but it can't be measured with an automobile odometer, either). One computer geek; especially impotant when dealing with on-line registration portals.

It takes a forward-thinking, well-prepared team of persons to put on a successful event, which often doesn't occur until the second year of an event's existence. If you don't have a team and you're looking at the short term you're probably better off...yes, having a bake sale.

August And Everything After

I don't know how you feel, but I'm excited. Let's get the month of August over with and on to September. If you're training for the ING in Miami or New Orleans' Rock n' Roll this is when the training kicks off, but as a (rehabilitating) athlete/coach the majority of my focus right now is on races which take place between Labor Day and Thanksgiving. I know nobody wants to be out running in August. All those folks who laid their money in the early spring to run Chicago or New York...what were they thinking? And if they ratcheted the intensity up too soon up front the odds are pretty good that by now - at the end of August - they had to take at least a week off.

During the summer, which for me and the athletes I work with I define as the period between the end of May and the beginning of September, most of the "speed" workouts are what coaches would call "maintenance." They're doing aerobic efforts, ranging from 160-to-1600 meters, breathtakingly-boring stuff. One of my guys races sprint triathlons, so the efforts he runs with me (when in town) are a nice change from the damage he does to himself on the junior circuit. His training partner is training for a marathon, so my biggest challenge is to keep them from hammering themselves into oblivion. Everybody else in the group have been with me for at least a year so I don't have to pull the reins in as much on them.

Once the temperatures drop to about 82 degrees I start to work in the occasional 400 at closer to VO2max pace - 2:10 per 400 for runners like my wife, 1:25-to-1:30 for my "hammerheads." Jack Daniels suggests a 2:1 work-to-rest ratio, which means the guys might jog an easy 100 in between, where Suzanne will walk that same distance. She'll do five of those where she might have done six (seven on a cooler day) at a more-aerobic pace; Al and Ash might do eight.

Even if I didn't change the intensity the chances would be they'd see faster times on the race course, because unlike many of their contemporaries they've been doing SOMETHING the entire summer rather than lsying on the couch drinking iced tea and watching Looney Tunes.

So, if you decided to allow the most frightening law of physics, the law of inertia, to take effect over the summer, it's not too late to be ready, more or less, for those Turkey Trot races at the end of November. Six weeks of aerobic efforts and you should be good to go.

When You Read Your Training Schedule Backward...

I didn't run a single step the other weekend; not a one.

I tentatively planned a brief 30-minute jaunt (or two) on Saturday, as well as Sunday. But as my old coach used to say, 'one excuse is as good as any other if you don't want to do something.'

I wanted to do something, but my heart wasn't in it. I was more worried about how my father was doing. So I spent more time chewing at my brains and reacting to every chime of my cell phone until I had the chance to speak to him on Sunday afternoon...

Me: "So, how are you doing?"

Him: "Well, I'm alive."

And, as my hasher friends would say, "...there was much rejoicing."

I've kvetched and moaned in the past about consistency in training, the benefits of rest, and stuff like that. Quite frankly, I don't think there's an incongruity between getting out (or, on the treadmill in my case) when your schedule says so, and plugging in a day off, especially when you've got a lot things on your mind.

Many of my friends love running as a form of stress release. As long as you don't carry your cell phone with you, a good run is a sure-fire way to place some distance between you and the things which are eating at you. Sometimes when it's all said and done you've got the problem all sorted out, or your plan of action drafted, or the thing you intend to say rehearsed. But there are moments when the overabundance of things on your mind are going to do nothing but screw up your run.

And if you're a tightly-wound guy like I am that "rotten run" then ends up being another thing driving you insane. I guess that's the double-edged sword, that "holism of training" thing which Timothy Noakes talks about in his "Laws of Training. How many times do we find that when we're running well our lives are a joy to behold? I mean, we're feeling (relatively) lean, (relatively) fast and invincible; our workouts are falling into place, our race performances are where we think they should be, all is right with the world? Those are the good days. And we can have the exact flip side of the coin where we can't finish a weekend long run without feeling gimpy and dragging our tail between our legs, and all we want to do is find a country album and a record player so we can play it backwards and...

You do know what happens when you play a country song backwards, right?

My wife loves to use her little frustrations as a reason to go out and run. Running with anger? I'm not so certain that adrenaline and cortisol and all those other hormones make for the most optimal run fuel source. Perhaps sprinters can get away with that sort of junk, but it's a recipe for disaster for us distance-loving guys & gals.

Naturally, Suzanne is not your typical distance runner.

It's okay to take a day unscheduled. You might feel a little bit of guilt, but I don't know of too many people who have died (directly) from feeling guilty. And if you're running for the right reasons you shouldn't feel guilt in the first place

Oh, and when I (finally) hit the gym on Tuesday, even the tendons and fascia had a good time.

The (Consistent) Spice of Life

This week - actually this last Sunday morning - marked the beginning of the last week of my second 16-week training cycle. I bet that sounded confusing. Anyone who's read my postings for long enough could probably tell you I most likely took my "writing clarity" coursework from Yogi Berra.

As always, another story altogether.

Two very important (and seemingly dissimilar) characteristics make up a good training regimen; consistency and variety. As I was learning from my old coach, Dale Fox, he once told me there was no real secret to the training our group did. What was special about the training was the consistent application of stress and rest, shorter repetitions at race paces and long, steady miles throughout the year. We knew Tuesday nights were filled with tough, shorter repeats; Thursday nights were longer repetitions at a slightly easier tempo...and Saturday mornings could go on forever. But we didn't get hammered at the same intensity level every workout, week-in and week-out. After a while we learned that one week could be hard, followed by a harder week the next week, and quite possibly a third, even tougher week, depending on the athlete's ability to adapt to the training. But every third or fourth week we would have workouts with repetitions which were highly aerobic throughout, or consisted of a longer, easy warm-up with a few very hard repeats at the end.

As every person knows and as the writers always scribble, variety tends to keep our lives from becoming too bland. During my first year as a coach there were persons who complained that I assigned the same workout every time they showed to the track. In my defense I'll admit these persons showed up to train with the group once every six weeks. It's hard to tell how well a person has adapted to a training stimulus when the frequency of exposure is minimal, even desultory.

But as I work through a training plan for an athlete I blend Jack Daniels' training mesocycles (repeat intensities and distances) with a three-week "kind-of-hard, hard, harder" and one-week "not-so-hard" effort cycle.

For this neck of the woods, where the racing season starts in early September and ends in late May, three training cycles consisting of four four-week training foci are good. A runner who is interested in training to peak for two marathons may prefer two cycles consisting of four six-week focus periods...each with a couple of weeks of full rest in between.

If the athlete is running around 60 minutes a day during the other three weeks during a training period, I might encourage them to cut back to 40 or 45 minutes.

And in some cases, with brittle guys like me, as little as 30.

The benefits of a less-intense week of training aren't only limited to the physical realm, and that supercompensation talked about by Hans Selye and other smart guys. It doesn't hurt the mind to have a little bit of relaxation...or at least to not worry about being beaten down...every couple of weeks.

Really, what you don't want to do is continue grinding along at the exact same intensity level day after day. The same thing, repeated over and over, is a sure ticket to boredom, fatigue, injury and eventually burnout.