Nature's Little Surprises

"Nature loves her little surprises....don't you know it's a waste of your day caught up in endless solutions that have no meaning, just a hunch based on jumping conclusions...living a life of illusion..." - (Joe Walsh, 1981)

On my non-running day this last week, Suzanne and I were invited to a Zumba class by a friend (a former member of my training group, and my dentist) and his girlfriend. When the invitation came I believe I had a good idea what to expect.


In case you spent the last decade in a place where there are no gyms playing a single beat of Latin-flavored dance music, Zumba is a mix of Latin-style dance and aerobic moves. If you squint just so and the lighting is right during a sixty-minute session, you might get visions of Billy Blanks and Shakira.


I've done aerobic classes of one kind or another over the past couple of decades, however almost 30 years had passed since I did my last "mae geri keage" in the dojo, so the kickboxing moves were going to be more difficult. I'd seen the info commercials on television, so I worried a little leading into the class session. First, bouncing around on a linoleum floor in a school cafeteria may not be good rehabilitation for achilles tendonosis. Second, my parents did not pass on the "dance" gene, at least not to any popular dance outside of "high school hug-disguised-as-a-slow-dance" dance.

But I did remember my first aerobic instructor's advice if a routine became too complicated:

Keep breathing. Breathing is definitely a good idea, considering the unsavory alternatives. I don't do "smurf" all that well.

Keep moving. Standing still in an exercise class when everyone else is moving eventually leads to unintended collisions. Kickboxing moves, not full-contact kumite, grasshopper.

Keep smiling. If smiling is not possible a grimace looks much like a smile from a distance.

In that order.


But most importantly, I was going to be (probably) the second guy in a class full of women. There are guys who feel comfortable in their presence. There are guys who, by circumstance, spend a great deal of their life in their close proximity. If you're one of those guys whose livelihood (two good examples being the medical and educational disciplines) requires you to be in close proximity, you learn a lot of things.

You learn women are EXACTLY like men. At least when they are in an environment where they are the overwhelming majority, if not the totality. Sure, their work spaces are a little more nicely decorated, scented, and accessorized, otherwise they're alike. While I've never spent time in a ladies' locker room, I can say that women who work in an all-female shop can be very un-ladylike. They are more likely to, to be polite, "let their hair down." I've heard things no man should probably ever know existed. After about six months, I pretty much became one of the girls...estrogen-challenged and testosterone-enhanced, but one of the girls, no less.


After Dr. Quigley's "breathe, move, smile" advice came that of Clint Eastwood, straight out of "Heartbreak Ridge." Sure, that old Marine Corps gunnery sergeant was trying to get in touch with his inner-feminine side (or his ex-wife's), but he valued the ability to 'adapt, overcome, improvise.' As Suzanne moved farther forward into the class and worked at learning the routines, I stayed in the back of the classroom where the traffic was lighter, got a good sweat, and - most importantly - didn't hurt myself or anyone else too much. And, while dance frustrates me, I have to admit I did have a little bit of fun.


Perhaps that's why all-woman health and fitness clubs and women's running groups are popular. The "fairer sex" can feel less hindered or intimidated by us grunting, sweating, metal plate-chucking, lead-by-a half-stride-pace-seeking knuckleheads. Some of them do get better workouts that way. Of course, there are women who completely waste their time socializing or working out at an intensity level just one notch above sitting on the couch.


There are benefits to co-ed training. If you want to get a good weight workout, do it with a chick. There's not going to be a lot of grunting and, if you'll pardon the expression, man-handling the weight. Women more often use proper form and reasonable resistance. They'll get a lot of repetitions in so the muscle is stronger, not necessarily bigger. And there are drawbacks, too. There have been track workouts where my ego had to kick in to keep from getting "chicked" on one or more repeats. I trained with a woman who was so tough, we joked she would only quit a workout when a bone was sticking out of her leg...and only after she realized the bone ws her own.

"Every once in a while," my wife says, "we need to confuse our body by doing something a little different." Here's to the occasional confusion workout. It can be something as simple as changing from the time of the run from evening to morning, the surface from road to treadmill, the situation from running solo to doing a run with a group.

Consider the Treadmill Your Friend

Summer has turned to autumn, and infernal conditions have turned temperate (a good change), but the hours of daylight have dropped as quickly as the mercury. The runner in training, and even the runner who wants to stay fit and healthy through the season of junk food and socials has to consider the benefit of a few changes to their routine:

Change the time of the run from the increasingly dark morning and evening hours.
Change the run venue from outdoor trails and tracks to indoor facilities and treadmills. Change the run gear from lightweight to lighted (or reflectorized).

Not every runner is blessed with access to workout (shower!) facilities or flexible schedules, but a run during the work day can be a pleasant diversion from the "typical" stress of the work place. A runner who is not able to do a short run in the middle of the day might benefit from sliding the run time "to the left" or "to the right" to take advantage of daylight hours. Of course, that also depends on the good will of one's employer.

Many people hate running lap after lap on a track. Others can't stand to run indoors on a treadmill. When I suggest either option they often tell me it's either too painful or too boring. Given the choice of running a solo track workout or running on a treadmill I am most likely to choose treadmill running. The treadmill allows the individual runner to control nearly all of the workout variables, such as pace, duration, distance, and elevation. A runner who is willing to pay attention to the timer or the odometer can simulate almost every track workout imaginable. Pace discipline is almost absolute over time; there's no variation in pace, unless the runner changes. Most importantly, if something goes wrong biomechanically, they can stop the workout and immediately treat the issue.

I've even had people tell me treadmills were not good for runners because the mechanics of running were different. But I've always trusted my instincts about the treadmill and not listened to the nay-sayers. Then, last week, I watched a Running Times magazine podcast video about "Fixing Injured Runners". In the video, Jay Dicharry, MPT, CSCS, Director of the SPEED Performance Clinic and the Motion Analysis Lab Coordinator at the University of Virginia, was working with a middle-distance runner who had been dealing with achilles tendinosis for about a year. Dicharry's laboratory uses infrared cameras and a high-tech treadmill to help analyze the gait of runners of all ability levels, part of a three-fold process to determine "what's broken". About three minutes into the video, Dicharry said something which made me feel very confident (not only about my own recovery path, but also about training alternatives):

"Old lore states running on a treadmill and running over ground are dramatically different. A lot of coaches out there will tell you when you run over ground you're pushing yourself along the ground and when you run on a treadmill you pull yourself along. We can state this is not true. When you run on a treadmill versus over ground you are still pushing the body along. The treadmill is moving but you are pushing on a moving surface. The GRF (ground force reaction) profiles we measure are fairly similar."

"We published a study a few years ago (Riley, P.O., Dicharry, J., Franz, J.R., Wilder, R.P., Kerrigan, D.C., A kinematic and kinetic comparison of over ground and treadmill running. Medical Science, Sport & Exercise 2008; 40(6):1093-100) which looked at differences between over ground versus treadmill running. What it showed was about 60 percent of people ran almost identically on a treadmill versus over ground; while 40 percent had some differences. The differences we saw were really no more apparent than they would be if you ran on a track versus a treadmill versus a gravel road versus a trail. You want to acclimate and accomodate your body to prolonged running on a new surface..."

"We have noticed over the years after five minutes of running the variability in the gait cycle tends to decrease....As far as training, think about one more factor: on trail or any place someone is running around...if they want to speed up or slow down they can, it's no problem. On a treadmill they can't because the speed is set and held constant by the motor. If someone runs at a higher speed, gets fatigued and can't keep up with their leg speed they'll tend to overstride. When a runner overstrides they are running with a compensated gait pattern. That's one of the mechanisms people complain about. They claim treadmills cause them to get injured when they are running."

"I don't think it's the treadmill causing the injury, I think it's their compensated gait style causing them to get injured while on the treadmill."

As Mike Smayda, the middle-distance runner featured in the (three-part) podcast series said: "People set their treadmills too fast and overestimate their ability."

Most runners are more likely to adapt to the outdoor conditions and move their workouts to times with more light or bring the light (or reflectors!) with them, but the treadmill can also be the training runner's bst friend during the dark days of late autumn and early winter.

Say When?

Once upon a time there was a kingdom filled with runners, where machismo was the coin of the realm. It didn't matter what the weather conditions were like, or how ill or sore they felt. When the alarm clock rang out they would stiffly make their way out the door to the track or the road run, depending on the day of the week. Eventually, their illnesses became chronic ailments; their little tweaks turned into painful disorders. All for the want of common sense.

Where was it written, that rule which compels otherwise wise and prudent men (women, too!) to fill up calendar squares, and then eventually the appointment calendars of orthopedic specialists? Even Bill Bowerman, notable for saying "there is no such thing as hard conditions, only soft people," was known to have forced easy efforts, even rest, on his athletes. Kenny Moore writes about it in the opening chapter of his (most) excellent biography.

Yes, even Kenny Moore learned when to say when.

I believe it was Cosmas Ndeti, three-time Boston Marathon winner (1993-1995), who described in a Runners' World interview about ten years ago, what can simply be called the "two-kilometer rule." (There are other athletes who have said something along these lines.) He said that on those days when he felt less than strong during the morning run he would make an effort to keep the first two kilometers close to home. If he still felt bad at the two-kilometer mark he'd call it a day, walk back to the house and rest.

Yes, even the Kenyans know when to say when.

I've talked about having a "plan B" workout for those days when the conditions or circumstances were not going to be in your favor. There are days, and physical conditions which call for each of us to be brave enough to have a Plan "C" (Cosmas Ndeti, if you like), and call it a day rather than try to struggle through it. "Wooden legs" will probably make it through the two klicks just fine. Depending on the degree of ache in the muscles, and which muscles are aching, that mile-and-a-quarter might just let us shake things out.

Those overuse injuries, on the other hand, are probably going to continue to "talk" to you at 2K. It happened to me last night at my group track workout. I wear three different types of cushioned shoes, all made by the same manufacturer. One is wider in the heel or the forefoot than others, which leads to a "mismatch" between shoe and sock, shoe wriggle, and impact shock.

Rather than be smart and remembering (my coach's coach Bob) Schul's dictum: 'you get no glory points for running through pain at a workout,' I stuck it out through the five miles of near-90-degree slog. I felt fine (better!) once I went to bed that night, but the morning workout turned from "Plan B" to "Plan C" in less than thirty minutes.

Silly me. I still need the reminder: Know when to say when.

The Big Plan B

*BEEP*

That was the low battery warning signal from my (formerly) trusty Garmin 310XT GPS receiver. The sound was immediately followed by a slight buzz, silence as the receiver shut itself off, & an unprintable comment from my mouth. I guess it wouldn't have been such a bad thing if not for the fact I was driving out to run a tempo run with a group on a Wednesday evening.

My wife asked, 'do you have a charger in the car?'

'My charger, unfortunately, is attached to my computer back at the house,' was my reply. As we continued the 20-minute drive I was stewing in my own juices of stupidity. I know I put the receiver on the charger the previous evening, so how could this be? I resigned myself to the thought of going out for what former triathlete (now triathlon coach) Chuck "Chuckie V" Veylupek calls a 'caveman run.' This would be an acceptable compromise. I took a deep breath, let it out, & returned to conversing with my wife about life, the universe, & everything. You know, the kind of stuff married couples talk about when there's nothing else to do...wink, wink, nudge, nudge...

My wife then pulled out her new smart phone to check her voicemail & realized her phone had been off all day. She had a little trouble turning the phone on & assumed the battery was dead. I managed to reset it, & then realized, 'hey, these smart phones have GPS. If I download a run mapping program (like iMapMyRun) I should be able to keep track of the pace I'm supposed to do for this tempo run.' So, with precious few minutes left before the group was scheduled to leave on the run I tried to download the software. However, I couldn't get WiFi or set up the phone in time to download. That's where the ability to "Plan B" a workout is a valuable skill.

When talking about training I repeatedly have borrowed the John Lennon song line: 'life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.' This is so true as a runner or as a coach. I can lay out a training schedule in macro for 16, 18, 20 weeks out from a race, but more often than not it's going to get adapted, truncated, or...worst of all...pitched in the wastebasket as life takes hold of the stick & throttle. Even the micro level of an evening's (scheduled) track workout gets adapted; heavy cranes & lighting equipment, soccer matches & "facility fascists" can take up part or all of the track & leave an inexperienced (or unprepared) runner - or coach - wondering what to do as a "Plan B."

While in a two-year internship with the Navy I spent periods of time ranging from two weeks to two months at training commands. The assignments had the obvious drawbacks of living out of a suitcase, with access to hotel treadmills, & so on. But I learned how to adapt my training to the conditions. During a two-week assignment to Orlando I learned that light poles along this nice long stretch of road near my hotel were set at approximately 50 yards. So, all I had to do was count the number of light poles for my interval workouts; run three at 5K pace, walk one to recover, repeat six times, jog eight poles...I'm certain you get the message.

Frank Shorter once was quoted as saying 'hills are speed work in disguise.' So, running up a section of hill or bridge for a period of time (or distance, if you know it!), then jogging easy or walking down can provide a great workout. A 300-yard hill near the track facility where we train has three points marked on it; if a soccer match is going to keep us off the track for most or our entire workout I can always go down the hill. Sometimes the soccer matches are not interrupting; I'll do a set on the hill just to break up the monotony.

Training by perceived effort for a long enough period can help a runner develop a sense of pace; after a while you know what a nine-minute per mile pace feels like, as well as an eight-minute pace, & so forth. The most important thing in understanding pace sense is to know how a particular pace FEELS. I always marveled at my coach's pace sense when we would go out on easy runs during the weekend. I had purchased my first heart rate monitor/foot pod combination & was geeking out checking our pace during one run. He asked me at one point what my heart rate was; I looked at my wrist, then told him, to which he replied, 'yeah, I figured that. We're at the right pace.' Sometimes, it is safer to not ask how they do it. They just do it. I've got a few paces pretty well nailed down after eight years of training by perceived effort, so I can tell how hard I'm working give or take a few seconds now.

But I don't have a good sense of time, with the exception of swimming in a pool. I can tell you exactly how long it takes me to swim 50 or 100 yards, even though it feels like forever, give or take a second. (It must have to do with that love of oxygen.). So when it comes to running a particular period of time at a particular pace I'm doomed if I don't have a watch. So rather than the planned tempo workout of eight minutes at the pace I need to run a half marathon, two minutes easy, eight minutes at threshold, two minutes easy - repeated twice - I had to adapt. I decided to count telephone poles; eight at moderate effort, two easy, eight at hard effort, two easy, repeat until the end.

Adapting a workout to meet life's demands: So simple, even a caveman - or a smart runner - can do it.

Necessity Is The Mother Of Adaptation

Some of the athletes I work with remotely have their own special set of constraints, having much to do with maternity or Mother Nature, both of which are a force stronger than E.F. Hutton. The good news for me when I begin to lay out a training plan for them is they usually have a treadmill for running purposes close by. The only place treadmills are used as a clothes valet, as far as I can tell, is Florida.

The difficult part, however, is how to figure the proper training intensity. I can spend thirty minutes in an e-mail discussing what some call Coach Mike-speak, a variant ot terms used by my former coach, Dale Fox, his coach (1964 Olympic 5,000 meter Gold Medalist) Bob Schul, & his coach, Mihalyi Igloi...which works great when the individual athlete is on the track with me over the course of five or six weeks, because they'll catch the understanding eventually. But when dealing with remote coaching situations I can get a good effort approximation from some other really good coaches; Jack Daniels or Greg McMillan. Daniels' run intensity calculations are easily figured out through a table in the front end of his seminal work, Daniels' Running Formula (which I consider one of the three absolute must have running books), or you can find calculators and reference charts on many different web sites on the Internet (http://www.coacheseducation.com/endur/jack-daniels-nov-00.htm has what I would call Daniels In A Nutshell). I've encountered a fantastic spreadsheet you can use (http://www.electricblues.com/html/runpro.html) to determine the training effect of a particular workout, given the heart rate & run duration, but I recommend it for calculation's sake. McMillan also has a web-based chart, located at http://www.mcmillanrunning.com/ which aligns closely to Daniels'. I'm more familiar with Daniels, so I'll use his terminology to talk about run intensities here.

To determine your VDOT score, which Daniels explains is an estimate of a runner's VO2max at velocity, you'll need the results of your races (1,500 meters, mile, 3,000 meters, 2-mile, 5,000 meters, 10,000 meters, 15,000 meters, half-marathon or marathon) from the past year or so; if you have a variety, so much the better. Find your time for the particular race on a Daniels VDOT Values Table, then look at the number under the VDOT column. A list of best performances over more than one race distance will provide a more-accurate calculation; if you race more long events, focus on the findings based on those results and not so much on the shorter races. I'm one to err on the side of a lower VDOT score, personally, as your body can adapt to a training intensity that is a little too low better than it can an intensity which is too high. Once you have a VDOT score, a second table shows the training intensities based on that particular score for distances from 200 meters up to the easy/long run for the week, depending on the intensity level. For example, the athlete I talked about when I wrote about heart rate monitors has a VDOT score of 44 based on her recent 5K racing. She's training for a marathon in November - given the right conditions, a VDOT of 44 equals a 3:32 marathon performance prediction, but that's another story. Based on that performance I recommended she run her easy runs & her weekly long run at a sliver over nine minutes per mile. Her runs to prepare her for the pace she'll need to run in the marathon would be a little over eight minutes per mile, & the pace I recommended for tempo runs on the track is a little slower than a 7:30 mile. Once the runner knows their specific paces, they can use one or more of a few good 60-minute workouts for the treadmill-bound runner. I recommend one long run, one tempo & one repeat workout per week, with easy runs filling the remainder of the time available. If the athlete finds the workouts a little difficult based on perceived exertion or heart rate, we adjust the pace/s downward or extend the recovery period a little:

Progressive Tempo - 30 minutes at Easy/Long pace, increase speed by .1 mph every four minutes until Marathon Pace is reached. (Runners training for half-marathon or shorter races can continue on to Threshold pace.)

Marathon Tempo - 2 miles at Easy/Long pace, increase speed by .1 mph every two minutes until Marathon Pace is reached. (Runners training for half-marathon or shorter races can continue on to Threshold pace.)

Long Repeats (improve lactate threshold) - 2 miles at Easy/Long pace, increase to Threshold pace for up to five minutes, followed by Easy/Long pace (recovery) for up to two minutes.

Medium Repeats (improve velocity at VO2max) - 2 miles at Easy/Long pace, increase to Interval pace for up to three minutes, broken up by Easy/Long pace (recovery) for up to two minutes.

Short Repeats (improve economy and speed) - 2 miles at Easy/Long pace, increase to Rep pace for 30 seconds to one minute, broken up by Easy/Long pace (recovery) for up to two minutes.

How do you know when you're ready to move the intensities higher? Daniels says race performances are the test of when you're ready to move up...under no circumstances does he recommend trying to beat the training intensities for specific efforts.

While many persons will say a treadmill (simulation) workout is not as good as getting out on the road or the track, I consider it an "eighty-percent solution" for those days when the weather conditions are less than optimal or the runner has a limited amount of time available to train.

When The Training Triad Fails...

This weekend has been a challenge and a joy when it comes to my own training. I had a couple of local hare-and-hounds runners (two different kennels) socially (network) commit to the weekly Sunday morning long(ish) run, so I was really looking forward to the motivational benefits of running with a couple of guys who are closer to my pace.

Usually, the long run is an opportunity for some time with my wife. I'll run a few miles solo, then trail back to where my wife is on the course. Eventually my run turns into a walk with her. Some suggest I should take my "very easy" days and do those with Suzanne. Love my wife, but she's just a little bit slower than I; running with her in the past has come at a cost. A jaunt around Ala Moana Park in Waikiki , just months after a horrible marathon experience, not only reminded me of the fragile state of my achilles' tendon but tied up my hamstring in the process...to the degree I had to hunt down the Hilton's massage therapist mid-week.

So, we both agree she can not an active part of my training triad. She's an elemental part of the training group I coach, and of my coaching process, though.

The rainy conditions which began in earnest this week dropped the temperatures a few degrees, from nearly-infernal to what I've found a temperature on the high end of tolerable, somewhere around 82 degrees. I'm not certain what the temps were this morning when I got to the park where we normally start our loop, but the rain was a cool rain, making me think a little about several things:

"Should I wear a shirt for the run?" I had worn a long-sleeved technical top on the drive, and thought it might help to retain some warmth. If it was a month ending in "R" the decision might have been wise. But, we're still talking August. Also, I began to think about how heavy that shirt would have felt about 45 minutes after the start of the run. Yeah...that's okay.

Before that question, though, I was asking myself, "Should I bag the idea of a solo run on the loop, drive to the gym near the house, and give my new iPod application from Marathon Nation, Run Roulette, a go?" The Run Roulette app provides up-to-40 different workouts in five categories, ranging from 30-to-90 minutes in duration. Run Roulette also tracks which workouts you've completed, and - if you're the type of person who likes to publicize your super-secret training runs - sends status messages by way of Twitter and/or Facebook. I don't use a lot of applications and really am not at a loss for workout ideas for myself, but I downloaded the free Lite version from the iTunes Store for those days when I get stuck on the treadmill and need a little diversity in my running. Who knows? My F.A.S.T. Pensacola athletes might see something from RR in the future.

So, in spite of Chris Carmichael's advice to ensure someone to train with on a regular basis by developing a training triad, Murphy has a great deal of influence (or anti-influence) on a drizzly Sunday morning. It's always easier to hit the snooze button and roll over when you hear the hiss of rain outside the bedroom window. That's not an indictment of anyone. That's fact. I've done it on more than my share of occasions.

When the triad fails, your catchphrase needs to change from "Leave No Man Behind" to "Semper Gumby". "Always flexible"...another way to say "suck it up, buttercup; you got to do something on a Sunday morning."

Slow Ride...Take It Easy

The conditions we've endured this summer (thanks to a wicked El Niño) have made training very entertaining. Coaches - if they believe there is one present - are often accustomed to looking for the location & quantity of the silver lining within the dark cloud of the athlete. It could be a short-term body habitus change or a change in a fitness level...sometimes both issues at the same time, if the coach works with a female athlete. In those sorts of situations the best thing anyone can hear is the need for patience, & the true hope that given enough time things will get better.

Of course, it's hard when the coach is the person in question losing confidence in their fitness. There are coaches who are self-coached, but sometimes everyone needs an ear to bend when the days are a little less than sunny. When it comes to swimming I have a couple of good friends/coaches I can turn to. As for running...I'm more likely to talk to my wife; she seems to have a good perspective on what I'm doing wrong since she hears me provide advice and counsel to others. I don't always like to hear what she has to say, but she's more likely going to initiate a plan of action to fix my problem.

So, rather than beat myself needlessly over the conditions & the fitness I decided to adapt my training plan. I figured, rather than try to accelerate a marathon training plan by two or three weeks in order to run a local marathon I had not registered for yet, I'd spin the dial all of the way back to base-building...something I could have done from mid-April until early June rather than taking so much time off. So yesterday I got on the treadmill and ran six miles at ten-minute per mile pace...very slow for me. It felt quite good when I finished but the real lessons of running slowly hit home at five o'clock this morning.

First, if your shoes are old, beat-up or beyond their best days, running slowly will make you realize the fact. And the fact? What else? It's time to spend money on another pair.

Second, & this is more of an opinion than anything, you find out how efficiently - or inefficiently - you run, form-wise. Shortening your stride, which works well on the roadways, isn't so effective on a treadmill. So there is such a thing as a too-slow pace on a treadmill. I learned yesterday I was probably a solid minute-per-mile too slow...at probably the last minute of the run. One minute of the "right" dead-slow (easy) pace certainly does NOT make up for the previous 59 where you were at the wrong pace.

The nice thing is, out of the whole situation...you live...you learn. And I got some very easy miles out of the process. Really it was nice to run for an hour without sweat flying all over, the ability to really enjoy the music and look out the window at folks coming into and leaving from the gym.

Now comes the adjustments...the way my back felt this morning it might involve a chiropractor.

It's a Rebus, Ya Butthead...

(A tip of the swim cap/cycling helmet/running visor to "Chuckie V" Veylupek. A little more obscure & cryptic than his road sign, but hey! That's the way I am, right?)

So, the end of the calendar year is always great fun for me. Not only does it allow me to scale back the running or cycling I do in order to spend more quality time - running - with my wife, I also get to play my favorite puzzle game, called "What The Heck Did We Do Wrong This Year?"

Well, it's not the official name of the game, but it's the working title for what new twist do we want to try in our training to replace the things that didn't do so well last year? I know, it's not as catchy as Scrambled Eggs, which was the working title for one of the greatest pop tunes of the past fifty years (kudos to anyone who knows the title - I don't have anything special I can give, short of my admiration!), but it will have to do.

Last year I tossed the fairly-well tried-and-true three weeks on, one week off training intensity cycle right out the window for a shorter three/four/five day on, one day off cycle. Unfortunately, I don't control all of the workout factors; I can swim up to six days a week (seven if I wish to engage in open-water!), and I can bike, run or do strength training almost any time I please. But sometimes I like the idea of getting out on a ride, or a social run, with a friend. We're social animals, we humans. While we may not have identical training goals & our physiological make-up varies by chronological & training age, there are times we like to have someone else suffering along with us.

So, this year I have decided to carpe the damned diem...seize the day. There are enough social-like training-like situations where I can get the necessary intensity in without feeling like the Lone Doggone Ranger. Rather than focus strictly on hard mileage/yardage, I've borrowed from a number of guides to gauge the volume & the balance between the disciplines.

The first guide is from Joe Friel's The Triathlete's Training Bible (I have the next-to-most-recent-edition). Since I'm focusing on two IM 70.3 events this year & I'm a middling-to-back-of-the-pack (blame it on my swimming) participant, I'm looking at the middle of Friel's 500-to-700 hours of training per year window. So, when I look at the amount of time I spent this year it's not going to be a big change, time-wise (this makes my wife very happy!). Friel has a week-by-week breakdown through each of the base, build, and prep cycles leading to the event, & the events are far enough apart to give me a chance to re-cycle through base & build in the summer.

Even neater than this, Friel lays out a division of hours per day for each week. Sundays have the most time available; which seems in line with most middle-class triathletes, & the week slowly tapers off in hours for training, with Saturday being the shortest day of the week, where your most intense stuff, or your C & B races, fit in. But there are days where my swim work is 'etched in stone' because of my masters' group, & the twice-weekly Six At Six beatdown is becoming a regular thing again...so there's a healthy chunk of the week taken up. But it's probably a better thing to have a little too little training volume than too much, right? I doubt if anyone ever got injured from undertraining over time.

The second tool is Dan Empfield's aerobic points system. For me to get out & run 8-to-12 miles on the weekend, 8 miles in the middle of the week, & five-to eight miles worth on the elliptical trainer (or treadmill, if I'm not too beat up) may...or may not...be such a good thing, especially in light of how badly I swim. Empfield's point of view, as well as many other coaches is race your strengths, train your limiters.

(If you're strictly running you will be better served by Jack Daniels' points system, which is published in the latest version of Daniels' Running Formula. But if you're a beginner tri-geek you might want to use this guide to keep your training balanced...so you don't spend too much time working on the stuff in which you are already good.)

Empfield's system works like this:
1 mile cycling = 1 point

1/4 mile running (~400 meters on track!) = 1 point

100 meters (yards) swimming = 1 point

I did a little bit of adaptation because of my tendency to beat myself up on the run: If I use the elliptical trainer (with a heart rate monitor!), I'll divide the time spent on the ET by 2.4-to-3.3 (2.4 if the average heart rate is closer to maximum, 3.3 if the average is closer to 50 percent) and give that score to the ET workout. (In essence, it's a way to equate elliptical trainer with cycle!) So, 25 miles of running might equate to 100 miles on the bike or 10,000m (yd) in the pool.

A hard-core runner might not need to develop strength by hitting the weight room, & some triathlon coaches consider hitting the pool to be better than pumping iron. Empfield prefers weights, so, every five minutes pumping weight (after 20 minutes) earns a point. A one-hour session would give you 12 points, but that assumes no lollygagging, definitely a hard-core weight session.

If there's a weakness in your training or you aren't certain how to balance out life & training, or the disciplines for which you are training, it helps to figure out what some of the good coaches are doing or telling their charges...might work for you; might not. We're all an experiment of one. Don't do the same thing over again if you're looking for different results.

Adapt or Die

Lately, my wife has been looking into business plans; big picture strategic stuff which (in the past) used to make my head hurt. Hurt. Bad. Worse than any workout I ever ran under my old coach, or as part of my own training. Bad enough to drive me to that high-end coffee emporium you can find on nearly every corner in a good-sized city. At that point, my business plan was to go in, grab a four-dollar latte, & think pleasant thoughts about long, easy runs on shady, tree-lined lanes with no automobiles, no dogs, & toilet facilities at each mile marker. Silly to think I'd have to resort to fantasy to ease the pain of reality, right? Then I began to think about how they expanded from a few stores in one city to this big, honking, megalithic corporation with stores everywhere...all part of a big, honking, audacious business plan a bunch of smart business-types sat down over their lattes and drafted out years ago.

So, my wife was talking to me in between my workout and my hurried rush to be late for work...again...about things like micropayment & free-riding... I vaguely remembered from my college economics course about free-riding; it's like banditing a road race. For the uninitiated, bandits are unregistered, unofficial race participants. They don't have a bib number so their performances aren't officially recorded. Most of the time, these bandits won't grab drinks at the aid stations or run through the finish chute; the occasional cup of water taken by a bandit might not adversely affect a race promoter's profit margin, but when they run through the chute it causes headaches for the timing crew...especially if their timing system is antiquated.
Of course, the bandit is of the opinion 'hey, the police coverage is going to be out there for everyone else, what's so wrong with me using the race as a fast training event? I'm not drinking the beer or eating the bagels, am I?' Most race directors, at least here, turn a (semi-)blind eye on the banditry because it usually doesn't screw up their event as a whole. However, if the individual participant looked at it as 'dude, someone isn't paying their fair share...' perhaps race directors would be a little less benign about the whole thing. The difference between 300 persons paying for a 350-participant race and 350 persons paying for a 350-participant race, if we're talking a 5,000-meter run with a $20 entry fee is (before the expenses are taken away) $1,000, right on the edge of 15 percent potential additional income. Or, the race director can do something really cool, like keep the registration closer to $18. Imagine what the average, run-of-the-mill race participant would think about a $2 decrease in entry fee?

It's hyperbole, but it's easier to think about the difference when you start tossing big numbers.

Is it crazy to provide content, services, or goods for free? It depends on the provider's intent; if the hope is the (potential) customer will reach for value-added items, available for a small fee, then providing content for free is acceptable. If the seats in the auditorium (to borrow a theater analogy) are filled with non-paying customers, in order to keep up the appearance of a successful business, then you know eventually the business is going to do one of two things in order to survive:

1. Change or discontinue certain content.
2. Charge for content.

Adapt or die, say the business theorists, who borrow from theories of natural selection.

And it appears many on-line coaching services cannot help but agree. You might be able to find cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-most training plans - or parts of them - on the web sites of coaching content providers, but a modicum of your paycheck is going to have to be parted with if you want the entire picture, which may or may not include a coach to answer questions, provide guidance & counsel, & help you to figure out what you need to reach your own athletic performance goals.

And books with coaching advice & training plans? Well, you have to purchase those, too, so you're putting the money out one way or another. A coach who I know performs his craft strictly for love of the sport has written, & sells, a training manual - so a dichotomy can exist in athletic training consisting of altruism & venality...better yet, let's say altruism & capitalism. :)

Any coach who doesn't consider charging a reasonable price for the service they provide:

1. Does not want to place their reputation behind their product (perceived worth), or

2. Is independently wealthy (altruism), or

3. Has no need to make a living from their craft (libertarian ideals), or

3. Does not care enough about developing potential clientele (selectivity).

Simply put, gains in athletic performance, & striving for athletic/fitness goals, costs you in time, in personal committment, & in finances. A good coach can help you get there - better than you can do it on your own - because they've seen the pitfalls from their perspective, & many have made the common mistakes in their own experience. A good coach is like a Sherpa; you pay them to guide you up the mountain, they work hard so you don't have to expend as much effort or risk the chance of dying on the journey.

(POSTSCRIPT - My coach reminded me last night there are coaches who do what they do solely for love of the sport. The statements above sound mercenary, but they are theories, much like the theory of natural selection. Day-to-day practice may or may not align with the above-mentioned theory.)

Recovery Is Underrated

"Recovery. That's the name of the game... Whoever recovers the fastest wins." - Lance Armstrong
Locals haven't seen a lot of me lately; some assume it's because I'm injured or quit running/racing altogether. Nothing is further from the truth. I'm spending more time doing something I could have done better in the past. In order to perform well at my goal events this autumn I'm spending more time on the treadmill, on the elliptical trainer, on the bike, in the pool and - believe it or not - easier efforts on the road. It isn't as fun as road racing. You don't get any awards for doing base training. Maybe that's why it's so overlooked. However, this isn't about me as much as it is about you.

If you participated in every area race since the beginning of the year (Here in Pensacola the first race is not long after New Years' Day, goes until early May, then stops over the summer. Racing then resumes in earnest around the middle of September & reaches it's crescendo right before Thanksgiving.) it might be too late to talk about whether it is time to recover; that time might have been long past. While hard work - long runs, speed work, tempo runs, terrain/event-specific workouts - are important, what is more important (I'm reminded by reading the thoughts of coaches & physiologists) is what Alan Couzens calls "the intelligent distribution of work."The first time we encounter a particular stress during training (say, a workout of 800 meters four times, with 100 meters walk recovery, at "up-tempo fresh" pace) our body becomes alarmed at the assault. Once the body adapts to that stress it compensates to deal with it, making you more fit...for a time. However, extended exposure to the same stress (say, due to a lack of variety) eventually leads to exhausting adaptation; you could end up worse off than when you first started doing that particular workout. That's what makes a variety of training stressors important. The same (4 x 800 in this case) workout that provided a 100% performance benefit at New Years', if done without any change, would provide, if you’re lucky, only a 3% benefit by Memorial Day.A season of hard training - or racing - that is too long leads to a performance plateau, or to fatigue. If you don't ration your efforts wisely over time, you can expect a relative plateau after three months & a decline in performance in five. Backing off the efforts by 1/3 of the normal volume one week each month, & one month each year won't hinder performance a bit.Each athlete needs to know the best length of training period, volume of training, & intensity of training for their goal. This means taking time to quantify not only how far/fast you went, but how intense it felt, & how you felt during the next workout period. You can do this by Borg (perceived effort) scale, average heart rate during the workout, resting heart rate each morning, hours of sleep, relative fatigue...I think you get the picture.Recovery, as the smart people say, is underrated.

The Needs of the Many...

...outweigh the needs of the few...or the one. - Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy), "Star Trek II - The Wrath of Khan"

If there's anything I hate, it's saying goodbye. I've never been good at it. Usually it comes with a promise to keep in touch, which rarely happens. Well, now it's easier to do with the advent of e-mail, instant messaging, Skype and cool stuff like that.

Most of the time I've had to deal with good goodbyes, where everyone parts on the greatest of terms and say glowing things about the relationship. Then, you get bad goodbyes, where everyone saves their final, hurtful parting shots for the final salvo of bile, then circles their wagonload of close associates near to hear them say, 'yeah; you're right, they suck bilge.'

So, why can't people who don't see eye-to-eye and don't want to be associated with each other just agree to disagree, say adios, and get on with life? I sometimes wonder what Ron Warhurst, Mark Wetmore and Chris Carmichael do - or did - when their athletes decide to work with another system, another coach, a different location, or go a different direction.

It used to irk me to have someone no longer train with me without providing a reason. Now, I think I'd rather have them not provide one, that way I can still consider them a friend. As an athlete, I tied so much of my self-image and self-esteem to how my training was progressing and how my racing was going. Not much changes when you move over to the other side of the track; now I tie so much of what I am into what I think is good training for an athlete at a particular point in time. Disagreeing with me doesn't make me feel like I'm being personally attacked as much as it used to; a good solid reason for the disagreement might even make me think twice about what I believe...and adapt accordingly.

It hurts, though, to be blamed for everything that is going wrong in the perception of a single athlete. While I can look at it and say, 'consider the source, it's a disgruntled former athlete,' I guess it takes a while to develop a nice, thick skin.

In the meantime, I guess I'll find a Teflon warm-up suit and some Kevlar shorts. I've got a dozen others who depend on me to do the coach thing; guess I cannot stop at this moment to over-analyze the whole sordid situation. As I tell everyone else what the Maori say, I'll have to:

Kia Kaha. Stand Strong.

Priority Male

When you are an athlete, and even more so when you are a coach, your life revolves around coming attractions. Vacations are tied into races, accommodations are considered worthy or unworthy based upon their adaptation to training, air travel is preferred over driving, aisle over bulkhead seat, and so on...

Suzanne's better on this than I am. She'll drive to visit her parents on a Saturday when I can't seem to get away from running a track workout. The 'rents are pretty understanding about it. They know I'm passionate about the sport.

And really, the psychology of performance translates quite well from the world of sport to the world of everyday work/life. Think about these points:

1. Choose your parents wisely.

- - As a whole, we all bring pretty much the same general stuff to the table. The little things we get from our parents can make a difference.

2. Attitude is everything.

- - Toxic teammates are a bummer no matter what the situation. There's not enough salary in the world that can make a person stay in a place where they're not happy. However, the wrong persons stay too long and the good persons leave too soon.

3. Have a Plan "B," a Plan "C," and a Plan "D."

- - Success means the ability to adjust the plan as circumstances arise.