Oh, Porta!

I knew it was going to happen.  There was going to be a "pit stop" - one of those destined to leave me far behind the group - before I reached the first mile.  And there wasn't a thing I could do about it, except for run at race pace to the Quick-Mart on the corner and hope for (zen-like) emptiness in the "coaches' ready room."

The Quick-Mart came and went, and I felt a sense of calm.  Perhaps it was only a little abdominal tension, released by the early exertions of the morning's "sorta-long run."  But no sooner had I passed the convenience store and approached our parked vehicles that the rumbling began deep down below.

Really, there's no nice way to talk about the, er, increased gastric motility which comes to every runner at one time or another.  Some of us more often than others.  And there are the very unfortunate few who suffer from what is commonly known as "runner's trots."  While there are fitness professional types who say this is caused by a decreased blood flow to the gut - because the blood is going more regularly and more often to the lower extremities as we run - that's more likely to cause digestion to slow down rather than increase. 

Dr. Timothy Noakes, in "Lore of Running," writes that the physical activity more likely stimulates the gastrointestinal system to secrete chemicals which encourage gastric motility.  There's also a function of the bouncing and the increase in core body temperature that can stimulate what you took in the night before to, well, head farther south a little faster than the 12-to-19 hours it often takes for digestion to occur.
So, is there anything you can do to keep from having to make those uncomfortable, and sometimes undesired "side trips?" 

First of all, keep in mind that GI distressing symptoms, like "runners trots," can be a sure sign that you might be overtraining, and need to back off.  In this coach's case, I can go ahead and scratch that right off the list.

Food items like dairy, legumes, grains, high fiber the night before...or even the morning of...can be a potential cause of bloating, GI discomfort and so forth.  Alcohol in excess the night before a long run can also leave you with more food in the gut than desired.  Hey, that liver has to make a choice on which to metabolize first, and it usually chooses the item which is more-poisonous. 

A little extra time to T.C.B. in the morning - time with a slice of toast, peanut butter, banana, oatmeal, a cup of hot coffee...an extended visit to the "reading room" - can also work wonders.  I had my tummy pretty-well trained for the past 16 weeks or so, and then when the weather took a turn for the warmer I moved the Sunday morning run twenty minutes earlier.  So, perhaps my mind had well-adjusted to the fact I had 20-minutes less prep time, but that was time my GI system used to make certain I was well-prepped.
Sometimes the adjustment process includes the need to plan ones' running routes around the availability of toilet facilities.  One of my favorite Sunday morning routes - a loop around our airport - begins at an exercise facility which has two reasonably-stocked bathroom facilities.  We also have a city parks and recreation facility, and our house, along the loop.

If changing your diet, your preparation and your route doesn't solve or at least quiet the complaints from the colon, Noakes suggests a small dose of loperamide (Imodium) be taken before the run.

While there's nothing delicate which can be said about the gastrointestinal distress and misadventures which can happen to a runner, take comfort in knowing there are two types of runners in this world:  those who have had to imitate a bear in the woods...

Lace Up Those Shoes, Kiddies

I don't get the phone calls as often as I used to.

I could guarantee at least half-a-dozen phone calls between February and May from the parents - or grandparents - of potential youth running prodigies.  And the phone message, give or take a few words, always sounded like: 'I found your name on the (blank) web site, and I see that you do track workouts on (day of week).  My (child) runs for (coach) at (school), but I want to help them improve at the (race distance).  Please call me back with more details about your program.'

So, I'd call back and graciously decline their offer to potentially coach the 'next great American runner.' Lake Wobegon syndrome ("...all the children are above-average") notwithstanding.  To me, youth coaching is a trip to the dark side of the Freudian pleasure-pain calculus.  Think Clarence Thomas at a confirmation hearing.  Bill Clinton defining 'is' during a deposition.  Lance Armstrong in an interview with Oprah Winfrey.

My (nearly) hard/fast guideline is that I will not coach anyone younger than 16.  If the kid can't drive themself to the track, I want no part of working with them.  And if they already have a coach, well, I'm not going to take another guy's/gal's kneecaps out, just to have another young athlete.  I've had family members recruit me within earshot of the other coach (a personal friend).  We had a good laugh over that one after the parents were gone.  The scariest thing about running, especially when youth are involved, is that a family member can screw up more than one person's career at a time.

Kids should be encouraged to take up running as sport.  It's one of those activities which needs little more than a place and decent shoes.  The list below contains most of the Road Runners Club of America guidelines for youth running, based on developmental principles of training and racing for young distance runners written by Larry Greene, Ph.D. and Russ Pate, Ph.D.

My sport is your sport's punishment.  Every time I've seen youth baseball players do sprints or laps around the field for screwing up a double play I want to shriek in horror.  First and foremost, running should be fun.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it; if it looks really broke, make very small adjustments.  Once upon a time, a family member made a wise-crack about my run form (back when I played baseball); they said I appeared to have been impaled by a broomstick.  Strangely enough, my father recalled this observation during the height of my (healthy) racing career.  A proper (erect) form and reasonable stride length, taught early on, will eliminate bad habits and potential injuries later.  There are other little things which can be discouraged, like excess arm movement, twisting the upper body, or over-striding.

You might not be the best, but you can be a good one.  Strangely enough, the over-emphasis on awards, trophies and personal accomplishments also seem to scare away many adult runners.  The goal is to develop the habit of life-long activity and participation; middle school, high school and (some) college competition can/will come soon enough.  Personally, if not for a college coach who encouraged me to "just go out and have fun," I might not have even considered racing.

We're all individuals, exactly the same as the next person.  In the same way that one marathon training program - or race distance, come to think of it - is not the best fit for every runner (differences in time to train, time to recover, resiliency), it's important for adults and coaches to allow for different abilities and physical maturity levels within the group.  Around age 12-to-14 training distances and durations can be slowly increased, leading to systematic and competitive training.  I was questioned the other weekend about the optimal training volume for 5K racing, at which point the father of a young man who was working out with the group looked at me in a shocked manner.  I then had to remind him my answers and guidance focuses more toward adult runners, and that in the case of his son I would have to err on the side of slightly less intensity and duration.

I am thankful that running is the most egalitarian of sports:  Simple persistence and patience can turn any individual into a more-healthy, more-active, and more-engaged person.  As a well-known running writer has often said, 'there is no limit where running can take you.'

A Bad Day, And A Revelation

This week marks, more or less, the 52nd week since my most painful two weekends of running in nearly two decades of the activity. I ran a half marathon almost a year ago which was actually an enjoyable first eight kilometers, followed by a very uncomfortable fourteen. Not to be outdone, the next weekend's (scheduled) 16-mile training run transformed into a tale of two loops; one good, and one terrible.


Since that harrowing fortnight I've been on the mend. I've tried to do as many things as "right" as possible, in the hope I can return to full-fledged running craziness. There have been good days/weeks and bad runs/recoveries, transitions and changes, and - most of all - a changed philosophy about my own training.


This week was the first of a three-week cycle where the running or non-impact exercise was scheduled for fifty minutes. Everything went fine yesterday, mostly because it was a non-impact day. Today, on the other hand...


...well, let's call it a bad day. I felt beat-up at the two-mile point on the run, and had to shut down at the thirty-minute mark. I walked the additional twenty minutes so as to say I did fifty minutes of some sort of exercise. One thing I made the conscious effort not to do, this time, was to berate myself or punish myself for not being able to complete the run...at least beyond thirty seconds, and the time taken to mark my calendar entry with a yellow highlighter.


Too many runners are more likely, in the wake of a poor workout effort, to redouble their effort the next day. If the schedule called for an easier effort run, they most likely would scrap that effort to take the previous day's run on, just once more.


Don't do it. The best solution for a bad day is another day.

If the offending workout is a series of repeats, save it for the next speed work day...or leave it be. If a long run, do it on another course, or do the same course which kicked your tail before. But "a steak and a nap," an old friend's way of saying "be good to yourself," will give you time to look at some of the things which might be going wrong.


It could be something as simple as wearing the wrong pair of shoes, the wrong shirt (if you sweat like I do, that's more important than you think), or, strangely enough, the wrong terrain.


Who knew that a mulch-covered trail could cause me such pain?

It flies in the face of conventional wisdom passed along by generations of runners and coaches: Softer surfaces are better for distance running. That's why the Kenyans are such great distance runners, right? That's why ultradistance events are on trails, right? I guess not.

Exercise researchers, interviewed for a (July 19, 2011) New York Times article, concluded there was no direct correlation between running regularly on soft surfaces and decreased tendency toward musculoskeletal injuries. In fact, the researchers found that runners tend to adjust to the surface on the fly in order to maintain a consistent ground reaction (impact) force. So, we're less stiff when we run on a roadway, but our legs stiffen when we hit the softer surfaces.

So, from where does the discomfort, or injury come? Like any situation where one of my athletes has complained of aches and pains, I start to look at what was recently added to the training regimen. Running one day on a treadmill, the next on a mulch trail, and perhaps two days after on an asphalt roadway, may have caused too much "confusion." Simply put, there was too much new stress in the past couple of days for this (nearly-50-year-old) body to adapt.

It doesn't mean I can't run on the mulch trail. Just that I need to add the trail in smaller doses. Once again, at least in my case, the best solution for a bad day on the trail is to schedule the trail for some other day.

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.

Why, Why, Why, Why, Why?

Last week, I saw a Facebook status for my friend Jean Knaack. She serves as executive director for the national running organization I represent. On top of this, she has a husband & two young children & has done several Ironman triathlons. Jean & her husband recently returned from Ironman France in Nice. She posted her race report on Facebook & said something along the lines of ‘hardest race I’ve ever done...not certain whether I’ll do another…’ I responded by congratulating her, & added, ‘I bet you register for another IM in a few weeks.’

When I saw Jean's 'registered for another IM event' status on Facebook I could not help but let out a solid guffaw. There's no way she could duck the challenge of another cycle of training and travel which makes directing a non-profit, or being a wife & mother, any less simple. But, when you see someone’s eyes light up about the journey to the starting line, like Jean's did when Suzanne & I talked with her last spring, you know they are the type of person who continually needs a challenging, yet attainable goal before them. Probably that little extra oomph to get them out of bed in the morning.I know; sometimes even a big event or two on the horizon might not be able to get you out of bed (like me this morning). But...we set goals to guide what we should be/do (daily or twice-daily workouts, rest, recovery, massage, etc.), & sometimes even to remind us what we need to avoid (junk food, stressful situations, etc.) so the vision becomes our reality. Like intermediate points on a long journey, our big, audacious end-state goal should have short-term points (short races, key workouts) so we know we’re on the right path...and if we're not, they should be early enough in the training cycle that we can adjust accordingly and still benefit from the change.
Jordan Metzl, MD, recently wrote in Triathlete magazine about a benefit of goal-setting: ‘What I tell my patients is to set a goal and work toward it. I generally find that it doesn’t matter what the sport or level of athlete is; from triathlon to ballroom dancing, everyone needs a goal. Athletes who exercise just to exercise, without a specific goal in mind, are much less productive than those who set goals.’

Not only are we more productive, we’re less likely to overtrain or over-race. If our focus is on a long-distance triathlon, we work on our endurance by engaging in steady state runs & bike rides; swim longer intervals & do what it takes to toughen ourselves mentally in order to go anywhere from 4-to-17 hours...depending on the event. Marathoners will run up to 150 minutes on those long run days, just to get time on the feet. Some pros do what is known as a metric marathon (26.2 kilometers, or 16.2 miles) late in the training phase. All they want to do is simulate the event by doing 60 percent of the distance. And we can probably say without a doubt recovering from an effort of a particular distance is easier than the distance plus 25-to-50 percent.

If you want to know what the real reason for something is, or a real root cause for a failure, take the time to ask why five times, at the very least. For example:

Runner: I want to train for a marathon, but I want to do 20-milers as part of the training plan.

Coach: Why do you want to do 20-milers as part of marathon training, when most of the good programs I've studied & coaches I've consulted consider 16-mile long runs long enough?

Runner: I don't think the 16-milers I did training for my last marathon were sufficient.

Coach: Why do you say the performance in your second marathon ever was insufficient?

Runner: I didn't run the marathon as well as I wanted to. (Never mind the warm/humid weather conditions on race day & other factors out of his control.)

Coach: Why do you want to improve your marathon performance?

Runner: I want to finish in a time which will qualify me to run the Boston Marathon.

Coach: Why do you want to run Boston?

Runner: I don't want to run Boston. I just want to run a time that will qualify me for Boston.

When you look at the underlying reason the runner wants to train in a particular manner, is the goal relevant? Did the runner set the bar too high?

When the coach asks the fifth why, about the goal event, then walks backward 20-to-24 weeks, he finds the athlete has three one-week holiday trips during which the coach knows no trainng whatsoever will occur. And that's just a best-case scenario. At that point, the athlete either needs to think about another goal event, adjusting his training cycle further out to make up for the lost training opportunity, or lowering his expectations.