Hell Freezes Over, Sort Of

"For the record, we never broke up; we just took a 14-year vacation..." - Glenn Frey, 1994

I've coached a small group of (as few as three to as many as a dozen) adult runners for six years, in the classic "stand on the side of the track" as well as the "in the pack" style.  Each style has its benefits and drawbacks; coaching revealed me at my best and my worst.  If an aspiring author were to write it without the benefit or hindrance of this blog it would most likely either look like a Charles Dickens ("best of times, worst of times") tale.  Maybe not.  More likely in the style of a Stephen King ("...heeeeere's Johnny!") screenplay.  As long as Jack Nicholson isn't playing me, I'm all right.

Coaching is stressful, especially if you feel the need to prove to athletes that the training will never get "boring," (news flash:  it will, get used to it...) or, worse yet, when a symbiotic relationship with a running emporium (''...you refer runners to me for training, I send them to you for shoes and gear...') transforms into "competition."  Add to the stress a pair of achilles tendons made cranky by too much hard training and not enough recovery, and life becomes a misery.

So, I took a bit of a holiday.  I retired.  I became a "gentleman" coach; a "quasi-guru" with a limited and non-paying clientele.  Not surprisingly, people "suddenly" become more interested in training when you're not available.  It's no different than the difference between when you're single and when you finally find that "soul mate;" every other person who otherwise would not have given you the time of day if your watch had stopped cold dead wants something to do with you.

Last weekend I decided, against my better judgment, to hang the shingle again.  I don't know why, other than perhaps the moon was full, the beer was cold, my tendons hadn't barked at me for a month, and the person who asked me seemed to be genuinely interested. 

This time, however, things will be different.  I have nothing to prove to anyone who shows up.  Except for the fact I can give them a good product at a reasonable price.  They will pay, I will coach, and they will work.  Seems simple enough to me.

Overtraining: The March To Pizza

The slow, steady march of stars and check-marks down the date boxes on my wall calendar gives me a sense of joy and accomplishment.  I have nearly made it to the end of August and the first really comfortable days of outdoor running, in September, will not be far behind.  It also means Suzanne will pull out the slow cooker; stew and soup season will begin soon.  The first days and weeks of warm bowls of stew or soup, with either cheese bread or a sandwich, are a welcome reward for those hard run workouts.  But, once Thanksgiving arrives, I will be jonesing for pizza.

We used to do pizza every Friday evening with my old coach and his wife.  We did the same pizza joint for two years straight.  Now I only go there if we’re in the neighborhood and we don’t want to drive closer to home.  Price might have been one thing, but familiarity breeds tolerance. 

Or contempt. 

Pizza often reminds me of many topics having to do with life, the universe around us…and running.  I remember a lunch discussion with an old running friend of mine, Drake.  He, his wife, Suzanne, and I sat down over pizza one Saturday after a local road race.  Drake said he was disappointed with his race performance and asked what I would recommend for his training plan.  I asked him what he was already doing in training.  He told me he ran the same 5K circuit near his home, every day.   At all-out race pace.  I took a deep breath, prefaced my suggestions with “if I were your coach,” and told him what I felt to be true.  He thanked me for my insights, but he never really took the advice to heart.  He no longer runs races, in fact, he’s what John Parker, Jr. might call ‘once a runner.’ 

I still see him every Sunday morning when we go out for our “sort-of-long run.”  He rides a bike.  Full blast.

Monotony and unchanging routine can be a comfort to many persons.  But the athlete who does the same run or workout day in and day out is most likely going to understand Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity.  There’s little chance for a different outcome or improvement in performance if an athlete is doing the same thing without variation for too long a period of time.  When laying a training foundation there are periods where efforts appear “boring,” but the body is most likely adapting to the stress.  But not varying the intensity of workout over the course of the training cycle or the year, especially if the intensity is high, is a certain way to eventually suffer physically and mentally from overtraining…and if not remedied, to suffer emotionally from burnout.

An over-trained (or under-recovered) athlete can show a constellation of symptoms which can be emotional, mental, or physiological in nature:

Runners who have a feeling as if their legs are heavy or wooden, or have muscles which are more sore than usual, or a sudden increase in thirst, especially at night, are most likely in an under-recovered state. 

When it comes to change in heart rate, researchers have equated an overtraining state to a sudden increase in early morning heart rate.  However, a decreased heart rate during exercise bouts is also a message to the athlete that the body is not completely recovered from a period of training.

It may seem beyond obvious that the treatment for overtraining is rest.  The body needs time to recover.  After the recovery period, which can be as short as one week and take as long as six weeks (sometimes much longer in the most chronic cases).  The intensity of the workouts after the recovery needs to stay at a reduced level, and the athlete should look more closely at their training periods.  Other treatments to combat overtraining include adjusting the diet to take in more calories or more nutrients, even adjusting the way they sleep.

There are programs, such as Matt Dixon’s Purplepatch Fitness, which utilize computer algorithms and spreadsheets to quantify training, recovery, nutrition and functional strength.  Finnish heart rate monitor manufacturer Suunto uses a calculation of post-exercise oxygen consumption (calculated from changes in individual heartbeats) to determine how hard an athlete has trained, as well as how hard their next workout should be to eventually increase fitness.  But any device or spreadsheet is of no use if the athlete does not have the courage (especially in a culture where a blank space on the calendar is seen as a personality flaw) to choose to rest.

An athlete can ignore their body for only so long.  The body will eventually make the athlete listen for a period much longer than the initially-requested chat.

Long Run + "Comatose State" = Too Long

My friend Betsy, Suzanne, and I were talking over Monday early morning coffee about time-constrained training, training partnerships and - not surprisingly - the role of the long run in marathon training.

Suzanne marveled that a group of people would meet each weekend at 5:20 in the morning to train.  Naturally, we understand that during certain times of the year - like months which don't have an "R" somewhere in them - early morning training runs are not just a good idea, but sane behavior.  She also liked the fact that the group would take time to socialize over breakfast something we've encouraged with our training partners.

Betsy mentioned that 5:20 was the latest the group left in the morning; a runner doing a longer effort would start their run as early as 3:00.  In the case of runners who want to finish and have breakfast with the rest of the group, doing two hours or less, it makes perfect sense.  

However, a four-hour marathon training jaunt only benefits mentally.  To do at least one four-hour (or longer) run in the preparation for 26.2(1876) miles - the four-hour run can help the runner to get their head around the thought of running four-to-five hours at a stretch - is one thing.  Otherwise, especially in the physiological sense, the recreational runner who does more than one four-hour training run when prepping for the marathon has got to be mental.

There's a point of diminishing returns - physiologically, emotionally and socially - once the run goes beyond two-and-a-half-hours.  It's more difficult to recover, and even do a run the following day, when more than 150 minutes of good running has been "deposited in the bank."  And 150 minutes at a stretch is the (recommended) 25-percent long run portion of the maximum sane week (10 hours) of training.  There are highly esteemed coaches (of Olympic marathoners) who would rather have their athletes spread the training volume across the week rather than do 50-60% of it in one long slog.

Frankly, all I wanted to do after 16-mile training runs (in a sliver over two hours) was take a long hot shower, pull on compression tights and sweats, put my legs up on the couch and watch football all afternoon.  Unless you have a VERY understanding spouse, kids or significant other, the prospect of a (beyond-healthy) chunk of YOUR Saturday (or Sunday) morning out spent on the roads doing 18, 20, or 22 miles in close to four hours, followed by "Occupy the Couch" means a large portion of THEIR weekend is pretty much shot to hell.

If you absolutely have to do the 18-to-22 mile run more than one time in the marathon preparation, schedule it so it comes before a "cut-back" week, where the mileage, time or intensity (or all of the above) is intentionally decreased to let the body (and mind) recover.

A physiologically or emotionally-viable alternative for the runner who feels the compulsion to do the "really long run" part of marathon training more than one time can include the option of splitting it into two.

There are several ways the "typical" weekend can be broken up:

1 - Run the first two-and-a-half hours on Friday afternoon, then do the remaining miles on Saturday morning.  Sunday morning can either be a rest day, Saturday's run, or a run of 30-to-60 minutes focusing on form and turnover.

2 - Run the first two-and-a-half hours on Saturday morning, with the remaining miles late Saturday afternoon.  Sunday morning can either be a rest day or a shorter run of 30-to-60 minutes focusing on form and turnover.
3 - Run the first two-and-a-half hours on Saturday evening, with the remaining miles early Sunday morning.  Then do a very short run run of 30 minutes focusing on form and turnover that afternoon.

I don't like the idea of splitting the long run between Sunday morning and Sunday afternoon.  There's always something to do with loved ones; taking any more time than what is absolutely necessary away from family is not a decision which will make for successful running.

There are varying schools of thought about what needs to be the maximum long run distance for marathon training.  The 30-kilometer recommendation of European coaches and the 20-mile number bandied about by coaches here in the States are nice round "one-size-fits-somebody" numbers.  The best maximum distance for marathon training is the one which does not go too far beyond the physiological tipping point, one which allows the runner to get up and do a little something the following day, or at least do a little something with family that day.

"Eustress," or You Stress?

"Mental tensions, frustrations, insecurity, aimlessness are among the most damaging stressors, and psychosomatic studies have shown how often they cause migraine headache, peptic ulcers, heart attacks, hypertension, mental disease, suicide, or just hopeless unhappiness." - Hans Selye, endocrinologist (1907-1982)

It didn't kick in until about 12:30 or so on Sunday afternoon.  When it did it was like a mule.

One minute I was  listening to Jimmy Buffett tunes on the stereo and driving to the home of Aaron and Betsy Boudreaux...a tray or two of boiled crawfish and a couple of cold beers seemed to me to be the perfect ending to a long-awaited weekend with friends and loved ones.  Next thing I know, I felt like a bank of telephones were ringing and I had to answer them, while driving at the same time.

About two hours later I felt a little more normal.  As I peeled and pulled, I managed to figure out the source of what went so awry.  I again had taken on the demands I had set aside when I retired from day-to-day coaching.  I was dealing with an increased workload at the office.  On top of that my racing fitness was not coming along as quickly as I hoped; the Achilles' tendon injuries were healing but I could only manage a good 5K...on a 10K course.  While I was outwardly pragmatic, I was all stressed up with no place to blow.

"Charley, I was a little scared," I told my friend later that afternoon over a beer.  We had talked days before about mutual friends, pillars of the community, who transmogrify into a maelstrom of insanity during Easter weekend in New Orleans.  Excesses immediately following the Classic - a couple too-many brews during the five miles from City Park to the Quarter, or a couple extra drinks while spending the evening at one of my wife's favorite karaoke establishments, is one thing.  This particular couple's hotel passageway eruptions made mixed martial artists and WWE-types take a couple of steps toward the exits.

Sometimes stress can get to us.  But is stress one of those things, like former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart would have said, we know what it is when we experience it?  Selye described stress (in 1926) being not only (as Emanuel Kant might have said) the thing in itself, but also the cause and the result of the same thing.

So if stress is the thing, and the cause, and the result, then is it bad?  Not necessarily.  When we exercise we incur a certain degree of stress.  If we allow ourselves time to RECOVER from that physical (and sometimes mental - if you've ever gone into a workout with a sense of dread) stressor we benefit from what is known as supercompensation.  Selye would probably consider that stress "eustress," or good stress.  If we load more stress before we completely recover we begin the process of slowly grinding ourselves down.  That, in my humble opinion, is when the burnout and the overuse injuries arrive.

On the other hand, if we allow ourselves to dwell on the minutiae of life, the small stuff we cannot control, or the things which we cannot immediately remedy, we incur bad stress, what Selye considered "distress."  Sometimes we can use "eustress" to overcome some of our own "distress;" but sometimes it cannot all be remedied through physical effort or exercise.

Sometimes it takes a little "me-time."  Sometimes it takes a "crucial conversation." (another commonly-used term would be the "come-to-Jesus talk")  But the distress, like the carbonation in a soda or champagne bottle, needs to be released in a careful manner, lest the darned thing explode - usually in a hotel hallway on a Saturday night, or a patio bar on a Friday evening, with stunned onlookers all about.

The Bow That Couldn't Shoot Straight

A story is told of a religious leader known to have had a fiery nature during his younger days. Another religious scholar, disguised as a hunter, came upon the man stroking a tame partridge while seated underneath a tree. The scholar marveled over the fact the religious man would 'waste his time' in such trivial activity.

The religious man asked in return, "do you always carry your bow unstrung?" The scholar responded, "no, for if I were to keep it strung continually, the bow would weaken. If I then needed to shoot at a boar or large animal it would no work correctly." The religious man replied, "if the bow that is continually bent will eventually cease to shoot straight, then do not worry about my brief period of relaxation."

It's important for the individual/self-coached runner to know certain things before they begin to develop their training plan. The most important factor is to know how much time they have available to train. The second-most important factor is the event or events which they are targeting with their training. Almost as important as the first two factors is to determine the day (or days) in the week to rest from training.

Professional athletes and younger adults might be able to get away with a seven-day-a-week schedule - but the runner who works a "real job" usually does not have the option of resting when not training. The choice is simple; take time off or risk progressive weakening.

Some running coaches have espoused the idea of taking a day off each week for every decade over thirty. So a 40-year-old would take one day, a 50-year-old two days, and so on. Other coaches "cut-back" training intensities/distances every third or fourth week of training, depending on the athlete. Others have recommended a day off each week, a week off (or easy!) each month and a month off each year. And yes, there are coaches who believe the need for a rest day is proof the runner has trained too hard or running too fast in their training.

The day of rest provides physical and mental recovery from the stress of running. It lets the person have something which vaguely resembles a life, rather than be "just a runner." While the amount of rest needed varies by person it cannot be overlooked completely. The body needs rest and recovery and it will get what it wants, either by choice or by circumstance.

Alice's Restaurant

Went out for a run on New Years' Day with a couple of (former) athletes and good friends. Late into the run, my friend Beverly told me about a mutual friend of ours, Mel, who became so motivated by his performance at Ironman Florida he took up running with a passion. Next thing she knew, she said, he read Christopher MacDougal's "Born to Run" and began training for a "real" marathon. We spent the remainder of the run discussing the next book to recommend; she thought it should be John L. Parker, Jr's. "Again To Carthage," I held out for "Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner," by Dean Karnazes.

Listening to "born-again runners" is a joy. Most of them cannot help but reveal what they consider their personal (secret) revelation to the world around them. Most runners know there really are no secrets, other than 'train your heart out, rest when not training.' I also like to hear someone speak about running, as Arlo Guthrie once sung, "with feeling..."

Sometimes the feeling can make us parochial, even dogmatic, about what we think is best for our fellow runner. As a coach, I admit I've recommended running specialty shops, web sites, coaches, training plans, races, lodging, and - on rare occasions - shoes, equipment, and gadgetry. Years after my last lodging arrangement, I still get 'hey, just curious if you're booking rooms for such-and-such race' e-mails. From people who never trained with me.

"...you should tell every young runner to use (brand) running shoes and (device)," the boy said to George and myself over a beer last night. That's the type of statement to which my old coach, Dale Fox, would reply, "Oh? Really?" Rather than immediately shut my ears to what Steve (a.k.a. "the boy") said I decided to take a few moments and listen. Not so much to dissassemble his assertion like an assault rifle, eventually laying the greasy little parts in front of him. I trained for a few years alongside Steve's his father, so there's a familial obligation involved. I also appreciate the boy's "salta de qualitat," or recent leap in his run performances.

Shoe manufacturers can market their shoes with a statement saying "the way you should run," but normative statements don't get marketing gurus and advertising agencies in hot water. That kettle of fish is usually saved for the coach or the running emporium proprietor who has to hear from the athlete, 'so, what do you think of...?' So the shoe, which costs about 20 percent more than what the athlete already wears, is designed to make the athlete adapt their running gait? Ah, but if I were to focus the athlete on a faster turn-over and a shorter stride - the very same mechanics the shoe purports to encourage - would they give me the additional 20 percent they would have spent on the shoe?

Probably not. Shoes are sexy. Coaching isn't.

There are an abundance of gadgets on the market which are a great help to runners, but there are certain things a massage therapist will be able to do that a roller, stick, or ball won't. But a runner on a tight budget may consider self-massage items a good (inexpenxive) substitute for regular massage therapy. I have a retired friend who knows his way around a dollar. I guess when you can retire before 55 you have a blend of skill, luck and the ability to know your way around a greenback. Rather than spend 40 dollars on a self-massage modality, he took the same 40 bucks and made a bunch of very-workable self-massage sticks, giving them out as holiday presents a couple of years ago. I still have his stick in the corner of my living room, next to a 100-dollar massage kit. You can take a wild guess which gets used more often.

A new friend, Galen, ran (at least) seven marathons in seven days last week here. He told me he sees the strangest things at some of the distance runs he does. Probably the most frightening was the (his words) "runner wearing the Camelbak as well as the 'hand grenade' bottle belt."

Overkill? I think so. Galen told me he asked the name of the running store proprietor, probably in order to tell newbie runners "enter at your own peril."

So before I "rhetorically" sing a bar of "Alice's Restaurant" ('you can get anything you want...') and walk out of any conversation, I always like to remind friends that every runner is a unique experiment, a sample population of one. What works for you, works for you. If you see something cool and new, take the time to do the research or ask if you can give it a trial run before springing the big bucks.

That's probably one more race entry, from what I can figure. Races are more fun than gadgets.

The ABC (Race)'s of The Training Cycle

What is the most important part of the workout, as far as the coach is concerned? My athletes would say, incorrectly, the second set of the workout.

While I call it "the money set," the second set of our workout - where the longest repeats, tempo or acceleration work is focused - is of secondary importance to me. What's the most important is the first and the final twenty minutes of our Tuesday and Thursday evening track workouts. That's the time when I get to pry, subtly, into what the athlete has done in the previous two-to-five days, or what's in their immediate future.

Both Deena and Jim, my marathoners, enjoy jumping into the occasional road race as part of their training. In fact, they both did fairly well at a recent cross-country 5K event. I chuckled as Deena talked about her race; at a late point on the course she was running with a group and one or two suggested putting a surge in to catch a couple of runners just ahead. Deena said she smiled and let the pair (of guys) go on ahead:

"I was out there to enjoy myself, Coach. I had plenty left in me to push the pace but I wasn't in the mood."

...which to me seemed the perfect time to teach the ABC's of racing.

Run and race for long enough and it is certain the personal best performances will not only be smaller in time increments but also harder won. There are runners who choose to race on a near-weekly basis through the season. Most of them do it in the hope of improvement by the end of the season. Many will race every race the same way. Some may be fortunate enough to improve, but most will eventually be a runner most-frustrated.

When they finally describe what they do I have to bit my tongue and not refer them to the quote attributed to Albert Einstein. He might not have been a distance runner, but if he could figure out the theory of relativity then he certainly could figure out the definition of insanity.

Some races are relatively more important than others:

"C" races, to me, are those early-season "rust-busters" a runner uses to help determine fitness. (Jack Daniels, in his Running Formula, uses personal best race performances or time-trial sessions to determine training paces for long runs, easy running, threshold pace workouts, and interval pace work.) Nothing wrong, in my humble opinion, with running a 5K or 10K as part of or in place of a weekend run in the early season. "C" races are the events at which the runner should be able to shrug off a less-than-stellar effort, or smile and say "I'm on the right track" when it's all said and done.

As the runner gets into the middle of their training cycle; closer to the weeks of the season or the event which is their target, it's time to start plugging in the "B" race/races. The "B" races are used to simulate the effort desired for the target race, can be on a portion of the target event course, or resemble the terrain on which the runner intends to eventually race.

Naturally, the "A" race is that target race or races which the runner has circled in pen on the calendar months in advance. Everything in the training cycle, ideally, should lead up to the runner being their sharpest - four or five weeks if racing shorter distances, two or three for longer ones.

The recreational runner's racing schedule doesn't necessarily take an Einstein to plan. All they need to do is know their ABC's.

Irrational Thoughts?

'Sometimes I think it's a shame when I get feelin' better when I'm feelin' no pain.' - "Sundown," Gordon Lightfoot (1974)

Just because a person has coached athletes for a few years, has learned from hard experience what not to do, and struggles on a regular basis to clearly communicate those lessons to people who ask questions of them does not necessarily mean they have achieved an immunity to the disorder I like to call "abject stupidity."

Somehow I managed to survive a brief exposure to this disorder on my way to my "real" job this morning.

I started to think about training for a marathon.

Those who follow my rambling, sometimes cryptic missives know marathon training nearly turned me into "once a runner" approximately six months ago. It wasn't necessarily marathon training which was the primary cause of my achilles injury as much as a failure to deal with an under-healed achilles tendonitis issue which plagued me for three or four years.

I'm not certain what made me start to think about the marathon. Could it be because the evenings and the early morning hours have become a little more cool? Perhaps the slow approach of autumn and the need to review the training plan of one of my athletes was a subtle hint. Maybe, just maybe, it was that set of 400s we ran during last night's workout.

I wasn't the one spanking the group, though. Jim took Deena and myself to the woodshed most of the workout. He was kind enough to let us out after the third set. But it was nice to float up along Jim's shoulder on the back stretch of the last 400 and be in that middle ground between floating - where you feel the spring in the toe-off - and the feel when you know there's no "extra gear" available.

So a little bit of the speed is returning; 15 seconds a mile here, 20 seconds a mile there. But I must remind myself, like Taco Bell differs from Mexican food, there is a vast difference between being "healthy" and being "fit;" being "able to run" and being "able to race." I am most certainly not out of the woods yet. But I am beginning to see glimpses of the glade.

Injured runners often take too little time off from training, don't allow the body enough time to gradually ramp back up to the level of training they were at when they injured themselves, and don't stay in touch with how their body is feeling during the ramp-up. Fail to exercise caution and restraint when increasing distance, duration, intensity, and especially when races are added, and those "small" injuries which are usually remedied with a weeks' worth of rest or cross-training can transform into "major" issues which drastically affect the overall quality of life.

Feeling no pain is not necessarily the same as feeling better. It is, however, the first step on the road to recovery.

As for this ol' coach, we're almost ready for 5,000-meter road races, and not much more. In the meantime, there's a couple of flat late-autumn and early-spring marathons I'll continue to consider; the operating word is "consider."

I'm not that stupid. Yet.

The Coach's Role

"So, have you registered for Bushwacker?"

I asked this of Deena as we walked from the track after last Thursday's workout.

"Well, since there are four weeks until the race I think I'll wait until the last week. I don't mind paying a couple of extra dollars if I'm race-ready; it's better than early registration and then not racing," she said.

Such discipline, especially coming from the mouth of Deena, warmed my heart. Is this the same runner who went out through the first half of a marathon a solid two minutes-a-mile faster than she needed to - and paid for her indiscretion by losing not only the 26-minute cushion, but an additional seven, in the second half - just eight months ago? Who raced a 5K just because she "felt like it" during the last month of training for that first marathon? Who needed a complete pacing plan laid out for her when it was time for her rematch with the distance?

Surprisingly, I didn't feel the need to ask for her drivers' license, just to make certain I was talking to the same athlete. In the months since I've worked with Deena she's become more disciplined. I get a physical and mental status when I ask "how ya doing?" at the beginning of the workout.

Is it based on her own self-confidence? Most likely.

It makes a coach's job much more simple.

On my computer, there is a podcast featuring triathlon coaches Jimmy Riccitello, Paul Huddle and Roch Frey. I listen to it on those days when I doubt my own methods, or when I need a good laugh on the way to work. In between the jokes about bike shorts I'm reminded the coach's role is teach the athlete to think for themselves; act as a sounding board for those times when the athlete is less than certain. Those very experienced coaches consider the first year of coaching an athlete as one where the athletic skills are taught along the side of self-knowledge.

It's the point in the coach-athlete collaborative relationship to this point in time I've rarely encountered. But it's definitely one I welcome.

The Privilege of Coaching

When Suzanne or I mention the term "grandparent" in a casual conversation, especially when talking with new friends, many are shocked because neither of us look like we're in our fifties (more or less). I've approached grandparenting with much less fear than I had at the prospect of parenting. No children for me, thanks. A playback of my youth and adolescence, but standing on the other side of the stage? Given a choice between re-living the period between 1975 and 1981, and shoving a sharp stick in my eye; the sharp stick wins.

After the "am I really going to be okay at this?" feelings passed, I found that I do like grandparenting. It doesn't mean I'm perfect at it; there are things which still get under my skin. The benefit-to-drawback ratio for this role is, compared to my opinon of parenting, so far, much higher. The roles of nurturer, disciplinarian and role model, which are part and parcel of parenting, are augmented with a little bit of Santa Claus. Our grandchildren are young enough to still depend on either their mom and dad or us, but old enough to have personality and a sliver of insight, sometimes more than for which we provide them credit. Recently, my eldest granddaughter, said something that will ensure she can (almost) do no wrong in this ol' coach's eyes. Who knew a five-year-old would know Bob Marley?

The relationships of adolescence, adulthood, and the advance from child (to parent, usually,,,) to grandparent, and the analogies which may relate to the relationship between athlete and coach kind of leaped out at me as I was on my morning run.

As an athlete I often saw the athlete-coach relationship from the child-to-parent perspective: I do what my coach says, for better or for worse. I may, or may not, have a voice in the equation. And, if I decide to leave "home" after a time it's all on my own head.

However, as a coach, I find the perspective is not as much like parent as grandparent. There may be coaches who have complete and total control over their athletes, but those relationships are either unhealthy or the coach also serves as parent; coaching family members has pitfalls of which I will not go into detail here.

Regardless of whether we see the relationship between athlete and coach as "parental" or "grandparental" in nature, the coach has to be a reliable role model. Dedication, loyalty, work ethic, healthy lifestyle decisions; all these have to be modeled. I'd love to crack open a couple of brewskies, get rowdy and watch mixed martial arts on the television when the grandchildren are visiting but it would (probably!) be more acceptable to turn on National Geographic Channel or put a G-rated movie on the DVD player. Overtraining, overracing, or sloughing off a Tuesday night workout for no apparent reason other than there was something good on the tube are not decisions which will keep athletes on the training plan I draft, or eventually as part of the training group.

Those positive behaviors are modeled because of the privilege, not the right, of the individual to be a coach. It's the same reason I (try to) behave myself in the presence of my grandchildren; their visits are a privilege bestowed by the parents, not a right I can enforce without a high-powered lawyer. And why would I want the kids feeling forced to be with me?

So, not only do I need to display the right behavior and be a positive role model, I also have to do it with the utmost sincerity. Most children have highly-tuned "b.s. detectors." To know what a person thinks about what you're doing, take a good long look at their kids. If the child treats you with courtesy, decency and respect you can be certain that's the way the parents feel about what you're doing.

The only proof of success comes down the road when the "kids" go out to do their own thing. If they replicate the good behaviors we model and overlook the bad ones then we can consider ourselves to be a small factor in their success.

My Sport Is Your Sport's Cross-Training

This last weekend was, I believe, the thirty-first running of the largest 5K prediction run in the U.S., at McGuire's Irish Pub in Pensacola. The last time I ran it I swore I would never do it again. Too many people. However, my wife wanted to go out and enjoy the cameraderie (and a few beers), so I could not refuse. But I think the numbers were a little lower back then. This weekend's run had an official count of 11,057, give or take a couple, and gave me the chance to spend some time with some former athletes, present friends, and see if I could shock a couple of persons. One of my former athletes was definitely shocked, saying I looked larger in the upper torso than in the past...I had to disagree a skosh, though. If you have a well-developed neck and shoulder area, and tend to run in either short-sleeved or sleeveless t-shirts, then appearing in public in either a running-style tank (singlet) or a spaghetti-strapped top is going to make ANY PERSON'S neck and shoulder area look large. Place a long-legged woman in a pair of short shorts and you'll think she has, like Rod Stewart once sang, 'legs right up to her neck.'

It's all in your perspective.

As a guy who likes a nice day in the sun as much as the next 'reformed vampire,' eleven thousand people is sufficient company for three miles and change. But if you're interested in testing your fitness, eleven thousand people for a 5K, without corrals or wave starts, is a few thousand runners to the dark side. When it takes (a rehabilitating runner) 34 minutes to get from the middle of the pack, across the starting line, to the finish, that's way too long, in my case ten minutes too long. That ten minutes was the only time where I could travel in a perfectly straight line; the rest of my run was a demented blend of road race and heavyweight bout: Bob and weave, stick and move... By the time I hit the first mile (since this was a prediction run there were no splits or timing), which went from FOUR LANES down to a single lane of roadway, half-filled with parked vehicles on both sides a quote from "The Big Lebowski," '...let's go bowling,' made perfectly good sense.

Speaking of bowling, I never thought I'd hear someone call running a form of cross training. That is, until I had a bowler come out to train with my group. Joe's mother, Vicki, is a friend of mine. She race-walks marathons, does triathlon, coaches charity runners and occasionally writes about her race day experiences, so we have a bit in common. I always wondered whether the bowling thing was an act of rebellion or something. I guess if I was a kid who's mother was "the balloon lady" at marathons - basically, the harbinger of doom - I'd find a sport which didn't have much to do with running, either.

So, we were chattering during the warm-up, and Deena, my marathoner, asked Joe what he did as cross training. Joe's response was, 'well, I'm a bowler, so I guess running is my cross training.'

It's all in your perspective.

Joe was recently accepted to a college which has a serious intercollegiate bowling program, which I guess to the average guy (including this coach!) seems like a multifaceted contradiction. But then again it's not that far a stretch from road running in the southeastern US, where beer drinking before 9 a.m. on Saturday appears the norm.

I guess the difference between a serious intercollegiate program (in Joe's case, Wichita State University) and a less-than-serious one is the implementation of a fitness test for prospective athletes. Yes, you have to love it. Joe is in great shape; he took everything I would normally dish out at the track to an unknown athlete and enjoyed it. I worried during one repeat, until he told me he was grooving to the music over the nearby softball field's public address system.

I've seen T-shirts which said "my sport is your sport's punishment." But I've never looked at running from the point of view (save for the occasional anaerobic athlete who disdainfully calls it "cardio") of someone who is slinging 15-pound composites a hundred times a weekend. I'll keep running, thanks. Bowling shoes are too darned ugly. At least for me. Perhaps young Joe thinks differently.

It's all in your perspective.

Tomorrow Ain't As Bad As It Seems

"...the good old days weren't always good, and tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems." -- Billy Joel, "Keeping The Faith" (1983)

So, I was running along the perimeter of the local airport with one of my athletes and my wife the other day (we passed my wife about five minutes earlier, but that's par for the course). As always, conversations of substance begin once runners get past that "oh, God, this kind of bites" feeling (usually during the first mile or so) and into the rhythm of the run.

The morning topic happened to touch upon age, aging, and most specifically, aging up into a new running age bracket. Deena, my "poster child" athlete of the moment, feels compelled to take her newly-found running strength and go "dominate the dojo." While she's not the best in her age bracket, she's become very good and will probably put a scare into the one or two gals who are better than she. Deena says she wants to see whether she can run better times at some 10K races she ran in the past, before she doesn't have the speed at her disposal. Of course, she feels concerned because she thinks she won't improve or maintain her fitness over the next couple of years.

Naturally, my job as her coach is to make sure she stays healthy in order to meet the big running milestones of her life, which right now means next year's Boston Marathon. I'm not used to thinking about training plans in time frames of longer than six months; most of my athletes to this point (in my experience as coach) haven't elaborated as specifically on their goal events as this recent crop.

Aging is an inevitable outcome. When you consider the thoroughly unsavory alternative to aging, it does seem fairly acceptable. Some people, like my wife, approach it with no small amount of grace and humor. Other persons, like me, vary in degrees of kicking and screaming, especially when we observe the ways (running the gamut from hair dye to needless surgical procedures) our fellow humans try to ignore or turn back the clock.

One of my dear friends, Ruben, has a high running pedigree; a contemporary of Frank Shorter, Jack Bacheler, Jeff Galloway, Benji Durden, Jerry Slaven, Barry Brown, et. al., during the glory days of the Florida Track Club three decades ago. Hang out with him after a road race, even when you've had a bad day, and there's no doubt you will feel much better about yourself, even before the first beer is drained. Ruben always has a kind word about every participant's performance, and seems to know exactly where the silver lining hides within the darkest of clouds. When a guy has genuinely endured what John L. Parker Jr. called "the trial of miles," raced at national championships and Olympic Trials, I guess everything else could be considered a bit of a letdown. If there's a man who has the right to play the self-pitying "I used to run this distance in..." card, it's Ruben. He's more likely to tell you a story about holding hands with a fellow runner because neither guy wanted to let the other lose. I used to think Coach Slaven was kidding when he would tell those tales after our morning runs. After meeting Ruben I knew they were all true.

Sometimes the hardest part of moving forward is knowing what to do with the past. Perhaps the best thing to do is the running equivalent of Baz Luhrman's advice in "Everybody's Free To Wear Sunscreen:" Keep your old love letters. Throw out your old bank statements.

It's the feelings, more than the numbers, that matter when it comes to running...especially as we become more seasoned.

Grab Some (Yur)Buds?

Rare is the moment I laud the use of headphones while running. They might be great for staving off boredom during treadmill workouts at the gym, but I do not like them - not one bit - on the ears of the athletes I train. Call me a kill-joy. Call me old-school. But I'm the coach; it's my prerogative to say what I do and do not like.

I don't like my athletes wearing headphones on the track because they cannot hear what I need to tell them about the specifics of their workout, their form or their effort. The last time I recall that particular form of feedback was called "coaching." I don't like my athletes wearing headphones during races because they cannot react to anything around them. Headphone-wearing runners turn into to the pace blaring into their ears rather than to the pace of the pack of runners beside (or in front of them). The last time I recall that was called "racing."

Working with the Road Runners Club of America for a little over five years, I learned the litany of safety reasons which clubs were told about the potential dangers of headphone use. Add to the "tune in, turn on, and lock in the pace" mentality of most headphone wearers at races the sometimes benign, sometimes life-threating approach of racing wheelchairs and strollers, faster runners, and intruding bicycles or other motor vehicles. You can end up with something as inconvenient as a trip-and-fall or as permanent as death.

And really, it's not the headphones which are evil. It's the way we tend to use them.

Several years ago I was at a small neighborhood 5K race; while standing on the corner cheering for my wife and several of my friends I saw a runner turn the corner and approach the third mile. She was running on the right-hand side of the road (not following the tangent, but that's another story altogether); I was standing on the sidewalk on the left. I could clearly hear the blaring from her MP3 player earbuds, at a distance of approximately 10 meters away. That meant she had to have the volume up at eardrum-bleeding, "Spinal Tap"-like volume.

Last year, I saw a product at the Rock n' Roll/Mardi Gras Marathon expo which drew my attention, especially in light of the RRCA work. At the time I was trying to write a white paper on headphone use, so the idea of a company like Competitor Group putting on an event with bands at every mile, yet selling headphones at the expo, seemed a little incongruous. I told the expo booth rep for Yurbuds who I represented and expressed my gentle skepticism about the product. He kindly provided me some print information and the website address so I could draw my own conclusions. However, I didn't want to try the product.

When I planned my visit this year I told my wife I would look closer at the Yurbuds product, especially after they developed an Ironman-branded version of the headphone adapter. If you have a product which gets to be Ironman-branded, you've pretty much made the big time...well, the chance of your product getting more exposure is very good.

The rep fitted me for a pair of the Ironman-branded Yurbuds, which are designed both to funnel the output of your music player, or computer, or whatever device has a 1/4-inch headphone jack into your ears...and allow ambient noise from your immediate surroundings to be heard. He then told me to let him know when I could hear the music and the ambient room noise. He showed me where the volume was set on his iPod; I could hear AC/DC's "Highway to Hell" comfortably at a volume level somewhere around the mid-point. I could also have a normal-volumed conversation with the rep. While sold on the Yurbuds, I did worry if I had a placebo effect; what would happen back home in my neighborhood?

I put the Yurbuds to the test last Saturday while my wife and I were at the gym. Rather than watch Anthony Bourdain's "No Reservations" I decided to talk to her in the middle of my 60-minute elliptical trainer workout. I asked, 'is there something which sounds different about this conversation to you?' She then realized she was not shouting, nor was I. Even this morning, during the walk from the gym back home, I could hear the singing of the neighborhood's mockingbirds, as well as John Mayer. You might not particularly care for my taste in music, but I think you get the picture.

It doesn't mean everyone should pay 20-to-50 dollars for a set of headphone adapters - they're comfortable, they keep the phones stable in the ear during strenuous activity - but if it helps folks turn their volume down on their MP3 player at races, without killing the user's listening experience, then I'm all for it...as long as they're not dawdling in front of my training group, in lane one on the track, or directly in front of me on race day.

Sacred Cow Hamburgers

For many years, my father worked in law enforcement, then joined the civil service, from which he retired about five years ago. It's probably a safe assumption that his closest friendships were with other law enforcement or public service employees while he was a cop. Dad's a fairly reserved guy, but I do remember he opened up most in the presence of other cops, sheriff's deputies, border patrolmen and firefighters. The tales sometimes sounded like a screenplay for the "COPS" series; but, fortunately for my dad and his colleagues those moments came rarely. (Yes, there were moments when things hit the fan, too. Those were tales I heard a couple of years down the road.)

After six years of military service, I worked in medical administration. Because I could focus without being distracted by certain aspects of hospital environments I was often assigned to work in intensive care units or cardiology wards. What surprised me the most was not the challenge of learning medical-speak, or deciphering doctor handwriting, but the jokes during the "unguarded" moments which came intermittently on the wards, but flowed at a torrent once the end-of-week happy hour came. Nurses and techs who were "all business" for forty hours, once seated behind a glass of white zinfandel and a basket of tortilla chips, would become instant comedians or comediennes.

These were the moments where sacred cows were transformed into hamburger.

One Friday, I naively asked one of the nurses how they could crack such crass jokes about otherwise life-altering scenarios. She then explained to me that the first years for many health care workers are usually the the most difficult, because coping mechanisms have not quite developed and they come to the sudden revelation they will be around sick, injured, cranky people for the remainder of their career. Many times coping comes as a choice of humor over depression; most who made it past the first years chose to be humorous.

I eventually moved into education and learned that teachers aren't much different than cops and health care workers. These persons are asked to deal with (sometimes) the more difficult or dark side of human existence. And be professional at all times. So when the choice comes to laugh or cry, many choose laughter, but some choose the teachers' lounge.

Riding the lead police vehicle for the marathon course was a two-hour trip back to the teachers' lounge of my young adulthood, or the Fraternal Order of Police lodge of my youth. It was deja vu, all over again; perspective I never had as a race worker, but one which didn't surprise me much. The two officers I rode with were professional, yet their observations of runners and running were some of the funniest I had heard in the past 15 years.

Fit for public consumption? Not in the slightest. They warned I would be corrupted by the end of the ride.

Were there things I took away to file for future reference? Absolutely.

Coaches vary in personality; in how we approach training, recovery, success, shortcoming, injury, rehabilitation, communication, and so on. None, I bet, decided to be a coach so they could take total control over an athlete's life, much like few go into law enforcement wanting to deal with criminals, or medical professionals with sick people. Most decide to coach because they love the sport and the process of teaching. They get to deal with the side of athletes, though, which wants to do silly things, like race a 5K in the morning, a 5K in the afternoon...and then ask the next day why they ache.

And we do, sometimes, slap our foreheads in dismay. Sometimes we write caustic e-mails and blog posts to get ideas and opinions out of our head...and hope like mad the right message is put across. And those messages, most often are: Keep everything in perspective. One person's sacred cow is another person's food source. And, most importantly, you're only as good as your next race.

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.

Rockin' In The Free Will

"There's colors on the street / Red, white and blue / People shufflin' their feet / People sleepin' in their shoes / But there's a warnin' sign on the road ahead / There's a lot of people sayin' we'd be better off dead / Don't feel like Satan, but I am to them / So I try to forget it, any way I can. / Keep on rockin' in the free world..." - Neil Young (1989)
My coaching focus is and has always been on adult runners. It's not that I don't like youth, I just prefer to deal directly with the athlete goals, limitations, choices, & strengths without the filter or static of well-meaning (but often meddlsome) parent-figures. It's enough of a challenge to explain the concept of patience and steady progress over the long haul with a new or inexperienced runner who shows great potential; a parent or grandparent who believes their ward is the next great hope for American running always wonders two things:

What can you do to make my child faster?

Why isn't their present coach doing anything?I've had parents who had the nerve to ask me - within earshot of their child's present coach - to work with the child. The last thing I want to be is the guy blamed for a good kid leaving a perfectly good coach.

Adults, on the other hand, have the option of free will. As long as there are no financial or educational constraints they are pretty much free to come and go as they please from training group to training group, from coach to coach. I'd like to say adults are easier to coach because you can be completely honest with them. But sometimes, honesty can be the biggest problem with coaching adults.Sometimes it's too much honesty: My wife reminds me on a regular basis to love and appreciate the people who continue to train regularly with me after five years. There have been times in the past I've stood at the side of the track with an apparently sour look on my face, more to do with nearsightedness coupled with watching running form from 200 meters away. Just like a grimace from a distance can masquerade as a grin, a squint can look like a scowl from afar. Not like my former coach was one to show his hand during a workout; inscrutability was his watchword. I, on the other hand, come from demonstrative fields of endeavor - drama, music, and education - and I'm genetically disinclined to to hold back with my opinion (regular readers are crying out "noooooo...").

Sometimes it's a lack of it: I recall a couple of former training mates/athletes, who when asked about the degree of injury or "beat-upness" before or during a workout, responded with a level much, much less acute than my perception. Others would hold back and appear to struggle during the front end of a workout, then cut loose with a repeat (usually the last ones) at an intensity far beyond what I assigned. After time, I learned whose word to take at face value and whose evaluation needed a little adjustment to the high or low. The "face value" athletes are refreshing, even when they decide to move on, they will tell you exactly what you need to know about how you're doing as a coach.Coaches, unfortunately, don't have the option of having as free a will as the athlete. We can't assign workouts just to see if we can break athletes - our "profession" is much like that of a doctor, with the guideline "First Do No Harm" indelibly etched into our mind. In fact, every action and decision should be made with the best interest of the athletes who have trusted themselves to us. I have a coaching partner who's more laid-back in nature than I am; in the interest of expanding our training group we talked about and instituted a group workout in the community close to his home on a weeknight. He has a good turnout, depending on the time of the year...very few during the winter, more during the spring and summer. While we don't directly collaborate on what workouts we're going to assign, the similarity between his workout and mine on many occasions can be astounding. Blame it on good coaching, I guess.

But, moving back to free will...a coach can't just take a night off because they feel like it, or because they hear (second-or-thirdhand) an old coaching friend has hit town. When I say with honesty, "I'm sorry, I have athletes to coach," it means, "while I would like to spend the evening drinking beer with an old friend, the marathon training of this athlete...the fitness level of this athlete...and the triathlon performance of this athlete...are more important to me - and to them."

"And their goals and desires, their free will, have become mine."

Running Legends and Urban Legends

Here goes one of those posts which is guaranteed to infuriate some, aggravate others & most likely reinforce my status in the eyes of some as a complete flaming...well, you can fill in the rest of the statement.

I recently read a former Olympian described by someone as a running & coaching legend. As I read the statement I sat back & gave what my old coach would have described as the classic 'oh? Really?' response. First thing I had to do is pull out my reference materials, especially what I consider the mack daddy of all running texts, Lore of Running.As a guy who coaches runners (some face-to-face, some remotely) & sometimes has the chance to answer questions about physiology, training, & injuries, this 700-plus-page text could be the answer to the 'if you could only purchase & use one running-related book, which would it be?' question.

So, rather than buy into anecdotal evidence, assertions & claims of improving a marathon time between 15 & 45 minutes by a particular training plan, I looked at the science. When Timothy Noakes, a physician & ultramarathoner, uses your training plan & the word heresy in the same sentence, well, Sarah Palin would possibly say your plan was refudiated.
So I show this information to my wife. She begins to tell me, 'well, he's doing something good for the running community. He's gotten a bunch of people off the couch & onto the roads.' Yes, but how many people are buying the lie that if you can walk 26 miles you can complete a marathon without hurting yourself? You mean there aren't people who don't get injured by that particular plan?

Noakes, in his tome, (which in the section on training commonalities between the legends and experts of the sport) refers to research refuting a relationship between a high/low volume training plan & an improvement in marathon performance. Frankly, the first challenge of marathon training - for each individual - is finding the plan which works best for their lifestyle, gets them to the starting line on the day ready to do their best, & allows them to - as he mentions in his 15 laws of training - get the best performance on the least amount of training possible.

I've done three marathons in the past two decades. In fact, my first marathon was my first road race of any sort, so I might have been a forerunner of the follower of urban legend number 783: anybody with enough guts (and a lack of intellect) can finish a marathon. I did my first marathon on a low-volume plan of 35-to-40 kilometers a week, hit the wall at 14 miles & dragged myself in under four-and-a-half hours. Ignorance is bliss.

My other two marathons were done during periods of higher training volume, with a blend of long runs, speed work, tempo runs & recovery efforts. I fell ill during the last month of training for marathon number two, & injured myself on my last long run preparing for marathon number three.

Not everyone is built to handle the stress of marathon training, regardless of whether the plan is high-volume, low-volume. Not everyone is meant to participate in marathons. And, I firmly believe, anyone who gets off the couch to run should think about training for shorter distance events first. Find the distance you love to race - balance the challenge with the amount of volume needed to properly train. And move incrementally up the distance chain - 5k, 8k, 10k, 12k, 15k, 21k, etc., if you are going to eventually try a marathon.

Even though there are 20 books out there which say you can, you don't have to.

Once A Coach, Always A Coach – OR – Sometimes, Sport Ain’t Pretty

Some time back I began to read the occasional blog posting from Brett "Doc" Sutton, an Australian coach who has guided a number of athletes to success in the world of swimming, as well as ITU and long distance triathlon. At this point in the 2010 season a number of his TeamTBB athletes have been setting the triathlon world aflame.

One of the first blog posts I read from Doc was entertaining, but difficult to follow, because he (as many of his athletes will tell) has an atrocious writing style. So, I took it upon myself to edit it for public consumption. I think Doc will be pleased, or at least minimally miffed, at the fact I hadn't chopped it up too much...I felt spelling and minor word cobbling would suffice. Enjoy!

Ol’ Doc has been getting a bit frayed around the edges lately, so his ever-suffering wife bought him a set of golf clubs. Seems she had heard him say that back in the old days his doctor used to prescribe hitting golf balls rather than punching bags when the anxiety level started to rise.

Recently his team was on fire, namely the daily “fires” athletes and coaches deal with to make the magic happen on race day. Putting out those fires was starting to take its toll on Doc. So after a little track set, his wife suggested he take the new golf clubs to the driving range and test them out, while she took the kids to the lake. She told him, ‘don’t think about coaching for the rest of the day.’

So Doc went off, bag in hand, down to the driving range. He bought his bucket of balls and proceeded to deal with the anxieties of coaching a’ la Tiger. Right beside him was a group of folks ranging from their mid 40s to about 80 years of age. They were all decked out in their new golf attire, with their beautiful clubs and the immaculately dressed golf pro who was giving the group a lesson. The pro had the group stretching and doing all these drills, and it appeared like they were having fun.

Doc proceeded to put his bucket of balls down, took a club out of the bag, and started to hit the balls. Being a professional in another ball-sport, He never considered hitting a ball that isn’t moving to be much of a problem. After about 20 strokes he found the ball to be moving off the tee quite well, but his anxiety wasn’t subsiding one bit.While his shots were going more or less in the proper direction, the golf students next to him were sending their balls, er, sideways. They had become a danger not only to themselves, but to everyone nearby.

After a 9-iron slice missed Doc’s temple by about an inch (which pleased an elderly lady in the group; she finally hit a ball that was not a “worm burner,”) he decided checking a few e-mails was the better part of being pole-axed by an octogenarian would-be Nancy Lopez. What’s a 20-to-30-minute delay on such a nice day? He knew he’d end up taking care of coaching business, but at least he was exercising his obsession at the golf club rather than at the track.

As he answered the last of the e-mails, Doc realized this group was booked for an hour lesson. So, with mortal fear he returned to whacking a few balls, but with his eye constantly on the group, just in case. The pro teacher had provided this group with all the correct golf form tips money could buy; but these middle-aged hackers were lucky to be able to strike the ball, much less the broad side of a barn. They all had back swings as big as John Daly, turning their hips exactly like Tiger, and were still fortunate to get the ball 15 yards downrange. Most of the shots were “worm burners,” except when they tried the 9-iron; those were the moments Doc feared emasculation.

He kept thinking to himself, ‘what is this bloke doing with these people?’ He had long gone past the point of being upset for no particular reason. But the anxiety and frustration the foursome was experiencing as an outcome of trying so hard to emulate the technique of the world’s best golfers, as espoused by their instructor, was quickly becoming pandemic. Even with the language barrier, Doc knew the French word ‘merde’ was not ‘I love that shot.’ Time to answer a little more e-mail, thought Doc, to avoid their frustration becoming his. When the old pensioner let out the English version of the earlier French interjection, Doc said nothing, but sat there and kept boiling on how these people were being coached.

The elderly woman came and sat on the bench five minutes later, to light up a cigarette. Now her – and Doc’s - anxiety had gone out of control. He said, ‘that will kill you,’ in English. He knew she understood only too well. She bounced back with, ‘not before the golf does.’

Doc learned during their conversation the woman’s husband wanted her to learn to play golf and improve her health; he bought her new clubs and 30 golf lessons. She was so embarrassed to not be able to hit the ball. At her age, she felt it was silly trying to learn something difficult, just for fun.

She then waxed on, ‘Look at you. You walk up, don’t stretch, don’t warm up, you don’t practice. You wear lambskin boots for golf shoes, and you just “bang, bang, bang.” The balls fire out like its nothing. How much have you practiced to do that?’ Doc said he had picked up the clubs two or three times in the last ten years.

While this dowager might have had a $3,000 set of clubs and Nike equipment, she was a Yorkshire “angler”; her biggest catch was the husband with the Swiss bank account. They might have been in Montreaux, she in her 70’s, prim and proper, but she still told Doc he was full of it.

However, he was serious: ‘If you really want to hit the ball time after time and enjoy it, I can help you.’ She said, ‘Oh, now you’re a pro golfer too?’ Doc explained while he wasn’t a pro at golf, he could have her hitting ten fifty-yard shots in succession within 30 minutes. ‘When he leaves with his band of merry payers, go buy another lot of balls. But you have got to do as I tell you; forget all that clap trap the instructor said.’

‘Did you see me try to hit that ball or you just blind? That was my 28th lesson and I have yet to hit one that far and more than three in the row that went anywhere.’ Doc said, ‘well, you got one off the ground which nearly took me out.’

‘So what’s the point? Do you want to be better than you’re doing now, or just look good?’ She said, ‘Yes, of course.’

‘Well make your mind up; I have to be back at the lake in 45 minutes.’

So, over she went and bought the balls. The first ten minutes passed with Doc instructing, ‘do you want to hit it or look like a golfer that air swings all the time?’

‘I learned a terrific lesson a lot of years ago when I went to a golf tournament to watch my brother-in-law hack about. I watched a 69-year-old lining up; my brother-in-law filled me in: “This guy is the local legend. He can hardly walk now, so he never finishes the second round of the tournament, but he won it three times; twice before the war and one time afterward. He never became a pro as the war wrecked him and his lungs.” Of course I followed him instead of the brother-in-law, and it was the best 18 holes I ever walked. Now, that is another story, but it taught me plenty about hitting a golf ball.’ So Doc told the lady of this old guy and what the old guy showed him, then she started to really listen, not like before. She must have thought there was some English common sense in that.

So, they got rid of the John Daly backswing, told Tiger Woods to piss off, and decided the follow-through was over-rated. That ten minutes was hopefully the turning point in Amy loving to play golf as in the previous ten minutes; not only did Amy hit ten straight balls but at least half of them went beyond the 50 mark.

She was astonished, but when she went to go, Doc said ‘hang on. It was all ten past that mark. Get your wallet out, old girl, and get some more balls.’ Some traits die hard. ‘We are going to nail this before we leave here.’ She hit two more lots of ten, and the last lot went past the 50-yard sign every time. They grounded in the "Amy Swipe," as it was christened: a technique that revolutionary needed to have a name. Amy was having a ball whacking the balls every time, like a Swiss watch. The old girl had a bit of talent; the “Amy Swipe” was a thing of beauty. The back swing was not higher than her hips - sorry, john. Her hip turn - well we lost that, sorry, Tiger, and her follow-through stopped also at the hip but she hit 30 balls. She never missed one and over half went 50 yards or more, all in a straight line.

They packed up, and she said, ‘I just paid that guy - or my husband did - 1450 Swiss francs for 30 lessons and I still could not hit the ball. What can I get you, Doc?’

‘Well, I am pretty thirsty. How about a can of Coke?’

‘Done.’

There are a couple of morals to the story:

First, beauty is in the eye of the beholder!

Second, do you want to look good, or do you want to be better?

I think that sums it up.

As for the anxiety, well, Doc returned to the lake, and his wife said ‘You look much happier. See what happens when you take just a little time off from coaching? I am proud of you!’

Doc said, ‘me too, me too.’

The Bow That's Continually Bent...

I vaguely recall a story which ( believe) was written by Eusebius, Origen, or one of the early writers of the Christian Church, about St. John (please keep in mind this is from a text I read back in my former life as an aspiring pastor). (I guess) there was a philosopher who went (in disguise of an outdoorsman/hunter) to visit John later on in his life, & was amazed to find him sitting in relaxation stroking a partridge. He asked John about the frivolity of his present activity, to which John responded with a question of his own. 'I see you have a bow in your hand. Do you always carry it about unstrung?' The philosopher replied, 'yes, if I were to keep it continually strung the tension would weaken the bow & I would be unable to use it to down stronger prey when the time came.'

John replied, 'worry not about my present state of relaxation. As you have rightly said, "the bow that is continually bent will cease to shoot straight."'

So, I guess it's necessary for each of us to take time away from our pursuits in order to recharge, redirect, reevaluate, & sometimes even reacquire a perspective we once had or discarded. The hard part is what I like to call a painfully obvious fact: The more time we have away from working out, training, running, bicycling, swimming, just plain flat-out doing, usually provides us time & opportunity for stoopid things...those things which get us in trouble.

And if you're not careful, you can burn up those spousal approval units during down-time, when you probably should be earning them by doing those quality time things. I've found a few of those QTTs can also provide some much-needed perspective on how other people see us...us being defined as athletes, coaches, & athletic event participants...I guess even athletic event providers can be fit into the definition. And I have to admit the first week or two of I'm not getting up early to... is pretty nice, but after a while it does become a nasty little habit. Sleep, as my wife has told me, is one of her guilty pleasures in life. In the past month I've probably increased my sleep time to nearly ten hours a night, much to my d-a-w-g's displeasure.

But worry not...this is the end of the month & I truly intend to be back on the chain gang.Honestly, it has been nice in many ways. Unfortunately, it also means I've spent lots of time on activities which are simple, but much higher in impact (more running, less cycling or swimming). So my body has really had a tough time adapting to a decreased, but different form of stress.

On top of all that, the temperature has gone not so much through the roof as much as it has increased a minor amount. But, the humidity in our area has definitely gone up. Much harder to breathe when you feel like you need gills. Must scale back effort levels or move indoors for a time. That means more boring. I know many who take the entire summer to unbend their bow. While it might work for them I'd rather loosen the string some rather than take it off completely. That way I'm not looking for the notch when September arrives...believe me, it cannot arrive too soon.