"Relay" does not mean "Delay"

The sign at the college campus entrance provided a knee-deep sense of foreboding...which quickly turned hip-to-waist-deep once I saw the tents and pop-up covers.  A fund-raising relay event on the track, in 25 words or less, meant no chance for speed work on the track.

If you're doing workouts on your own this isn't a big deal; you just have to go to another track, right?

What if there isn't another track nearby, or the track has a less-than-desirable location/surface?  I first had to deal with this "problem" during a two week assignment to Orlando, many years ago.  The hotel gym had a "typical inexpensive hotel gym" quality treadmill (translation: great for walking and not much else); and the staff did not know the location of the nearest track.  However, there was a long, straight stretch of roadway, about three miles in length, with light poles spaced about fifty yards apart. 

Speed workouts don't necessarily require a track; a favorite jogging path, stretch of road or trail will do.  The most-popular form of speed work done on paths, roads or trails would have to be fartlek, which is the Swedish for "speed play."  The fartlek workout has certain benefits as well as drawbacks:  A runner can pretty much push the pace for as long (or not as long) as they feel, they can vary the pace, and they can vary the recovery periods. 

However, I'm a bit of a knucklehead about speed work, and in fact, about most of my runs.  There has to be a purpose, some sort of plan, behind all of this; otherwise I might as well have my feet up on the couch watching SportsCenter.  If there are regularly-spaced landmarks along the way I'll figure it out from the outset and plan something like this:

First two miles - comfortable jog
Next mile - 200 meters, more or less, with 50 meters recovery jog
Next mile - 400 meters, more or less, with 50-to-100 meters recovery jog
Next mile - 200 meters, more or less, with 50 meters recovery jog

The efforts would be anywhere from highly aerobic (a pace I can hold steadily for five kilometers) to eighty-percent of maximal effort.

Now, with the consumer-grade GPS we can probably keep a closer eye on distance efforts and recovery intervals.  For those persons who aren't into GPS, another option would be to set a running watch on countdown timer for a thirty-to-sixty second period, set to repeat. Jog easy for fifteen to twenty minutes, then alternate harder and easier efforts during each repeat.  The distances are not so much the important quantity as much as the effort and recovery times.  Harder efforts, naturally, will most likely require longer recoveries.

So don't let that "Relay for Reality" or the infield soccer camp make you set aside your speed work.  Find yourself a place to let your horses run free.

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.

Timothy Noakes and the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition

There was a time, just before I started college, that I started to watch Star Trek: The Next Generation & (to a lesser degree) Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. It came on just after the local news; this gave me the chance to unwind after an evening run. Since my friend John (and his wife Terri) had a nice television (Anything larger than the 12-inch diagonally-measured black-and-white I had at that time in my little apartment met the definition of nice.) at their apartment, they would graciously invite me over for an O'Doul's or a white zin spritzer, & we would watch one or both of the ST series episodes, depending on the day of the week.

I thought ST: TNG was the better of the two series, but there was something entertaining about ST: DSN.

As a guy with an all-too-rigidly-defined sense of right-and-wrong, I found the Ferengi both abhorrent & attractive. For 18 months between my sudden social shake-up & going to college, I had a former roommate, a one-time grad assistant/fervent left-winger/lecturer/small-time con artist/educational fraud-enabler at the University of Arizona. We spent evenings discussing ethics, philosophy, economics, history & political science over coffee or dinner, either at the local Shoney's or on the back porch of my apartment. I absorbed the equivalent of a freshman-year education during that time, for free...it cost his share of the rent.

Discussion topics ranged from existentialism (once you understand it you see it in everything) to what can best be described as the economics of the street. Of course, when you've had a Manichaean black v. white, good v. evil mindset drummed into you from childhood & further beaten into you by fundamentalist preachers, there are certain moments which can be quite liberating. Nietzsche's beyond good & evil, master mentality v. slave mentality, for example. However, you don't have to read Nietzsche to understand Nietzsche. Just look for old Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episodes. The Ferengi are Nietzsche reincarnated.
I used to love the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition. My buddy used to laugh at me because I had a rigid, methodical approach to everything in life. (I was a Methodist for many years. Sue me.) He used to joke about the Tao of Bowen: Follow sidewalks rather than cut across grass, stuff like that. Even my wife figured I have this tendency to calculate, & try, much like Emanuel Kant, to live my life as though a universal rule should be written by it (what Kant called the categorical imperative). Until this morning I wondered if ANYONE wrote down or collected the ROA for the benefit of fanatics (lunatics?) like me.

So, I was at the track last night...we were finishing a particularly ugly workout when my friend Larry S. finished his warm-up jog. We chatted about training, & he asked my opinion about a particular long-distance training program. (Naturally, I've got opinions. If I didn't I wouldn't be writing here, right?) I told him what I thought was the dirty little secret about the plan, then provided him a recommendation of my own, based on his goal...which I learned was completing an international distance (otherwise known as Olympic-distance) triathlon. Larry trains with me when his work schedule permits, & he's a good soul, so I do not hesitate to give him my wisest counsel...which, of course, he can ignore at his peril or use...& more than likely do well. Ferengi Rule of Acquisition #284: "Deep down everyone's a Ferengi."
Larry was going to use a marathon training plan as the run training portion of his triathlon prep. Since Larry's doing an international distance event, I felt a marathon plan would put too much run training volume into his training. After doing a quick crunch of numbers, I estimated he would do 50 minutes for ten kilometers of running, 75 minutes for 40 kilometers on the bike, and 18-to-20 minutes on the swim. So, nearly two & a half hours at race effort? I believe he needs little more than to be able to run a decent half-marathon at the worst. Maybe somewhere less, but definitely more than a typical ten-kilometer training plan, and definitely less than a marathon, since he's going to be fatigued from the bike by the time he starts the run.

Why did I provide Larry that counsel? Timothy Noakes' Law of Training, #6: "Achieve As Much As Possible on a Minimum of Training."
Too many athletes, especially ones whose goal is to finish the event, do too much training. The law of diminishing returns, especially in run training, has sharp teeth. It doesn't hurt to know your own physical limitations: If you try to run marathons & the training volume kicks your @$$ (which it has done to me two times out of three), it might be the Almighty's way of trying to tell you to try half-marathons instead...or to find a training program with less volume.

Yeah, there are other factors, too, but you have to know what your body can - & cannot - handle. And in closing, let me remind you of Ferengi Rule of Acquisition #44: "Never confuse wisdom with luck."

Sometimes You Just Have To Say...

...the statement I was going to use (borrowed from an old friend, Christian Beine) can have positive & negative connotations. This weekend, it's a little bit of both.

It is not often I go to New Orleans in a month which is not spelled with an "R" somewhere within or at the end. Sure, there's the August trip to do the NOH3 Red Dress thing...that's a situation where I kick myself while pulling funky, nasty sweaty red dresses out of the back of my car, asking the un-askable question: 'What in the world was I thinking when I registered for this?' Then I realize I added a few too many words to the front end of the sentence & should have started the question with: 'Was I thinking...?' Naturally, my wife reminds me it is all in good fun.

This time we went, not to commemorate a hasher hook-up (I never knew that was the story behind the RDR!) but to take part in a variation of a ritual steeped in lore & tradition, immortalized by Papa Ernest Hemingway in the last three chapters of his novel, The Sun Also Rises. Seems someone felt like there was a need for another reason to party in New Orleans & the Fiesta de San Fermin seemed like as good a reason as any. I never knew the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona was part of a religious festival, but I guess when you're in a nation as Catholic (with a capital "C") as Spain, nearly everything has religious undertones.

And when you have the amount of spare time to research stuff I do...in between doing real work...you do have the opportunity to learn the history & significance of things. I think it makes the experience that much more meaningful, personally. The San Fermin web site, http://www.sanfermin.com/, not only had photos & commentary about the history, but even a little bit about Hemingway's visits there through his middle age. Even better, the site was set up in Spanish, Basque & English...with links to an on-line store for shirts & stuff. Hey, even the Euros feel the need to be capitalistic. Every so often.

But I digress.

Bulls are deeply tied into Spanish culture, long before even the Umayyad (sic?) Caliphate took over the Iberian peninsula. That much I recall from some multimedia thing I watched while I was studying Spanish in college. Somehow, I guess there was some machismo thing going on in the ability to avoid getting stomped or gored by some bull being taken down the main drag to it's eventual death in the bull ring. Not quite certain where San Fermin falls in there, save for the fact he's the patron saint of Pamplona, in the province of Navarre.

I guess during the seven or eight days of the festival these bull breeders in the region send eight of their fighting bulls to die for the pleasure of Spanish aficionados. And the last 800 meters or so of the trip is through the center of town to the bull ring. Barricades abound. Oh, & did I mention the very slippery cobblestone surface & the hard ninety-degree turn near the end? First time I had the chance to see this was not long after I first moved to Pensacola; Outdoor Life Network (now called Versus) would show it in the afternoons...guess Craig Hummer & Al Trautwig needed something stranger than cycle racing to commentate upon, huh? Bizarre thing to watch a ton of angry hamburger try to take a hard right on cobblestones...slide like he's on ice, & BANG! Into the barrera.

All right, so New Orleans' San Fermin is a little more kind & genteel. At least for New Orleans. First year's encierro had a few hundred participants & maybe a dozen "bulls," well, roller derby chicks with horned helmets & whiffle ball bats. This year, the third, had around five thousand participants & probably a hundred "bulls" from all over the southeastern U.S. And the blend of tradition & whimsy is perfect.

The start of the encierro is at the northern end of the Vieux Carre', winds through the Quarter, and finishes in the Warehouse District. The event started officially at eight o'clock, but if you weren't at the corner near the balcony at 7:05 the odds were good you were not going to have a good spot for the beginning of the festivities.

At (probably...I haven't worn a watch in six months, so time is relative!) 7:55, the caretakers of San Fermin's statue marched up Rue Conti, led by a squad of drummers. San Fermin was then followed by a flight of rolling Elvi on mini-motorized scooters. Once San Fermin was installed in his proper place, the Padron stepped out onto the balcony of the Three-Legged Dog & gave his welcoming speech. This was immediately followed by the kneeling & invocation of the participants to (who else?) San Fermin, asking him to guide them safely ahead of the bulls. Immediately afterward, unlike the real encierro where a rocket is launched to send off the runners, we were sent down the course.

The pace for the run was closer to a dawdle. Enough for us to think, 'heck, no worries...this is going to be an easy little Saturday morning jog in the FQ.' No sooner did that thought cross my mind than we made a left-hand turn through what appeared to be a barrier of spectators standing in the middle of the street. At that point I looked to the right.

Ever watch those old movies where Godzilla, or some fifty-foot tall, radioactivity-enhanced thing rises out of a body of water and begins to stomp its way into a major metropolitan area? Think about the people (who have screams of terror dubbed in) as they look back at the creature about ready to turn them into a grease spot on the sidewalk. That's the look we all had. Why? We just turned onto the point of the course where the "bulls" were waiting to be released. Screaming? Absolutely. Like a seven-year-old girl, I was.

We began to run like Kenyans at the Classic. And behind us we could hear the plastic 'whonk' sound of whiffle ball bat meeting body part, which only made us more panicky. My wife took the smarter plan of action, and stepped off the course onto the sidewalk. She told me while she thought this was all in good fun she was not in the mood to be whacked in the fanny with a plastic bat. So, she managed to come through the day un-bruised.

On the other hand, I received the beating of a lifetime, the sort I hadn't received since nearly failing middle school English grammar so long ago. It could have been a grounding, but noooo... These hits weren't just gentle 'whacks.' Some of these girls were out to make up for ex-boyfriends or something...one of them had a forehand which would make Serena Williams proud. I still have the mark.

Of course, with all that humidity & sweat flying around someone's going to lose a bat, & someone's going to lose control. One bull & I ended up in the San Fermin in Nueva Orleans version of a Mexican Standoff; she lost grip of her bat, which fell to the ground at my feet. I picked it up: Any other situation would call for payback. However, the second rule of the run, 'Do Not Touch The Bulls,' applied. So, I shook the bat at her with a small amount of menace, then smiled and handed it back to her. No good deed goes unpunished; she responded with a swat in the keister & a blown kiss for my reward.

While some of the NOLA roller girls were probably familiar with the terrain, it's hard to say whether the imported "bulls" were as well-prepared. The pavement can be rather unforgiving if you don't keep your wits about you...while the cobblestoned last two blocks of the encierro provided payback to the "bulls," there were a few places on the course where I watched "bulls" succumb to the laws of physics or crash into "innocent bystanders." If you're standing on the side of the road for the express purpose of watching this particular spectacle, the term "innocent" does not apply, in my humble opinion. Some guy complained about a bull causing him to spill his drink all over his shirt. Neither bull, nor runner, nor fellow spectator felt the least sympathetic.

The bulls quickly realized trying to roll over cobblestones would lead to accidents which could put this years' Tour de France to shame, so they lined up in a gauntlet formation & proceeded to beat upon the runners who had the temerity to run behind them on the course. The sound of whiffle ball bats could on that block from Tchopitoulas to Julia leading to Ernst Cafe' for blocks around. I rejoined my wife, who was standing at the entrance of Ernst Cafe cooling off. We watched for a few minutes the spectacle of runners staging photographed whacks with imported & domestic bulls, then retired, like Hemingway & his companions once did, to our hotel room to prepare for the next stage of our Fiesta experience.