Red Bull: The (Nearly) Two-Percent Solution

Spend enough time with a demographic which closely resembles the target viewing audience for adventure sporting events, and you cannot help but notice the large drink cans close by.  Even after nine weeks of boot camp, with plenty of exercise and the finest food the military has to offer, (all right, there's a good reason the dining facilities are called "mess halls) the young men and women I encountered on a weekly basis in my classroom drank can after can of sugary "energy drinks." 

When my wife makes the decision to party she doesn't hit the white zinfandel or the belgian Trappist ale.  She resorts to a very popular energy drink, often mixed with vodka.  The drink mixture makes as much sense as my Sunday brunch switch between a large cup of Seattle's finest export, the name of which rhymes with "four bucks," and a chilled flute of mimosa.  Take enough of the stuff in and you have a buzz in two different forms...a very alert drunk.  But that's a different editorial statement altogether.

The folks who make the beverage in the little blue and silver cans seem to be everywhere in the past couple of months.  Whether it's a guy who wants to go the speed of sound without an aircraft or a bunch of runners who want to outrun roller derby girls, the beverage and it's logo is darned near ubiquitous.  And the advertising is more, er, mature now.  I haven't seen as many of the silly black-and-white line-drawing animated cartoons.  They're back to focusing on a message of: 'drink this if you want to go farther than anyone else.'

That little blue and silver can...what's it got?  Well, about the same amount of sugar or sweetener as a typical soda...about 65 percent of the caffeine of the same sized coffee...some B-vitamins, a chemical found in detox drinks, and the amino acid taurine.  If you're used to drinking coffee before a race or a workout, there's a really good chance you probably won't be hurt drinking the beverage that reportedly "gives you wings."  In fact, it's not just the caffeine that may help your run performance, but the taurine.

First, taurine is commonly found in skeletal muscle, cardiac muscle and brain tissue; the chemical has been suspected to have a strong role in a number of physiological actions but until recently there was little research done.  Four researchers in the United Kingdom recently investigated the amino acid's effect on endurance performance, testing run performance for a three-kilometer time trial.  They found the subjects who took the taurine two hours prior to a maximum simulated 3K effort on a treadmill improved their performance by an average of 1.7 (and up to 4.2) percent, without appreciable change in heart rate, oxygen intake or perceived effort.  The researchers weren't able to explain the specific reason for the improved performance, however.

But, the little aluminum can is not necessarily the "two percent solution."  Energy drinks containing the two known ergogenics (caffeine and taurine) in other studies were shown to aid in endurance and resistance to fatigue, but the additional ingredients may slow or limit the body's ability to benefit from them.

REFERENCE:  Balshaw, TG, Bampouras, TM, Barry, TJ, Sparks, A (2012). The effect of acute taurine ingestion on 3-km running performance in trained middle distance runners.  Amino acids.  Springer-Verlag, Aug 2

15 Miles-A-Week To 26.2 In A Day: The Marathon Puzzle

This is part two of a response to a question I received in my personal e-mail from a reader:

"I have a question regarding your 10% increase every three weeks. How would this work if I were training for a marathon? Would I have to do a 20 mile run five times a week? I'm sure that can't be good for your legs. Do you have another training schedule that you recommend for marathons? Like your friend in the article I have also had IT band problems, which I believe was due to increasing my mileage too fast when training for my second marathon. Thanks for any help you can offer."

The previous post covered training plans I've recommended to my own athletes when they've considered running/racing a marathon. But the training plan only gets the athlete to the starting line, (ideally) healthy and ready to run a good 26.2 miles. A sensible pacing plan takes advantage of the smart training and lets the athlete perform up to their potential. Train hard/smart for 16-to-20 weeks, sacrifice family time, free time (morning, evening, weekends), and work time to get to the starting line, then go out the first five or six miles like a maniac? Never a good idea.

After I wrote the first post I sat down with an Excel spreadsheet to determine how long it would take to progress, given an approximate ten-percent increase in run duration/distance, from 20 minutes-a-day, six-to-seven days a week, to marathon training volume.

Before I start, let's come to a couple of understandings:

I've read of couch-to-marathon programs which -ideally - get the participant to the start line in 26 weeks. But I believe this shortchanges the runner on many fronts: They run the risk of overuse injury because of a very sudden increase in volume. They don't really learn to enjoy racing, racing etiquette, or what works and what doesn't on race day. And, there are so many different race distances and formats which are grossly overlooked...to many, it's either marathon or nothing.

In my humble opinion, it takes right on the verge of four years of consistent, (preferably) injury-free training to go from couch-to-marathon. Yes, that sounds elitist and discriminatory. I did my first marathon after only four months of "training;" I had a lot of fun, beat myself badly over the course of 26.2, and didn't run ANYTHING for ten years. It took another ten years for me to try another marathon, and STILL I did it wrong. I've been working the "marathon puzzle" ever since.

When it comes to the "marathon puzzle," every athlete is an experiment of one. I've drafted plans for both male and female runners, ranging in age from the mid-20s to the mid-40s, averaging four years of running experience. The athletes have been given free rein to adapt and adjust based on their own life constraints (treadmill adaptations for Canadian winters, for example...), and more often than not they've seen success...not so much because of my plan, but because of their hard work and consistency over time.

The only person who has ever failed on one of my plans is me (Chronic injuries and recovery issues have been my undoing - I'm not yet willing to admit I'm too brittle for the marathon.). Coaching, to me, is a zero-sum game: If I'm training well it's because I'm not paying attention to you. By "paying attention" I've helped four people finish iron-distance triathlons, four people to qualify for the Boston Marathon, and another four people to finish Boston. So I won't argue with the method/madness I've developed the past six years.

A Thought On Tapering

...or two. I guess this train of thought started last Wednesday evening during our "easy" 60-minute run on the beach. Quite frankly, it felt like a bit of a slog for a good portion of the run; just couldn't get comfortable. The heart rate wasn't going sky high...in fact, it seemed quite reasonable. Just a little bit of lead in the legs. When we got back to the start I had to admit I was glad we kind of went off the beaten path; heaven knows I'd have been tempted to slap it into B-for-boogie...and might have felt like ten pounds of used kitty litter afterward.
That kind of feeling has persisted for this past week, & almost two. I'm certain lots of it has to do with a subconscious effort to conserve energies for the day. But it's not like I'm really going into taper mode. Friends who know I'm (about) three weeks out from the Ironman have hinted, 'yeah, you should be starting your taper next week...' Trouble is, I am not certain what I'm supposed to be tapering from.
The bicycle crash, by necessity, forced me to back off about 30-percent of my intended training volume. I've had to limit my swimming to twice a week, & at an intensity which is just comfortable enough to not strain the trapezius, deltoid, or latissimus muscles on the left side...unfortunately, life has managed to make up for the lost efforts. If you've ever tried to get out of a Mercedes sedan on the passenger side, it requires a certain degree of assistance from the left arm to help roll you out. So, when I whine about wanting to drive it has as much to do with physical comfort as it does with personal autonomy.

I managed to do well through the long bike ride on the IM FL course, so there's little to worry about there. Even running, when the shoulder feels good & hasn't been over-stressed, is all right. The heart rate is good. And now, the weather has become almost nice. So it's not like I'm really going to cut back on volume that much...or intensity...not until next weekend.

At that point it's going to be little more than a single hour of a single activity. Spend a little more time with the feet up, with the coffee pot, with the good book, with the light jazz or baroque music. Definitely. I'll revert back to one of the things I said before...just kind of be like my greyhound: eat when I can, go out when I want, & rest otherwise.

So, I'm not really tapering as much as maintaining.

Sleep, Definitely NOT Overrated...

Certain days of the week are etched in stone. Mondays, Wednesdays...these are days I can't screw around with staying up after 9:30. Thursday through Sunday, and Tuesday are a little more flexible, but you're more likely to see me hitting the rack no later than 10. Gone are the days of staying up until all hours of the night and waking bright-eyed and bushy-tailed eight hours later. While I'm religious on my seven-to-nine hours a night, I'm truly affected by anything that affects my pattern. My wife, God bless her, calls it discipline. I tend to think it's closer to obsessive-compulsive behavior.

I've joked about this once before, but I believe that everything you ever need to know about being an athlete you can learn from your dog...especially if they're a greyhound. My 'hound, Rubin, is up (like a jack-in-the-box, I might add) at the stroke of five every morning. He's excited at the beginning of a new day...another bowl of kibble...another romp in the yard...another walk around the park...another day of napping on the cool tile of my wife's office.

Dogs are masters at the art of energy conservation. Why run when you can walk? Why walk when you can stand and sniff butts? Why stand when you can sit and scratch yourself? Why sit when you can lay down? I never hear Rubin complain about going for a jog around the park, or that he's tired and sore when he gets up in the morning. He tolerates the same kibble, twice a day, with a daily Milk-Bone supplement when he can "talk" his "mom" and "dad" out of one.

There have been Friday or Saturday evenings where my wife have been sitting on the couch, drinking beer and watching Monty Python...Rubin will get up from his blanket on the floor in front of the couch and stand between us and the television. I'll get a little perturbed at first, then realize what the time says on the clock. "It's 9 or 9:30," he 'says' with his big brown 'hound eyes. "You have to train in the morning." Sometimes he'll walk off to the bedroom and his large sleeping pillow, other times (if we ignore him) he'll stand directly in front of us until we get up to go to bed.

There's nothing like the sigh of the 'hound as he settles into his pillow..."mission accomplished. Dad'll thank me when he PR's."