Too Much Information?

BEEP!

I took a look at the small window which popped up on my computer.  Usually at this point I see a bar filling across the screen; the progress of my Garmin uploading data to my computer.  I take five minutes once or twice a day moving information from the Garmin onto a spreadsheet, the story of my (jogging) life.

But this time was different.  Something didn't seem quite right.

I punched the button again.  A third time.  And a fourth.

One of the things which infuriates the data-obsessed runner is when technology fails to work as promised.  On many occasions the glitches are quickly remedied by a reset protocol or a download of software.  But there are times when even those stop-gap measures are not going to provide satisfaction.

This particular episode made me think about what information is most important to the casual jogger or the semi-serious runner-in-training.  Most of the data can be collected with a good-quality heart rate monitor or running watch and kept either in a notebook or on a computer spreadsheet.

Here's what I think are the most important data points to collect as part of run training:

Time Spent Running - most run coaches consider four-to-seven hours a decent week of training, with the overwhelming majority recommending no more than ten hours a week.  This number, naturally, can be tracked with either a running watch or heart rate monitor.

Number of miles run - A runner who focuses on short-distance races might need to run little more than 30 miles per week, with marathon training requiring anywhere from 40-to-60 miles.  Not only should the average runner look at how many miles they are running, but the number of hard efforts; look at the amount of speed work (to include interval workouts, repeats, fartlek runs and tempo runs) compared to "regular" runs.  Speed training ideally should take no more than 25 percent of the training volume.  Lastly, how many miles has the runner accrued on each pair of running shoes used for training?  A decent pair of running shoes, if used in a two-or-three-shoe rotation, can last for 20-to-25 weeks (400-to-500 miles) before it's time to consider replacing them.  Naturally, a heavier/sweatier runner who trains in a more humid climate may need to replace their shoes a little faster than the lighter one training in a drier climate.  If you use the same courses without variation, you probably won't need a GPS.  A good on-line map program to figure out your run courses and training loops will probably suffice.

Average Training Heart Rate - A workout can not only be judged subjectively by the "did I kick things and take names today" question, but also by a more-objective means, otherwise known as "training effect."  A good heart rate monitor will provide the average heart rate for a workout bout.  If you know the percentage of maximum heart rate, you can multiply the percentage by 2, then multiply that number by the number of minutes exercised.  So, a 60-minute workout at 50-percent of maximum heart rate would have a score of 60 (.50 x 2 = 1; 1 x 60 = 60).  Scores less than 150 are low stress, 150-to-300 are medium, and 300-to-450 are high.  Low stress days can be recovered from the following day; high stress days would naturally take a few days longer.

Resting Heart Rate - the heart rate can tell not only how much demand for blood and nutrients was necessary during the workout, but also whether the body is still repairing from the previous days' exertions.  A resting heart rate (taken first thing in the morning before rising from bed) which is above normal can be a forecast of overreaching or overtraining.

Hours of Sleep - a sudden change in the amount of sleep necessary, or the ability to sleep, is also a warning sign which can tell the runner they might be training too hard.

Of course, the resting heart rate and quality of sleep - as well as training adaptations - can also be affected by our diet, work stress, personal relationships, and so forth.  We forget on many occasions that training is holistic - what happens outside the track or trail often affects how we do, and the other way around.  It doesn't necessarily take a $300 gadget and an overabundance of software to tell us what we really need to know.  We just need to know what to look for.

Whatever Doesn't Kill Me...

My retired racing greyhound trotted in from his morning visit to the backyard after his Sunday morning breakfast. On most days, Rubin likes to come back into the kitchen, check to see whether he can mooch a little bit of peanut butter, then heads back to his sleeping blanket at the foot of our bed. This last Sunday, he stopped by a small pile of clothing neatly laid on the back porch table & proceeded to engage in a lengthy sniff-through. While the clothing & shoes of a typical running enthusiast like me would normally interest my dog, he seemed a touch more interested in the clothes I wore the previous evening.

The reason for the increased interest? Perhaps it had to do with the information he gained. A suburban dog can learn a lot of new stuff when perusing clothes worn while running over (through?) trails and a few drainage ditches choked with low-hanging branches, fallen limbs, standing water, thorn bushes, and so forth. He learned standing water & plant material has a smell which is not like perspiration. Why did "dad's" clothing smell like swamp, & not sweat?

I have several friends who, while not hard-core road runners, enjoy the challenge of what is known as "hare & hounds" running. While the sources which explain the history of this activity, the traditions which surround the activity & the groups which engage in it...in varying frequencies...vary in quality and quantity, these facts which appear to be to be most true:

- A group of people meet in a location.

- One or two are sent off to lay a trail, with a brief lead time before the rest are sent in pursuit.

- A social gathering begins at trail's end, where songs are sung, beverages are consumed, & general runner-like fellowship occurs.

I've run with a couple of groups which play the "hare & hounds" game over the past year or so, & the one unique quality you can say is common among all of the groups - like Wesley's take on the non-essentials of any religion - is diversity. Two groups are active where we live, with several others in a one-hour radius of our home:

- One considers themselves a "family-friendly" group.

- The other has a t-shirt which says, "if the devil doesn't make you do it, we probably will."

I wouldn't say they're "night & day" in their approach totally across the board, but...I've been to the exact same number of runs with each group, & they do vary in their degree of challenge. I'm one of those who can hold my own on a semi-urban course of roads, parks and sidewalks, but reality sets in when we get out in the country. You can guess where I have acquired more scars on my legs. The nickname I earned is fitting for my "life" as a coach, as well as my attitude about running through thorn bushes, branches, brush, standing water, and more-challenging terrain. It's humbling when a "semi-accomplished road racer" is falling on his back side in three feet of standing water. I've destroyed a pair of perfectly decent training shoes in the past month, for which I'm less than enthused.

But it's a chance for my wife & I to spend "quality time" together; she's only a minute away, in front or behind, depending on the course. The mental aspect of problem solving, cooperation & communication sharpens us both, too. We like both of the groups in varying degrees, for a really good reason: doing the "paper chase" every couple of weekends breaks the "race Saturday, long day Sunday, easy run Monday and Wednesday, speed work Tuesday & Thursday, rest Friday..." mentality. We meet & run with some really cool people, have some good laughs, & we never quite know what the terrain is going to be like with either bunch.

But we've learned a pair of good knee-high socks is worth it's weight in antibiotic ointment.

Help Wanted

Three weeks post-triathlon. I guess it's pretty much high time to get back on the training. The most difficult part has been justifying what to do. It's a lot like the same feeling (depression?) which marathoners suffer after an event. think about it. You train for, focus your attention on, and live for that one day of activity. In a few short hours (relatively speaking), it's finished. Then, outside of the finishers' medallion and a t-shirt, there's not much else left but finding an eloquent way to tell the tale to your friends, family and anyone else who might stand still long enough to listen.

That's the bad part. The good part is when you have company; at least one person who has gone through the same event with you. At least you can do the social thing. Nothing like getting up to run at 7:30 on a Sunday morning, when the temperatures are 75 and rising, especially when you know someone else is going to suffer out there with you.
Thanks, Ferris, for taking the time to run 8.5 miles with me. It would have been much uglier without your help.

This week, for me, officially begins what I consider a transition period between seasons. We don't have too many running races here (yes, there are some in June...and a Fourth of July race or two...and one in August...) that reach out and grab my attention; anyway, it's hard to race well when the temperature is 90-plus degrees. Oh, and let's not forget the 90-percent humidity, too.

Usually, this means writing workouts with a Plan B. Plan B for a workout shouldn't necessarily be confused with a bail-out option where you pull the ripcord, get back in the car, drive home and crack open a cold brew. Plan B decreases the effort level, or adjusts the location to one with some shade, or utilizes a (convenient) headwind. Planning for nasty conditions like high temperatures, high humidity, or thunderstorm activity almost has to be a given here.

Of course, you can't try to make up for lost workouts. A lost workout is a lost workout is a lost workout. Period. However, you can plan accordingly by setting up a longer base period, a longer build-up and a longer preparation period for racing. How much longer? Well, that's where the art of coaching comes in. There are some aspects where I can juggle numbers, multiply by pi times the radius squared, subdivide by the number of weeks in a month, et cetera, et cetera, and so forth...and still miss the mark; darn it, they were ready to race two weeks too soon!

It's the joy of analysis. You have as much data as you are going to get from a given set of sources during a given time frame. You look for the trends, the philosopher's stone which will turn base metal into gold, and let 'er fly. If you're fortunate everything falls into place and you look fairly smart. However, more often than not you are dealing with human beings. That means you might not receive all of the information you need; or they'll withhold that little sliver of stuff which would help you make the right decision...and then they ask, 'you didn't look at...?' Of course, I didn't look at that particular piece of information. But only because you didn't provide it to me until now.
There aren't many differences between my job as a coach and my job as a program analyst; except the fact right now I seek a job which will pay me after October 1st. In spite of 20 years of federal government experience as an analyst, an administrative person, a go-to guy, a jack-of-most-all trades, a teacher, a seeker of good stuff (research) and a writer, all of it and 85 cents will get me a cup of coffee at Denny's...if I can get the attention of a waitress.
Yes, quite frankly, I am shamelessly plugging for a job. I'll be glad to send my resume to any prospective employer. Just point them in my direction. In the meantime I'll be developing Plan B for my employment life.

Nuts to You

Still, we are having what I sarcastically call Climate by Sybil. Our hopes are raised by 60-something degree tempeatures, bright sunshine and nearly-perfect conditions, only to be dashed by the onset of sub-freezing crud. I must admit I felt a great deal of sympathy for my athletes as they went through their paces last Tuesday night in the chill with the 20mph gusts kicking the daylights out of them on the front stretch; I did my workout a couple of hours earlier and had my behind kicked on the back stretch. And it was bad enough I lost count of where I was supposed to stop my repetition during the first part of my run.

Yesterday was even colder during the daytime. I resorted to dressing a little closer to an athlete and a little less like an analyst; wearing a technical fiber (tight) top under my dress shirt. I looked like a cross between Johnny Cash and Johnny Gray. But, why am I complaining? I live in Florida. Because I can?
This week has been enough to make my nut-sized brain feel more like a chestnut roasting o'er an open fire. I'm doing the number crunching on a information professional training adequacy survey, plus trying to make sense of the government contracting process. The number crunching isn't so bad, more mentally-draining than anything else. The contracting process, however...woo hoo hoo...that's the reason there are contract officers' representatives (COR), with requisite educational background and all, isn't there? If I can help my commanding officer to understand this stuff I probably deserve a job working as a COR...or a Purple Heart, or an early retirement.

My lunchtime habit of having french-fried potatoes is probably going to have to come to a screeching halt soon enough. I'm not gaining any weight that I can tell right now, and it's not like I can't fit into my size 32 jeans or slacks. Really, most of the weight I think I used to have as fat has probably been burned down to more lean muscle tissue. I can't tell the difference too much, including the times when I'm in the pool (I still have a hell of a time trying to float, but I'm slowly getting a little bit faster here and there...more strength...and so on...). However, I've got to drop a couple of pounds so I don't have to carry them on the bicycle with me this summer...and the only thing I can remotely think to sacrifice (something inherently unhealthy I eat on a regular basis) are french fries.
Man, is that going to suck. Hard. But I guess that's part and parcel with wanting to be an athlete. Nobody who wants to achieve anything in athletics ever achieves it without a little bit of self-sacrifice.

Strong Convictions

Listening to a Public Radio International program, The World, a researcher is trying to help reconstruct the voluminous amount of un-shredded (but hand-torn) data left behind by the East German Stasi (state security service) after the fall of communism in Eastern Europe. To this point, the information has been picked out and rejoined by hand; the best reconstructionist on the project to this time can put together the contents of one bag (presumably the size of a full-sized grocery bag) in a single year. Yep, that's a needle in a haystack in a barn full of haystacks. The researcher is trying to find a methodology, using scanner and computer technology, to subdivide the material into smaller piles so reconstructionists can have an easier time.
In the case of a single person's life (if they were considered a dissident) that's probably thousands of pages; probably millions of pieces...and in the best case, all together in the same bag. I guess the first question would be to someone looking from the outside, 'who cares?' But, if you're the person whose life was adversely affected by the decisions of a handful of bureaucrats, you'd probably be screaming for justice, or at least something that resembles closure. It might not make everything better, but it certainly would provide that AHA! moment that would better explain why something went wrong for you, given all of the available information to the contrary.

Basing strong convictions on exceedingly small amounts of data are never really good. Yes, there is that faith thing, but it usually pales in the face of the scientific method. If you're out and running little more than five easy miles at a stretch a couple of times a week, the odds are good you're not going to be able to run a terribly fast five kilometers. Stepping to the line without the prerequisite speed work, the right kind of tempo work, long aerobic running, or sufficient rest in your training plan is like trying to read a smudged, torn-up document...or applying make-up while the bathroom mirror is dirty and smudged. Your results are probably going to be less than stellar; you'll miss the gist of the message.