Strengths And Weaknesses

It's a nice day today; sunshine, blue waters, a little breeze here and there. Vicious rumor has it the weather won't be so nice over the weekend. That's all right. I'll settle for something close to nice, considering the alternative. I could be working. Worse yet, I could be unemployed and looking for a j-o-b. That's right: As the song in the end of the Monty Python movie, Life of Brian goes, '...always look at the bright side of life.'

I haven't touched my bike (save for putting on and taking off my race wheels) at all this week; no spinning class and no ride since Sunday morning. I'm not that concerned about the bike, because right now it's probably the most confident discipline I have. I'll need to have a decent swim and a strong run in order to have a better finish than last year. It would be nice to finish a little higher in the age group, but if I finish with a better time than last year and don't score any hardware, that's all right, too. My goal is to put all three disciplines together without looking stoopid.

One of the uber-gods of triathlon/coaching/mental and spiritual aspects of athletics, Mark Allen, wrote a really neat piece for this week's on-line version of Triathlete magazine, talking about how to fix your weakest link in the sport. The biggest thing I take away is to, as he said, work on your weaknesses to make them strengths. If you can take your race, regardless of the distance, and work it backwards to the beginning, you will probably find where things begin to go awry. At that particular point is where you can find the weaknesses in your own training.

I've talked about some of this before. Often we train our strengths and try to overcompensate so our weaknesses don't (we hope!) show on race day. If you (like me) tend to peter out in the latter stages of a 10-K run, it might mean looking at more 20-to-30-minute tempo runs. Other folks may go out too quickly in the first half mile of a 5-K, and that's all she wrote during the remaining 2.6 miles of the race. Some 500-to-1000-meter repeats at a consistent, sustainable pace, with brief rest intervals might do the trick. Lack that acceleration to get away from a pack in the middle of the race, or you're not able to kick at the end? How about some acceleration drills of 150-to-350 meters?

One area that can't be trained on the road or the track, or the gym, or the pool, is that gray area between our ears. Some coaches are great at tapping into the mind of the individual athlete, making them believe they are capable of great things. Others like to use tools like (as Mark Wetmore was quoted...) "ridicule and sarcasm..." to influence the athlete to think, 'well, I'll prove that blankety-blank wrong by succeeding where they think I can't.'

It takes honesty on both the athlete and the coach to look at a performance and ask the question, 'okay, where did things go wrong?' Not that every performance needs to be picked apart with a fine-toothed comb; some days nearly everything goes right and you say 'cool, I think we're on the right track.' However, more often than not we can find something to work on if we look hard enough.

Just make certain to enjoy yourself; there's plenty of folks who can't get out to do what many of us are blessed with by opportunity or physical ability. As for me, my thoughts will be with my sister this weekend, especially as I try to turn the scenery along the southern Alabama coast into a blur on my triathlon bike.

Ask Coach - March 2008

When I took over the coaching position for ECRT, I originally wrote the club's newsletter. Since I'm a typical guy (literal translation: lucky to do one thing correctly at a time) multitasking - it was a choice between writing communications and writing workouts. So, I chose workouts and told the new club secretary he would write the newsletter. He decided to throw rhetorical/actual questions he thought of and heard from folks asking about our training, etc., at me each month. Here's a sample of the ones from this month...

Which books on running do you recommend? Sometimes I need a little motivation to come work out on these cold nights.
I have good news and bad news. We won’t have too many cold nights after this month… that’s the good news. The bad news is we’ll have 90 degrees and 90 percent humidity. But I digress. I’ll give three non-training-focused books I think every runner should read at least once, or once a year.

The first, ‘Once A Runner,’ is a classic, a book you search for your entire life, then read at least once a year (Stacie Rockhill has my copy, and I want it back!) during those dreary days when you cannot get out to run. John Parker wrote this novel loosely based on his time at the original Florida Track Club, back in the days when Olympians Jack Bacheler and Frank Shorter were there. I had the supreme pleasure to meet (and train with) the inspiration for a couple of characters in the book during while in college. I asked my wife to read it when we were first dating to help her understand the idiosyncrasies runners possess. However, if it comes to the choice between purchasing warm technical gear to wear on cold workouts and buying OAR, the price might be equal, as this book is out of print and hard to find. If you are fortunate enough to get Parker’s follow-up, ‘Again To Carthage,’ wait to read it until you read ‘Once A Runner.’

The second, ‘Running With The Buffaloes,’ chronicles a season with the University of Colorado cross-country team and their coach, Mark Wetmore. Chris Lear’s development of a team dynamic and the trials of collegiate athletics are only two of the major themes in this book. Reading Wetmore’s philosophy of coaching and the method by which he develops training plans will help you understand some of the challenges as you look at your own training.

While I want to recommend Lear’s follow-up book, ‘Sub-4:00: Alan Webb and the Quest for the Fastest Mile,’ I think Dean Karnazes’ ‘Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner’ is better motivational material. “Karno” runs the gamut from talking about his passion for Starbucks, to describing his first (failed) effort at running the Badwater 150-Mile Run, to balancing corporate life with family and running. Two visuals come to mind as I recall the book: First, the starter who climbs a boulder to read the soliloquy from Shakespeare’s Henry IV (the “band of brothers” speech), before firing a shotgun to start the Western States 100-Mile Run. Second (and there’s a photo on the back cover), the photo of Karnazes at the South Pole showing what it takes to run in Antarctica…makes me laugh out loud. The dietary list from his 250-plus-mile run that frames this book (It’s an appendix, but don’t read it until you get to the end, okay?) is enough to make you topple. Or input the number to the nearest Round Table Pizza on your cell phone. I disagree with Outside magazine’s description of Karnazes as ‘America’s Greatest Distance Runner,’ but he definitely has a rare and special quality.

I’ve read that a serious runner should get in interval miles, long miles, tempo miles and easy miles. At the track, aren’t we overemphasizing interval training at the expense of the other types of training?

I‘ll start with the rhetorical question, ‘what is serious? And what does that mean to me as a runner?’

What we do at the track should only be a small part of your training, with long miles, (more) tempo miles and easy miles on the days you aren’t there. For example, I run easy on Monday afternoon, do interval work on Tuesday and Thursday, and a long tempo run on Wednesday. Sunday is my day to do either a long, easy run or a long bike ride (I also swim and ride a stationary bicycle as cross-training and to train for multi-sport events.). Some of what I have been reading says (in contrast) older or less-experienced runners will benefit more from increased aerobic-pace training than from interval work; after a time the younger runner needs interval work to continue speed development. But, don’t get hung up on what you read and consider it as the norm. Remember what works for the local running stud (or stud-ette) or the elite runner might not fit your needs. If you need help in developing a training plan to meet your running goals and touches all of those elements, (and includes rest,) please speak to me at the track, at the Deli on Friday night, or any time you can dial my phone.

This isn’t a question, just a comment – I am so glad that we are running the trail for our warm-up instead of two miles on the track!

I’m as glad for it as you are. We all need a little bit of diversion, and the trail warm-up allows that. You’ll get to run out on the trail as warm-up for a longer period this summer: I draw the line after I receive a bite from those nasty yellow flies.