Stupid Damage

The road back to running health and race fitness is not always a straight path. Sometimes it's not even paved. Not that an unpaved path is a bad thing...as long as there aren't too many bumps and rocks to bounce around. Mine, so I've learned, has a few blind curves and - apparently, from an experience at the beginning of this month - some obstacles which will need to be addressed, moved or just plain blown away.

A Tuesday track workout found Jim observing, as he put it, a "hitch in my giddy-up" during the warm-up. At first I put it down to a little bit of gamesmanship; while I'm the coach and he's the athlete, we're separated in age by only a couple of years. Some of the quicker efforts on the track can put us both on the verge of racing. At the tail end of the warm-up I made a brief "pause for the cause," which can sometimes improve the gait, or at least the outlook, toward a run workout. We slid into the workout and ran our 200-meter and 400-meter repeats.

The next morning I felt pretty much the same degree of tightness in my heels as in the past, so I didn't give the discomfort much thought. Until I went out for my mid-morning run on the wood chip trail outside my office. "Being flayed alive with a rusty straight razor", like John Parker Jr's. Quenton Cassidy, would have been most welcome. I literally had to shut down the run after the first minute.

I decided to go into Plan B, and do a little bit of run-walk.

Three minutes later, Plan B turned into Plan C: a nice walk along the trail in order to save my legs for a run later in the afternoon.

As I walked gamely around my office I realized this was no minor issue of delayed onset muscle soreness or something a little more disconcerting like inflamed achilles tendons. I'd done what appeared to be some stupid damage which was most likely going to take a few days to a week to straighten out.

So, I did what any smart guy would do in that situation. I slept on the issue, then talked to my dog about it during our morning walk. As Rubin and I walked we started to consider the possible root causes:

First, there was probably too much increase in stress for the body to handle (the classic "if this is good, then twice the amount is better" thing). While I increased the duration of each run by no more than ten percent, I also added additional workouts during the week; I had gone from from four hours to somewhere close to seven hours of running over a three-week period.

The second root cause might have to do with the pair of lightweight trainers I prefer for track workouts. They aren't the oldest pair of running shoes I have, and they don't have as many miles as the oldest pair, but 310 harder, more-sweaty miles, run through the heat of summer means faster midsole breakdown than running in more mild conditions.

When I've done too much speedwork or hard running on a crowned road the discomfort is usually limited to a single heel or ankle. But the pain this time was bilateral, in the heels, ankles, knees quadriceps and lower back...a sure sign shoes are a culprit.

So, the best course of action when the stupid damage is done is go "three steps forward, two steps back". Or at least two steps back:

First thing I would recommend is to scale back the run duration to the point before the discomfort and pain began. Those runners who feel compelled to do additional workouts might want to consider ones which will stress the cardiovascular system but place minimal impact stress on the musculoskeletal systems, like road cycling, stationary cycling, elliptical trainers, aqua jogging or swimming.

Second, find running routes which aren't going to place undue stress on the joints; preferably level ground. Dirt trails are great and more forgiving than asphalt or concrete, but be careful of wood chip or mulch surfaces, as they can be a little too forgiving or too unstable for the feet and ankles.

Third, once the body has adapted to a change in weekly run duration, distance, or terrain, resist the temptation to pile on MORE. Some runners can safely handle a distance or duration increase of up to 20 percent, but we are all an experiment of one - what works for you might put me back in the hurt locker. And whatever increases or changes are done, make certain to spread them out over the entire week.

Fourth, make certain to keep track of how long you've worn or run in a pair of training shoes. Six months, or 300-to-400 miles is a good gauge, but can be shorter based on weight and running conditions. Besides, good shoes are cheaper than good physical therapists.

Finally, make certain your training plan and your racing schedule are written in pencil. I'd rather be a happy 5K runner than an injured spectator. I've done that a few too many times this past year. It's not fun.

So, listen to your body throughout the training cycle. If you don't heed the first messages, it will eventually find a way to make you listen.

Surprise!

Another Red Dress weekend in New Orleans. Another trip, the fourth, away from the hound and house. You can naturally expect when you visit the Crescent City in a month which does NOT have an "R" somewhere in it that the weather conditions are going to be very hot and very humid. This being the fourth time I had a fairly well laid-out plan of action. Or so I thought.

I had a very good idea of the packet pick-up/expo location, having gone that general direction during Jackson Day a couple of years back. However, the last thing I wanted to do was hoof it ten kilometers in 90-plus-degree weather...one way.

I then thought, 'this is not a problem. I can drive to the fairgrounds and back.' A very reasonable plan until I saw the parking arrangements our lodging providers instituted. We could pay 20 bucks-a-day for the privilege to park near our room, but not only was it not a certain thing we would have a parking spot should we remove our vehicle, but if double or triple parking was the order of the day we would have to leave our keys with the hotel staff in order to move the car.

We figured we would have sufficient time to meet our friends, take a taxi to packet pick-up, then do the pre-festivities. Of course, our planning operated on the assumption we could and would get our registration-related goodies in an efficient manner.

Oh, it is to laugh; we're talking hashers, Coach Mike.

So, the pre-festivities went right out the window with the bath-water. Ah, but that lost opportunity removed a potential obstacle to getting up at before the crack of dawn to run with the 5:20 Club. Rather than drink Natural Light or other hasher fare, Suzanne and I decided to take a taxi back to one of our favorite dining/imbibing establishments and introduce our friends Charley and Sheila to some area-brewed and locally-cooked goodness.

I made a command decision at dinner that I would miss out on 5:20; get up at 5, get a brief workout inside the fitness center, clean up and have (continental, which continent we were not yet certain...) breakfast in the lobby. To wake the next morning at 5 was no problem. On my way to the fitness center I decided to walk past where my car was parked.

If you grew up collecting Hot Wheels or Matchbox die-cast cars, storing them in those plastic-divided cases, you probably remember eventually having more cars than storage slots. Ah, but it was never a problem; we would gently wedge a row of cars perpendicularly between the two outer rows.

That's what it looked like in the parking garage. If I had been in a rush to get to, say, the airport, it would have taken a solid 20 minutes to get the cars which had been multiple-parked...just to get to where my car was. While frustrating, I looked at the situation as one which reinforced my need to NOT drive during the weekend. I know how to use a taxi, walk, or the RTA.

The weekend was filled with surprises which challenged previously-ingrained patterns of doing things. After the first thirty seconds of grousing we quickly adapted, made command decisions and marched smartly forward into the fog.

How many times have we done the same routine over and over? My parents know by now the easiest evening to contact me is Monday or Friday; we're always doing some track workout on Tuesday or Thursday, long-ish runs on Wednesday or Sunday, a road trip or a race on Saturday. After a while not only do I start asking myself the "what am I going to assign tonight?" question, but my athletes start chanting the last set before I get it out of my mouth.

Gosh, have I become THAT pattern-based?

I know it takes as little as 21 days of doing something...especially an unhealthy thing...before the behavior becomes a habit. I'm not saying we need to break up our routines for the sake of breaking routines. But the "ho-hum, another darned (blank) workout" feeling should probably be a subtle hint.

As a coach, I have a little less wiggle space than the average self-coached runner; run a few unscheduled hill repeats or a road run here and there as long as the athletes are fit enough to adapt to the sudden change. Otherwise, it's change up the intensities on the non-track nights for me.

A little variation in terrain, intensity, duration, time of day, or even running partner/s can help stave off the "ho-hum." And it's less drastic than running in a red dress.

Feeling Positive About The Negatives

(Sandy - 1st Female Overall, Chris - 1st Master's Male, & MB after the Jingle Bell 10K)

So the plan was for 14 miles this weekend. However, my friend Scott (a.k.a. Knaves) asked if I was going to come over to Ft. Walton Beach, FL for the Arthritis Foundation Jingle Bell 10K. The last time I ran this race - seven years ago - it was 30 degrees colder & 20 miles per hour windier on the day. My friend Sandy was trying to PR at the 10k; her boyfriend Chris, & Brian, another friend, were going to pace her. Chris & Brian left her hanging in the wind for the last two miles, so I ran her in. She got her PR, which lasted for seven years, (which she reminded me the other day!), & I had a great time strutting my stuff in the chill. Of course, I was very (5K & 10K) race-healthy then. Now, working toward a marathon, with questionable achilles' tendons, it might have been a tad stupid to race. But, Suzanne & I like Knaves, & the race was late enough in the morning, so...

Chris warmed up with Suzanne & me before Sandy, Brian, Chris & I jogged the first mile of the course. He said to me: 'you going to do 39 today?' Of course, my answer was, 'Not today. This is part of the long run for the weekend. Just going out to have some fun.' Once the race started, it definitely was fun, all right.

I normally blow past 90-percent of the field at the first mile, after which it's no-man's-land for the remainder of the race; the studs leave me way behind & I'm strung out in between the really good runners & the fairly good ones. But this time, I went easy the first mile with Knaves, then slowly started to ratchet up the pace. Amazingly, I picked off runners here & there on the course between mile three & four. One guy said to me as I went by at mile four, 'nice kick.' I wasn't too certain about the tactics of the day, even at that point; I smiled (Maybe that was a grimace; they both look alike from a distance.) & told him so.

Passing a couple of greyhounds (Real greyhounds - they had a dog walk at the same time.) at the fifth mile, & all I could think was 'how much longer can I do this?' It was probably good I couldn't read my heart rate monitor, only my pace; I probably would have backed off. Fortunately for me there was still about three runners hanging out in front of me; I couldn't tell how cute the female was, but she was definitely working the pace up there. By the time I got to her, & then the sixth mile, I was running a pace about five seconds per mile slower than my half-marathon performance time, & about 20 seconds per mile slower than my "healthy" 10K pace.

Even if I hadn't won my age group I was very pleased with the effort, especially three weeks after my half-marathon meltdown. To top it all off, Suzanne took second place in her age group. It's not often when two Bowens score hardware, so when we do it's cause for celebration.

Now for the rest the story:

I'm going to make a confession. I have a nasty tendency to look at things & see 'opportunities for improvement.' Rarely, if ever, have I said to myself while hanging out with friends, athletes, loved ones & assorted sweaty lunatic friends: 'dude, today you ran a perfect race.' Maybe all of twice in the past decade of racing the 'perfect race' has happened; a PR at the Azalea Trail Run 10K in Mobile, & a consistent pace at a hot, early summer 5K here at home.

While I've always sought out & valued consistency above almost any other quality in life, the only thing which I've considered more difficult (the negativity most every racer seeks!) to accomplish is negative split racing. Why is this so difficult to accomplish?

First, most runners don't exercise discipline & restraint while training. They're more likely to run EVERY workout at the same effort; so rather than following the hard day/easy day, or even the hard day/easy day/easier day dictum, it's (I kid you not, I have a friend who does this:) 5K, every day, all-out. At least until they become injured, but that's another story.

Second, many runners who have the physical fitness don't quite have the emotional or mental fitness to race negative. These are the friends who, when you ask to them about their goal time before the race, will tell you they want to go out at a particular pace. When the horn goes off, however, it's a completely different story. The first mile herd instinct & adrenaline pitches the best laid plans in the rubbish, leaving them to suffer for the last two (or more) miles of the race.

Third, the runners who are smart enough to go out easy early misjudge how much faster they should increase the pace over time; there's either too much 'gas in the tank' when they reach the finish, or they begin to fade in the last mile. Racing negative splits is a trial-and-error process; once you do it right it will be your Holy Grail of sorts.

What do you need to race negative splits?

I cannot over-stress the benefit of training runs at different intensity levels, with & without the aid of GPS, heart rate monitors & running watches. Why do I say 'without' as well as 'with?' You never know when you're going to show up on race day WITHOUT your running watch or your GPS (which almost happened this weekend!), or your battery dies, or the course is marked poorly...so know how a particular pace on the road or track 'feels' to the legs, heart & lungs.

Here's an interesting idea: Toe the line with a solid racing plan - this particular intensity or pace for a particular section of the course, pick up the pace to a higher intensity after this point, & then begin to really push at this point, etc. - follow it as much as possible. Trust your plan; don't go out with the herd. If your plan is solid the odds are very high you're going to catch & probably pass them before it's all over.

And, most importantly: Don't place any stressful or unrealistic expectations on yourself. Face it, the vast majority of us are paying money to terrorize squirrels & cats (followed by socializing!) on a weekend morning when most of our co-workers are still sleeping. For a very small, less-than-one-percent of the population, what SHOULD BE fun & games for you is BIG PRESENTATION DAY at the office for them.

If it's not fun, you probably should be looking for something else to do, right?

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.

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."

An "Ask Coach" Moment - Can You Hear Me Now?

I usually take a week off or so after running a half-marathon, then start another training plan from the beginning. I was thinking on the long drive home yesterday from the Surf City Half it would make more sense to take off a few days & start where the training plan ended. I think I've told you I had used Hal Higdon's beginner plan, just increasing the speed at which I train.

What if I started back in at week eight or nine instead of going back to week one & starting over? That way I can do more long runs &, most likely, be in even better shape when event time comes around? I also thought about trying the Hanson's training plan you showed me.

Oh yeah, I need to really make an effort to quit going out so fast & burning myself out. I planned to go out at a consistent 9:00/mile pace at Surf City. I looked at my watch at 5 miles & noted I was running 8:15-8:20/mile. Naturally, I felt like $#!+ when I got to mile 10, 11, 12. The "rule of thumb" usually is a day of no running for every hour, & a day of no hard training for every mile for the event. So, a couple of days of walking or elliptical after a half, followed by the next eight to ten days of easy running is usually a good recovery. After the recovery period I would look at what the next target event is going to be & structure your plan accordingly...working from the end backward. If you don't have an event planned, then I would either use the sixth week of a training plan as a baseline, or figure out how much time you can commit to run training without adversely affecting the rest of your life. I bet if you look at all the other aspects of your life you've probably let some work things slide, some family things slide and some other responsibilities go on the back burner. This would be the time to go back and mend those fences. The good thing is that you trained for a half-marathon, which doesn't take nearly the time/effort a good marathon training cycle does.

Reverting to a baseline training week, even at a lower intensity, will allow your body to recover from the past 10-to-12 weeks of training. Remember, racing (especially racing long) is NOT natural; you're putting damage on your body above & beyond normal fitness running. The hardest thing to learn - I've dealt with it way too many times over the past seven years of coaching myself & others - is pace discipline. For an example, I went out 6:05/6:07 for the first two miles of the last half-marathon I raced in Dayton, OH. When I hit mile two I knew it was a choice between backing off a notch or dying a horrible death at mile 10. I managed to back off the pace for the next four-to-five miles. If not for the fact I was just outside of the top-20 I would have maintained that pace & "mailed it in." However, I wanted to finish in the top-20; I hammered (suffered!) the next six miles to catch a couple of guys in front of me - at mile 12 - & stayed strong until the last mile (actually entering the stadium parking lot) where everything went to hell...but I ran a personal best of 1:23:45.

A good way to deal with the "go out hard early, feel like $#!+ late" syndrome would be to do something like the Yasso 800 workout once every couple of weeks...but cut the distance in half for the sake of half-marathoning:

Go out & do the typical warm-up for your workout. I have my folks do a mile easy, recover for a couple of minutes, then another easy mile, recover a minute, then 10x100 striders to warm-up.

The workout is 10 x 400, with 400 jog recovery - goal pace for the 400s should be the target time for your half. So if you want to go 1hr 50min for the half, do the 400 in 1:50. If you go out too hard you're probably going to feel really good for the first five, then friggin' DIE by eight or nine. Jog an easy 400 after, with 10x100 striders to cool down.
You'll learn your lesson after a couple of those workouts. I had one of my guys do a few Yasso 800 workouts in the last month leading up to the FirstLight Marathon in Mobile. The first time he ran them he went 10-15 seconds too fast for the first 800, & everything fell off after that...to the point where his last one was barely on time & he was hurting big. The next time I told him to remain on his goal pace; he felt like the first ones were too easy, but managed to keep all of them on goal. He developed the patience & pace discipline to go out comfortably in the first 10K, & subsequently ran a Boston Qualifying time.

The workouts weren't the key, only part of a good training plan...and a well-executed race plan.

One Excuse...

"...is as good as another on any given day." - Coach Fox, multiple times between 2002-05

Every once in a while I have athletes who decide to engage in 'summer,' a strange season of the earthly year, a time filled with many outdoor entertainment activities, including a very strange concept called vacation. During this vacation, the athlete gets into an automobile & drives for several hours to a place where they spend the majority of the money they saved over the previous year on lodging, food & the exact same outdoor entertainment opportunities which they could have enjoyed at home had they decided to stay.

Also, during this vacation, the athlete usually makes a conscious decision to do NOTHING. As a result, they return back to the track on a Tuesday evening after one of these vacations having lost every bit of the hard-won fitness we attempted to develop from their previous vacation, during the period between the autumnal equinox & two weeks after the winter solstice. Following that vacation, they stepped on their bathroom scale & realized they weighed much more than they suspected...as if their jeans couldn't have told them the same message some time in late November.
How these athletes became conditioned to believe a vacation was meant to exclude exercise is beyond my understanding. If you were to ask every single one of them what they used to do throughout their summer vacation as a child, I would wager nine of every ten would tell you they were involved in some sort of unstructured physical activity, like swimming, bicycling, walking, hiking, climbing, & all that good stuff...on a daily basis.

So, how did we go from doing stuff on vacation to not doing a thing on vacation? Mind you, one or two of my athletes actually perform physical labor during the week, so for them, physical exercise is probably more fun than chore. A vacation for them would probably not be harmful. However, the rest of you (myself included) are still on the hook. If you're going to go on one of those vacation things, there's a very good reason for the "take half the clothes and twice the money" advice provided by every travel consultant...it's so you can add at least one pair of running shoes & three outfits, silly. Your employer will thank you. Your co-workers will thank you. And yes, your coach will definitely thank you...not nearly as much as you will, though.

During this time of the year, it's difficult to get fired up about food. Well, unless it's fired up on a grill & sitting beside a cold beverage of choice. Otherwise, most indoor dining is boring. Hardest part about being a person in training at this time of the year is this: You need to get nourishment back into your body, at the least some nourishment within 30 minutes of finishing a workout, but other times during the day, too.

But when the day is divided up into workout, clean-up, commute, work, commute, workout, clean-up, sleep (with a few other small pieces in between), it's a challenge to get the right food in the right amounts into you...especially if you're one of those people who hate eating first thing in the morning, or don't have a stable enough work schedule during the day, or don't have access to a kitchen/refrigerator, or have knucklehead co-workers who raid the fridge. The key is to get what your body needs. Keep it simple.My wife recommended I take a big ol' salad into the office so I could scarf on throughout the day. Nice, but there are days when I'm not exactly sitting in front of my desk doing office things. I could have something a little smaller every so often, though. She made a salad the other morning, which was sitting on the stove next to a couple of bagel halves. I couldn't tell at first what the contents were, so I opened up the lid. Instantly I smelled onions & knew there was no way I could take that in to work.

I don't eat (raw) onions, period. End of story. I can tell if there's one on a sandwich or in someone's lunch across a crowded room.So, I try to get a little something on the way in, but balance it with the wisdom of knowing that eating McBarfle's five days a week is going to make me fat as a pig. My recent screaming about weight & the need to get back down to fit weight made the cartoon above stand out. For those of you who don't know me too well, my dog is below:
...I think you can guess who represents me in the cartoon above. Ah, but it's a temporary phase, one which can be remedied by smarter eating, judicious workouts, & resting as needed.

See you at the track.

Ask Coach: What Do I Need to Change To Stay Injury-Free?

I have been suffering from an overuse injury. What do I need to change to stay injury free?

Overuse injuries are caused by not listening to your body (or to your coach). You need to be smarter than your ego. You can do this by:

SETTING A GOAL that is specific, measurable, achievable, reasonable, & time-specific (in this case, performance in a particular race). Every training plan, regardless of the author, begins with a specific end in mind (which, by the way, author Steven Covey says is the first habit of highly effective people).
DEVELOPING A PLAN once you have the goal set. This means walking backward from the target race week anywhere from 18 to 24 weeks; 18 for 5K, 24 for marathons. Divide the plan into four phases. The first phase, Foundation, is where you establish the training routine, with lots of easy (aerobic) pace running. The second phase is where you begin to work on the mechanics of faster running; learning to run as efficiently as possible with a minimum of stress. Phase three is where you begin to stress different energy systems (the anaerobic & ATP/CP) & begin to challenge yourself with hard(er) efforts. The final phase is where you take care of the final details which prepare you for that goal race.
FOLLOWING THE PLAN but adapt your training as necessary. When I talk about adaptation, usually I mean to the more kind & gentle…rarely, if ever, does a workout get ramped up in intensity. It’s more likely to be scaled down. If you’re beat-up, take a day off. I CANNOT OVERSTRESS THIS: IF YOU ARE BEAT-UP, SORE, OVER-TIRED OR INJURED, TAKE A DAY OFF.
RECOVERING FROM THE GOAL RACE (or any race, for that matter) is included. The rule of thumb is a day of no activity for every hour of racing, followed by a day of easy running for every mile of racing. A person who runs a 40-minute 10-kilometer race should take the next day off completely, followed by six days of easy running. If it’s the goal race, it’s time to set a new goal & develop a whole new training cycle from the beginning. Plugging in periods of easier running, active rest or complete rest altogether between training cycles will keep you from getting injured, & from getting burned out.
Specific goal-setting & laying out a plan in macro will keep you from going out & running on the wrong surfaces, or the wrong terrain, or at the wrong intensity for too long a period of time. Even if your race focus is on early September 5Ks, the first week of aerobic-paced running in an 18-week training cycle would commence this week.

I’ve been working on “plug & play” training plans which focus on specific distances, which I can adapt to the individual athlete’s personal schedule. Talk to me so I can help you fill in the details.

Comfortably Numb

This weekend is what I would call "Anaerobilooza" in most civilized areas. Two events in the course of 10.5 hours. My original plan was to NOT participate in the morning's 10K race because I was going to participate in the 5K that night.

Reason for my choice?

A 10K road race in the morning on the first weekend of May in N. Florida is NEARLY GUARANTEED to be warm & humid. No matter what the conditions are in the two weeks leading up to the event it's going to happen. In fact, the thermostat in my house the afternoon prior to the race was in the 80-degree range; high time to fire up the A.C. Shucks. At that point you know it's going to be UGLY.

I had my goal split times with the (suicidal) hope of running sub-40 written down on a strip of pull tab. However, everything went to hell-in-a-handbasket at the first mile split (16 seconds off from the word go). At that point, I should have tossed the strip, relaxed and had fun. However, I did continue to push the issue for what it was worth...finishing a solid minute slower than my Crescent City performance weeks earlier. I was disappointed for a good 30 minutes, then took a pragmatic look at everything:

1. Too warm/humid.
2. Too little base training in the early year.
3. Tough course.

So you go on from there. Since there are no major races for months around here it's back to base-building. Nice, comfortable long(er) runs.

So, home to relax on the couch, talking to the dog & fold up the abundance of clothes piled up in the clean clothes basket...one very good reason to not have more than a single beer after the race. Well, two or three beers after a 10K on a Saturday is fine if you have nothing better to do for the rest of the day, however...

I almost shut down the idea of running the 5K in the evening...while running an easy warm-up over the first mile of the (out/back) course. The shut-down then almost happened at the first two strides off the starting line...but I talked myself into it. Hit the first mile at the pace I should have run in the morning's race. Probably top 15 to top 20.

DIGRESSION FROM TOPIC FOLLOWS:
As a course measurer, it's difficult if not impossible for me to go to local races. If I go to a race the first question I receive is: 'Hey, Mike...did you measure this course?' If I don't go to a race I get asked: 'Hey, Mike...how accurate was that course?' Once I get through with measuring a course it's up to the race director to communicate to the race organization (volunteer workers) exactly where the start, finish, turn-around & split points need to be. I've been at races where volunteers placed splits & turn points at locations where they always had been rather than at the correct location, without knowing the course had been changed/re-measured. The measurement & certification process, done for the benefit of the individual athlete, at the cost of several hundred dollars to the race, is derailed by something so simple as ignorance & lack of communication.

OKAY, NOW BACK TO THE STORY...
Turn off to the secondary road and I see cones in the middle of the street. Since I measured the course I knew exactly how the course should have been set up. No worries, it only made the course a tad longer than the certified length.

As I was running up the road I knew we were approaching the turn-around point, but it looked like the cones were going on for another 200-300 yards. At that point the ethical dilemma comes to pass: do you run the incorrect course because everyone else did, or do you turn in?

I ran a 10K earlier in the day. I was beat up. I saw the turn point & turned. I'm certain everyone freaked out when I was at the front of the field...going from 15th to first in a matter of moments is NOT NORMAL.

I ran the course I measured. I didn't do the course the RD laid out. It was the wrong decision for the right reason. I won't go into the end of the story in detail, but the RD & I had a chat after the race, & I told him to go ahead & scratch my performance. Better to have one or two people upset than 300.

Of course, then I have persons coming up & telling me I measured the course incorrectly. Damned if I do. Damned if I don't. Guess that happens when you're a guy doing your job.

Saint Nick Has Strange Timing

A second attempt at measuring the half-marathon/marathon course shot down the tubes. The RD called me 15 minutes before I was scheduled to head out the door and get my calibration rides. "You looked at Weather Channel yet?" I saw the forecast for the day didn't look all that good, with a band of showers preparing to roll through...followed by a healthy drop in the temperature. The rest of the week isn't looking all that good, either. Ironically, Friday morning seems to be the only good day for the week. I've got it off, but I bet good money it's not the best of days to be on any of the roads, especially near the mall. Of course, given this economy that might not be the case.
While Suzanne was taking care of details for her little soiree last night I had the opportunity to get out and shop. Part of the rationale was painfully obvious: I hadn't done a lick of real shopping without her. Well, I needed to get a bite to eat and recover from the morning's spinning class so I could turn around and do my swim workout...and I had just a sliver beyond the four-hour window my body likes between food and workout. Good enough reason to hit the mall, go to the World Market and see what cool stuff was hiding in there...followed by Bed, Bath & Beyond. Not terribly romantic, but practical & helpful...when it comes to my wife, helping her life is as good as I can get.
I've purchased some books on-line, too, but they might not arrive in time for Christmas...how embarrassing would it be to have to say 'happy Christmas, honey...sorry you don't have any gifties...it's all the Postal Service's fault.' In the case of this wanna-be IM guy, it would be just one more justification for me to see legal papers. Never a good thing. I also bought a book for me, so there's more mindless reading during the down days.
Suzanne got me some stuff I really needed this year...which is not all that difficult, because she could gift-wrap a bag of gummi bears and I'd be overjoyed. So far it's a pair of Gap jeans (yay!) and the biography of Michael Phelps I almost bought for myself on Amazon.com. Talk about a massive sigh of relief on both of our parts; Suzanne thought I already had a copy. I don't always jump on the celebrity biography bandwagon, because I hate having a bio on a luminary, then find out more dirt occurs to them later in life. Call it the Lance Armstrong Syndrome, if you like...more grist for the follow-on biographer, I guess. More money for the celebrity, too.
But I have a great deal of admiration for Michael. Why does it seem (rhetorical question follows:) that the great athletes - or many of them - come from sh!tty childhood situations, where their fathers were either absent or a$$holes? Okay, there are world & Olympic champions, great athletes, who had the continual love & support of both of their parents, so it's not a broad brush stroke.
All right. Enough ranting. I need to go for a walk and burn off some of the excess beer I took in at last night's holiday/cancer remission celebration/karaoke-thon...as well as the previous evening's holiday party.

Looking Past The Right Now

While I'm not the most savvy person on financial matters, I do know when something smart comes past my ears. One of my fellow Toastmasters spoke on long-term investing this morning; she mentioned a little-known fact at the front end of her speech on individual retirement accounts that just might fit the running realm, too. The graph above cites the number of times the word recession was mentioned in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. The gray bars are the periods of time when the economy was really in a period of recession. It either means one of two things: Economic writers are full of unprocessed fertilizer material. Or, economics is more difficult than we all think. Perhaps it means both.
No, what it means (in my humble opinion) is that by the time folks figure out what is happening around them the situation has nearly passed. If I translate this to training for the typical runner, it means without developing a long-term goal and a corresponding training plan that spans at least six months, and perhaps even a year-to-two years, the period of opportunity (where the individual athlete may most benefit from training) may long be past. While (nearly) nobody in their right mind would undertake a six-week training period for a marathon, there are plenty of persons who will jump into a 10k, 15, 21.1k race with little or no training whatsoever to prepare for the distance. Even more amazing is when they race, have a performance that doesn't meet their expectations, and complain the training plan the coach provides is wrong for them.

No. You have to look past the immediate. It's not just the elite athlete who benefits from looking three or four years up the road, beginning to visualize where they want to be at that point. Beijing, and the starting line for the events, were in the minds of every distance runner, sprinter, and triathlete probably from the day after their competition in Athens, or the day after the Olympic Trials if they failed to make the team. That vision, that goal, is probably the main thing that drove each Olympian to get out of bed and onto the bike, the track, the pool when it was too dark, too cold, too hot, too early, too whatever for the rest of us.

It takes more than a pithy bumper-sticker-quality statement, like Maurice Greene's 'to be number one you have to train like number two', to motivate. It's probably why I prefer to save that sort of stuff for myself...usually when I am in the middle of a seemingly senseless repeat workout, or dragging Speedo-clad butt in the pool and not feeling like I'm getting any faster or stronger.
As Coach Ethan Barron says, 'if you don't truly believe what you are saying, then don't say it.'

Of course, there's always the choice of cycling from pool to pool, as Frazz mentions. That's why I am at the track three days a week. There's always the never-ending hope friends will return to (as some outsiders used to say) hard-core training. So, even I have to look beyond past the immediate, the very quiet, very cold and damp right now to the warmer, more cluttered and sunny afternoons of spring.

Time To Put Out The Shingle

So...looking in the local bulletin board and I find this:

I am a relatively new runner (6 mos). I have 3 5k's, 3 10k's, and 2 4 milers under my belt. In the last month though I have been dealing with terrible lower leg pain after a run no matter what the distance is. I motrin up, take hot soaks, ice bag, and use the various cream rubs to no avail. I am hooked on running but am worried this is more than something that a new runner deals with. Any advise (sic) out there?

IF I WERE YOUR COACH: Eight races in six-months of running might be normal for a well-trained, well-conditioned elite-level runner. However, I think it's too much, too soon for a person who is in their first six months of regular running.
There are a number of root causes for lower leg pain that come to mind:
1. Previous (undiagnosed) injury
2. Lack of running experience
3. Competitive running
4. Excessive weekly running distance
Your injury is probably due to a breakdown. You've run and raced more than your body has been capable of handling, stress-wise. Without looking at your shoes, your mechanics, or your background I cannot say with clarity what the cause may be.
The good news is that most injuries are curable, if you are willing to be patient (the degree of injury you apparently have suggests a three-to-six-month recovery) and correct the root causes:
1. Find an alternative means of exercise that will build leg strength and maintain cardiovascular fitness without aggravating the present injury.
2. Sit down with an experienced running coach and develop a holistic training and racing plan which includes all of the necessary elements; rest, long aerobic runs, speed work and recovery runs.
3. Visit a knowledgeable running store (such as Running Wild) and have their staff look at your biomechanics and fit you for a running shoe that meets your running needs and your individual biomechanics.
You might want to also spend some time and money visiting your general practitioner to let them make certain there is no (stress-related) fracture to the leg.
There's my two cents. Please feel free to contact me; if I cannot help you I can point you in the direction of other coaches and professionals.
I cannot wait to see my response get slammed. :)

Changing Courses in the Middle of the Stream

Ever have a training plan or a racing plan drafted out in the smallest detail, then suddenly - wham! - bad strangeness sets in? Often I find that what I've laid out works good for me, seemingly, then I encounter a friend or a teammate who says, 'hey, I'm planning on doing...' Next thing I know I'm sitting in front of a beer or two with my wife, trying to figure out how can I do this and not screw up my plan for that? Naturally, I have a number of choices:

One, I can choose to not do the particular activity with the friend/teammate. I might not have the opportunity to enjoy myself by being in their particular presence, but I definitely haven't screwed up on two fronts.

Two, I can choose the activity my friend is doing rather than my originally-planned 'thing to do.' Done that before and enjoyed the daylights out of it. In fact, I've never had (that I can rightly recall) a bad Plan-B-activity. I guess you can say that the social aspects of the event far outweighed the lost opportunity cost of the discarded event. It's not always perfect, you understand. Sometimes you pay the price for not doing what you know deep down you should be doing. There's a handful of x-rays in an orthopedic consultant's office and a velcro arm sling that can attest silently to this.

Three, I can find a way to do both...if I really want to do it. How many times have I jumped into a race at the absolute last minute and sucked bilge, or run two races on a single day and felt beat up afterward? Well, a couple of times. However, I think it's all in the perspective; if you do a particular event on a lark without any preconceived (unrealistic) expectations you'll probably have more fun than you expected to. And who knows? Sometimes that's when those fleeting personal best efforts come to pass.

I guess the lesson you can take from this commentary is to have a good idea when, where, how many, and how long a distance you intend to race during a season. Do what seems best to you, not to the friend who's trying to talk you into the Murky George 100-Kilometer Slog Through The Bog or something like that. Right now, I'm thinking about whether to take a year off from racing, outside of a half-iron distance triathlon or two. Whether or not the hiatus will sharpen my desire to toe the line once again is at question. Right now, the goal is to make it to the end of December...after that, I can start thinking about my racing future. Hey, it might not hurt to take a year and just be Coach.