Breakdown...Go Ahead, Give It To Me

There is the occasional morning when I awaken a little more stiffly than I would prefer.  Something which makes my wife and I both chuckle, especially on Sunday mornings is to repeat the tag-line from a favorite viral video of ours: "I am a marathon runner...I must run...I am injured..."  If you've not seen this video...it's definitely not for children.

Within the last year - after several years of abject stupidity, foolishness and plain mule-headedness - the proverbial light bulb went off in my head.  You can only kick the can so far down the road, progress from one overuse injury to the next, before the woman's side of the discussion in the video makes sense.  You realize, yes, you are an idiot for trying to run through injuries. 

It seemed like the right thing to do...someone asked whether I ascribed to the "no pain, no gain" school of coaching.  I told them, "discomfort is okay, but pain is no way."

But what now frustrates me is when I encounter runners who suffer from an overuse injury; to hear them talk, one would assume they were professionals, their livelihood would be at risk if they did not run.  Nearly half of all runners are hurt at any given time, and over eight of every ten will suffer from an injury within their lifetime.  And while there are some biomechanical abnormalities which predispose us to injury, most running injuries are the result of a screw-up on our own part; environment, equipment, or execution.

When the injury happens I tell athletes that rehabilitation, not (race) preparation, has become their goal.  While I like to leave the major medical decision-making to the persons who have initials following their names, I believe a series of simple questions can break down the breakdown to one or more causes which can be remedied with little expense.  This fault logic diagram (a thumbnail sketch of Dr. Timothy Noakes' "Lore of Running," Chapter 14) can guide the athlete - or coach - to a macro-scale solution set.  Yes, a set of solutions; rarely if ever is a running injury caused by one single factor.

When you see "no run" or "rest" as a potential treatment, that doesn't necessarily mean "complete rest."  Complete rest would only be advised in the event of more-severe injuries, such as stress fractures.  Of course, I haven't hit all of the possible categories, and I'm not prescriptive on the strength training, stretching, or cross-training.  That's where the smart folks with the initials after their names come in; just don't let them tell you to stop running altogether.

I like to think I can get to a failure cause in training method, as well as a degree of injury, but there are times when the athlete isn't giving the entire story; "nothing has changed," they say.  "All of a sudden...I can't run..."  Sometimes, the mule-headedness is karmic retribution for my own past doings.  There's not much you can do, in that case, except shrug your shoulders and recommend a week of no running, with a "wait and see" attitude.  Sometimes a causal factor suddenly pops into an athlete's head when they've had a couple of days off the trails.

The Bow That Couldn't Shoot Straight

A story is told of a religious leader known to have had a fiery nature during his younger days. Another religious scholar, disguised as a hunter, came upon the man stroking a tame partridge while seated underneath a tree. The scholar marveled over the fact the religious man would 'waste his time' in such trivial activity.

The religious man asked in return, "do you always carry your bow unstrung?" The scholar responded, "no, for if I were to keep it strung continually, the bow would weaken. If I then needed to shoot at a boar or large animal it would no work correctly." The religious man replied, "if the bow that is continually bent will eventually cease to shoot straight, then do not worry about my brief period of relaxation."

It's important for the individual/self-coached runner to know certain things before they begin to develop their training plan. The most important factor is to know how much time they have available to train. The second-most important factor is the event or events which they are targeting with their training. Almost as important as the first two factors is to determine the day (or days) in the week to rest from training.

Professional athletes and younger adults might be able to get away with a seven-day-a-week schedule - but the runner who works a "real job" usually does not have the option of resting when not training. The choice is simple; take time off or risk progressive weakening.

Some running coaches have espoused the idea of taking a day off each week for every decade over thirty. So a 40-year-old would take one day, a 50-year-old two days, and so on. Other coaches "cut-back" training intensities/distances every third or fourth week of training, depending on the athlete. Others have recommended a day off each week, a week off (or easy!) each month and a month off each year. And yes, there are coaches who believe the need for a rest day is proof the runner has trained too hard or running too fast in their training.

The day of rest provides physical and mental recovery from the stress of running. It lets the person have something which vaguely resembles a life, rather than be "just a runner." While the amount of rest needed varies by person it cannot be overlooked completely. The body needs rest and recovery and it will get what it wants, either by choice or by circumstance.

So How's That Integrity Thing Working For You?

Доверяй, но проверяй. (Doveryai, no proveryai. - Trust, but verify.) - Russian proverb, frequently used by V.I. Lenin, borrowed by Ronald Reagan

Over the past several days I've chewed, digested, regurgitated, held down, subsequently thrown-up and (like my dog) returned to fallout from a personal and professional (measurement) misadventure which has taught me a great deal about my own personal integrity as well as that of others. Explaining the source of the mistake to the parties most-affected by it has helped, providing a possible solution set a little more so...but outside of a few family members and a business colleague I expect no more in the way of comfort.

I'm not certain if my grandson Simon knows how much help he's been in the past four hours. He and his "Grammy" went to the movies last night. He asked her to give me his bag of one of my favorite candies. I absent-mindedly tucked them into the cup-holder of my vehicle and forgot about them until this morning...after I spent sixty minutes of mea culpa-ing to a very concerned race director. For the second time. Over the course of three days. Sometimes unconditional love for a part-time coach/part-time measurer/full-time curmudgeon can be a little hard to come by. Sometimes you have to consider the source; a person who considers another's humor to be caustic might be lacking in a sense of the very same quality.

'So. How's that integrity thing working for you?' you might ask.

Pretty darn good. Painful in the short term. But sleep comes a little easier with it than without.

Perhaps that's why it's good to have a second (or third) set of eyes/ears around; why we always ask "who is checking the checker?" When our labors, our workouts, and our decisions stay within that easily-maintained comfort zone they can easily become sloppy, lazy and complacent without having someone available to ask the accountability questions. We soon cut corners and round up (or round-down, depending on what makes us look better) the numbers. Then when the big job, the big race, the big project comes along we get caught shorting the course, fudging the budget, doing the walk of shame. Our number gets posted on the big, public penalty sheet with a "disqualification" after it - or worse, our story gets printed in section A of the newspaper of record with the words "fraud," "deception," or "cheating" attached.

Reputations have been tarnished as a result of terribly small errors, spread wide. Ask any politician who had the brass ring slip from their grasp. Ask any Olympian who had to return a medal. For every person who "came clean" about their transgressions, paid their penance and were permitted to return to their profession there have been that many and more who denied the accusations and were finally found out...those are the persons who are never able to regain their reputation.

It's easier to point to a bad piece of meat (in more ways than one), but, my parents used to tell me: 'when you point a finger (at someone else) there's three still pointing back at yourself.'

Rockin' In The Free Will

"There's colors on the street / Red, white and blue / People shufflin' their feet / People sleepin' in their shoes / But there's a warnin' sign on the road ahead / There's a lot of people sayin' we'd be better off dead / Don't feel like Satan, but I am to them / So I try to forget it, any way I can. / Keep on rockin' in the free world..." - Neil Young (1989)
My coaching focus is and has always been on adult runners. It's not that I don't like youth, I just prefer to deal directly with the athlete goals, limitations, choices, & strengths without the filter or static of well-meaning (but often meddlsome) parent-figures. It's enough of a challenge to explain the concept of patience and steady progress over the long haul with a new or inexperienced runner who shows great potential; a parent or grandparent who believes their ward is the next great hope for American running always wonders two things:

What can you do to make my child faster?

Why isn't their present coach doing anything?I've had parents who had the nerve to ask me - within earshot of their child's present coach - to work with the child. The last thing I want to be is the guy blamed for a good kid leaving a perfectly good coach.

Adults, on the other hand, have the option of free will. As long as there are no financial or educational constraints they are pretty much free to come and go as they please from training group to training group, from coach to coach. I'd like to say adults are easier to coach because you can be completely honest with them. But sometimes, honesty can be the biggest problem with coaching adults.Sometimes it's too much honesty: My wife reminds me on a regular basis to love and appreciate the people who continue to train regularly with me after five years. There have been times in the past I've stood at the side of the track with an apparently sour look on my face, more to do with nearsightedness coupled with watching running form from 200 meters away. Just like a grimace from a distance can masquerade as a grin, a squint can look like a scowl from afar. Not like my former coach was one to show his hand during a workout; inscrutability was his watchword. I, on the other hand, come from demonstrative fields of endeavor - drama, music, and education - and I'm genetically disinclined to to hold back with my opinion (regular readers are crying out "noooooo...").

Sometimes it's a lack of it: I recall a couple of former training mates/athletes, who when asked about the degree of injury or "beat-upness" before or during a workout, responded with a level much, much less acute than my perception. Others would hold back and appear to struggle during the front end of a workout, then cut loose with a repeat (usually the last ones) at an intensity far beyond what I assigned. After time, I learned whose word to take at face value and whose evaluation needed a little adjustment to the high or low. The "face value" athletes are refreshing, even when they decide to move on, they will tell you exactly what you need to know about how you're doing as a coach.Coaches, unfortunately, don't have the option of having as free a will as the athlete. We can't assign workouts just to see if we can break athletes - our "profession" is much like that of a doctor, with the guideline "First Do No Harm" indelibly etched into our mind. In fact, every action and decision should be made with the best interest of the athletes who have trusted themselves to us. I have a coaching partner who's more laid-back in nature than I am; in the interest of expanding our training group we talked about and instituted a group workout in the community close to his home on a weeknight. He has a good turnout, depending on the time of the year...very few during the winter, more during the spring and summer. While we don't directly collaborate on what workouts we're going to assign, the similarity between his workout and mine on many occasions can be astounding. Blame it on good coaching, I guess.

But, moving back to free will...a coach can't just take a night off because they feel like it, or because they hear (second-or-thirdhand) an old coaching friend has hit town. When I say with honesty, "I'm sorry, I have athletes to coach," it means, "while I would like to spend the evening drinking beer with an old friend, the marathon training of this athlete...the fitness level of this athlete...and the triathlon performance of this athlete...are more important to me - and to them."

"And their goals and desires, their free will, have become mine."

Bigger Than My Wallet Gives Me Credit For

...and since there are less triathlons here than there are running events, even the average guy has to travel farther to get beat. But we can solve this problem, given enough time and a job. This is a reprint of an earlier blog posting I had on another site. Forgive me. I'll do better next time...

I've been a runner for nearly 15 years and an athlete for nearly 10. Outside of my senior year at The University of Tampa, every expense related to running or triathlon; shoes, clothes, travel, entry fees, rehabilitation, and so forth, has come directly from my own pocket. I consider the $500-1,000 spent each year on running alone as an investment into my own well-being. However, I'd be lying if I said I never wanted to have someone else pay for my habit.

I will say I've been fortunate to be employed by the federal government in one way or another for nearly 20 years. This provides a secure income, liberal vacation and sick time, reasonably-priced health insurance (although I could complain about my dental coverage...), a 401K-like retirement plan, and - most importantly - tenure. As long as I don't break any laws or kill someone (I've fantasized about doing my boss in more than once, but we're all better now...in many ways...), show up to work in clothing other than my Speedo within a time zone of when I'm supposed to be there, I'm good to go. The new pay-for-performance system might not provide any pay raises, but I can keep the wolf away from the door.

My coach has told me (to a degree) that having someone pay for you to do what you like to do is something akin to prostitution. Mekhi Pfifer told Eminem in the movie "8 Mile" that '...free comes with a (graphic reference to sodomy).' But I still envision the fantasy about just how cool it would be to be a professional athlete, especially in the endurance sports.

Since I'm not independently wealthy I still have to pay for all the things to keep honey, hound, house and 'hoopty' happy or copacetic. That J-O-B stuff keeps otherwise driven, motivated, and (nearly) physically-talented persons from becoming professionals at whatever sport they love. In order to get better you have to train, in order to train you need time and resources, in order to get time you have to steal from other things in that small 24-hour stretch (that ideally includes sleeping) otherwise called a day, and resources, well...there I digress.

So, where do you go to find opportunities to use, as Tim Cahill wrote about the joy of adventure travel, other people's money? If you're a regular user of an on-line race registration web site, sometimes the opportunities find you, via the siren call of e-mail. In the past I've filled out on-line applications for sponsorship, to no avail. After several years of consistent, strong performances at races from the 5K to the half-marathon, I felt I was unjustly being ignored because I live far from other major metropolitan cities.

Since I began coaching this year, I got a little more aggressive in applying. I would love to have a team supported by sponsors. Another option would be to earn a sponsorship, kick @$$ and take names for a season, then tell the sponsor, '...hey, I have a team full of people like me; let's make a deal.' My decision to explore different distances, moving up to the marathon in the fall, dabbling in triathlon, plus the fact I was going to run lots of out-of-town events this year, this racing schedule had to show I wasn't just a little fish with a big name in a much bigger pond of marketing opportunity.

I was selected for the Snickers Marathon Team, who provide me with racing kit for running and expect I will go out, market and do well. Ah, here comes that sudden sodomized feeling. Since they won't let me place my club logo on their gear, I cannot represent my club at the same time.

It puts extra emphasis on my own training and desire to do well at events, since there are incentives built into the agreement. Not that I needed much incentive beforehand, but if there's a chance for money and perhaps a little recognition I can step up the energy level.