Filling In That Hole

There's nothing like having a senior moment influence your workout.  Rather than run five-to-twelve one-kilometer pieces with rest cycles in between, I ended up doing a version of "ten the hard way" the other morning with my little run group.  Actually, in front of them.

Pete and I got to chattering about his injuries, fitness, training, and racing with about three miles to go.  He decided to run a five kilometer race in the morning, then turn around and race a second event in the afternoon.  Not surprisingly, he marveled at how much more fatigued - and how much more slowly - he raced that evening.

All this, naturally, provided a teachable moment on the joys of recovery.

It seems all too simple:  Exertion (stress) leads to decline in fitness (trough), then a return to homeostasis (baseline) and eventual supercompensation (peak), given enough time.  Add more stress before the return to baseline and you've begun to dig a "deeper hole."  Play your cards right with the level and timing of stress and rest, and over time the baseline is a little higher...that means the athlete is more fit than when they started.

If Pete had been running twice a day - or at the least the occasional run late in the afternoon, followed by a run early the following morning - I believe he would have known how a short recovery period would affect his second run.  He could have learned from trial-and-error how much rest, how much fluid and nutrition, and what specific techniques would have worked.  Or at least what would would not.

Research literature is loaded with many different recovery-enhancing modalities; some of which aren't as highly-touted or marketed as the more-questionable ones.  Naturally, not everyone will benefit equally from the same routine; what works best for you works best for you.

Protein and simple sugars - The latest and most popular blend of protein and simple sugars appears to be chocolate milk.  The moo-juice's advantages definitely lie in the ability to down serious grams of protein and carbohydrates in a matter of seconds almost immediately after the run ends.  Try THAT with a sports nutrition bar!  SlimFast shakes and the Gatorade post-workout shake have also been recommended by several coaches, too, but I started to wonder what the lactose-intolerant runner can do.  A poster on a fitness bulletin board suggested three parts chocolate-flavored soy milk and one part regular soy milk, which they claim has the same ratio of sugars and protein.

Hydration - Water, naturally, is the best choice for hydration, but you only need to drink until your thirst is sated.  A new book by one of my favorite 'smart people,' Dr. Timothy Noakes says the "hydration industry" is, well, 'all wet.'  We didn't have hydration "issues," he says in a recent British Journal of Sports Medicine podcast interview, "until about two decades ago."

Shower - There's nothing like a really warm shower after a hard run; if you have a handheld shower head (especially one with a massage function!) you can focus the flow along the muscles of the lower extremities.  Even though heat and cold treatments are questionable when it comes to muscle soreness, there are very few persons I know who have felt worse after a shower.

Rest - Besides, once you've finished a shower you're probably going to feel like laying down for a bit of a nap.  Even a couple of extra hours of sleep are beneficial to the healing process; sleep deprivation, on the other hand, was found to increase insulin resistance and decrease glucose tolerance, leading to a decreased time-to-exhaustion during exercise.

So, hanging out with the friends and sucking down a couple of adult beverages of choice after a morning's race is perfectly fine, as long as you're not planning to go out and do another race in the afternoon.

Hell Freezes Over, Sort Of

"For the record, we never broke up; we just took a 14-year vacation..." - Glenn Frey, 1994

I've coached a small group of (as few as three to as many as a dozen) adult runners for six years, in the classic "stand on the side of the track" as well as the "in the pack" style.  Each style has its benefits and drawbacks; coaching revealed me at my best and my worst.  If an aspiring author were to write it without the benefit or hindrance of this blog it would most likely either look like a Charles Dickens ("best of times, worst of times") tale.  Maybe not.  More likely in the style of a Stephen King ("...heeeeere's Johnny!") screenplay.  As long as Jack Nicholson isn't playing me, I'm all right.

Coaching is stressful, especially if you feel the need to prove to athletes that the training will never get "boring," (news flash:  it will, get used to it...) or, worse yet, when a symbiotic relationship with a running emporium (''...you refer runners to me for training, I send them to you for shoes and gear...') transforms into "competition."  Add to the stress a pair of achilles tendons made cranky by too much hard training and not enough recovery, and life becomes a misery.

So, I took a bit of a holiday.  I retired.  I became a "gentleman" coach; a "quasi-guru" with a limited and non-paying clientele.  Not surprisingly, people "suddenly" become more interested in training when you're not available.  It's no different than the difference between when you're single and when you finally find that "soul mate;" every other person who otherwise would not have given you the time of day if your watch had stopped cold dead wants something to do with you.

Last weekend I decided, against my better judgment, to hang the shingle again.  I don't know why, other than perhaps the moon was full, the beer was cold, my tendons hadn't barked at me for a month, and the person who asked me seemed to be genuinely interested. 

This time, however, things will be different.  I have nothing to prove to anyone who shows up.  Except for the fact I can give them a good product at a reasonable price.  They will pay, I will coach, and they will work.  Seems simple enough to me.

Changing Your Definition

My buddy Justin posted this up on my social media wall the other evening, not many minutes after a perfectly decent rowing ergometer workout at my local fitness gym...

I swore last year to not deride people who purchase fitness center memberships in January but never use the facility after March, or how infuriating the first two-to-three months of the year can be for persons who have a well-developed workout habit.  The smart "resolutionists" at least take advantage of the "complimentary" fitness assessment; they know how far they have to go to meet the airbrushed (and most-likely "cosmetic-surgeried") image of quote-unquote "fitness" plastered on billboards.  When it comes to that 'oh, gosh, I'm THAT unhealthy?' revelation, perhaps ignorance to a certain degree is bliss.  Some would prefer to not pay the extra dough to have someone beat up on them for the next three/six/twelve months...or longer.

As a runner/triathlete-type, I have near-epistemological opinions about what does and does not constitute fitness.  It used to be if it had nothing to do with swimming, bicycling and running I preferred to avoid it at all costs.  An Outside Magazine story on climber-turned-hard-core-fitness-trainer Marc Twight, and ESPN's telecast of the CrossFit Games caused me to channel my own inner Pontius Pilate and re-ask: 'what is fitness?'  But that's what philosophy - and coaching - is all about, isn't it?  Believe it, test it, re-work it, retest, and repeat.

So, this year I've decided to engage in some personal resolutions, not necessarily run-focused, but resolutions which will most likely carry over into life pedestrian:

Read more - I refer often to three or four good training books, but this last year provided me the opportunity to branch out and read works in genres I hadn't touched since college.  If coaching had only to do with the heart, lungs, muscles and skeleton the learning process would be simple.  Ah, but there are brains, minds and souls; opinions, concerns and fears involved.  And the scariest territory of any fitness enthusiast or athlete would have to be that space which is between the left ear and the right ear.  Luke Humphrey's "The Hanson's Marathon Method" is on my short list of acquisitions.  A conversation with my step-son, Scott has inspired me to re-read Phil Jackson's 'Sacred Hoops: Spiritual Lessons of a Hardwood Warrior."  Expect a few nuggets in the future from these minds.

Recover more - Reading is a great form of recovery from both the physical and mental stress of training, as well as the stress of the work day.  Contrary to the opinion of some of my co-workers.  Recovery is everything you are doing when you aren't working out: Sleep, food, massage, hydration.  Those are important, but don't forget the Bowerman-esque "hard day-easy day" theory, or Bannister's training impact.  Contrary to the dictum of the great Hungarian coach Mihaly Igloi, 'every day hard training must make,' we don't need to do every workout at one-hundred percent intensity.  When's the last time you had a rest day marked on the training schedule?

Resist more - Several definitions of resistance can be covered here.  Weight training, or cross-training which involves friction (rowing ergometer, elliptical trainer, indoor cycling) can raise heart rates a touch and strengthen muscle groups which are important for running performance, without the worrisome impact which can make joints (especially older ones) ache.  The second form of resistance comes in the form of avoidance; like unhealthy food and drink choices (here I am most definitely speaking to myself!), of toxic persons and situations, and workouts which become contests.  Ah, but none of us have ever treated a Sunday morning long run as a long race, have we?

Destination race - There's nothing like putting a target race on your training calendar to encourage a training focus.  My wife is much better at finding opportunities to travel and race within days of a conference or a business meeting.  Besides, you can only run the "Rancid Possum 5K" course and drink the same post-race beer so many times before things...get...old...  We have one "destination" race already on the calendar, and I suspect two or three more will soon follow.

I hope these thoughts will encourage you to look a little more closely at your running and fitness habit and see if there's something which cries out for a little change this next year.

"Eustress," or You Stress?

"Mental tensions, frustrations, insecurity, aimlessness are among the most damaging stressors, and psychosomatic studies have shown how often they cause migraine headache, peptic ulcers, heart attacks, hypertension, mental disease, suicide, or just hopeless unhappiness." - Hans Selye, endocrinologist (1907-1982)

It didn't kick in until about 12:30 or so on Sunday afternoon.  When it did it was like a mule.

One minute I was  listening to Jimmy Buffett tunes on the stereo and driving to the home of Aaron and Betsy Boudreaux...a tray or two of boiled crawfish and a couple of cold beers seemed to me to be the perfect ending to a long-awaited weekend with friends and loved ones.  Next thing I know, I felt like a bank of telephones were ringing and I had to answer them, while driving at the same time.

About two hours later I felt a little more normal.  As I peeled and pulled, I managed to figure out the source of what went so awry.  I again had taken on the demands I had set aside when I retired from day-to-day coaching.  I was dealing with an increased workload at the office.  On top of that my racing fitness was not coming along as quickly as I hoped; the Achilles' tendon injuries were healing but I could only manage a good 5K...on a 10K course.  While I was outwardly pragmatic, I was all stressed up with no place to blow.

"Charley, I was a little scared," I told my friend later that afternoon over a beer.  We had talked days before about mutual friends, pillars of the community, who transmogrify into a maelstrom of insanity during Easter weekend in New Orleans.  Excesses immediately following the Classic - a couple too-many brews during the five miles from City Park to the Quarter, or a couple extra drinks while spending the evening at one of my wife's favorite karaoke establishments, is one thing.  This particular couple's hotel passageway eruptions made mixed martial artists and WWE-types take a couple of steps toward the exits.

Sometimes stress can get to us.  But is stress one of those things, like former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart would have said, we know what it is when we experience it?  Selye described stress (in 1926) being not only (as Emanuel Kant might have said) the thing in itself, but also the cause and the result of the same thing.

So if stress is the thing, and the cause, and the result, then is it bad?  Not necessarily.  When we exercise we incur a certain degree of stress.  If we allow ourselves time to RECOVER from that physical (and sometimes mental - if you've ever gone into a workout with a sense of dread) stressor we benefit from what is known as supercompensation.  Selye would probably consider that stress "eustress," or good stress.  If we load more stress before we completely recover we begin the process of slowly grinding ourselves down.  That, in my humble opinion, is when the burnout and the overuse injuries arrive.

On the other hand, if we allow ourselves to dwell on the minutiae of life, the small stuff we cannot control, or the things which we cannot immediately remedy, we incur bad stress, what Selye considered "distress."  Sometimes we can use "eustress" to overcome some of our own "distress;" but sometimes it cannot all be remedied through physical effort or exercise.

Sometimes it takes a little "me-time."  Sometimes it takes a "crucial conversation." (another commonly-used term would be the "come-to-Jesus talk")  But the distress, like the carbonation in a soda or champagne bottle, needs to be released in a careful manner, lest the darned thing explode - usually in a hotel hallway on a Saturday night, or a patio bar on a Friday evening, with stunned onlookers all about.

If Mama Ain't Happy

So far I've been fortunate. The holiday season usually finds Suzanne and/or me nursing a bug of some kind by the week after Christmas...and by the first week of the new year at the latest. The difference, I think, is we followed a different schedule; spent time with people we normally do not see, did less than we felt we had to.

I used my mildly sociophobic tendencies as a lame excuse to try and keep myself healthy this season. My wife considers my sociophobia a load of bologna; I'm not so much sociophobic as I am socially-inept. The one edge of the proverbial two-edged sword was I did less social functions, saving me from needless exposure to stress and illness. The other edge was Suzanne was occasionally a little less-than pleased.

However, it's easier to make her happy when I decide to "hide." It's not always cheaper than the drugs, but it's easier on me than spending a miserable week on the couch in my warm-ups watching ESPN.

So, when Eric and I talked running during a Christmas social I had to remind him of the old Southern dictum: "If Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy."

Why would I bring up something so simple, especially when talking about running?

Most folks, knowingly or unknowingly, make some sort of commitment for the new year. Some call them resolutions. Others call them goals. Eric's goal is to complete a marathon in the future. He runs a few miles here and there, and we hit the trails once or twice a month with the local hash, so he's not a couch potato.

I first applauded Eric's ambition and his moxie, then began asking (like any good coach) a few gentle questions. "So, how many hours do you have free to train?" Eric deals with a full-time job, occasional travel demands, and Ashley. Ashley is Eric's wife. She works and is a college student. When he told me the (small) number of hours he had available I recommended he set a few interim goals, based on a shorter distance event or two, considering the time at his disposal.

How many persons train for endurance events at the risk of strained marriages, missed family functions, irritated and infuriated employers, and frayed friendships? Does a marathon finisher medal or tattoo mend broken fences and burned bridges? Not hardly.

Some coaches use the term "spousal approval unit," which is a lot like the "emotional bank account" Stephen Covey writes about in his book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. If all the time we have available to train without adversely affecting those relationships which make the rest of our life rewarding is small, there's nothing in the world that can increase that period of time.

There are some efficiencies which can help us to recoup time:

We can sleep less. At least to a certain point; there's that fine thin line where we hinder our body's ability to recover from workout efforts.

We can cut back on time-wasting activities, either at work or at home.

We can maximize the time we have available to train by cutting back on "junk miles" and focus on quality efforts.

It's less expensive, physically, financially and emotionally, to "keep Mama (or Papa!) happy" than it is to press forward with an unrealistic training plan or goal event. What do you do to keep your family members happy when you're training for an event?

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.

All Stressed Up And Nowhere To Go

Ever have one of those mornings when you didn't feel like getting out of bed for the morning run? You talk yourself out of bed and into the morning pre-run ritual. You might even muffle the little voice in your head long enough to step out the door. Maybe you get a mile up the road before SOMETHING finally clicks in your head and you receive the urgent message. You know the one:

What. Are. You. Thinking?

There are mornings, sometimes days, when our body tries to inform us it hasn't completely recovered from the stress of days past, which may or may not include our training. A heart rate monitor is an inexpensive tool to determine or predict whether we've endured a little too much stress.

I've used a heart rate monitor as part of my training for the past six or seven years. It's a simple tool to figure out your resting heart rate first thing in the morning. Some folks like to use the monitor to maintain their run pace. The heart rate monitor can also be used to help quantify a workout effort.

An athlete's resting heart rate can show the progression of fitness, as well as the onset of overreaching (not so good) or overtraining (not good at all). Some will place the heart rate strap when they go to bed, then turn on the heart rate receiver for a minute after waking up. Once the athlete learns their average heart rate, those mornings when sudden spikes of five-or-more beats-per-minute are read can tell the athlete about residual stress, or that the body has not completely recovered.

A resting heart rate can also be checked just as easily by placing a finger on the carotid artery and counting the pulses for a minute, but machines are more likely to be honest than human beings about the numbers.

I know folks who like to pace their runs based on a target heart rate zone. I prefer to go by feel than by heart rate for a number of reasons:

First, the heart is a demand pump. The oxygenated blood is sent to the places the body informs the brain it is most needed. That means there's a lag time between an effort is performed by the muscles and when the blood arrives to replenish the muscles...kind of the reverse of the way our automobile's carburetor works.

Second, depending on hydration (or dehydration), weather conditions, fitness, etc., a particular pace effort can vary in heart rate. A six-minute-per-mile pace is not always going to equate to a 145 beat-per-minute rate, just to give an example.

Ever ask someone how difficult a particular workout was? How do they usually describe it?

Dr. Eric Bannister researched training impact, scoring by percentage of maximum heart rate, multiplied by duration. Each ten percent above the fiftieth percentile earns a single point for each minute of effort. So a sixty-minute run at fifty percent of max heart rate would be a training impact score of sixty. That same sixty minutes at sixty percent max heart rate would score 120, a 180 training impact score would be seventy percent max for sixty minutes, and so on. Most good heart rate monitors have a function which informs the user how long their effort was in a particular range, or provides the average heart rate for the workout period.

Bannister and others also researched whether the Borg (perceived effort) scale of one-to-ten could be used to score training stress. They found most experienced athletes scored their perceived effort almost as accurately without a heart rate monitor; an athlete who scored their workout as a six-out-of-ten was found to have had exercised at around sixty percent of maximal heart rate. So you don't necessarily have to use a heart rate monitor, but you can get deeper into the details with one on your wrist/chest.

Once the workout is scored, the question soon follows as to what that score means to the individual.

Hunter Allen, one of the developers of the Training Peaks workout software, in a recent article, correlated training stress scores to levels of stress and need for recovery. He wrote that scores of:

- less than 150 = low stress. Recovery from this effort is generally complete by the following day.

- 150-to-300 = medium stress. Some residual fatigue. Generally complete recovery by the second day after the workout.

- 300-to-450 = high stress. Residual fatigue remains even after two days.

- more than 450 = very high stress. Residual fatigue over the next several days is likely.

While it's important to know how hard we run or work out, it's more important to realize gains in strength, speed, endurance and overall fitness come as we allow our body to properly recover from the effort. Once we completely recover we can go out and repeat the stress again, which makes our body more resistant to that same level of stress.

The Not-Always-Ten-Percent Rule

Some seven months ago, my achilles' tendon gave me the impossible-to-ignore message that marathon training could soon be its undoing. Since then, I've encouraged myself to look more critically at several different aspects of my training. I'm looking not so much because I want to complete another marathon, but because I want to continue running. Walking with a minimal limp (from bones broken almost three decades ago) is a plus.

It's meant, at least for me, some changes to my workout schedule...some ways in form, but mostly in duration.

I firmly believe in the ten-percent rule; the rule (of thumb) which states no increase in distance, intensity (which I look at as average heart rate over time) or duration for an exercise activity should be more than ten percent over the measure of the previous three-to-four week period. There are several coach/author-types who have published this same belief.

But not all coaches agree. My friend Patrick McCrann is one of the few who openly disagrees. He writes that increases of any sort need not necessarily be at the "rigid" ten percent point. Some times it can be more; other times less. What is important, in his mind, is to adjust the stress once the body adapts to it, then keep it there until the adaptation is complete.

I understand his thoughts on the subject. Since we are all an experiment of one, we adapt to stressors, and the change of those stressors, in varied ways. Two eight-minute milers can run on a flat course for 30 minutes at a time and perhaps both feel the same physiological benefit/stress that we can measure (heart rate, respiration, fatigue, just to name a few) during that ~3.75-mile jaunt. Add three minutes to that run and one of the two may walk around the next day with aching joints; the other might be "itchy" for more distance.

Naturally, we can't isolate all of the factors which could cause differences in adaptation. Not without putting an entire population in isolation. If we could I am most certain there are entire populations we would prefer to isolate...most likely not our own.

When making those changes in stress, it's important to keep static as many of the other variables as possible for at least three weeks. If your body responds in a less-than-desired fashion, like an injury, it's probably a good idea to back off the stressor until the injury subsides. Injuries are usually the body's way of saying "I am not able to adapt to this much stress." Stay at that level for three weeks, then increase or change the stress as tolerated.

A little imagination, and close attention to your body's response to stress, is key to increasing mileage, duration, or intensity in your training plan.

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?

A Thought On Tapering

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

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

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

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

The Whole (Hole?) Truth About Bad Days

This last week seemed to be an ongoing object lesson in the holism of training, from Tuesday evening at the track (and the immediate thereafter) on to the Monday morning after the Bushwacker 5K. So maybe it's high time to talk a little about what can (help) cause bad days to happen.

Sometimes they do to you. Often times they do to me. But this is about you.

Your bad day can (or may, or may not...) be the result of a number of short-term and longer-term decisions. Everything from the number of adult beverages you drank in the past few days, to the food choices you made in the past 48 hours, to the effort level of the activities you did (or did not) in that same period of time can either positively or negatively reinforce your energy level.

So, for example, if all of your workouts consist of the same activity, for the same duration, at the same intensity level, it's highly likely you have trained yourself not so much into a groove as into a rut. Keep going long enough and it's more likely going to feel like a grave with two ends missing; 'cause you're going to feel like your running is flat out dead. A friend of mine had a bad day on Saturday (in his own opinion); rather than write it off as a bad day, or take it as a sign he might want to adjust his training, he walked around at the post-race party in a severely despondent state, one step (barely) above suicidal.

Outside stressors can cause your run training to be a little less than fun, too. Look for a job, or try to sell a house, or deal with a familial issue for an extended period of time...that stuff will weigh on your mind and eventually affect your physical performance. Sure, at first the run or bike or swim is a brief escape from the stress, but what I'm talking about are those seriously extended circumstances...the ones that can last for six months or more.

So, I have no magical silver bullet for you today. Sometimes, though, knowing where the problem might lie can be the first step in fixing (better yet, understanding) the bad day problem.

Someone REALLY Needs A Mental Health Day

Yes, I've seen that look before. Lately, I see a lot of it when my wife comes through the door. Most of the time she can get past a tough day (or several tough days) at work by going out for a run, taking the d-a-w-g for a walk, or slurping on a few cool beverages in the evening. However, yesterday's look took the cake. While she was looking forward to getting out to the beach for a little while last night, she was going to settle for a walk, instead. At first, I was wondering why a walk and not a run. However, the meterological conditions were, as some would say, gawd-awful.
It's difficult, if not impossible, to train hard in triple-digit heat indices. Well, you can train indoors on the treadmill, the spinning bicycle, the elliptical trainer, or hit the swimming pool. Depending on the air conditioning capability in the place where you're at, even a tough workout can be almost tolerable. However, lots of (average) folks don't have access to pools, workout studios, or indoor tracks (memo to self: build an indoor track facility when you hit the lottery.). That tends to turn a planned six-miler into a four-miler, or a sprightly four-miler into a more relaxed-pace (George says, '...this is relaxed pace!?') four-miler, with a short walk at the end.

The saving grace of all this is the fact I have all these training options. Getting back into the pool after weeks away from it has been wonderful. I'm almost back to the fitness level I was before I broke the arm; not as fast in the water, but I think the mechanics are more relaxed. Give or take a couple of seconds, my reps in the pool have not changed for the worse from early June. While swimming might not transfer much to running, it helps me to learn to control my breathing when at speed...if you can come up on another competitor without them hearing your heavy breathing, you just might be able to put a stride or two on them before they can react.

If Thomas Paine were alive today, writing a pamphlet on training in Florida in the late summer, he would begin it: '...these are the times that fry men's soles...' He could still entitle it The Crisis if he wanted. He could talk about the conflict between the conscious and the subconscious mind; it's a little over five weeks until the first late-summer/early-autumn 5,000-meter road race...and the panicky state of affairs that the very competitive local runners may be feeling. Hell, I'm feeling it, and it's only a stepping-stone race toward my main races; a half-marathon in October and a marathon in December. I've also planned a 10-kilometer road race in early November, but...

I haven't run any chunk of distance beyond 400 meters at near race pace for, oh, about two months to be exact. I did some 400s a couple of weeks ago at 95-second pace, but that was a slow ramp-up from the first ones, which were closer to 110. However, we will see how things go tonight. The plan is 8x400 at 95-97sec pace, with 100m walk breaks in between. This will be the first test of fitness. I might tell everyone to extend the 100 to a little closer to 150. We'll see.

Maybe I'm thinking too much right now. Maybe it's me who needs the mental health day.