"Relay" does not mean "Delay"

The sign at the college campus entrance provided a knee-deep sense of foreboding...which quickly turned hip-to-waist-deep once I saw the tents and pop-up covers.  A fund-raising relay event on the track, in 25 words or less, meant no chance for speed work on the track.

If you're doing workouts on your own this isn't a big deal; you just have to go to another track, right?

What if there isn't another track nearby, or the track has a less-than-desirable location/surface?  I first had to deal with this "problem" during a two week assignment to Orlando, many years ago.  The hotel gym had a "typical inexpensive hotel gym" quality treadmill (translation: great for walking and not much else); and the staff did not know the location of the nearest track.  However, there was a long, straight stretch of roadway, about three miles in length, with light poles spaced about fifty yards apart. 

Speed workouts don't necessarily require a track; a favorite jogging path, stretch of road or trail will do.  The most-popular form of speed work done on paths, roads or trails would have to be fartlek, which is the Swedish for "speed play."  The fartlek workout has certain benefits as well as drawbacks:  A runner can pretty much push the pace for as long (or not as long) as they feel, they can vary the pace, and they can vary the recovery periods. 

However, I'm a bit of a knucklehead about speed work, and in fact, about most of my runs.  There has to be a purpose, some sort of plan, behind all of this; otherwise I might as well have my feet up on the couch watching SportsCenter.  If there are regularly-spaced landmarks along the way I'll figure it out from the outset and plan something like this:

First two miles - comfortable jog
Next mile - 200 meters, more or less, with 50 meters recovery jog
Next mile - 400 meters, more or less, with 50-to-100 meters recovery jog
Next mile - 200 meters, more or less, with 50 meters recovery jog

The efforts would be anywhere from highly aerobic (a pace I can hold steadily for five kilometers) to eighty-percent of maximal effort.

Now, with the consumer-grade GPS we can probably keep a closer eye on distance efforts and recovery intervals.  For those persons who aren't into GPS, another option would be to set a running watch on countdown timer for a thirty-to-sixty second period, set to repeat. Jog easy for fifteen to twenty minutes, then alternate harder and easier efforts during each repeat.  The distances are not so much the important quantity as much as the effort and recovery times.  Harder efforts, naturally, will most likely require longer recoveries.

So don't let that "Relay for Reality" or the infield soccer camp make you set aside your speed work.  Find yourself a place to let your horses run free.

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.

Consider the Treadmill Your Friend

Summer has turned to autumn, and infernal conditions have turned temperate (a good change), but the hours of daylight have dropped as quickly as the mercury. The runner in training, and even the runner who wants to stay fit and healthy through the season of junk food and socials has to consider the benefit of a few changes to their routine:

Change the time of the run from the increasingly dark morning and evening hours.
Change the run venue from outdoor trails and tracks to indoor facilities and treadmills. Change the run gear from lightweight to lighted (or reflectorized).

Not every runner is blessed with access to workout (shower!) facilities or flexible schedules, but a run during the work day can be a pleasant diversion from the "typical" stress of the work place. A runner who is not able to do a short run in the middle of the day might benefit from sliding the run time "to the left" or "to the right" to take advantage of daylight hours. Of course, that also depends on the good will of one's employer.

Many people hate running lap after lap on a track. Others can't stand to run indoors on a treadmill. When I suggest either option they often tell me it's either too painful or too boring. Given the choice of running a solo track workout or running on a treadmill I am most likely to choose treadmill running. The treadmill allows the individual runner to control nearly all of the workout variables, such as pace, duration, distance, and elevation. A runner who is willing to pay attention to the timer or the odometer can simulate almost every track workout imaginable. Pace discipline is almost absolute over time; there's no variation in pace, unless the runner changes. Most importantly, if something goes wrong biomechanically, they can stop the workout and immediately treat the issue.

I've even had people tell me treadmills were not good for runners because the mechanics of running were different. But I've always trusted my instincts about the treadmill and not listened to the nay-sayers. Then, last week, I watched a Running Times magazine podcast video about "Fixing Injured Runners". In the video, Jay Dicharry, MPT, CSCS, Director of the SPEED Performance Clinic and the Motion Analysis Lab Coordinator at the University of Virginia, was working with a middle-distance runner who had been dealing with achilles tendinosis for about a year. Dicharry's laboratory uses infrared cameras and a high-tech treadmill to help analyze the gait of runners of all ability levels, part of a three-fold process to determine "what's broken". About three minutes into the video, Dicharry said something which made me feel very confident (not only about my own recovery path, but also about training alternatives):

"Old lore states running on a treadmill and running over ground are dramatically different. A lot of coaches out there will tell you when you run over ground you're pushing yourself along the ground and when you run on a treadmill you pull yourself along. We can state this is not true. When you run on a treadmill versus over ground you are still pushing the body along. The treadmill is moving but you are pushing on a moving surface. The GRF (ground force reaction) profiles we measure are fairly similar."

"We published a study a few years ago (Riley, P.O., Dicharry, J., Franz, J.R., Wilder, R.P., Kerrigan, D.C., A kinematic and kinetic comparison of over ground and treadmill running. Medical Science, Sport & Exercise 2008; 40(6):1093-100) which looked at differences between over ground versus treadmill running. What it showed was about 60 percent of people ran almost identically on a treadmill versus over ground; while 40 percent had some differences. The differences we saw were really no more apparent than they would be if you ran on a track versus a treadmill versus a gravel road versus a trail. You want to acclimate and accomodate your body to prolonged running on a new surface..."

"We have noticed over the years after five minutes of running the variability in the gait cycle tends to decrease....As far as training, think about one more factor: on trail or any place someone is running around...if they want to speed up or slow down they can, it's no problem. On a treadmill they can't because the speed is set and held constant by the motor. If someone runs at a higher speed, gets fatigued and can't keep up with their leg speed they'll tend to overstride. When a runner overstrides they are running with a compensated gait pattern. That's one of the mechanisms people complain about. They claim treadmills cause them to get injured when they are running."

"I don't think it's the treadmill causing the injury, I think it's their compensated gait style causing them to get injured while on the treadmill."

As Mike Smayda, the middle-distance runner featured in the (three-part) podcast series said: "People set their treadmills too fast and overestimate their ability."

Most runners are more likely to adapt to the outdoor conditions and move their workouts to times with more light or bring the light (or reflectors!) with them, but the treadmill can also be the training runner's bst friend during the dark days of late autumn and early winter.

Irrational Thoughts?

'Sometimes I think it's a shame when I get feelin' better when I'm feelin' no pain.' - "Sundown," Gordon Lightfoot (1974)

Just because a person has coached athletes for a few years, has learned from hard experience what not to do, and struggles on a regular basis to clearly communicate those lessons to people who ask questions of them does not necessarily mean they have achieved an immunity to the disorder I like to call "abject stupidity."

Somehow I managed to survive a brief exposure to this disorder on my way to my "real" job this morning.

I started to think about training for a marathon.

Those who follow my rambling, sometimes cryptic missives know marathon training nearly turned me into "once a runner" approximately six months ago. It wasn't necessarily marathon training which was the primary cause of my achilles injury as much as a failure to deal with an under-healed achilles tendonitis issue which plagued me for three or four years.

I'm not certain what made me start to think about the marathon. Could it be because the evenings and the early morning hours have become a little more cool? Perhaps the slow approach of autumn and the need to review the training plan of one of my athletes was a subtle hint. Maybe, just maybe, it was that set of 400s we ran during last night's workout.

I wasn't the one spanking the group, though. Jim took Deena and myself to the woodshed most of the workout. He was kind enough to let us out after the third set. But it was nice to float up along Jim's shoulder on the back stretch of the last 400 and be in that middle ground between floating - where you feel the spring in the toe-off - and the feel when you know there's no "extra gear" available.

So a little bit of the speed is returning; 15 seconds a mile here, 20 seconds a mile there. But I must remind myself, like Taco Bell differs from Mexican food, there is a vast difference between being "healthy" and being "fit;" being "able to run" and being "able to race." I am most certainly not out of the woods yet. But I am beginning to see glimpses of the glade.

Injured runners often take too little time off from training, don't allow the body enough time to gradually ramp back up to the level of training they were at when they injured themselves, and don't stay in touch with how their body is feeling during the ramp-up. Fail to exercise caution and restraint when increasing distance, duration, intensity, and especially when races are added, and those "small" injuries which are usually remedied with a weeks' worth of rest or cross-training can transform into "major" issues which drastically affect the overall quality of life.

Feeling no pain is not necessarily the same as feeling better. It is, however, the first step on the road to recovery.

As for this ol' coach, we're almost ready for 5,000-meter road races, and not much more. In the meantime, there's a couple of flat late-autumn and early-spring marathons I'll continue to consider; the operating word is "consider."

I'm not that stupid. Yet.

Grab Some (Yur)Buds?

Rare is the moment I laud the use of headphones while running. They might be great for staving off boredom during treadmill workouts at the gym, but I do not like them - not one bit - on the ears of the athletes I train. Call me a kill-joy. Call me old-school. But I'm the coach; it's my prerogative to say what I do and do not like.

I don't like my athletes wearing headphones on the track because they cannot hear what I need to tell them about the specifics of their workout, their form or their effort. The last time I recall that particular form of feedback was called "coaching." I don't like my athletes wearing headphones during races because they cannot react to anything around them. Headphone-wearing runners turn into to the pace blaring into their ears rather than to the pace of the pack of runners beside (or in front of them). The last time I recall that was called "racing."

Working with the Road Runners Club of America for a little over five years, I learned the litany of safety reasons which clubs were told about the potential dangers of headphone use. Add to the "tune in, turn on, and lock in the pace" mentality of most headphone wearers at races the sometimes benign, sometimes life-threating approach of racing wheelchairs and strollers, faster runners, and intruding bicycles or other motor vehicles. You can end up with something as inconvenient as a trip-and-fall or as permanent as death.

And really, it's not the headphones which are evil. It's the way we tend to use them.

Several years ago I was at a small neighborhood 5K race; while standing on the corner cheering for my wife and several of my friends I saw a runner turn the corner and approach the third mile. She was running on the right-hand side of the road (not following the tangent, but that's another story altogether); I was standing on the sidewalk on the left. I could clearly hear the blaring from her MP3 player earbuds, at a distance of approximately 10 meters away. That meant she had to have the volume up at eardrum-bleeding, "Spinal Tap"-like volume.

Last year, I saw a product at the Rock n' Roll/Mardi Gras Marathon expo which drew my attention, especially in light of the RRCA work. At the time I was trying to write a white paper on headphone use, so the idea of a company like Competitor Group putting on an event with bands at every mile, yet selling headphones at the expo, seemed a little incongruous. I told the expo booth rep for Yurbuds who I represented and expressed my gentle skepticism about the product. He kindly provided me some print information and the website address so I could draw my own conclusions. However, I didn't want to try the product.

When I planned my visit this year I told my wife I would look closer at the Yurbuds product, especially after they developed an Ironman-branded version of the headphone adapter. If you have a product which gets to be Ironman-branded, you've pretty much made the big time...well, the chance of your product getting more exposure is very good.

The rep fitted me for a pair of the Ironman-branded Yurbuds, which are designed both to funnel the output of your music player, or computer, or whatever device has a 1/4-inch headphone jack into your ears...and allow ambient noise from your immediate surroundings to be heard. He then told me to let him know when I could hear the music and the ambient room noise. He showed me where the volume was set on his iPod; I could hear AC/DC's "Highway to Hell" comfortably at a volume level somewhere around the mid-point. I could also have a normal-volumed conversation with the rep. While sold on the Yurbuds, I did worry if I had a placebo effect; what would happen back home in my neighborhood?

I put the Yurbuds to the test last Saturday while my wife and I were at the gym. Rather than watch Anthony Bourdain's "No Reservations" I decided to talk to her in the middle of my 60-minute elliptical trainer workout. I asked, 'is there something which sounds different about this conversation to you?' She then realized she was not shouting, nor was I. Even this morning, during the walk from the gym back home, I could hear the singing of the neighborhood's mockingbirds, as well as John Mayer. You might not particularly care for my taste in music, but I think you get the picture.

It doesn't mean everyone should pay 20-to-50 dollars for a set of headphone adapters - they're comfortable, they keep the phones stable in the ear during strenuous activity - but if it helps folks turn their volume down on their MP3 player at races, without killing the user's listening experience, then I'm all for it...as long as they're not dawdling in front of my training group, in lane one on the track, or directly in front of me on race day.

Ask Coach: Pre-Workout Snacking

What is a good pre-workout snack? I tried some Raisinets before a recent workout, but wanted to get your opinion.

Take this as a do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do; nutrition is one of my weaker areas, & something which I constantly strive to improve. I think something a little less “simple sugary” – a banana or a slice of whole-grain or rye (see the article below!) toast with peanut butter & jelly (or honey!) – will stave off hunger, provide beneficial fats/protein, & not die out on you at 7 p.m.

Through the spring & early summer I had a serious fling with the mini Clif Bars, they have 100 calories per bar, & are loaded with fiber & good (natural) nuts, grains/soy, fruit. But they were so good I probably took in too many calories - a couple of hundred calories of snacking a day is fine; a couple of hundred calories of snacking three or four times a day on top of meals can do some damage. I probably took in more calories than I thought I was burning in my workouts.

Without looking at the nutritional data – if you’re looking at nutritional data to justify your snack, it’s probably not worth putting in your body, anyway - there are natural sugars in the raisins, caffeine in the chocolate…and God knows what other chemicals from the processing. So, two out of three are not bad; better than Little Debbie cakes. There was a time I would scarf on one or two of them (Oatmeal, Devils’ Food, Raisin…all evil!) a couple of hours before a track workout. Most of the time I found the short-term sugar rush was NOT worth the crash which occurred on the last set of the workout.

While I'm in the mood to talk about hunger suppression and bread, I saw this article the other day (Isaksson H, Fredriksson H, Andersson R, Olsson J and Åman P (2009), Effect of rye bread breakfasts on subjective hunger and satiety: a randomized controlled trial. Nutrition Journal 2009, 8:39, August) and thought it rather interesting:

Several studies report that dietary fiber promotes the feeling of satiety & suppresses hunger. However, results for cereal fiber from rye are essentially lacking. The researchers investigated subjective appetite during eight hours after intake of iso-caloric rye bread breakfasts varying in rye dietary fiber composition & content.

The first part of the study compared the satiating effect of iso-caloric bread breakfasts including different milling fractions of rye (bran, intermediate fraction (B4) & sifted flour). The second part investigated the dose-response effect of rye bran & intermediate rye fraction, each providing 5 or 8 grams of dietary fiber per iso-caloric bread breakfast. Both study parts used a wheat bread breakfast as reference & a randomised, within-subject comparison design. Appetite (hunger, satiety & desire to eat) was rated regularly from just before breakfast at 8:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m. Amount, type & timing of food & drink intake were standardized during the study period.

The milling fractions study showed each of the rye breakfasts resulted in a suppressed appetite during the time period before lunch (8:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m.) compared with the wheat reference bread breakfast. At a comparison between the rye bread breakfasts the one with rye bran induced the strongest effect on satiety. In the afternoon the effect from all three rye bread breakfasts could still be seen as a decreased hunger & desire to eat compared to the wheat reference bread breakfast.

In the dose-response study both levels of rye bran & the lower level of intermediate rye fraction resulted in an increased satiety before lunch compared with the wheat reference bread breakfast. Neither the variation in composition between the milling fractions nor the different doses resulted in significant differences in any of the appetite ratings when compared with one another.

The results show rye bread can be used to decrease hunger feelings both before & after lunch when included in a breakfast meal. Rye bran induces a stronger effect on satiety than the other two rye fractions used when served in iso-caloric portions.

Detraining and Retraining

This week has been a quote-unquote easy week. However, I cannot say my body can tell the difference between an easy week and a hard week at this particular point in time. On Monday afternoon my body would have called this week hard. However, after yesterday afternoon's run, my physiology clearly said things were all right and that I was on the right track. Sure, my heart rate was a little higher than I would have liked it for eight miles, but I did the same loop I ran six weeks ago a minute faster, without stopping the watch at two intersections and felt better about the whole thing this time.

I could find a lot of excuses for why I'm not where I would like to be at this time of the year, but I have to agree with my coach's dictum: gains in distance running (and endurance sport) is as much a function of patience as it is of pace.

It's important to get out and do something, even if it isn't directly related to your main sport, as many days in a row as possible. Run, jog, bike, briskly walk, do jumping jacks...because, beloved, the concept of detraining is reality, as real as the rising numbers on the scale and the doctor's chart. Life gets in the way. Business gets in the way. Weather gets in the way. And worst of all, our own laziness gets in the way. My education psychology professor might have had it correct when he told us, one quiet spring evening in grad school: 'If you don't use it, you lose it. If you do use it, it breaks.' But I'd rather Super Glue it together than walk around the track looking for it a second/third/fourth time.

Triathlete/coach Chuck ("Chuckie V") Veylupek wrote something very politically incorrect in his blog, inspired by the attitude of some walkers on the track where he was training a neo-pro triathlete.

"The human body-yours-is the single most amazing instrument you will ever own. You will own it from the day you are born right up until the moment you die; it's the only "thing" you will own throughout that entire span. Don't be ashamed of your body, no matter what condition it's in. Learn to cherish it and befriend it, or the date of your demise may come sooner than you realize. Change your ways before it's too late, and though it may already be too late to ever be fully healthy, it's never too late to try. Diabetes Type II is preventable. Heart disease is preventable. Obesity is preventable. Cancer (to a lesser extent) is preventable. Bad health is preventable. Death is, um, delay-able. Walk on ladies, walk on. But do me a favor: don't despise Angela because she cares about herself more than you do. Your mumbles are as loud as each of your foot-strikes."

I have fun challenging athletes who have developed their fitness over time. I care about the entry-level runners who come to me, but with the fit athlete it means I can pull more tricks out of my little black bag without worrying if they will come up dinged from too much training. Retraining the detrained athlete can be frustrating, both to the athlete and the coach...most coaches would rather not see their athletes regress into that state. That's why many of them have little regard for excuses...doesn't mean they haven't used them at one time or another, but they know what those excuses do.

So, as Chuckie V said: Cherish and befriend your body. Keep it trained. Make your coach use their imagination when developing your next workout. :)

The Eighty-Percent Solution

Of course, the only caption I could probably think of at this particular time is a rip-off of an old James Taylor tune, Hey, Buddy, That's Me On The Jukebox...or something like that. Once again I decided to join up with 17,500 of my closest friends in order to partake in what might be considered (lightly) the sacrament of sweat on the day before Easter.
After running one of my strongest 10K races last year, followed by probably what has been the most challenging training years I've ever had as a runner, I harbored no unrealistic expectations for the day. All I wanted to do was:
1) Run well enough (top 500 finishers) to earn my fifth Crescent City Classic poster in five tries.
2) Finish in under 40 minutes.
3) Not injure myself.
This years' trip had more of an Emerald Coast Racing Team focus to it, since seven of us stayed in the same hotel just blocks from the starting line. What it lacked in pure amenities it made up for in location, location, location. (Editorial comment: Probably not worth a repeat next year, but the price was reasonable enough to merit one.) I had to take care of some RRCA business earlier in the day - promised the LA state rep I would support her meeting and provide a brief presentation on measurement and certification - hope it was good enough. CCC always has that sort of work hard, play hard attitude around it; the volunteers from the New Orleans Track Club and other local sporting organizations really bust their chops to make our experience each year a memorable one.
We didn't push any particular itinerary, allowing the laissez faire, laissez passe mentality to go on. Suzanne and I knew what we wanted/needed to get accomplished; everything else was gravy. It kind of made for a smaller group dynamic, but we managed to hook up at least once through the weekend.
Enough about them. Back to me.
Great conditions for racing, especially when compared to last year's near freezing temperatures. We had temps in the high 50s at the start with a gentle breeze coming from the north, if I rightly recall. Since we were so close to the start I completely overlooked the need for a warm-up jog; usually the Pensacola contingent all meets at the Chateau Sonesta for a quick photo-op, then makes their way toward the starting corrals, about half a mile away. Being as close as we were, I had to walk no more than three blocks, maybe four, to the corral and porta-johns. (I worried more about the potty stop than the warm-up. Both are just as important; I could have jogged a couple of corrals back and hit a porta-john with a much smaller waiting line...achieving the desired or necessary results - empty bladder/bowel and loose limbs.)
As usual, the NOLA military contingent seems to find a new way to screw around with athlete access every year. This year there was no division of corrals, so we found more than our share of persons who were about two corrals out of their league, up with the elites, near-elites and pretty darn good runners.
No warm-up and lots of nervous tension doesn't do well when you're standing in a crowd of 17,500 waiting for a cannon to shoot you down Decatur Street. I looked at the readout on my HR monitor and found it registering somewhere in the high 190s. Probably a good thing I didn't take more than a swig of Suzanne's coffee to go along with my bottle of orange juice.
Mile 1 & 2 were run in 6:15 and 6:10 pace. Right from the start of the race I didn't feel like I was running with the option of an extra gear. (There's the consequence of undertraining and insufficient warm-up) I also noticed my left shoelace flopping about after the first mile split. I knew it would mean the difference between a bad day and a very bad day; stopping to retie would lead to a bad day, ignoring it in the presence of all these knuckleheads could cause a very bad day. Stopped for about 20 seconds just before the left turn onto Esplanade Avenue and did a quick double knot...something I should have done a couple of hours earlier.
Mile 3 & 4 felt closer to a typical day on this course. I hit the three-mile mark at about the time I normally would have run a 5K (if racing fit). While I wasn't too worried I didn't have the confidence of rolling through the rest of the race like I wanted to. Sure, I was still passing runners in ones and twos, but I couldn't tell whether these were good runners, knuckleheads who went out too hard and were starting to pay for their mistakes, or jumpers, folks who were not seeded and decided to jump in on the course after the starting line.
I used to have evil things to say about bandits, but I am learning to dislike jumpers more so. If you're not seeded in a race and you decide to jump onto the course after the starting line, wait until you begin to see a lot of people at your pace...not at the pace you wish you could run.
Okay, there's my cranky moment for the blog. I'm back now.
Mile 5 & 6 is always the worst part of this race. You're away from the packs of spectators on Esplanade and far off from the packs near the finish under the oak trees. This is the part of the course where if I'm not racing fit or haven't run smart I end up Gallowalking. This year was no exception. All I could hear during this particular stretch was my mind telling my body how badly it (my body!) sucked. Once I turned into the park, over by the tennis courts, and saw the time clock (32 minutes at 5 miles) I resigned myself to the fact I would have to have a super last mile and two tenths to make it in under 40 minutes...and that at this point it wasn't going to happen without a lot of hurt. When you get to the 5.2 mile point on the course, at this little bridge, there's a guy who stands and counts the runners coming through. He's usually pretty accurate, give or take ten runners - well, at least up to the first hundred or so. After the pack thickens up it's probably a SWAG (serious wild-@$$ guess). Counter-Guy has me at 190-195, which is the lowest I've been on the food chain in five years. At that point I make the decision to turn and burn the last mile and see how many people I can pick off, regardless of how badly I'm hurting (Note: Bev Fair's "what would Coach do?" comment again). I lost count of how many persons I passed once I got to the circle around the museum, but I suspect somewhere around 15-20.
At .2 to go is the boom where the Marathon Foto folks take some of the best photos during the race. It's usually my favorite part of the course because there's not that many persons near me when I get here. However, some knucklehead who is barely ahead of me decides he's going to have his moment of exultation, raising his arms skyward for the camera. Thanks, dude. Now it's going to take some serious Photoshop work for me to get a good photo of this race. I guess I'll pass you now.
I can hear a guy coming up on my left and working it hard. I have nothing left in the tank. Zero. He's going to pass me, so I might as well keep pushing and make him work a little longer.
Finished in 40:18, 136th overall. For the first 30 minutes after the race I'm disappointed with myself, especially for not having the guts to maintain the effort in the fourth and fifth miles. However, looking back, I did meet at least two of my three goals for the day. I knew I was under-trained; needed more long runs, and more quality speedwork. Forgoing a decent warm-up also prevented me from being more comfortable at the start (sometimes you need to release a little of the excess energy before you go to the starting line) and making necessary equipment adjustments (I normally use a lightweight trainer with elastic laces, but the last two races have been in either a lightweight trainer without elastics or a medium weight trainer without elastics).
We're not there, but we're doing fine getting there.
The rest of the group ran well - one was in the top-100, another two besides myself finished in the top-500, and my senior guy barely missed top-500 by less than a minute.

Are We Having Fun Yet?

Last Thursday was the first time I stepped on the track to run since the marathon. I did three miles on the treadmill the week before, which was not only painful but discouraging, especially when my heart rate shot up faster for an eight-minute-per-mile pace than it would be for something, er, a little bit more relaxed. I lumbered through the two mile warm-up, as well as some easy striders, but had to shut it all down during the first 300-meter piece. Too much bang bang.
First thought was well, it definitely is not the right pair of shoes for running. So, I went to see the owner of my friendly neighborhood runninig emporium...got into a more-cushioned pair of shoes and went out for a quick trot on the sidewalk. Bang bang bang...still not good. After a brief, animated discussion, we figured out my issue is not just shoe-related, but biomechanical, reinforced by the wrong shoe. When an experienced (under three-hour) marathoner tells you he would not run a marathon in the shoes you used, that's not a good sign. Nothing like getting slapped around by a guy who you give a hundred bucks every couple of months, no?

Great fun over the past weekend. Nothing like sitting on your butt for five hours on the highway, followed by sitting on your butt for 20 hours in a college auditorium learning everything you ever wanted to know about track and field coaching but were afraid to ask. Oh, yeah, add another five-hour drive on the return. There are things I probably never will have to do as a coach...like teach someone how to pole vault. But, you never know, dude. It could happen. I guess if I were the king of track and field I would divide the level 1 course into the relevant areas (sprints, jumps, throws, endurance) like level 2 presently is. However, I guess if you look hard and long enough you can find common threads in all of the disciplines.

Yes, it was a weekend where there was not enough coffee and too much Taco Bell. After two meals there, and one in a Mexican restaurant (all right, I have to admit I would have gone to the Chinese joint further up the way in the strip mall but I couldn't find a parking spot close enough), all I wanted on the way home was something that didn't look like fast food. I chose the wrong exit on Interstate 10 to pull off for a bite to eat, though; of the four restaurants, three of them were fast food joints co-located with gas stations. The only stand-alone joint was a Waffle House kind of place. All right. At least I can get a cup of coffee and a ham-and-cheese omelet and be certain of its origin being somewhere else than a cardboard box.

I have a love-hate relationship with traveling, yet it has to be done if you want to compete outside of your own back yard or learn anything. Maybe someday I'll get it figured out, how to get the best of both worlds - staying comfortable and going places - while I expand my own horizons.

The Job Hunt, Redux

Well, my quote-unquote vacation is quote-unquote almost over. If I had the brains the Almighty provided to wooden geese, I would have taken the other two days this week for which I hadn't originally planned. I'm extending it just a little bit longer to include a long weekend of education in Jacksonville; who knows, I might even be a better coach when it is all said and done.

However, I am taking to heart something I heard yesterday morning from the wife of the man who owns our local running emporium. She reminded me I trained under a different system than the one/s to which most coaches ascribe, so (in so many words) adding more bricks to my knapsack might not be as beneficial as I think. Thank you, Mimi. Spoken like the maternal figure you are. I still bow in your general direction.

Since I'm back in the office, the active hunt for a new job goes back into full swing. Ideally, I'd like to stay at about the same income and (40-hour) time constraint. I've got resumes out in the abyss, but I have the sneaking suspicion nothing will come to pass until I have a reduction-in-force notice in hand (which places me on the preferred placement listing). The sooner I'm in a new j-o-b, the sooner I can figure out what I can do as a coach and an athlete.

Christmas, however, is over. It's time to get back on the chain gang. I have my own personal training plan writ large, as well as my goals. That's always a good start. Following that, as always, comes the hard part of charting the path to the goals, then tracking the progress along the path. As I've become what I like to think of myself as...computer savvy over the last few years, I've graduated from ring-bound logbooks to spreadsheets. Some have been more effective than others. One I liked for many years was developed by David Hays, a physician (I believe). His spreadsheet, which I think is called LogRun, is a neat tool, especially if you want a good, workable, editable way of following your progress...especially when it comes to tracking shoe mileage.

You can keep track down to the mile the distance your shoes have traveled over time, which can save you a load of grief, joint soreness and the risk of overuse injury.

I use it in conjunction with a workout tracker program on the Presidents' Council for Physical Fitness and Sports to estimate what my spinning/indoor trainer and swim workouts would have been if it were a run. It's not perfect, but it beats most anything else I've seen out there. You also can keep track of activity in order to qualify for bronze, silver and gold awards. Oh, yeah, there is a platinum one, too, but I suspect it will take me another four or five years (barring cycling incidents requiring six to eight weeks of hanging out in a sling) to reach that one.

So, take time this week to look at what you accomplished last year, what you wanted to accomplish, and what it might take to bring those missed goals to pass.

Myth America

As the holiday season nears its end, I have no doubt whatsoever the track facility where I train will be filled with well-meaning persons trying to undo the damage inflicted upon their bodies since the end of October. I hold out hope (however fleeting) they will keep at it long enough to develop a healthy habit of daily (or near-daily) exercise.
I'm not certain what is more frightening, the pile of fitness, health and dietary myths printed on a regular basis in the public media...or those that are not only printed in the media, but repeated by medical professionals...with no scientific evidence whatsoever.
The British Medical Journal traditionally carries light-hearted features in its Christmas edition. Two U.S. researchers took seven common beliefs and searched for evidence to support them.
Despite frequent mentions in the popular press of the need to drink eight glasses of water (in fact, repeated on the health section of Yahoo!), they found no scientific basis. The lack of evidence is recorded in a study published in the American Journal of Psychology.
So, let's take a look at the other six "myths" (and my editorial commentary):
1 - Reading in dim light ruins your eyesight - unlikely to do permanent damage, but may make you squint, blink more and have trouble focusing. (If you're reading Runner's World, some of the articles will make more sense.)
2 - Shaving makes hair grow back faster or coarser - no effect on thickness or hair regrowth, but stubble gives the impression of coarseness. (So if I let my mustache, beard and head and leg hair grow long, I can slick it down for aerodynamic effect. What do you think, dear?)
3 - Eating turkey makes you drowsy - tryptophan is involved in sleep and mood control, but turkey has no more than chicken or beef. Eating lots are probably the real cause of sleepiness. (Not to mention slowness and fatness.)
4 - We use only 10 percent of our brains - imaging shows no area of the brain is completely inactive. (The jury is still out on the effects of skull thickness.)
5 - Hair and fingernails continue to grow after death - the skin dries and retracts after death, giving the appearance of longer hair or nails. (Hm...there's an untapped market for manicurists...)
6 - Mobile phones are dangerous in hospitals - studies found minimal interference with medical equipment. (People using mobile phones in public, not only hospitals, are more a pain in the @$$ than anything else. Mobile phones are still dangerous in airliners and while driving on the roadways, however.)
So, go ahead and use that cell phone (quietly) in the hospital, back off your dietary intake a skosh if you're feeling sleepy, and drink when you're thirsty. If you're one of those persons who believes all the stuff you read in the newspapers, stop, already. Always, but always go to the source documents. And don't believe everything your physician says, especially when they tell you that running is bad for the knees. :)

So, What IS "Fresh?"

Newcomers to my track workouts spend a lot of their first workouts trying to learn all of the terminology - to do the workouts you have to speak the language. I've spent lots of time trying to explain - especially to newer athletes who are hammering at my pace on an easy day - just how hard they should be working.

The object is not to run all-freaking-out at every practice. If you are going to run anaerobic, no more than ten percent of the workout should go there...the rest of the time should be in varying degrees of aerobic pace...or lactate threshhold pace. My wife, once again, asked me last night how I would describe a "fresh" pace, which is what the workout was set for as of late...we're in between seasons and getting ready for laying a new base.

Here's how my coach's coach, Bob Schul, described his workout paces:

First there are various speeds you will be using. They are "fresh", "good" and "hard".
I do not run my athletes "all out" as I find there are too many injuries or potential injuries when the body is pushed to that extreme.
Distance runners do not need to run all out, since in a race, when they are sprinting, it is not how fast their muscles will contract but how fast they will contract when tired.
There are efforts in between the "fresh, good, and hard," but they are subtle.

"Fresh" running is faster than a jog but there is no pressure on the body.
Everybody is different depending on their natural reflex action.
Some can run 200 meters in 40 seconds while others may run it in 30 seconds.
It is the effort that is important.

"Good" means that you now have some pressure on the upper body.
Somewhere between 5/8 and 3/4 speed.

"Hard" means you are running about 7/8.

If I tell an athlete to do a good build up, that means you will start "fresh" for 1/3 of the run, change to a gear I call "fresh to good", for 1/3 of the run and finish the last 1/3 at "good".
If you are doing a "hard" buildup, you run the first 1/3 at "fresh", the second 1/3 at "good" and the last 1/3 at "hard".
Obviously you should be well conditioned to attempt "hard".

Where you run the intervals does not matter.
It could be on a track or a nice grass field.
Don't be too concerned with exact distances.
If you use a park then estimate the distance and use it.
Try to stay off the roads when doing these, as a softer surface will treat your legs much better.
Even your long runs might be done on a softer surface if it is available.
Trails would be great for your long runs.
Be sure to wear good training shoes, not racing flats.
Save those for the races.