Not Too Far To Walk Back

It's great to be able to link up with many of my fellow run enthusiasts and classmates by way of social media.  Every once in a while I hear a doozy:

"u know what the trouble with jogging is...by the time you realize you're not in shape for it, it's too far to walk back."  I'm not that shocked to hear a statement like this coming from a fellow Baby Boomer.  Most of my high school companions, including the sporty ones, would consider themselves to be - unlike Sir Paul McCartney - more than the man they used to be.  Even though, if asked to judge our health on a 1-to-100 scale, we would most likely give ourselves a score in the 70 range, I'm starting to see some around my age "leave" in ones and twos.  An insurance company-sponsored survey of 1,800 persons, ranging in age from 25-to-64, found folks my age more likely to define "healthy" as visiting the doctor and filling the necessary check in the block on the questionnaire each year...and the requisite bodily fluid work-up, etc.
Only one in five of us would say we're doing something to "look good in our underwear," such as a regular exercise routine.  And when it happens, it's more likely to be because we've got a goal staring us in the face; men usually tie it to an endurance event, such as a marathon...women to a wedding or reunion.

Like any 12-step program, the first step to working through the problem is admitting the problem exists.  Lots of Boomers invested the lion's share of their time and effort on raising families and developing careers.  Now that we've begun to have more time to do other stuff we receive the sudden and frightening message that we're not as fit as we were when we were in high school or university.  How do we get back to where we once belonged?  First of all, like our generation is more likely to inform the Gen-Xers and Millennials, we need to not sweat the small stuff. 

If I were going to go back and develop a running habit from the outset I would start with finding a loop course, just big enough to traverse that I felt like there was a level of accomplishment, but not so large that I couldn't do it in five minutes or so...so we're talking probably something in the range of 600 or 700 meters; no bigger than half a mile around.  Grass and packed dirt would be fantastic, but an asphalt bike path will do in a pinch.  Start by doing one minute of running, followed by walking until you're ready to run one minute again.  Do this for at least 30 minutes, every other day for three weeks. 

Test yourself at the three-week point:  Run for as long as you can without stopping.  Divide that time by three; make that the new "run" time.  Once you get to the point where you can run comfortably for thirty minutes you can start to add on time here and there as your body tolerates it.  Have fun with it; alternate hard running with easy running, easy running with brisk walks.  There are many benefits of running for time rather than for distance.  Unless you're in the surveying (or course measurement) business, a second is a second everywhere in the world (great for those persons who do a lot of traveling), and your heart and lungs will gain the same benefits whether you're doing three or five miles in a thirty minute span. 

And if the heat and/or humidity happens to be an obstacle, treadmills can be the best alternative.  I know people who despise treadmills with a passion, but I like the ability to control almost all of the potential variables which can affect exercise performance, namely air temperature, surface hardness/softness, elevation and speed (I'll include the ability to immediately stop the run, live to fight another day,should something begin to hurt badly.).  And if you're at a gym facility where there's lots of traffic, often the scenery isn't only limited to what's on the television screen.  To make certain you're not going at too quickly a pace during the run pieces, I would running the "talk test" during the first bout on the belt - start at five miles per hour.  Can you talk to yourself, or a person next to you, in complete sentences?  Bump up the speed a notch.  check yourself after a minute.  When you find the sentences are shorter, or you can't finish it without taking a deep breath you've probably found the right pace.  The walk recovery pace is not a problem; set it for anywhere between three and four miles per hour and you'll be fine.

Some persons say that treadmill running is not the same as running on the roads or trails, and they are correct, but in very small ways.  Other than wind resistance, there's not much difference between how our body reacts to running on a moving belt and how it reacts on a gravel road, or dirt trail, or rubber track.  Purists can kick the elevation on the treadmill up one notch just to make it feel more like you're working into a self-made breeze.

So don't fret if you're a boomer who's started to worry if they'll ever be able to regain lost fitness, or wants to drop weight, lower the risk of obesity-related diseases.  As long as you remain patient at the start, consistent through the process, and progressive in adding intensity once your body begins to tolerate the new (or renewed) stressors, it's never too far a walk back to a fit lifestyle.

"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.

Free Your Ears And Your Run Will Follow

My (wife’s) iPod crashed last week...right before a workout.  It wasn't a ‘good news, bad news’ situation.  It was more like a ‘good news, bad news, really bad news’ thing. 

Good news:  I had many of my favorite music files tucked away in my smart phone. 

Bad news:  The iPod required a reset to factory specifications.

Really bad news:  My computer was stolen a couple of weeks back; not only did I lose three years’ worth of training data, blog posts, articles, research and photos, but nearly two thousand MP3 files and podcasts, which were not in my iTunes account.  Thus, many of my favorite songs in that “sweet spot” tempo of 80-to-90 beats per minute would either need to be reinstalled from source CDs, or were gone forever.

I’ve written on many occasions how fickle technology can be toward the running athlete.  The more dependent we become on the technology to tell us what we think we need to know, or to make us happy during the run, the more earth-shattering it seems when everything “goes south.” 

My views on using personal music players vary from ambivalence and pragmatism to pity, depending on the shirt I’m wearing at the moment:

If I’m in running attire at a race the view is closer to ambivalence.

If I’m in a red or zebra-striped polo shirt I’m busy reaching for my notepad.  (My friends know what I mean.) 

I don’t run on the roads with a music player, but I’ll sing to myself when I run outside.  I tell my wife, for much the same reason I train on a treadmill, I want to control as many of the variables as possible.

One of the reasons people run with a music player is to dissociate, or to drown out the “stop already” messages the muscles, lungs and heart send to the brain throughout the course of a race.  Other runners use music players to reinforce run tempo (one reason they are prohibited in triathlon).  But there’s more that happens between the ears and the earphones of the individual runner when music is involved.

We have an internal clock which controls how well we move in the forward direction; run rhythm, stride length, run speed, and so on.  When fatigue sets in we need to grasp for some sort of cue to align with the “clock” in our head and normalize ourselves: music, lines in the road/on the track, telephone poles, etc.  The tempo of the music in the player may…or may not…be aligned with the "right" tempo for the individual runner.  Unless you’re a complete obsessive-compulsive it is highly unlikely your music is set aside in beat-per-minute playlists.  (In the interest of public disclosure, I do notate my BPM on my tracks.) 

That most likely means you are thinking more about what’s going into your head than what you’re putting out via your legs.

Do you sing in the shower?  Do you sing while cooking? Or folding clothes? 

And if you do, do you ALWAYS sing at the EXACT tempo at which the song was performed?

If you answered ‘no’ to the last question you may not need a music player to improve your running.  You can most likely sing your way to a better run performance.

Satoh and Kuzuhara (2008) assessed the time and steps of subjects walking along straight and curved paths while mentally singing a familiar song.  They were asked to listen to the song, clap hands while listening, sing the song, clap while singing the song, sing while walking in place, walk while singing, then walk while singing to themselves.  Analysis of the gait (degree of arm swing, the height of the knees and the smoothness of turn) was performed by a trained observer.

The patients reported feeling improvements in foot progression, ease of arm swing, knee raise and turning and fixation of walking speed. Qualitative evaluation of walking indicated higher knee lift, larger arm swings, smoother turns and less inconsistency in gait.  There was a significant improvement in the time and steps while walking a straight path and turning.  The researchers believed improvement would be more dramatic in the event of worse gait disturbance.  The study participants were able to use mental singing to recover normal pacing when pace was disturbed.

Athletes who moderate their run mechanics by the use of music will most likely benefit from simply singing to themselves during the run rather than placing their safety at risk by using a music player.

Finding The Sweet Spot

"These sudden joys have sudden endings. They burn up in victory like fire and gunpowder. . . . Too fast is as bad as too slow."
--"Romeo and Juliet," Act 2, Scene 6 (William Shakespeare, ca. 1597), in modern English.

My loving wife often warns me about what she calls "hobby-horses." She knows I tend to be fixated to the verge of obsession on certain topics. When I served as RRCA state rep for North Florida, headphone use was my "hobby horse." I've had other "hobby horses," too, but the headphone thing was most-notable.

I've talked a lot about treadmill running with people who hate treadmills. Some of them are folks who say TMs are no good for training, others don't like the boredom factor. Since late November, I've done every weekday run, including speed workouts, on a treadmill. True, the TM can be breathtakingly boring, but they let me control many training variables. I can adjust one variable at a time and see how my body reacts, or I can end the workout the instant my tendons are in distress.

The initial 35-minute runs are now 60-minute runs, averaging eight minutes per mile. The good news is I'm near the training volume where I was when I was running six days a week and racing once every three months. But the ache in my back and hips is not so good.

It's not the shoes - the oldest of my three pairs has somewhere between 260-270 miles on them, with the newest pair less than thirty. Could it be the treadmill? The "Gait Guys" wrote an article for Triathlete magazine; they warned readers about how a treadmill can adversely affect a runners' gait.

After reading the research by University of Virginia physical therapist Jeff Dicharry, I called the overwhelming majority of the "Gait Guys" article bupkis. Except for that "downhill" thing.

Like a road or trail surface, the feel and comfort of a treadmill varies by manufacturer, model, and even the machine's installation. Ed W. sees treadmills and elliptical trainers as warm-up, not the workout itself...that means run/tri guys like me are not his gym's typical customers. The treadmills in his cardio area are on solid rubber flooring, and thick rubber matting supports his lobby area TMs. There might be a slight slope in the lobby naturally; all the lobby treadmills seem to have this feeling like one is running slightly downhill.

The "Gait Guys" say the downhill sensation is caused by the "pull" of the belt on the runner's lower extremity, in contrast to the "push" of the lower extremity on the ground surface. They say it affects the gait; Dicharry has proven whatever variations exist (in 40 percent of runners) are so miniscule that to tell the difference it requires equipment which exists in only two sports labs in the country.

So, runners who sense that "downhill" feeling on the TM may benefit from an elevation tweak of 0.5-to-1.0 percent. I've tried both; for me a 0.5-percent adjustment is enough to take away that sensation.

The cause of the hip ache is simple - spin class on the "off" days. The exercise bicycle in the gym cannot be adjusted as readily as a "real" bike, or like a "spinning" bike. Different movement patterns cause musculoskeletal aches and soreness.

Any runner who has ever tried to run a pace that is too slow for their comfort has probably found out too late the error of their ways. I like to tell the tale of running with Suzanne at Honolulu's Ala Moana Park in January 2008; a solid minute-to-two-minutes-per-mile decrease in pace left me hobbling after the third day. A pace that is much slower than a runner's intrinsic efficiency forces major gait adjustment, either in stride length or stride duration. A shorter stride length is not biomechanically injurious; a longer stride duration means a longer period of compression time for the large muscle groups and joints. Drive with your shock absorbers compressed beyond their normal range for an extended period of time is most likely going to shorten their lifespan.

So, perhaps it's possible not only for a runner to go at a pace that is too fast - leading to fatigue, overstriding, a compensated gait pattern, and heel-striking - but also too slow on a treadmill.

How can a runner determine what are good training paces for treadmill runs, without going into a lot of trial and error? There are a couple of really good on-line calculators developed by some of the nations' best running coaches (e.g., McMillan, Daniels) which provide optimal pace ranges for easy runs, recovery jogs, and speed work of varying degrees.

I used my Daniels VDOT training pace for easy/long runs as the starting point for treadmill runs. After a time it appears the easy/long run pace is too slow. So, I will probably start at the "marathon pace," a little closer to 7:30/mile, and adjust downward until I find the least uncomfortable pace which doesn't feel too slow.

That's why the later editions of Running Formula, and McMillan's calculator, have pace ranges, because there will always be a sweet spot at each of the intensities which feel best for the individual runner. While running too fast on the treadmill can injure a runner, too fast is no more injurious than running too slow.

Bad Workout? It's All In Our Mind

The latest books I've read have not been without their own degree of controversy. Much like the reading (running) public stepped to one side or the other of the line drawn in the sand over barefoot running and Christopher McDougall's "Born To Run," they seem to stand on the same kind of dividing line over Matt Fitzgerald's newest work, "Iron War: Dave Scott, Mark Allen, and the Greatest Race Ever Run."

Sometimes you have to look at the subtitle a little more closely. While Fitzgerald writes, with the assistance of two decades worth of research materials, about Scott and Allen, it's...well, it's not all about them. Iron War also tries to explain what made them different in 1989, and what makes endurance enthusiasts different now.

Yes, there are biographical pieces on Scott and Allen (which for this writer drew a parallel to other freakishly-good athletes like Michael Phelps and Lance Armstrong), but Fitzgerald looks at the sport of triathlon and the type of person drawn into it, especially the ultra-distance multisport events which were born of a bar room argument after the Honolulu Marathon thirty-plus years ago. He asks not only what drives the elite endurance athlete, but also what keeps their foot on the accelerator when the vast majority of us are begging to mash the brake pedal?

Or, as I began to think, why is it we tend to have crappy workouts when we are rushed for time; when we shoehorn in that speed workout in between the morning budget meeting and the afternoon conference call? Samuele Marcora says it might be more in our mind than we care to admit.

Marcora believes fatigue is more a perception of our mind than a physiological state. Watch runners break into a sprint for the last 200-to-300 yards of a race when they looked like they could not run another step just a half mile before. Timothy Noakes' central governor model of exercise performance says the brain makes a conscious effort to limit energy expenditure in order to save fuel for the heart, brain and lungs. But Marcora says the anterior cingulate cortex in the brain, the area responsible for control of our heart rate, breathing, autonomic responses, and conflict resolution, is the "boxing ring" for the struggle between the part of us that wants to quit and the side that wants to keep going.

Why do we feel physically fatigued after a sustained period of sedentary office work, like reconciling a budget spreadsheet (or sitting in a foreign language class)? The anterior cingulate cortex is engaged when we engage in an activity - even mental - which involves sustained attention to detail.

That might be another reason folks hate treadmill running so much. All that data - time, pace, distance, heart rate, calories and the like - is displayed before the runner. We start to do the mental gymnastics of how much longer before the end of the treadmill program, etc., and the little voice in the head begins to remind us of all the other things we need to get done...right away.

Even those runs which get shoehorned in between the rush-hour drive time and the drive to the youth soccer match can be affected by the other "noise" in our heads. The mental to-do list makes us more tired on our run, which makes us get down more on ourself because we're not running as well as we would like.

Sometimes it just pays to know "when we're training well we're probably not training well." It's not the "mark-a-star-on-the-training-calendar" runs which do us the most benefit...it's the ones where we want to beat ourselves up mentally which make us stronger.

Don't Say You Don't Belong

My wife ran another half-marathon this weekend. She's been very fortunate to mix business travel with road running, and I think if I could do the same with my work I would. Actually, I was able to during the first two years. After that work-related travel was pretty much minimized. If it couldn't be accomplished by phone or video conference then...and only then...did you have the chance of going on the road.

So there we were, in Miami Beach for an information technology conference. Well, she had the conference. I could have run the event if I had felt the compulsion, but still being injured and recovering, I didn't want to sidetrack my slow progress back to running fitness.

So, I decided I'd hang out along the course for a while and cheer my wife on for once. After which point I could go to breakfast and get a little run of my own. I had two mysteries of the universe which needed solution, though:

How can a guy in a tiny storefront restaurant be overlooked by two servers at eight o'clock in the morning? I wanted my cortadito, damn it. I needed my cortadito.

When looking at marathon and half-marathon participants it's not so much a spectrum of fitness as it is a Venn diagram: There are two categories - the fit and the insane. Then you have the intersection of the two groups, making up the insanely fit. I can understand the fit and the insanely fit doing it, but why do thousands of people who would fall under the "insane" category see the need to run or walk - 13.10938 or 26.21876 miles?

I'm not the best of spectators, especially for live sports events. Especially for live sports which I can do. Little league baseball and middle school basketball might have much to do with this attitude. I couldn't throw a baseball for beans, and I didn't touch a basketball until I was age ten. So I spent more time picking splinters out of my baseball uniform pants during the summer. Basketball was worse; I was more practice squad material than benchwarmer. I didn't get to play during "garbage" time; the coach didn't realize until the last game of the season ended.

Once I hit high school I figured out I was a better musician and actor than an athlete.

But during the spring of my senior year I had too much free time on my hands and sure as hell didn't want to go home early to deal with...never mind. So I went out for track, specifically distance running; in my school that was the 800 meters, mile and two-mile. The coach focused more on the sprints and hurdles than the distance guys; their training was more 'go out and run, you'll figure out what you need' than doing technical stuff or sprints. So I'd go run, then walk home from school after track.

It was dusty and very anti-social. But I was not at home. I never knew anyone who was cut from the track team. They might have quit, but they didn't get cut.

That's the nice thing about road running. You can quit, but nobody can say you don't belong. As long as you know how to place one foot in front of the other repeatedly from point A to point B you have a place in the grand scheme of things.

Got a brain, heart, lungs and limbs which are capable of propelling you along? Good.

Got a pair of shoes? Good.

Got a trail, path, track or road? Good.

And perhaps that's the reason people do road races. Call it "Occupy the Road," if you like. I guess you could just as easily run that 21.0625 or 42.125 kilometers out on a wooded trail, a beach, a stretch of sidewalk, a grassy field, or whatever surface (including a treadmill in the privacy of your own home or local gym...) you desire.

And those who have done it enough have heard the catcalls, insults and spurious warnings from the world around them. So for that amount of time, anywhere from one to six hours, on those Miami/Miami Beach streets, those 25,000 people were saying: 'I can quit if I feel like it, but you cannot say I don't belong here.'

And standing on the side of the road, as a rehabilitating runner, I was reminded the entire population, including the subsets described by John "The Penguin" Bingham - the "very fast," the "pretty fast," the "sort of fast," and the "penguins" - all belonged out there.

A couple of them held out their hand to swat a high five with me. I recognized one of my Marathon Maniac friends from the Christmas holidays. About five minutes later, my wife came by. Usually she's the one on the sideline and I'm the one racing.

"Go, honey! Go, honey! Go, honey! Go, honey!" I called out.

She looked at me and smiled. Sure, it was insane of her to be doing this, but she was having a good time.

The two gentlemen near her marveled at her one-man fan club, to which she replied, "I guess we can all be 'honey' today..."

Running might be an insane act, but don't ever let anyone say you don't belong out there.

Twenty Minutes To (More) Speed - Tempo Runs

Everyone has seen this runner: They toe the line at the local 5,000-meter race, go out at 6:30 pace for the first mile, subsequently slowing down to 7:30 pace on the third one. When you approach their gasping form as they hang onto a signpost, they tell you, 'I could have raced this one, but this was only a tempo run.'

Oh? Really?

When I coached weekly workouts it was my "job" to provide training which worked as many energy systems as possible.

(ED. COMMENT: My coach reminded me we used to do tempo runs as part of the group's training, for which he is correct...a few things changed some over the course of a few years...sometimes change does not always move toward the more beneficial.)

One day a week we did a lot of aerobic-to-threshold-pace stuff at a short (one-to-two-minute) duration. The second workout of the week consisted of efforts lasting anywhere from two-to-five minutes. Several members of the training group liked the longer repeats a great deal. But it was difficult to encourage tempo running as a solo workout outside of training sessions.

I didn't run regular tempo workouts, either. Yes, there were the occasional "anti-social" Wednesday evening beach runs, where I'd go out at a low-seven-minute pace for as long as my lungs could stand, then push a little harder for the last three miles. But it wasn't until I became treadmill-bound and more-closely focused on my own training I started to look a little more closely at the tempo run.

Most recreational runners don't like tempo running; I'm not certain if it is because they don't know what pace to run, they think tempo runs are too painful, or they'd much rather socialize during their runs. But I can tell you they're missing out on some free speed at a low (time) cost-to-(speed) benefit ratio.

First, let's look at what constitutes a tempo run. Dr. Jack Daniels, in "Running Formula," says that (ideally) twenty (to-thirty) minutes of steady running at threshold pace is a tempo run. That's twenty minutes of steady running at an effort level where our body uses the lactate as fast as it is produced from carbohydrate metabolism during physical exercise.

For example, a person who runs a 21-minute 5,000-meters would - according to Daniels - run tempo runs at about 7:10/mile pace (for those who speak treadmill, that's about 8.4 mph). If you still don't have a copy of "Running Formula," never fear. Take your 5,000-meter race pace per mile and add 25-30 seconds.

Are tempo runs painful? I will say they are no easy, breezy walk in the park. After running my first tempo run in about a year - and my first tempo run on a treadmill - my average heart rate was about five beats higher across the board, and my max heart rate near the end was just shy of 85 percent of maximum. For those runners who prefer to not inflict twenty minutes of "comfortably hard" effort on themselves, Daniels recommends what he calls "cruise intervals" of one-mile or ten-minutes, broken up with 30-to-60-seconds of recovery.

Another challenge of tempo running comes from having the right course. The right circuit or course can make all the difference. If your favorite training stretch - for example, from the hotel where Suzanne and I like to stay to Audubon Park and back - has a lot of intersections and traffic, it's easier for me to run "cruise intervals." A good, lightly-trafficked and distance-marked loop or bike path, like the 4.25-mile or 5.8-mile loops on Pensacola Beach, are good for tempo work. Levees and rails-to-trails are also good.

And it doesn't necessarily have to be a solitary affair. Social runners who are at or near the same ability level can work together and ensure the run tempo does not slack off.

Tempo work is probably one of the most under-appreciated, and under-used, workouts which are available to the self-coached runner. The only things necessary for longer-distance speed gains are to know the proper pace, set aside twenty quality minutes, and keep pushing the entire piece.

Treadmills - We're Talking "Circus Animal Stressful"

One of my fellow running bloggers from the New Orleans area, Jenny, asked me this question:

"A friend and I were discussing road vs treadmill running and wondering why we can run at 6mph on road but on the treadmill run at 5.2mph and get tired much quicker? Have you ever done a blog on that phenomenon ? LOL :) I figured you would be the one who knew best."

When my friends Betsy and Aaron Boudreaux come visit and we go out for a run, I swear she can tell the slightest elevation variance on what I would consider a fairly flat road. I guess that's what happens when you live in a city which is laid out like a soup bowl. What I see as normal near-level terrain she notices as a rise in elevation.

Dr. Jack Daniels talks about the difference between TM and road in the most recent edition of "Running Formula." In fact, he has a series of charts which equate TM pace/elevation to road pace. From what I can tell, most of the possible reasons for this phenomenon all seem to boil down to variation, or the lack of it.

Pace - If you refer back to the comment by Jay Dicharry, PT, which I shamelessly ripped out of that "Running Times" video, It might have to do with the fact there's no pace variation to speak of when you use a TM. We might 'average' 6 on the road it might vary from 5.5 to 6.5.

Equipment - Some TMs are more accurate in their measure of a "mile" than others. If you take a wheel and measure the TM belt, then run it for a minute at 7.5mph, ideally, you should get APPROXIMATELY .125 miles.

Environment -It's harder to stay comfortable running indoors on a TM compared to running outside on your favorite pathway. While we can control (to a degree) the elements in which we run on a TM, especially if it's bitter cold, raining or freaking windy outside, but what we lose in nasty weather we also lose in that cooling airflow we experience in the great outdoors.

Add to that controlled environment the joy-killing factor of boredom. Even though some of the best-equipped gyms have televisions/DVD players/music, the unnatural act of running on a moving belt is mentally stressful. Think circus animal stressful. There's only so much a guy/gal can do to dissociate, so mental discomfort soon leads to physical discomfort.

Now that you've got me to thinking about a run, it might be a good idea for me to grab my stuff in the bag by my coffee pot here at work and get out on the chip trail before the weather turns nasty again.

Happy Christmas to all of you!

Open Season on The Roads

I almost ran into a runner as I drove from my home to a local run group gathering last night.

Well, the term "almost" might be a little bit of a stretch. I was a couple of feet closer to him than I felt comfortable. I had my low beam driving lights on and cannot say I was distracted by anything. In fact, it wasn't until I was about 50 feet away from the guy that I saw anything.

I know my nearly fifty-year-old eyesight isn't the greatest, even at baseline. Top that off with the twilight conditions and the poor lighting on this stretch of road along the bluffs just off Pensacola Bay, it's amazing more runners (and bicyclists) are not injured or killed there.

In my own defense, when a guy runs out along the side of the road at twilight wearing dark gray and black thermal compression wear, with nothing light-colored, lighted or reflectorized he is not doing himself any favors.

The period between Thanksgiving and the New Year might best be called "open season" on runners, walkers and cyclists. Motorists are in a hurry to get from home to work, from work to shopping, from shopping to social function, and from social function to heaven knows where. Multitasking is something most humans do poorly, yet they do it regularly. That leaves the responsibility to the person not cocooned in a motor vehicle to either stay clear of where the distracted motorists are, or to make themselves very, very visible.

Lots of runners loathe the treadmill because of its boring nature; the same surface step after step. The same pace minute after minute. Are we talking about the same runners who go out for a run with headphones? Dude, wear them on the treadmill. Make a game out of the treadmill run; go hard for a song, then easy for a song. Sing along with the jams - I bet that will encourage everyone to steer clear.

Reflective clothing can be bought in a variety of styles (vest, belt, top), (bright) colors, and fabric weights. I recommend pairing reflective clothes with clip-on lighting; the more the better. At the least if you don't feel like wearing lights or reflective stuff, then a light-colored long-sleeved top is better than nothing. And definitely better than black, dark gray or dark blue.

And, most importantly, don't forget that cell phone with the camera, just in case things do go south on the run. You never know when you might see someone who needs assistance...or when you might need it yourself. If changing the time or the location of the daily run or ride to get away from traffic is not possible, then do what you can to make yourself seen out on the roads.

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.

Time Is The Final Currency

Suzanne and I drove home the other day from what I would call the fitness equivalent of the Beatles' "Magical Mystery Tour." Between the two of us, we visited Gulfport and Biloxi, MS, and Gulf Shores, AL, participating in two events. Naturally, this meant being awake and functional before the crack of dawn to carpool with friends to the venue/s.

In between Johnny Cash tunes, a couple of Suzanne's friends found out her age, as well as mine. They also marveled at her fitness level and appearance as of late. I like when people look at my wife. Why not? That's what I like to do.

We talked about the observation later in the afternoon. We don't see our health as fantastic. In fact, when we compare ourselves to many individuals near our age we consider ourselves somewhere closer to the median. I guess that's where that theory of relativity kicks in; if you spend much of your free time with active persons you're more likely to fool yourself into thinking it's the norm. But if you have a lot of friends or associates who aren't necessarily athletic you soon find out exercise is not the norm.

Research done in 2010 by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics found 22 percent of American men and 16 percent of American women over the age of 15 engaged in sports, recreation or exercise activity; almost an hour and 20 minutes for women, just a little under two hours for men. That averages out to somewhere a little under 20 minutes a day for the entire population of America.

In 2008, the US Center for Disease Control recommended that adult Americans get anywhere from 75 to 150 minutes of aerobic activity (depending on the intensity), combined with at least two days a week of activity designed to strengthen and work the major muscle groups. If you divided those activities up it would be anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes of aerobic exercise five days a week, and two days (CDC recommends multiple sets of between 8 and 12 repetitions of any exercise requiring some muscle strength) of muscle strengthening activity, which can range from weight training to resistance bands, to hard yard work, to yoga.

Yoga, huh? I've tried yoga. For me it's more an exercise in frustration. To each their own.

Even with such a low standard, why don't Americans get in a reasonable workout?

The government survey data says something I've always felt: We invest our time, finances, and resources into the things which are the most important to us. It makes it easier to understand why people buy workout club or gym memberships and never step foot in the place.

Many persons who do invest in a gym membership or a treadmill or an exercise device think exercise is a zero-sum game. If I don't have an hour to invest in a workout then I'm wasting my time. For many of them it's impossible to block out an entire hour or more to dedicate to a workout.

Ever consider whether the workout can be split into two or three sessions throughout the day? What if I can do a 30-minute workout in the morning before I go to work, and a 30-minute workout in the evening once I return home? Some physiologists have opined that anything less than 20 minutes of aerobic activity is probably not going to provide a benefit, especially in the case of weight training. No lollygagging in the gym.

So what are the benefits of splitting up a workout into smaller pieces? A little bit is always better than nothing. Personally, I can hit the road for a 30-minute run before I go to work, and get at least three-and-a-half-miles in. I haven't beat myself up too much; my body is still burning calories during the day, and I'm stimulated when I hit the office as much as if I sucked down a cup of coffee. Even better, if something suddenly comes up in the evening which requires my non-running presence I'm less likely to feel guilty.

Are there down sides to splitting runs?

The first drawback may be an endurance limitation. Running two 30-minute pieces a day may work well for a runner focused on races up to 10,000 meters, but anything longer may be a disaster. For longer events the training runs are still going to be long. Time-crunched runners can still split runs in their training plan which will take longer the two-and-a-half hour physiological limit for distance training. Two-and-a-half hours of running on Saturday, followed by an hour-to-90 minutes on Sunday, is more likely to keep my wife and family members happy as marathon training grinds into the later weeks of the plan.

In our household, the dirty clothes already multiply at an astounding clip. Two runs a day means dirty running attire accumulate at twice the rate. Add to that pile of stink sweaty shoes which need to dry or need time to dry; you'll either spend time shoving newsprint inside the shoe, money to maintain a running shoe arsenal, ingenuity in finding ways to make wet shoes less wet in as little as eight hours...or you'll develop a tolerance for damp running shoes.

Lastly, splitting runs in two means more attention to the (brief) recovery period available. When running twice a day run efforts ideally vary between hard and easy, or all of the efforts are easy. A good diet, portable self-massage devices, regular hydration and even sports supplementation also become more important during the period between runs.

Time, as David Crosby wrote, is the final currency. We can only spend what we have available at a particular moment. It doesn't necessarily mean the time we have during a day for running is absolutely limited to one unbroken 60-minute period. With a little discipline and the desire to do what is absolutely necessary, even the time-constrained runner can achieve the goals they've set for themselves. It all boils down to will.

Horses For Courses - The Right Music For The Run

Not a week after we returned from Singapore, my second iPod Touch went on to it's eternal reward. Apple, in their infinite wisdom(?) decreed the cause of "death" to be immersion or exposure to fluid. I unsuccessfully tried to explain I live in a part of the country where humidity is a way of life. The only way to NOT expose electronics to fluid is to hermetically seal it within a plastic casing, like the DryCase I reviewed months back. The positive of the DryCase sealing technology was countered by its size. I could easily carry the iPod Touch in a knitted pouch hung around my neck, access the on/off/volume controls, and so on. I didn't run with the iPod in Singapore because I forgot to take the DryCase along. Somehow the exposure happened. Nothing else can be done without spending a lot of money to repair the iPod.


So, I'm back to running without music.


It's a blessing and a curse. Running with music naturally provide mental stimulation, and allows runners to dissociate - tune out - the messages which often try to slow down or stop them on a run. For me, running without music - especially in the morning - provided the chance to tune in to bird songs, watch clouds move, and pay close(r) attention to my immediate surroundings. There are times it's nice to not have any distractions blaring into your head.


The first "non-musical" treadmill run, however, found me grooving voluntarily to a John Mayer tune in the back of my mind. I recalled entire albums of music from memory before on road runs, because Walkmans were heavier and had lousy battery life.

Running author Hal Higdon mentioned in social media posts the favorite pieces of music he would listen to during treadmill workouts. Higdon liked classical music, including Beethoven and Tchaikovsky. "Horses for courses," triathlon coach Brett Sutton would say, while it works for Hal, I think I'll avoid the 1812 Overture and the climactic cannonade...at least on the treadmill. We all have our own personal tastes. And, as I used to tell my students, "there is no such thing as bad music."


So, what's the best kind of music to listen to when running?


An English sports psychologist studied the effects of musical performance, and considered tempo to be everything. In his opinion, most commercial dance tunes and rock music seemed to fit best, having a tempo which ranged from 120-to-140 beats per minute. Music professors, fitness buffs and medical professionals seem to agree a tempo which aligns with specific workout motions is the best for the activity.


When I think about the music I've "channeled" during some of my best races, it falls into the 120-to-125 beat-per-minute range. My best long runs, however, are in the 160-to-180 (or 80-to-90) beat range. Of course, good grooves are everything. Punk and hard rock - styles which often make a concerted effort to break the "comfortable" groove - are probably the least desirable genres for running.


Ah, but horses for courses.


There are a variety of sites on-line where you can find new music at a desired tempo; other sites allow you to find old favorites or in different genres. There are also great workout podcasts available for download, with music mixed to a particular tempo. One site I'll send some love out to is http://www.djsteveboy.com/. Steve Boyett has several mix podcasts which are among the iTunes Store's top downloads. His Podrunner casts feature many independent and out-of-the-box musicians, mixed at tempos ranging from 120 to 180. The most recent series has tempo progressions which mimic pyramid and tempo workouts...all of them are around 60 minutes and include warm-up and cool-down segments.

Making the treadmill workout a little less dull can take some time and effort on the part of the individual runner. There are tempo-defining programs which can help catalog the runner's music collection, or the workout at a particular pace can be downloaded from the internet.

And the "horse," when matched to the right "course," can make an hour's treadmiling less...boring.

The Times That Try...

"Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph." - Thomas Paine, 'The Crisis,' (December 23, 1776)

July is a tough training month for me. It's not the Independence Day holiday, or the seemingly endless stretch until the next three-day weekend, or the meteorological/climatic conditions - in and of themselves - which make it this way.

Take 198 bicyclists in Spandex. Sprinkle generously with the seemingly encyclopedic knowledge, accents and anecdotes of English cycling commentators Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen. Top with Bob "Bobke" Roll. Serve for 23 days. The Tour de France is both an inspiration for me to get my (fat!) self out on the road (on the bike or on foot) during the month of July, and a justification to stay shackled to my television.

I was into cycling before it was acceptable to enjoy it in America. I started riding (in the bike shorts and the jersey with the pockets on the back side) and following the sport when the only American names in the professional peloton were Jacques Boyer and Greg Lemond. Europeans and English had daily and nightly telecasts on the tube. Americans had to settle for a digest of the Tour's previous week on CBS.

We have it so much better now. And not.

Take this weekend, for example. Versus/NBC showed the first three weekend stages, then replayed the broadcast at least three more times during the day. Great if you missed a part of the stage; not so good if you felt suddenly compelled to forego mowing the lawn...or doing that run in the late afternoon.

Sure, I'm blessed with a gym with cable television, good treadmills and air conditioning. It only makes me feel guilty when the peloton begins to suffer while climbing the Alps and Pyrenees. I grip the handlebars of my exercise bike/elliptical trainer just a little tighter, push a little harder, and thank whatever gods may be that I can take a day of rest should I feel a little beat up.

Rather than make life more simple this month of July, however, I made a pact with myself. I'm going to run outdoors in the elements during at least one workout of the day. No comfortable air conditioning. No Tour de France on Versus or NBC while I work out. No; watching the boys on the tube will be my reward, rather than my consolation.

Carry That Weight

"Boy, you're gonna carry that weight, carry that weight a long time..." - "Carry That Weight" (The Beatles, "Abbey Road," 1969)

I dreaded this morning's first-Monday-of-the-month weight check, especially after I saw the photos from the Easter holiday weekend. My friend Randy's commentary was more than correct; I didn't look "bigger," I looked fat.

Okay, maybe not "Gabriel-Iglesias-'fat.'" Perhaps "healthy" or "husky" on his 'fat scale.'

Looking at the photos taken by my wife, I can understand how someone could say 'the camera adds pounds.' I knew the numbers were not going to be good.

As a former "fat" person (5'8", 180 pounds back in 1992 may not seem fat to you, but when your face looks like Garfield the Cat in a photo...), the digital scale at the rear of the gym is the most fearful piece of equipment in the joint.

I stepped on the scale after a 30-minute elliptical trainer session and saw a good sign: Even with workout shoes on I dropped a pound in the past month. Sounds like cause for celebration. Woo hoo hoo!

Now, back to work.

Part of me sometimes asks why the weight has come off in an agonizingly slow manner. It's not that I've denied myself any particular food item in the past nine weeks. Outside of my wife's insistence on packing a healthy lunch for me whenever she can, I suspect it has much to do with the slow, conservative approach I've taken in my return to running:

- In the nine weeks since I started running again, I've increased the duration of my runs by no more than ten percent each week. I started at 20 minutes each run; I'm now at a little under 40 minutes. Barring unforseen circumstances, I hope to be running for 60 minutes in six-to-eight weeks.

- The Sunday morning "long run" has walking added to the week's run duration to make it a total of 60 minutes each trip. I also split the run duration into two parts; this week's 40-minute run was divided into two 20-minute pieces, with a ten minute walk in between.

- My Tuesday and Thursday evening speed workouts, amazingly, are near the intensities they were before the injury. But, quitting time is quitting time even if I feel good. The same goes for my Wednesday night run on the beach; I know exactly when I need to quit running. I slow down to a walk when the timer says I'm done. Ego, or the need to be "top dog," only stands in the way of recovery.

- I still use the treadmill and the elliptical trainer at the gym, but the workouts start easy and progressively increase in intensity. I'll cut the workout short if things are not going well rather than try to fight through an issue.

- Most importantly, I allow my body to recover as much as possible from each workout. That means the "two-a-day" workouts come once every six days, and I'll rest if I feel badly.

My wife handed me a couple of race flyers, which I summarily dismissed as being too soon for my taste. Racing is out of the question until I think my body is ready. Because, the most important thing is not being able to race well, but to be able to run for a long time.

Fitness takes a long time to gain, can be lost quickly, and can be thwarted by a lack of patience. There can be no doubt, running is a sport of pace and patience.

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.

Necessity Is The Mother Of Adaptation

Some of the athletes I work with remotely have their own special set of constraints, having much to do with maternity or Mother Nature, both of which are a force stronger than E.F. Hutton. The good news for me when I begin to lay out a training plan for them is they usually have a treadmill for running purposes close by. The only place treadmills are used as a clothes valet, as far as I can tell, is Florida.

The difficult part, however, is how to figure the proper training intensity. I can spend thirty minutes in an e-mail discussing what some call Coach Mike-speak, a variant ot terms used by my former coach, Dale Fox, his coach (1964 Olympic 5,000 meter Gold Medalist) Bob Schul, & his coach, Mihalyi Igloi...which works great when the individual athlete is on the track with me over the course of five or six weeks, because they'll catch the understanding eventually. But when dealing with remote coaching situations I can get a good effort approximation from some other really good coaches; Jack Daniels or Greg McMillan. Daniels' run intensity calculations are easily figured out through a table in the front end of his seminal work, Daniels' Running Formula (which I consider one of the three absolute must have running books), or you can find calculators and reference charts on many different web sites on the Internet (http://www.coacheseducation.com/endur/jack-daniels-nov-00.htm has what I would call Daniels In A Nutshell). I've encountered a fantastic spreadsheet you can use (http://www.electricblues.com/html/runpro.html) to determine the training effect of a particular workout, given the heart rate & run duration, but I recommend it for calculation's sake. McMillan also has a web-based chart, located at http://www.mcmillanrunning.com/ which aligns closely to Daniels'. I'm more familiar with Daniels, so I'll use his terminology to talk about run intensities here.

To determine your VDOT score, which Daniels explains is an estimate of a runner's VO2max at velocity, you'll need the results of your races (1,500 meters, mile, 3,000 meters, 2-mile, 5,000 meters, 10,000 meters, 15,000 meters, half-marathon or marathon) from the past year or so; if you have a variety, so much the better. Find your time for the particular race on a Daniels VDOT Values Table, then look at the number under the VDOT column. A list of best performances over more than one race distance will provide a more-accurate calculation; if you race more long events, focus on the findings based on those results and not so much on the shorter races. I'm one to err on the side of a lower VDOT score, personally, as your body can adapt to a training intensity that is a little too low better than it can an intensity which is too high. Once you have a VDOT score, a second table shows the training intensities based on that particular score for distances from 200 meters up to the easy/long run for the week, depending on the intensity level. For example, the athlete I talked about when I wrote about heart rate monitors has a VDOT score of 44 based on her recent 5K racing. She's training for a marathon in November - given the right conditions, a VDOT of 44 equals a 3:32 marathon performance prediction, but that's another story. Based on that performance I recommended she run her easy runs & her weekly long run at a sliver over nine minutes per mile. Her runs to prepare her for the pace she'll need to run in the marathon would be a little over eight minutes per mile, & the pace I recommended for tempo runs on the track is a little slower than a 7:30 mile. Once the runner knows their specific paces, they can use one or more of a few good 60-minute workouts for the treadmill-bound runner. I recommend one long run, one tempo & one repeat workout per week, with easy runs filling the remainder of the time available. If the athlete finds the workouts a little difficult based on perceived exertion or heart rate, we adjust the pace/s downward or extend the recovery period a little:

Progressive Tempo - 30 minutes at Easy/Long pace, increase speed by .1 mph every four minutes until Marathon Pace is reached. (Runners training for half-marathon or shorter races can continue on to Threshold pace.)

Marathon Tempo - 2 miles at Easy/Long pace, increase speed by .1 mph every two minutes until Marathon Pace is reached. (Runners training for half-marathon or shorter races can continue on to Threshold pace.)

Long Repeats (improve lactate threshold) - 2 miles at Easy/Long pace, increase to Threshold pace for up to five minutes, followed by Easy/Long pace (recovery) for up to two minutes.

Medium Repeats (improve velocity at VO2max) - 2 miles at Easy/Long pace, increase to Interval pace for up to three minutes, broken up by Easy/Long pace (recovery) for up to two minutes.

Short Repeats (improve economy and speed) - 2 miles at Easy/Long pace, increase to Rep pace for 30 seconds to one minute, broken up by Easy/Long pace (recovery) for up to two minutes.

How do you know when you're ready to move the intensities higher? Daniels says race performances are the test of when you're ready to move up...under no circumstances does he recommend trying to beat the training intensities for specific efforts.

While many persons will say a treadmill (simulation) workout is not as good as getting out on the road or the track, I consider it an "eighty-percent solution" for those days when the weather conditions are less than optimal or the runner has a limited amount of time available to train.

I've Got You Onto My Skin: Heart Rate Monitors

I've used chest-strap heart rate monitors for probably the better part of six years, & seen the good, the bad & the ugly of them. In spite of it all I consider them one of the tools which should be in every endurance athlete's arsenal, for a number of reasons:

First, heart rate monitors are great for checking the resting heart rate first thing in the morning.

Second, you can use a heart rate monitor to determine whether the recovery period during hard "interval" workout sessions is sufficient...or if it's time to pull the plug on the session before you begin overtraining.

Third, the heart rate monitor can help you ensure your "easy" training days remain just that...easy.Some high-end monitors are capable of calculating the amount of oxygen taken in to restore the body to it's original resting state, the effect of the training on the athlete; some will even recommend the effort level of the next exercise session after a brief analysis of the data. Naturally, many of these calculators are closer to the one size fits many rather than the individual side of the training device continuum.

Even the most simple monitors, which can download data to the athlete's personal computer, need to be calibrated to the individual in order to be most effective.

The most common - and most commonly incorrect - formula to determine maximum heart rate (MHR) is the classic 220-minus age. If a guy like me uses this particular formula, then my maximum heart rate (then used to determine training heart rate levels) should be 220-47, or 173 beats per minute. This would make my "easy" day heart rate (50-60% MHR) somewhere in the range of 86-to-103 beats per minute. High aerobic pace (61-to-80% MHR) would be 104-to-137 beats per minute.

Now, let's place a wrinkle in the equation. This formula was calculated using men. What guidance do I use as a coach when dealing with a female athlete? A recent Northwestern University study gave me a whole new formula to memorize: 206-minus-88%-of-age. So, one of my female athletes recently purchased a heart rate monitor; she can use the Gulati, et. al. calculation to estimate her MHR: 206 - (48 x .88) = 206 - (42.24) = 163.76...OR...164. Her "easy" day training rate would be in the 82-to-98 range; her high aerobic pace would be 99-to-132.

Of course, that also assumes the ability to drop the heart rate down to zero. I'm no Zen Master, so I can guarantee my high-to-low heart rate range is definitely not 173 beats. My daytime resting HR (RHR), sitting in my office without any hassle, is 54...about two beats higher than my (highest) resting rate first thing in the morning (when I'm fit & race ready it's as low as 42). So, for purposes of this post, let's just say my RHR is 50. That gives me a heart rate reserve (HRR) of 123 beats.

Karvonen would say the lowest target heart rate for my "easy" day (50%) should be: (173 -50) x .50 + 50 = (123 x .50) + 50 = 61.5 + 50 = 111.5. So, my highest target heart rate for the "easy" day (60%) is probably around 122. Keeping the heart rate reserve in mind "justifies" that slightly more intense workout on the "easy" day, right? Maybe.
But, in order to really get the most out of a heart rate monitor, the athlete needs to ensure they do a few things:

First, learn their "true" resting heart rate. This might take strapping on the monitor for a couple of mornings in succession. A good way to do this is - if you're like me & have to get up in the middle of the night to "exchange" fluids - put the strap & receiver on. When the alarm goes off, start the monitor. After about four or five mornings you'll have a good idea of the average.

Second, find out their "true" maximum heart rate. There are physicians who will perform a stress test (for a few dollars) if you have nobody available to assist you. Sally Edwards (and a few other coaches) recommends the test be taken on a track, but I'm partial to using a treadmill because the speed can be increased incrementally through the test, & elements which are hard to control on a track can be controlled with a treadmill.

- Start the test with an easy warm-up of at least 5 minutes. The goal during the warm-up is to get the heart beating to 100-120 bpm.
- Without stopping, begin the test by gradually accelerating the speed so the heart rate climbs about 5 bpm every 15 seconds.
- At each 15-second interval, your partner should tell the exercise time, heart rate, and offer encouragement as they gradually increase the speed.
- Within a 2-to-4-minute period, the heart rate should cease to climb even with increased effort and pace.
- When you can no longer accelerate, or you hear your partner repeating the same number you've (probably) reached your maximum HR.
- At that point either you or your partner can call an end to the test.

Third, & most importantly, learn to correlate effort with number. I've learned the hard way that technology fails, & often at the worst possible moment...on race day. Believe it or not, the experienced runner or athlete can figure out, within a few percentage points, just how hard they are working in terms of their maximal heart rate; researchers proved a strong correlation between the Borg (perceived effort) Scale & the percentage of maximum heart rate. So if you're an experienced runner, running at a level of nine on a one-to-ten scale...chances are good you are fairly close, give or take a few points, to ninety percent of maximum heart rate.

Remember - the heart rate monitor, much like the GPS receiver, is a tool. You can place one in the hands of a child & wreck things, or you can place it in the hands of a craftsman & watch beautiful things happen. The right tool, in the right hands, at the right time, for the right purpose.

The Red Whiten Blues

"It's kind of fun to do the impossible." - Walt Disney

Just in case my (semi-) chubby form or the photo details are not clear enough, the quote on the highway overpass (in English and Arabic) is from Disney. I'm not terribly surprised the development company Emaar (builder of some of the big malls and towers in Dubai, including the Emirates Mall, where Ski Dubai is located) didn't take Walt's dictum to heart.

If you ever want to have an OZ moment (your line: '...you know, Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas any more...'), just take a week for a vacation to the United Arab Emirates, namely Dubai. It's the kind of place where architectural historians, or at least mechanical engineers, would scratch their heads in wonder. I modified the Field of Dreams tag line if you build it, they will come to describe the building madness that is going on there: If You Design It, They Will Build.

Take a city like Chicago, or New York. Add financial incentives. Blend with varying degrees of Islamic and Western Asian culture. Drop it into the Arab world. There's Dubai.

Before you begin to think that I have an infatuation with the city, let me balance it out. It's not a town where runners or athletes would feel particularly safe, at least not in the newest sections. The traffic pattern is hideous, the traffic insane, and the drivers very aggressive. Perhaps out toward the older districts of the city and the surrounding environs it might be more tri-geek, runner or cyclist friendly, but even then I have my doubts.

Eating in Dubai for the Western European/North American is a no-brainer. Well, it's actually quite challenging, because you can have either every major restaurant chain known to man or local cuisine, cheek-by-jowl. Once you get out into the suburbs, cities like Sharjah for example, the food is more adventurous and the people a little more fun. Where else can you walk into a coffee shop and be offered some of the best baklava outside of Beirut and wash it down with an absolutely awesome Turkish-style coffee, all for much less than what you would pay at the local Starbucks? If there's a place, please let me know so I can go there.

I didn't get enough exercise in during the week, but this trip was not so much about exercise as much as it was about adventure, about extending a few horizons and (in some cases) hanging on for dear life until the bumpy sections were through...in order to laugh about your own fear.

I hope I figure out before the next visit a good place to go running. Somehow, treadmill workouts in a place like Dubai, or Sharjah, just seem to be a really bad idea.

You Love The Thunder...Not!

Sometimes the weather is too nasty to run a workout on the track but you feel like your training is going to slip without an interval workout. Assuming you already have your aerobic base built, the good news is missing a single workout because of weather or life issues which suddenly arise is not going to destroy your fitness. The bad news is many runners feel the need to tack on a second workout, or do one the next day at a higher intensity than they originally planned.

Listen very carefully to me. Don’t do it. A day without a workout is a day without a workout. It’s not a character failure or the first sign of the apocalypse. Just do the next day’s planned workout & be happy for the extra rest you probably needed in the first place.

If you have access to a good treadmill on those days when the weather is nasty or dark once you get away from work, or you know you’re going to miss a track session because of a social/work function, here’s a good 60-minute substitute workout. I've used this on several occasions, especially in the late winter, when almost NOBODY wants to be out in the dark, wind & cold hammering out repeats on the track:

Start the treadmill on the manual program with a flat elevation; to simulate the resistance of road running, you can set the elevation for 0.5 to 1.0 percent. Set the speed for a pace with which you can comfortably run for an hour; I like to use about 0.5 of a mph slower than my long run pace (for example, if you’re running 8:00 miles (7.5mph) on your long run, set the treadmill speed to 7.0-to-7.1mph. A 9-minute miler (6.7mph) would set the TM to 6.2 or 6.3mph).

Warm-up (15-20 min) – 2.0 miles at starting speed.

First set (10 min) – increase speed 0.2 mph – run 30 sec, rest 30 sec x 8.

Second set (10 min) – increase speed by 0.2 mph – run 1 min, rest 30 sec x 5.

Third set (10min) – increase speed by 0.2 mph – run 2 min, rest 1 min x 3.

Cool down – decrease speed by 0.5 mph, run for rest of hour.

I’ve done variations of this workout (.1 mi/25 sec, .18 mi/30 sec, .22 mi/40 sec & .25 mi/60 sec repeats), but 30-second & minute time intervals are much more simple, especially if you’re math-challenged to begin with.

This is just a simple, 80-percent solution to take care of business when either Mother Nature or Father Time (Constraints) places undue (negative) influence upon that well-laid-out training plan of yours.

The Winter of Our Discontent

There's something nice about having a short attention span, multiple interests and a supreme dislike of commercials when it comes to television programming. Well, at least now in the age of on-screen information and remote control. I can always hop about from program to program when a commercial comes on. The only time I even want to watch a commercial (especially during a football game, when half of the time-outs are commercial-driven) is during the Super Bowl. Heck, during some years the commercials are more exciting than the game.

I'm back on a treadmill for a couple of miles a day at a pace that stays aerobic for as long as possible; right now it seems to be working pretty well. I'm not concerned about my own fitness or the long, slow run-up to full-speed running, yada, yada...it will come back in good time...and I'm vigorously swimming and bicycling four-to-six times a week at this time. You can't rush the recovery process, and you probably shouldn't if you aren't making a living from running; if you are making a living from running you probably have access to all of the help and all the time you need to recover as quickly as possible. The rest of us working class mortals will just have to listen to our bodies and err on the side of caution.

But, while I was in the Y working out on the treadmill and the elliptical trainer the first reports came on about the untimely death of the Australian actor Heath Ledger. Once again, all I could think about was what I like to call spiritual vampirism, the tendency of the broadcast media (formerly restricted to radio and television, but in the internet age you can include print) to lurk about, searching for some more blood to suck up. It's bad enough to hear about B. Spears, P. Hilton, L. Lohan, et. al., incessantly, but you have to feel for the family of a notable person who suddenly dies, especially when the circumstances are sketchy. Hey guys, let's leave the situation the heck alone and go find something worthwhile to do, like send care packages to the Rockefellers...

We're having fun this time of year. The climate hasn't figure out what it wants to do; be bone-chilling cold, have uber-blonde (sorry, honey, please don't take this personal...) dense fog, dump boatloads of rain, blow 20-30 mile-per-hour gusts, etc., etc. It makes the thought of training indoors sound very, very good. Sure, I sound like a wimp, but when you're trying to get 60 minutes of consistent effort in it's always more fun to get it inside an enclosed, slightly heated pool or a gymnasium rather than take your chances with traffic and persons who have no clue on how to drive in conditions that are not perfect, dry and sunny.
The only thing I hate is that when it sucks outside I want to be out there...or I've got something that needs to be done out there.