Distance Running Observer

Team USA MN Video Revisited

2012-01-12T19:59:00.000-08:00

Another one, even better than the previous one! Great training wisdom -- as Tyler McCandless put it, "[captures] the essence of training for the trials."

Marathon Road from Paul Sanft on Vimeo.

Team USA MN OT Video

2012-01-02T09:45:00.000-08:00

Another training group (interesting that two of the best marathon training groups are in the upper midwest, not at altitude nor in a temperate/sunny clime) that deserves more credit than it tends to receive. The production quality of these videos is really improving: http://youtu.be/ulTx8uWlpZI

Chicago Marathon LIVE Webcast

2011-10-06T07:24:00.000-07:00

c/o RRW:
Fans can watch the Bank of America Chicago Marathon live online and free of charge this Sunday, thanks to the race's broadcast partner, NBC Chicago.

Race organizers reported this morning that fans can connect to http://www.nbcchicago.com at 7:00 a.m. Central time (8:00 a.m. Eastern, 1:00 p.m. GMT) to watch NBC Chicago's full broadcast. The free live stream is available globally, organizers said.

This is the first time that the race has been available for free global viewing online.

Watch the BMW Berlin Marathon in the US for FREE

2011-09-20T16:17:00.000-07:00

Fans in the USA can watch the BMW Berlin Marathon, either on-line or on television, for no charge. The race will be carried by Universal Sports as follows:

. LIVE: On-line at UniversalSports.com, Sunday, Sept. 25, 2:45 a.m. to 6:00 a.m. (link on homepage)

. TAPE DELAY: On television on Universal Sports, Sunday, Sept. 25, 8:00 p.m.

To find the Universal Sports television channel, go to UniversalSports.com and click TV CHANNEL FINDER in red at the top of the page. On broadcast (over-the-air) television it usually a sub-channel of the local NBC affiliation.

1964 Olympic Marathon

2011-09-11T14:30:00.000-07:00

From Tokyo Olympiad, which is one of the very best sports documentaries ever made. Great footage of Abebe Bikila's second consecutive Olympic marathon win on an apparently muggy day in 1964, when leather or canvas shoes were still the state-of-the-art and nylon in running shoes was still a ways off. Essentially no narration or dialogue, simply superb cinematography and a perfect soundtrack. Results from the race (note Billy Mills doubling back from his 10,000m win with a 2:22:55 in 14th) are here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athletics_at_the_1964_Summer_Olympics_%E2%80%93_Men's_marathon

Marathon start is near the 7:30 mark of the first video clip.

Grist For The Mill

2011-08-25T08:27:00.000-07:00

Great thoughts from Kenyon Neuman over on his blog:

I expected to finish higher at Heart and Sole. When I didn’t, I was mad, fired up and ready to train harder. Now, without pulling the reigns the result of these feelings could be negative. I could run myself into a state of great fatigue or I could injure myself. On the other hand, with patience and some intelligent planning that fire can be channeled into some really fantastic efforts. It can also be channeled in other positive ways. When I feel this was I become much more focused on eating right, sleeping enough, getting into the weight room and doing all the self-rehab work I need to stay on top of. It will give me a focus, a drive and a tenacity when I race again. If I had won Heart and Sole, I probably wouldn’t have put my nose to the grindstone with the same dedication and intensity. A disappointing race can push you more than a great race if you respond in the right way. Remember that the next time you’re disappointed with a performance.

Virgin London Marathon Live Webcast

2011-04-15T08:16:00.000-07:00

Residents of the United States can watch Sunday's Virgin London Marathon LIVE on-line at no charge. These are the times at various locations in the USA (the race starts at 8:55 a.m. local time):

New York (EDT): 3:55 a.m.
Chicago (CDT): 2:55 a.m.
Denver (MDT): 1:55 a.m.
Los Angeles (PDT): 12:55 a.m.
Honolulu (HAST): 9:55 p.m. (Saturday night)

To watch the coverage, follow these steps:
1. Go to http://www.virginlondonmarathon.com/
2. Click "News & Media"
3. Click "Marathon TV"
4. Scroll down, then click the red box which reads "Watch Live Coverage" (a video player will launch)

For information on how to watch coverage in other areas of the world, go to this link:

http://www.virginlondonmarathon.com/news-and-media/news-and-media/marathon-tv/

Efficiency

2011-04-03T15:39:00.000-07:00

This past Thursday evening, I attended a running form improvement clinic and really learned a lot! I wish everyone who reads this could have attended. There was much about foot position, forward arm/wrist position, chest/head position, tibial alignment, heel lift, knee lift, etc., relating not only to injury prevention but also to performance improvement. A lot to think about and try to better incorporate in my running form. Some very basic takeaway that I can share is to not reach with the lead arm/leg and that lead arm wrist position at foot plant (near center of gravity or far ahead of it) will coincide vertically with lead leg foot plant. Also, keep the arm movement chiefly to the side of the body, in a forward-pointed vertical plane -- crossing the arms across the body (and I have seen runners with high aspirations who have this pattern) pulls at the body in the wrong way and detract from one's ability to perform and can certainly contribute to injury. One wants to have "quiet" head/shoulders/torso so that it is the arms are counteracting the forces generated by moving legs. Additionally, the arms should be short levers moving forward and long levers moving back. Not sure if they would make much sense outside of the context of the clinical presentation, but here is the link to download the slides used by the presenter, Dr. Jeremy Rodgers: http://www.drivehq.com/folder/p8326757.aspx

Spiraling Shape

2011-03-18T14:44:00.000-07:00

While out catching some rays, I read a highly intriguing article in Men's Health on running form. I know what you might be thinking, I was also surprised to find something that could be applicable to performance in the pages of that magazine -- I normally do not read it and only took the opportunity to read it because a free copy was left where I happened to find it. The gist of the article was about Tyson Gay's work with David Weck in getting his arm movement to spiral as he ran. The results from working on this component of performance were evident in Gay's 2010 season. While I am not ready to jump onto the Weck-BOSU bandwagon just yet, reading the article definitely got me to thinking about applications to distance running, which essentially follows a more compact version of sprint form. I was also reminded quite a bit of what I have read in Training With Cerutty regarding Percy Cerutty's ideas on natural, animalistic movement patterns in running. Essentially, curling the fingers in towards the thumb and rotating the thumb outward on the forward arm in its upswing and releasing the fingers out and rotating the thumb inward on the trailing arm in its downswing is the idea to help tension the fascia, help with hip rise, etc. and in the end helps produce greater speed. I recommend reading the entire article, it gives a much fuller explanation as well as ways to train such movement into athletes.

Mental Limits

2011-03-11T15:53:00.000-08:00

I just read a great blog post from Kenyon Neuman regarding mental barriers and it resonated with me and memories of things I have observed over the years. So often, runners seem fixated on numbers, making the training data the goal over all else, and in doing so inadvertently limit themselves and what they can do. I, too, have fallen into this trap in the past. If I did not hit the times I desired for the first couple of repeats in an interval workout, I would just get frustrated and tense and lose enthusiasm and desire for running the workout. Fixation on numbers does not help anything. Over time, I learned to emphasize a focus simply on effort and form and do not concern myself with split times or pace or distance until after the run or workout is completed. Just being relaxed and focussed only on the sensory feedback from the body. The entire blog post (including some inspiring videos of awesome performances) is worth taking the time to check out, I am excerpting part of it here:

I was thinking about how often we let our minds get in the way of running fast. I had this run over CU’s 20-mile loop at Magnolia Road last year that I kept thinking about. I chose not to look at my watch over the entire run. I didn’t once give in to the temptation to check my time, figure my pace, and go into this mental routine of determining whether it was too fast or too slow. I gauged my entire effort on “sensory data” which is an invaluable tool Mark Wetmore always told me to use. I just relaxed and turned my legs over the entire way. Somewhere near the end, I knew I was running fast, but I was starting to work a little too hard on the last few hills. So I slowed up and decided not to trash myself for our track session on Tuesday. I figured that I’d get pretty close to the fastest time I’d ever seen anyone run on the loop (2:03 – Brent Vaughn). When I decided to slow up I thought I’d probably finish a bit slower, maybe 2:06 or something. I knew that it was worth slowing down and making the effort reasonable so as to run well in the coming workouts. When I finished, I stopped my watch, crossed peak-to-peak highway and then took a gander at my time. It was far faster than I had imagined, and I’m convinced the key was not thinking about time, just worrying about effort. The key was not overthinking things, putting up these walls & telling myself that the pace was too fast. When you know you’re running fast, you begin to worry about the worst scenarios. You begin to think you might blow up, and then, you just do.
I just finished reading an article about Daniel Komen in Competitor. It must have been fate, because it just reinforced the very thing I’m writing about. Komen didn’t want to hear his splits. He didn’t care about time. He just ran his ass off and listened to his body. He’s the only man to ever run two sub-four minute miles back-to-back. Mental limits didn’t exist in his world. “Too Fast” didn’t exist either. Doubt didn’t exist. It was simply about beating people and pushing it fire-to-wire. The guy was apparently pretty confused when someone asked him about pre-race nervousness. He was dumbfounded. He didn’t get why anyone would be nervous before a race. If Komen had heard “3:59.4!” at one mile in his world record 2-mile, and worried about whether the pace was too fast, or whether he was going to blow up, that record never would have happened. He didn’t care about the splits. The pace was never “too fast”.

How They Trained: Greg Meyer

2011-03-04T10:04:00.000-08:00

Check out this great interview podcast from Running Times: http://wpblogs.runningtimes.com/blogs/performancepodcasts/2011/03/podcast-greg-meyer-the-last-american-man-to-win-boston/

Some highlights:

20-mile fartlek
Individual training adaptations regarding speed and endurance
Race-readiness
Competing vs. pacing
Integrating race seasoning into training

"Gritty marathoners are the ones who are going to get the results."

2011-02-03T14:25:00.000-08:00

From a great article (translated on Japan Running News) on Koichi Morishita, a 2:08:53 debut performer at the 1991 Beppu-Oita Mainichi Marathon and Olympic marathon bronze medalist in Barcelona in 1992:

Morishita began the marathon from a track background, winning the gold medal in the 10000 m at the 1990 Beijing Asian Games. His 10000 m PB was 28:01. The number of current Japanese athletes who have surpassed Morishita's marks is not small. Rikuren director of men's marathoning Yasushi Sakaguchi commented, "If we talk about Japanese men who have run 28 minutes, there are currently over 100. Every one of them has the potential to break 2:10."

So why aren't they? Although Morishita admits that the basic speed of Japanese runners has improved, he says they need to get tougher to succeed. "Gritty marathoners are the ones who are going to get the results. I want to see people who are tougher in spirit. That is Japanese people's greatest strength."

Caffeine Addendum

2011-02-01T08:37:00.000-08:00

As a follow-up to a previous entry on performance enhancement via caffeine, here are a few more recent articles and their relevancy to distance running performance:

http://www.drgregwells.com/wells-blog/2011/1/30/international-society-of-sports-nutrition-position-stand-caf.html

Caffeine is effective for enhancing sport performance in trained athletes when consumed in low-to-moderate dosages (~3-6 mg/kg) and overall does not result in further enhancement in performance when consumed in higher dosages (>/= 9 mg/kg).
Caffeine exerts a greater ergogenic effect when consumed in an anhydrous state as compared to coffee.
Caffeine is ergogenic for sustained maximal endurance exercise, and has been shown to be highly effective for time-trial performance.
The scientific literature does not support caffeine-induced diuresis during exercise, or any harmful change in fluid balance that would negatively affect performance.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21279864?dopt=Abstract

A 3 mg · kg(-1) dose of caffeine significantly improves exercise performance irrespective of whether a 4-day withdrawal period is imposed on habitual caffeine users.

How to Boost Long-Distance Performance with Caffeine

1993 Women's World Cross Country Championship

2011-01-20T17:42:00.000-08:00

The women's senior race from the 1993 World Cross Country Championships in Spain, including Lynn Jennings, Zola (Budd) Pieterse, Paula Radcliffe early in her career, among other notables:

Who's Who

2011-01-20T08:27:00.000-08:00

A little past/present/future spotlight on top runners:

A 'Lulu of a Rules Interpretation

2010-12-13T08:43:00.000-08:00

In this past weekend's Honolulu Marathon, the women's winner took significant (and illegal) aid from her boyfriend, who flew there with her with the obvious sole purpose of pacing her and carrying her fluids through the race. From Universal Sports:

When Belainesh Gebre, an Ethiopian athlete based in Flagstaff, Ariz., was unable to gain invited status for the 38th Honolulu Marathon here this morning, she and her boyfriend, Ezkyas Sisay, decided to sign-up for the race on their own. Race organizers were tipped off that she planned to compete by another competitor, and Honolulu Marathon Association president Dr. Jim Barahal allowed her and Sisay into the invited athletes staging area in the predawn darkness this morning.

"Because, you know, she tried to enter (as an) elite athlete, they didn't accept her," Sisay explained to reporters after the race.

Wearing bib number 9670, Gebre tucked in behind Sisay right from the gun, hitting the first kilometer in 3:25, and the first mile in 5:33, several seconds faster than course record pace. With the exception of designated pacemaker Kaori Yoshida of Japan, who ran close behind the Ethiopian couple through 15 km, no other women were in sight.

Because Gebre, a 1:09:43 half-marathon runner who has won her last five road races, was not part of the invited field, she did not have her own energy drinks at the eight official aid stations like the other top women. To compensate for that, she drank PowerBar energy drink from bottles which ringed Sisay's waist on a belt.

That's where all of the trouble started.

USA Track & Field rules 144 and 241 address unfair assistance to athletes, and Sisay's pacing Gebre, supplying her with drinks several times from his belt, bringing her sponges and drinks from the aid stations, and providing information to her about her pace and the whereabouts of her rivals was over the line as far as three-time champion Svetlana Zakharova of Russia was concerned. After closing the gap on the slowing Gebre late in the race to about 40 seconds, Zakharova was unable to catch the Ethiopian who ran the last kilometer of the race alone after Sisay ducked off of the course. The 40 year-old Russian, who has won both the Boston and Chicago Marathons, filed a protest after Gebre clocked 2:32:13 to win in her marathon debut. Zakharova finished 48 seconds back.

Minutes later in a rambling interview, Sisay said he didn't understand what all the fuss was about.

"We need to drink PowerBar," he said referring to the energy drinks he carried. "Then, we shared our drink."

He then insisted that he was not in the race to pace Gebre, but was trying to compete in the men's division, instead.

"I came here, I wanted to finish top-3," he said. "This is my liquid. She asked me then, I gave her."

After investigating the matter with a local USA Track & Field official, Barahal told reporters that he was unhappy about what Sisay had done, but that his offense didn't rise to the level where Gebre should be disqualified.

"After careful review of photographic evidence, eyewitness accounts, and some discussions with the runner and her running companion and coach, we have made the decision to affirm the results and declare (her) the winner of the race. The results stand as determined on the course."

Barahal reasoned that since Gebre did not have access to the special fluid service provided to the invited athletes, her taking the drinks from Sisay essentially leveled the playing field.

"Because she entered on her own and was not an elite athlete, she was not able to access our elite aid stations, which there are eight on the course," Barahal, a cardiologist, said. "Since she wasn't an elite athlete, she didn't have that. By eyewitness accounts, we have reliable reports that she received assistance six times. Even if that's true, that's still less than the eight (stations) the other athletes had."

Barahal said that he spoke to the Ethiopian couple sternly and expressed his displeasure, and that if she decided to return next year to defend her title such conduct would not be tolerated.

"We don't think there was any question that the coach acted inappropriately," Barahal intoned. "Whether that reached the standard for disqualification is something reasonable people could probably disagree on." He added: "Let's face it, at the end of the day she did run 26.2 miles."

Gebre earned $40,000 in prize money, compared to $16,000 for Zakharova. Third place went to Japan's Yoshida, who decided to finish, in 2:39:02.

So apparently the official line is that while what the couple did was wrong, it was simply not wrong enough. I would like to know what the USATF official who was consulted suggested and the basis for the input that official gave. If race officials thought that she did not warrant invited elite entry and all that goes with it then she should have either carried her own fluids or just taken what was available on the course. The boyfriend is a liar, if he truly were gunning for a top-three finish then there is no way he would have been hanging around his woman through even 5K, let alone through 41K and then stepping off the course with just 1K remaining. He interfered with the women's race and the two of them manipulated the outcome by finessing the rules. If this sport had any semblance of authoritative integrity then Gebre absolutely would have been disqualified. The "[let's] face it, at the end of the day she did run 26.2 miles" logic coming from the race director is head-shakingly simplistic, exhibiting a remarkably poor understanding of the sport. So the Ethiopians and the RD cheated Zakharova out of $24,000.

Late-breaking input from David Monti of Race Results Weekly: http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?board=1&thread=3826912&id=3843274#3843274

Knowledge & Wisdom

2010-11-18T14:58:00.000-08:00

It is amusing how people can read one popular book or another and lift proprietary terms to parrot as if they really know something. Lingo and jargon are not comprehension of fundamental concepts. In fact, comprehension of fundamental concepts would allow them to use plain, laymen's terminology and not proprietary jargon that is so much wankery. They can hum the song and may even be able to replicate the chorus, but the lyrical structure and sheet music (not to mention improvisational riffs on the song) are well beyond their skill set. Another analogy I have seen is painting-by-numbers versus crafting an original piece of art (or even just being able to closely copy another original piece of art). If one is going to invest heavily in one's expression through running - and I do consider running and other athletic pursuits to be a means of personal expression akin to other, more obvious art forms - then why not spend the time to grasp the fundamental concepts to raise the level of one's personal running expression?

I saw some great thoughts today from Brad Hudson:

Quote

RML: You have a quote on your Facebook page from Leonardo Da Vinci that reads, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” What does that quote mean to you?

Hudson: I like the quote, because I interpret it as just because something’s more complicated doesn’t mean it is a better way of doing things. The best way to do things is to make them as simple as possible so the athletes understand it--especially in distance running. It’s great that we have all this technology in the sport. It really helps when our athletes are hurt, but there’s no substitute for the naturalness and simplicity of running. I think Kenya and Ethiopia are showing that.

Bill Squires, Bill Rodgers, and GBTC

2010-09-07T06:01:00.001-07:00

While recently searching for something else on the web, I came across a really good article on the history of the Greater Boston Track Club:

Club Feature: Greater Boston Track Club
By Barbara Huebner
Resource Guide 2004, Vol. 11, No. 5
American Track & Field

It was early on a Thursday morning in April 1977 when Randy Thomas aimed his '76 Toyota Celica down Route 2 toward Boston. Two of his Greater Boston Track Club teammates would be waiting in a parking lot on Route 128 for Thomas to collect them on the way to the Penn Relays, where they would compete that night.

But a wheel bearing broke, and Thomas was two, maybe three hours late and $170 in repairs poorer by the time he reached his passengers. With only $30 in his pocket and no margin for error in getting to Philadelphia, they hit the road again, made it to the meet on time, barely, and all ran PRs.

After a night of sleep in a shared hotel room, made into a triple courtesy of a mattress on the floor, the guys woke to an inspiration: let's stay another night so we can watch the meet tomorrow. Yeah, I know we don't have enough money left but let's do it anyway. Sneaking out of their hotel room at 5 the next morning because they had no money to pay the bill, they bought a package of bologna and a loaf of bread from a convenience store. Adding mustard from a hot-dog stand at Franklin Field, they sat in the upper deck of the stadium all day, watching the meet and eating bologna sandwiches. Life was good.

Which is how the Celica came to be parked in the far left lane going on to the Ben Franklin Bridge heading out of Philly that evening while its occupants, three esteemed members of the Greater Boston Track Club who had just the day before all run the fastest races of their lives, crawled out to scoop up all the loose change they could find on the ground so they could pay the toll. Richer by $5 or $6, they resumed the trip. When they got to the Garden State Parkway, they got out again and scavenged for gas money. This time the take was only $4, but it was enough.

The trio got back to the Eliot Lounge, near the Boston Marathon finish line, about 1 a.m., split one Miller Lite three ways with their last $1.50, and went home happy.

Thomas tells the story to illustrate a point: that runners were hungry then in a way that fueled their competitive fires. You did whatever it took.

But in a broader sense, it gets at the heart of the phenomenal success of the Greater Boston Track Club in the late 1970s, a success made most public when four of the top 10 finishers in the 1979 Boston Marathon came from its membership rolls. You did things together that you would never do alone. You shared what you had. You kicked around ideas. And you succeeded.

The GBTC was founded in 1973, when senior Jack McDonald gathered a half dozen guys (Bill Squires, Bob Sevene, Don Ricciato, Kirk Pfrangle, Dick Mahoney and Dave Elliott, by most accounts) in a locker room at Boston College to assess interest in forming a track club for the post-collegiate runner. McDonald, a 4-minute miler, had just finished hastily putting together an exhibition track meet between a visiting Oxford-Cambridge team and a group of New England all-stars, and so enjoyed the experience - both athletic and social - that he wanted to repeat it on a regular basis.

"There might have been a six-pack of beer floating around at that meeting," recalled McDonald, now the athletics director at Quinnipiac College in Hamden, Conn.

They immediately enlisted Squires, track coach of the successful Boston State College program, to coach. Squires remembers a slew of names bandied about, including the Codfishers and Boston Beaners, before the settled on Greater Boston Track Club. In the fall of 1973, a promising young distance runner named Bill Rodgers joined the group. A year later, Rodgers would be the upset winner of the 1975 Boston Marathon, wearing a singlet with "GBTC" written by hand across the front. Two legends were born that day, one wearing the name of the other.

Before the success ebbed in the early 1980s, the GBTC would go down in history as one of the greatest-ever amateur distance running clubs in the world. On its resume:

* Three of the top 5 finishers in the 1978 Boston Marathon (1. Rodgers, 4. Jack Fultz, 5. Randy Thomas)

* Four of the top 10 finishers in the 1979 Boston Marathon (1. Rodgers, 3. Bob Hodge, 8. Thomas, 10. Dick Mahoney)

* More than 20 New England titles at various distances from 1973-1980; six consecutive U.S. 25K road racing team titles beginning in from 1974- 1979

* Nine consecutive U.S. 20K titles

* And, in a performance perhaps even more brilliant than that at the Boston Marathon earlier that year, the 1979 Senior Men's National Cross Country team championship, with GBTC runners going 1-2-4-5- 12 and outscoring the second -place team 26-179.

Scoring at that 10K meet were: 1, Alberto Salazar (30:37); 2, Bob Hodge (30:52); 4, Dan Dillon (30:56); 5, Greg Meyer (31:01); 12, Randy Thomas (31:23).

Perhaps more startling are the names of two men who ran for GBTC that day but didn't score - Pete Pfitzinger, who would go on to become a two-time Olympian in the marathon; and Bruce Bickford, who in 1985 would be ranked #1 in the world at 10,000 meters before going on to the 1988 Olympics.

"There was so much depth," said Rodgers, the ace who didn't even run in the meet.

Think of it as the running-world's equivalent of "The Perfect Storm," with a rare combination of factors creating the ideal training environment. Alter one element - Squires, Rodgers, the strong supporting cast always nipping at his heels, the locale, the decade - and it amounts to nothing more than your average rainstorm with an occasional gust of wind.

Start with Squires.

"If you look at most of the great athletes, they all had a coach they believed in and they did what they were told," said Meyer, who would win the 1983 Boston Marathon and is still the last American man to do so. "When that coach tells you you're ready, you believe them."

Squires, himself a three-time All-American miler out of Notre Dame, liked to play around with training, surprise his athletes, make any situation as fun as it was competitive. With the belief that repetition and familiarity are keys to success, he had his athletes doing hill workouts on Heartbreak Hill so they'd still be able to lift their legs once they got tired, and running from Boston College out to Wellesley and back along the Boston Marathon course so they would know how to race every inch of it. Whatever the exact race situation was going to be, whether on the track, cross-country or the roads, Squires wanted his athletes to be prepared.

"We did it so many times," said Squires, "you could do it in your sleep."

That's one of the rare Squires sentences that is clear from start to finish. Listening to the man known around Boston simply as Coach is akin to chasing butterflies. Just when you think his thoughts have finally been captured in your flailing net, you look up to see them flutter away. No matter. He manages to get his point across, although you're never sure how.

Tom Derderian, who ran for Squires at the time and now coaches the GBTC, described Squires' typical delivery of instructions for a track workout. "He'd say 'go there and go there and go ugh and then ugh and then ugh. OK?' And everyone said 'OK.' Everyone knew you came there to run hard."

"He was just the right guy to lead us," said Rodgers. "He wasn't authoritarian and he wasn't laissez faire; he was right in between. He was quirky the way runners are quirky."

Talk to his top athletes of the days, folks like Rodgers and Meyer and Hodge, and it's no specific workout they recall. It's a feeling. Squires believed in moderation on the track; he believed that marathon success begins at the 10K; he believed in his novel workout called "the simulator," - intervals on the Boston College track followed by a run on the nearby Newton Hills followed by another track workout; he believed that a coach needs to control where and when his athletes race. But above all, he believed in the importance of belief and the courage to think big.

His athletes returned that belief. "We put our total faith in him, and we achieved," said Sevene, now the coach of Team USA Monterrey.

"Thinking big" was all that much easier with Rodgers around. At the time he joined the GBTC in 1973, Rodgers - after a year of joblessness - was working as an attendant at the Fernald School, helping tend a ward of moderately-retarded men. He would often run with Sevene, who lived nearby. After running some in high school and college, he was just starting to get his running back together after foundering since graduation. He had even quit entirely for awhile.

But in less than two years under Squires and surrounded by his GBTC teammates, Rodgers would finish third at the 1975 World Cross Country Championships, and shortly thereafter win the 1975 Boston Marathon in 2:09:55, an American record.

That's when things really took off. With Rodgers as a magnet, the club quickly drew the rest of the region's top distance runners and eventually a few from outside New England, as well. But the internal effect was more dramatic. Rodgers, after all, had run just 2:19:34 at Boston in 1974. His GBTC teammates now looked at him and said: Wait a minute. I can hang with him in workouts. If he can run 2:09, I can run 2:11.

"I don't think people give enough credit to Billy for the confidence he gave to American distance running," said Thomas, now the head track coach at Boston College.

Plus now you had a core of runners able to push Rodgers. "Billy knew if he screwed up, Randy would get him and gloat about it," said Derderian.

Then there was the trickle-down effect. Before the 1979 Boston Marathon, Bob Hodge was asked by a Brockton Enterprise reporter how fast he hoped to run. When Hodge (whose PR was 2:28) said 2:15, the reporter asked what made him think he could do such a thing. "Randy ran 2:15 last year in New York City, and I run with him," was the answer.

Had Rodgers been more ego-driven, the whole thing might have fallen apart. But the affable Rodgers had - still has -- a certain openness, a generosity of spirit. If you're a mid-packer in the East McKeesport 10K and bump into celebrity guest Bill Rodgers in the elevator of the headquarters hotel, he's going to ask you how your race went and he really wants to know. That's how he was with his teammates, too. "Billy's the kind of friend, if he couldn't go to a race he'd throw your name out so maybe they'd take you," said Meyer, who moved from Michigan to join the GBTC after Rodgers gave him a job at his running store.

In turn, there was scant jealousy of Rodgers' fame and success.

"I didn't mind when people said Billy was a better athlete," said Meyer. "Hell, he was."

Even the era itself couldn't have been more ideal. In the Vietnam-laden climate of the mid-to-late 1970s, a lot of young Americans were "finding themselves." It was acceptable to hang out for awhile after college, try to figure out what to do with your life, explore some personal options. No one jumped from graduation into $80,000-a-year corporate positions; no one got impossibly wealthy overnight from an internet startup. No one needed to: even in Boston, apartments were cheap, especially if you piled in three or four guys. You might be poor if you chose to be a runner, but you weren't going to be much poorer than you would have been anyway.

"To become a distance runner is more of a gamble today," said Rodgers, of those low-pressure, no-prize-money days. "The push to make money is on now more than ever in society. We didn't have as much to lose."

Bobby Hodge is a good example. In 1977, in the midst of an All- American career at the University of Lowell, Hodge decided to leave school and travel around the country living out of a van, keeping his running low-key (which, to him at the time, meant running twice a day), trying to decide where he wanted to go with his career and his running. By the time the trip ended in March of 1978, he writes on his website, "The decision I came to on this trip was that no matter what else I did, I would run and find out what I could do in the sport until I was either beaten down or successful enough to be satisfied."

In early 1979, Hodge was working in a shoe store in Hanover, Mass., sleeping on a mattress in its basement and using a garden hose strung outside as a shower. In April of that year, he would finish third in the Boston Marathon.

"I was willing to be just a running bum for a couple of years," said Hodge, now a law librarian. "[Most guys now] think it's putting their life on hold. I hate that. How can they view that as sacrificing? They're living large."

All this did not go unnoticed in Boston, with its deep distance-running tradition, plentiful collegiate track programs, knowledgeable fan base and such exhaustive news coverage that Joe Concannon of the Boston Globe used to report the results of Thursday night workouts.

"The community of Boston respected the athletes," recalled Meyer.

"They knew running. You felt like an athlete in Boston. You'd go out for a run and you'd have the guys coming up out of the manhole covers saying, "kick their ass, Billy."

On April 16, 1979, Rodgers ran 2:09:27 for his third Boston Marathon victory. No one was surprised. Randy Thomas came in eighth, in 2:14:12. No surprise there, either. But Bob Hodge bursting forth with a 16-minute PR to finish third, in 2:12:30? Dick Mahoney, a mailman, running 2:14:36 for 10th?

With four finishers in the top 10 "of probably the finest marathon field ever put together, the Greater Boston Track Club is THE marathon club," wrote Steve Harris in the next day's Boston Herarld-American. The city honored the quartet in a ceremony at historic Faneuil Hall.

Their times have stood the test. Had they run them at the 2003 Boston Marathon, Rodgers still would have won. Hodge, Thomas and Mahoney would have come in fifth, seventh and eighth.

It has not been forgotten, but can it be repeated? In the early 1980s, shoe companies lured many of the GBTC's top guns away to compete for them, a scenario repeated around the country. The club system faded. American distance running, for the most part, suffered for its runners' relative isolation, until things deteriorated to the point where the U.S. was represented by just one male and one female marathoner at the 2000 Olympics. Enter: the past. Team USA, the Farm Team and others stepped up in an attempt to turn things around.

"Certainly the Greater Boston Track Club is a huge role model for what we do here," said Keith Hanson. His Hanson's-Brooks Distance Project in Rochester Hills, Mich., was founded in 1999 and was perhaps the biggest story of the recent U.S. Men's Olympic Trials when it saw its runners go 4-5-13. The fourth-pace finisher, Trent Briney, was a virtual unknown before the Trials, what Squires would have called a "guppy," and his 2:12:34 was a PR by 8:36.

Echoes Sevene, who calls himself a reflection of everything Squires was trying to do: "We're trying to go back today to what that club was."

Next thing you know, their guys will be eating bologna sandwiches and diving for toll-booth change.

Barbara Huebner wrote about running for the Boston Globe from 1993-2001. She is now a freelance writer and media consultant.

Have to throw in a link to the great training guide that Bill Squires wrote with Bruce Lehane: Speed With Endurance.

Watch Out For Cars!

2010-08-31T08:10:00.000-07:00

Right-of-way does not automatically ensure safety as a much heavier vehicle will always win out regardless of whether the driver is in the wrong. Make sure the driver sees you and is coming to a stop before stepping out in front of the vehicle -- anyone could be running a yellow/red light, running or rolling through a stop sign, etc.

Thank goodness this runner was not injured worse:
http://www.isuvoice.com/2010/08/26/marathoner-hit-by-truck-is-isu-employee

Virgin Again

2010-08-13T20:32:00.000-07:00

A new interview with Craig Virgin, to compliment one posted here a year ago:

http://www.garycohenrunning.com/Interviews/Virgin.aspx

Sage Thoughts From Pete Pfitzinger

2010-08-12T16:38:00.000-07:00

Here is Pete Pfitzinger, a renowned physiologist with a great collection of training articles, in a two-part video interview:

Yet More Coach Joe Newton

2010-07-25T17:59:00.000-07:00

The Long Green Line on Hulu:

Spread Your Wings

2010-07-12T08:24:00.000-07:00

Great song - long one of my favorites - and good imagery. A little Monday inspiration:

Racing & Pacing

2010-07-07T15:21:00.000-07:00

Today I saw a compelling article on the Running Times website regarding approaches to training, racing, and excellence in distance running. Apparently some of the phenomena described by the author are spreading to places where they had long been rejected. Some excerpts that I liked and agree with:

We often fall into the trap of believing that our measure as athletes is based on how far we went today, or our weekly mileage.
I'd like to argue that frequent marathoning may be detrimental to some runners' development, and you may find greater satisfaction and success aiming at a shorter distance during many of your training seasons.
We went too long too soon, developed bad habits, and failed to build the athletic strength necessary to support our growing aerobic strength.
Ignoring speed work leads to inefficient strides (the "marathon shuffle") and injury as well.
I recall one spring when I was training for a marathon, getting in 50-to 60-mile weeks, going on an easy 10-miler with an Austrian friend who was not much faster than me at shorter distances and was training for a different marathon. I learned that he was running 90-100 miles per week, which he considered barely adequate. Learning my miles, he suggested that I should probably be aiming at the 10K. It surprised and somewhat offended me at the time--but, while I ran a PR, he ran his marathon more than 10 minutes faster than me.
How many miles are necessary? Let's look at one common measure: If, as many coaches advise, the long run shouldn't be more than 25 percent of your week (many say 20 percent), any week when you are running a 20-miler should total 80+ miles. This is in line with what top coaches recommend if you want to do your best in the marathon: An informal poll of five coaches came up with a range of 70-120 miles (see sidebar). Less than that, and not only is the marathon distance a survival stretch, but the long run becomes too much stress in your week and you fall into the problems discussed above of ignoring other elements, all of which are necessary to become fully prepared to race the distance. I know first-hand. Looking back with a critical eye, I've done adequate mileage for the distance only three or four times, and it shows: Those are the breakthrough, negative-split races amid many "glad I made it" finishes.
What if, when looking at a training book, we didn't say, "I'm running 40 miles per week, I can follow the intermediate marathon training program," but instead focused on the advanced program for the 5K or 10K? Let's not fall into the trap that we're going to "waste" the miles on a shorter race: Top runners from Kenenisa Bekele down to any collegian regularly run 70 to 100 or more miles per week with no intention of racing longer than 10K. "Yes, but they're elites," we too often say. Why sell ourselves short? If we can run 50-mile weeks with several speed workouts, why not use it to test the limits of what our bodies can do at a shorter distance, rather than accept that we're intermediate at the marathon?
Running faster is just as hard, often harder, than running longer.
[Bill] Rodgers says, "I like the racing part of our sport--and it doesn't have to be the marathon. The excellence side of the sport is very important."
"In essence, I think it takes a lot more training to be your best at all distances than people often realize or commit to," says coach and Running Times columnist Greg McMillan. "For competitive runners, I find they can usually run much faster when they safely build up to more and better training even for shorter races like the 5K/10K."

The late, great Coach John Wooden

2010-06-05T13:20:00.000-07:00

Though not a coach of runners, he was a coach of people and of life and as such his influence has so much to offer any and all of us, no matter who we are or what we do. Anyone should be able to find something relevant in what someone who has been so successful has to say.

Here is a great column from John Feinstein followed by a great video via TED.

John Wooden: Untouchable record, incomparable man

Koll Power

2010-06-04T06:25:00.000-07:00

Lisa Koll won the 2009-2010 Honda Award in track and field, given annually to the top woman athlete in the sport in the NCAA. She joins the company of Angela Bizzarri, who won for cross country for 2009-2010, and past t&f winners such as Jenny Barringer, Kim Smith, and Amy Skieresz. In her video interview, she gives some great insights on sacrifice, determination, perseverance, overcoming adversity, and simply doing what one loves and enjoying it -- highly recommend watching it, her demeanor is definitely one worth emulating.

Eating For Performance

2010-06-03T09:27:00.000-07:00

Saw a great article on ultrarunner supreme Scott Jurek's diet today. This is something that far too few dedicated runners seem to comprehend in terms of (no pun) low-hanging fruit that plays an important role in performance, whether one embraces it or not. Some highlights:

When I explain my vegan diet to other runners, I try to get them to think about what I eat rather than what I do not eat - because that’s how I look at it.
Many runners eliminate items from their diet without finding healthy alternatives, resulting in a drop in health and performance. I focus on eating whole, plant-based foods. These include: healthy fats, whole grains, legumes, soy protein (via tempeh, tofu, and miso), nuts, seeds, fruits and vegetables. I eat organic foods as much as possible, usually 80 to 90 per cent of my diet, and over the last few years, I’ve been trying to eat more locally grown, seasonal foods.
Endurance athletes, including vegans and vegetarians, should not be afraid of healthy fats. They are just as essential as carbohydrates for optimal performance and recovery. Protein is important, too, but many vegans could meet the 10-15 per cent protein requirement for endurance athletes if they met their caloric requirement (quantity) and included fewer processed foods (quality).
Scott Jurek’s Tips for Vegans and Omnivores

1. Focus on quantity of calories no matter what type of diet, and then work on improving the quality of the calories.
2. Incorporate rather than eliminate: Include high-quality whole foods to optimize the calories you consume. Grab the whole foods and then ditch the junk foods.
3. A natural boost: A huge benefit of a vegan or vegetarian diet is it will naturally encourage the inclusion of higher-quality foods.
4. Explore new foods. Part of the fun and challenge of a vegan and vegetarian diet is the introduction of new foods.
5. Ease into it: Try going vegetarian or vegan once or twice a week or maybe just start with one or two meals per week.
6. Go local and organic: If your diet already includes whole foods, step it up a notch by eating more organic and locally grown foods. Get out and explore the farmer’s markets in your area.
7. Put your money where your mouth is: Eating organic, whole foods does not have to be expensive. Put your dollars in fresh produce and bulk foods. The less packaged food you eat, the more you will save, and the quality of your diet will increase.
8. Get in the kitchen: The key to quality nutrition is doing more food prep and cooking. Experiment with new foods. Cooking can be simple - you don’t have to be a master chef.
9. Plan ahead for meals and recovery mini meals. Pack a lunch and plan meals with a grocery list so the kitchen is stocked with essentials, and food is ready to go when you need it.
10. Make the most of your cooking time. Yes, it does take some time to prepare food, but it doesn’t have to take too much time. Prepare extra food so you have leftovers for lunches and the next day’s dinner.
11. Embrace food prep. I find it a very relaxing time of my day (although I admit it can be hard to motivate yourself to cook when you’re tired from a long day). It’s also very rewarding to know that you’re putting the time and energy into the food that keeps your body fuelled for running. Think of cooking as part of your training.

Check out the entire article, he lists a sample day of his intake as well as recipes.

Resuming Transmission

2010-05-12T18:05:00.000-07:00

Been a while (too long) since my last post. Nothing incredibly original this time, just a few pretty cool W.S. videos I have seen recently:

The Importance of Iron Redux

2010-04-03T16:53:00.000-07:00

Revisiting a topic I posted an entry about earlier this year, I recently found a source for low cost ferritin testing (among many other inexpensive tests) available across the USA, HealthCheckUSA.com. The last time I tried to get a ferritin level through my HMO just for my annual physical, it was a huge hassle as they would not order the test without a medical diagnosis to prompt it -- they would prefer me to wait until I was actually showing symptoms of anemia and not just seeking a more ideal ferritin level for athletic performance. I wound up getting a ferritin level that one time because the doctor I saw turned out to be a runner, too, and understood my concern. So even if one has health insurance, it might turn out to be much easier to go directly to a lab to get ferritin levels on a regular (quarterly) basis. Check the website for an affiliate near you.

XX Running

2010-04-03T11:22:00.000-07:00

I just read an interesting blog post that, while it is applied to mountain biking, is essentially about how women may approach sporting challenges differently from men. I found it highly instructional and it is something that anyone who coaches or trains/competes with women likely should understand. Some highlights:

[If] you’re a healthy male, you’ve gotten a large rush of adrenaline to the bloodstream. This is going to amp you up for the challenge, goad the competitive inkling and increase your focus and clarity; all helping you feel ready to attack.
If you’re a healthy woman, well, maybe not so much. You’ve released the adrenaline, but it’s likely you just got an even larger dose of acetocholine. This happy little hormone makes you feel uncomfortable and nauseated with clouded thought.

And because of an added rush of oxcytocin, the “Tend-and-Befriend” hormone, you have an urge to connect with others and tend to the needs of the group. You’re not necessarily looking to discuss your feelings, just the same you could throw out a “How you doin?”

What looks on the surface to be nervous chatter, is actually a physical response to help calm the nerves.
In addition to the above, there are many more gender differences in approach to challenge based on psychology and socialization.
Beth explained that when faced with a daunting physical challenge, it helps many ladies to understand that wanting to throw up isn’t always a sign to give up. This can make for a better assessment of a situation. And knowing that connecting with the group can lend to success, a woman can find support for herself through a challenge.
[For] most females, having options and an incremental approach when highly stressed is a step towards the desired goal.
“Just do it” doesn’t really give room for options or differences in learning styles. A woman might prefer, “Try this portion of the ride and see how you feel.”

La Campionessa

2010-04-02T07:15:00.000-07:00

A superb recent interview with one of the true assets to Boulder's and Colorado's running community, and incidentally one of my favorite runners, Melody Fairchild: http://www.coloradorunnermag.com/read_feature/interview-melody-fairchild

Excerpting one of the highlights:

What do you believe is the most important training advice to share with competitive long distance runners for 5k to the marathon?
It’s important to do some nuts and bolts core and strength training of some kind. A ten minute warm up run before some core and strength training two days a week is worth more than that extra ten miler. I wish I had done this earlier and more often in my running career.

Perhaps more importantly, pay attention to recovery. Balance is really tough for distance runners -- runners think that more is better and are afraid to stop and get out of shape. To get into that rarefied place it takes going to some extreme. If we go to those extremes too often it means eventual physical injury and psychological burnout.

With all of the moving forward and pounding of joints, tendons, ligaments, and muscles it also really helps to have some kind of practice that is an antidote to all of that. I think this would extend people’s running careers. It’s unfortunate that more runners don’t do that and give back to themselves because runners are often the most open and ready to accept that kind of thing. As the antidote, I would suggest lengthening the body in some way and not stretching muscle, something that Cortical Field Re-Education offers.

Video of Melody's first win at Kinney (now Foot Locker):

Also, a wonderful article by Melody from last year: http://runningtimes.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=16932

Correction on World Cross Webcast

2010-03-27T10:50:00.000-07:00

Though it appears on the Universal Sports schedule, it is not included in their listing of upcoming video coverage. However, I have since found this:

http://www.athletics-weekly.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1875&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=30

says the event will be on here live:
http://www.worldlivetv.org/
then click on the left on the link that says:
RAI Sport Piu

The time schedule in the US is:
Junior Women's Race 6:00am Eastern
Junior Men's Race 6:30 am eastern
Women's Race 7:15 am eastern
Men's Race 8:10 am eastern

World Cross Live Webcast from Poland on Sunday

2010-03-26T10:22:00.000-07:00

Junior races start at 6 AM EDT, 5 CDT, 4 MDT, 3 PDT
Senior races start at 7:15 AM EDT, 6:15 CDT, 5:15 MDT, 4:15 PDT
http://www.universalsports.com/track-and-field/schedule/index.html

We Have a New Half-Marathon World Record Holder

2010-03-21T15:40:00.000-07:00

Eritrean Zersenay Tadese kills it today in Lisbon, Portugal.

Some compelling analysis: http://www.sportsscientists.com/2010/03/5823-half-marathon-world-record.html

How They Trained: Bill Rodgers '74

2010-03-17T07:09:00.000-07:00

The year he ran his third, fourth, and fifth marathons, went under 2:20 for the first time (in Boston), and broke the CR at the Philadelphia Marathon -- and of course led into '75.
http://www.billrodgersrunningcenter.com/bi19rulog.html

Perspective

2010-03-12T11:18:00.000-08:00

I have really become a big fan of Jay Johnson (check out his videos, linked from the lower part of the sidebar here) and his blog. On top of his signature enthusiasm and clear intellectual curiosity, he consistently displays a genuine love for both the sport and helping all runners, not just the ones he coaches, find improvement. In a recent blog post, he included this video he shot with Renee Metivier Baillie, who is having a breakthrough year so far (count me among those who are excited to see what is yet to come for her), giving some valuable perspective on training and racing that all coaches and runners could learn from:

Renee Metivier Baillie on training from CoachJayJohnson on Vimeo.

Renee Metivier Baillie discusses the importance of running by feel and how to use the watch to keep from running too fast. During the video she's getting some important, but painful, soft tissue work.

Also, a link to a blog from a world class runner who has interesting things to say:
http://marayamauchi.blogzine.jp/english/3_blog/index.html

More Good News For Olympic Trials Aspirants

2010-03-11T21:33:00.000-08:00

Credit where it is due:

I just wanted to pass a note along to let friends with fast running friends know about a bonus that the KeyBank Vermont City Marathon will be offering this year. The KBVCM will be giving $750 to every American male and female who gets an Olympic Trials qualifying time at our race. For those of you who don't know, the KBVCM is potentially a fast course with a net downhill of 100 feet. Weather here in May during the race is usually about 55-65 degrees. We are hoping this incentive creates our fastest race ever this year with solid competition for those up and coming US marathoners with aspirations to make it to Houston.

In addition to the OT bonus money, we also offer a Course Record bonus of $1000, with current course records of 2:17:03 for men and 2:35:02 for women. In the case of multiple runners of a single gender breaking our course record in any given year, the Course Record bonus will be paid to the first place individual.

The KeyBank Vermont City Marathon takes place on Sunday, May 30, 2010. If you are interested in running or know someone who is, please send them our way. Travel money and hotel are available for some. The contact in our office is Joe Connelly at joe@runvermont.org.

Great News For Olympic Trials Marathon Aspirants

2010-03-11T09:20:00.000-08:00

"I just wanted to pass a note along to let friends with fast running friends know about a bonus that the California International Marathon will be offering this year. The CIM will be giving $1000 to every American male who gets an Olympic trials qualifier and either $1000 or $500 (a and b standard) for every female who gets a qualifying time at our race. For those of you who don't know, the CIM is one of the fastest courses in the country with a net downhill of 326 feet. Weather here in December is usually about 50 degrees. It has always been a great place to run fast or even debut and this year it will be a great place to do that while putting an extra grand in your pocket! We are hoping to create a really fast race this year with this incentive.

The California International Marathon takes place on Sunday, December 5, 2010. If you are interested in running or know someone who is, please send them our way. Travel money and hotel are available for some. My elite athlete coordinator, Priscilla Bayley, can be contacted at priscillabayley@gmail.com.

Here's to a great year of training ahead and to Houston in 2012!"

More Coach Joe Newton

2010-03-04T07:52:00.000-08:00

This time in interview format:

Coach Joe Newton Speaks

2010-03-03T22:35:00.000-08:00

The art of coaching and so many gems for everyday life:

Talent: Fact & Fiction

2010-02-25T22:00:00.000-08:00

A great recent article by Bryan Green on talent, quite good: http://www.runnerstribe.com/article/post/show/id/703-The-Talent-Distraction

Runners do different mileage, different workouts, in different environments, with different teammates and different coaches, in different eras, and none of them share that information in a clear, easy to understand way.

Also, an interesting blog post by the Science of Sport guys on mental vs. physical:
http://www.sportsscientists.com/2010/02/mental-edge-thoughts-and-opinions.html

A Weighty Matter

2010-02-07T13:31:00.000-08:00

This past week there was a great item in the NYT regarding weight and athletic performance. Some highlights:

So, why not just be as thin as you can be?
The problem is that everyone has a point at which further weight loss actually makes their performance worse, said Dr. Mark Tarnopolsky, a muscle metabolism researcher and physiologist at McMaster University in Ontario. Dr. Tarnopolsky, who is a nationally ranked athlete in winter triathlons, adventure racing and ski orienteering, said that people vary so much that there is no formula to figure out the perfect weight.

Dr. Tarnopolsky said that he got his best VO2 max — 86 milliliters of oxygen per kilogram of body weight — when he weighed 156 pounds. “Like everyone else, I said, ‘Maybe if I drop some body fat, it will go higher,’ ” Dr. Tarnopolsky said. So he got his weight down to 152 pounds. But to his surprise, his VO2 max decreased, to 82.
The likely reason, he said, was that he had reached a point where his body began burning its own muscle protein for fuel. He was weaker, and his performance was worse, even though he weighed less.
“You could see on the VO2 machine what your body knew was right,” Dr. Tarnopolsky said. “You’d feel tired, stale, lethargic when you tried to drive your weight down.”
Often the only way to know your best weight is by trial and error.
My running coach, Tom Fleming, a former elite runner who won the New York City Marathon twice, in 1973 and 1975, said that he always tells his competitive athletes “that the perfect weight is the weight you are the day you P.B. in your event,” referring to the time you achieve your personal best — or fastest — finish.
“Your body will tell you” your perfect weight, he said, and when you are there, “you will feel fast, race fast.”

[Dathan Ritzenhein] has learned, he said, that if he tries to lose weight too fast or if he continues to lose weight up until his race day, he does not have the energy he needs for his best performance. And if he tries to lose weight too fast, his training suffers.
“It’s a hard line” between losing just enough at the right rate and losing too much too fast, he said.

Andre Agassi, the tennis star, and his longtime trainer, Gil Reyes, discovered through experience that Mr. Agassi’s best weight was between 178 and 182 pounds (Mr. Agassi is 5 feet 11 1/2.)
“We came up with a number, but we did not seek a number,” Mr. Reyes explained in a recent telephone interview. “It was all about him feeling strong and fit.”

Before he retired from tennis, Mr. Agassi would sometimes gain weight and then stop eating, trying to shed the pounds fast. Mr. Reyes discouraged this. “I said to him, ‘Why do you feel like you have to stop eating to lose that weight?,’ ” he recalled. “ ‘What if you were to eat 10 to 15 percent more, but train 40 percent more?’ ”

“I knew from experience and results that I had an ideal weight — or what I thought was ideal,” said Andy Hampsten, a former Tour de France rider and the only American ever to win the Giro D’Italia, in 1988. “If I set too low of a weight goal, I would be weak and stressed,” he said. “If I weighed 4 or 5 pounds more than ideal, I could see I was slower than my competitors.”

Mr. Reyes said that he and Mr. Agassi learned not to let the scale rule your life. “We had a little bit of a phrase,” he said. “The weight scale to most human beings can be like a Ouija board. It can start messing with your head.”
The trick is not to let it.

Vive La Différence

2010-01-24T09:20:00.000-08:00

I recently discovered an online collection of ads from one of my favorite marketing campaigns aimed at runners from adidas: Runners. Yeah, we're different. I recognize some notable US runners like Alan Culpepper and Pete Julian, among others (Jen Rhines? TWill?) featured in the ads.

A few of my favorites:

This happens just about everywhere there is a high enough concentration of runners. Though the venerable local mainstay, the Boulder Creek Path, happens to be paved with concrete, for more than 60% of its length there is a well-worn dirt path running parallel alongside it.

The snot rocket. A handy skill that occupies a prominent spot on the toolbelt of any runner who has spent enough time out putting in the miles. Beware of misfires and scatterbombs. Also known as a "farmer blow" by daintier types. The answer to the newbie query, "where do you carry tissues when running?"

Ah, the balance between the necessity to relieve oneself in public and the fear of being discovered doing so, especially where there is scant cover.

No comment here, just throwing this one in for the ladies.

The Importance of Iron

2010-01-23T08:00:00.000-08:00

This past week I read a really good article on iron intake and iron stores by coach Jeff Hess. It is something that is unfortunately misunderstood and undervalued in how much it can impact performance, by too many coaches, athletes, and even the medical community. It can affect males as well as females, particularly in those with heavy training loads - as well as those living at altitude - who do not include regular intake of red meat and/or sufficient iron supplementation. I have referenced it in passing - coach Scott Simmons, to name just one, has all of his athletes, both professional and collegiate, tested quarterly for ferritin levels - and the timing of seeing this article seems like a great opportunity to explore it more in depth. I will post some pertinent passages below, but the entire article is certainly well worth taking the time to read and digest.

Iron is a particularly important mineral for endurance athletes due to its role in binding oxygen, which is circulated through the lungs and to the working muscles. Unfortunately, our bodies absorb only about 15% of the iron we ingest, and distance runners do just about everything possible to deplete the iron that they do consume.
Iron is lost through sweat and gastrointestinal irritation. It is temporarily lost through "footstrike hemolysis" (bursting blood cells through foot impact with the ground). Iron absorption is inhibited by calcium, coffee, tea, carbonated beverages and non-steroidal anti-inflammatories (all that ibuprofen some of you swallow). Women lose a substantial amount of iron through menstruation, making them more susceptible to iron depletion, but it is a concern for all distance runners-male and female.
Anemia, clinical iron deficiency, is not rare among runners, but even more common than iron deficiency is "iron depletion" due to low ferritin stores. Ferritin is an iron-containing protein that is primarily responsible for iron storage in the bone marrow. It is common among distance runners to have acceptable hemoglobin and hematocrit counts even when ferritin levels are severely depleted. For less active people, low ferritin levels are much less significant and don't often draw the attention of medical professionals.
However, the results of low ferritin levels for distance runners are significant. While iron depletion rarely results in the general lethargy associated with true iron-deficiency anemia, distance runners with low ferritin will likely experience abnormal exhaustion, increased blood lactate, slow recovery, declining performances, heavy legs, muscular tightness, loss of motivation, and substantially increased risk of injury. Does any of this sound familiar?
And there's more. Overuse injuries (the type of injuries distance runners get) double with ferritin levels under 20 and triple with levels under 12. I think it's safe to suggest that iron depletion is rarely considered to be the root cause of these injuries. Instead we focus on mileage, running surfaces, shoes and the other usual suspects. If you were nodding your head thinking the previous symptoms sound like a checklist of your most recent season, go get your serum ferritin tested.

At South Eugene High School, we became aware of the consequences of low iron in the spring of 2001 when three of our female distance runners all came back from blood tests with ferritin levels below 10 ng/ml. All three had all run their best times two years before but had been plagued with injuries and frustration since. During those two years, they had multiple blood tests, but the doctors never checked their serum ferritin levels.
Within four weeks of beginning an aggressive supplementation program, all three felt substantially more energy while running; their enthusiasm and joy for running returned, and they began to run much faster. Within two months, their levels were between 35 and 55 ng/ml. All three went on to compete collegiately and ran times far superior to what they ran in high school.
Since that initial experience, we have suggested that all the girls on the team have complete iron tests. Only five out of the dozens who have been tested, have been within the acceptable range for serum ferritin, and those five were either big meat eaters or had been taking supplemental iron for years. Half of the girls tested have been below 12 ng/ml.

Meet America's newest 2:10 marathoner

2010-01-21T20:54:00.001-08:00

An interview with the 4th fastest US debut marathoner in history, Brett Gotcher:
http://runningtimes.com/Print.aspx?articleID=18598

USA Half-Marathon Championships Live Webcast

2010-01-15T08:15:00.000-08:00

http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/livenow?id=7212907
"KTRK's steadycam vehicle will follow the half virtually to the finish (where the FL cameras will take over) before heading back out to pick up the full marathon at about mile 17."
Race starts at 7 a.m. CST (8 EST, 6 MST, 5 PST)

Shalane Flanagan, AR-holder for 3000m, 5000m, and 10,000m, will be making her debut at the distance at the same venue where Ryan Hall had his break-out AR debut performance. From a local perspective, Renee Metivier Baillie, former NCAA CC runner-up and multiple all-American training under Jay Johnson, is making what I believe is her debut at the distance. Brent Vaughn is also making his debut in the half-marathon and I am intrigued to see how he does. Looks like a really solid men's field, including Rohatinsky, Carney, Arciniaga, Nelson, Young, Hartmann, and Ryan Shay's younger brother Stephan, and should make for some really good races.

Entries: http://www.usatf.org/events/2010/USAHalfMarathonChampionships/entry/status.asp

Roids

2010-01-14T19:02:00.000-08:00

Another solid post with some great takeaway from Pete Magill:
http://petemagill.blogspot.com/2010/01/steroid-confessions-your-humble-blogger.html

Being Present!

2009-12-20T20:43:00.001-08:00

I touched on this a bit in a post from a couple of months ago, and this great blog post from elephant journal goes further in describing the impact of the mental aspect on sports performance:
http://www.elephantjournal.com/2009/01/sports-is-spiritual-michael-jordan-magic-johnson-babe-ruth-sharma-dr-joseph-parent-zen-of-golf/

Don't think, do. Then think.

2009-12-11T11:51:00.000-08:00

Really nice article on running and weather from Running Times. Some portions that really stood out to me:

The truth is, if you tracked the weather throughout the year, there are really only a handful of perfect running days. So, I’m used to running in less than ideal conditions. I learned a long time ago that if I let the weather become an excuse, then I could find at least a hundred other excuses not to run. Excuses don’t serve you well, if there’s something you hope to gain through persistence.
That’s the way it is when you’re facing something difficult. The hardest part is almost always the very first step. Once you’re moving in the right direction, momentum becomes a friend.
Instead, focus on the year ahead and the unwritten chapters of your life. What is it that you want to do? And, perhaps more importantly, who is it that you want to become? Now is a time to imagine, to dream, not to lament.

Fukuoka Marathon Live Webstream

2009-12-04T07:09:00.000-08:00

A great heavyweight match-up in Japan, Land of the Marathon: Mekubo Mogusu (in his debut) and Tsegaye Kebede. Looks like a rather amazing race beyond those two, as well:
http://japanrunningnews.blogspot.com/2009/12/fukuoka-time-watch-live-online.html

Start will be at 12:30 p.m. EST, 11:30 p.m. CST, 10:30 p.m. MST, 9:30 p.m. PST on Saturday, December 5th.

How They Trained: Bill Rodgers '75

2009-12-04T07:00:00.000-08:00

His log from 1975, when he won the B.A.A. Marathon in 2:09:55, a new PR.
http://www.bunnhill.com/BobHodge/Rodgers/TrainingLogs/br75traininglog.htm

Mind Over Matter

2009-12-02T16:54:00.000-08:00

A nice article on dealing with pain and other mental obstacles that may arise when running hard, as in a race, with valuable insights from greats like Lorraine Moller, Bill Rodgers, Hendrick Ramaala, Bob Kempainen, Ryan Hall, and Kara Goucher:
http://runningtimes.com/Print.aspx?articleID=18261

Bizzarri's Brilliance

2009-11-28T16:21:00.000-08:00

A very cool video on 2009 NCAA Women's Cross Country Individual Champion Angela Bizzarri's championship run:

Distance Running 101

2009-11-28T10:39:00.000-08:00

Though this was written three years ago, I do not believe I have ever read this before. It is an essay by Weldon Johnson that is highly exemplary of the principles for success in distance running. Some highlights:

"I was too busy focusing on the details to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. Running is a very simple activity. It is largely an aerobic activity (and more so the farther you run in distance). The better aerobic fitness you have, the better you'll do. The more you can train and the more consistently you train the better you'll do. Most of us however, especially college runners, are out there running ourselves ragged, pounding away at intervals, without taking a step back to see what we really should be doing."
"The best piece of running advice I think I ever received actually came when I was in college . . . I asked Bob Lesko . . . for training advice. Lesko was primarily a miler and half-miler and he told me if I was 5k and up to run 'twice a day, every day.' Something to that extent. Very similar to what Haile Gebrselassie says about his training - 'I train twice a day every day, except Christmas' . . . Now, I'm sure at the time I argued with Lesko, saying I couldn't run twice a day every day. So then, he probably told me to do it 3 or 4 times a week or as many times as I could."
"I knew this off the top of my head, but in college I would average all my runs as being 6:30 a mile or faster. And looking at my logs, this is shown as well. I'll have a 10 miler at 6:20 pace and that is an easy day. I used to try and pretend that I run 7:00 pace on my easy days now, but I think it is often much slower than that. The point is now I don't really care about the pace. I'm not trying to run 'slow' by any means, but I have no concerns that I am going too slow. But when I am running twice a day, 120 miles a week, the pace is the last thing I need to even think about. I need to go too 'slow' (in your opinion not mine) if I want to workout consistently and effectively . . . I was always trying to make sure I hit a certain pace instead of learning how to relax when I was running."
"The goal of every interval or every workout is not to run as fast as you can. . . . Actually, on most intervals and most workouts you don't want to be running anywhere near as hard or as fast as you can. Paraphrasing Arthur Lydiard, the key to running fast is to relax. And if you are running 'hard' on all your intervals and on each workout, you'll never accomplish this."
"On most intervals you should be staying away from the red line. But looking back in college, I can see even if we ended up with say a 400 and 200, it looks like I was trying to really finish the workouts off with an unnecessary bang, as I made sure I ran them 'hard.' In running however, there are not bonus points for running 'hard.' The point is to run fast. There is a difference. Don't forget that. Too many people confuse 'hard' with fast. The next time you see Bernard Lagat running, tell me how 'hard' it looks like he's running. And if you are running "hard" on all your runs and all your intervals, you will never teach your body to relax while running fast which is the key to running even faster."
"If I'm trying to bang out every fartlek, every interval, and then making sure I run at least 6:30 pace on my easy runs, something had to give (since I wasn't a freak and a 4-time Footlocker guy, the Wisco guys can all run 6:15 as they are freaks). First out the window was consistent improvement and peaking at the right time. Sure, I generally got better year to year (runners generally should improve year to year almost by default but I never came close to reaching my potential) but was incredibly inconsistent. But by not letting my body recover or have its easy days, it was much harder to peak on the proper day. If your body is tired all the time, it is much harder to get it to peak on the right day."
"Nowadays, not only am I way faster than I was in college, but more importantly, I know that I'm going to run my best when it matters most. A lot of guys don't have this concept down because they are running too hard all the time. They'll run 28:20 in April and then nationals come around and they'll run 28:50. I'll do the opposite. The guy who wins the race is not necessarily the guy with the most ability or most potential, it is who runs closest to their max on that day. So you need to know the purpose of each workout, each recovery run, and take it to heart. Most young guys think they just need to run "harder" to be good. Often this is not the case. They just need to run faster. Think "fast" not "hard." I ran plenty hard in college, and some of that was my problem."
"I think I would have been healthier if I ran more, but at a slower pace on my easy days. It would have let my body recover. A friend of mine raced one track race his entire college career until his senior year. He was constantly injured but really enjoyed the sport.. Once he got out of college, he was still training, and I told him he needed to run more. He told me his body wasn't meant to run more. I told him to slow down. Sure enough he called me back a few weeks later and was amazed that he had done his first 70 mile week. So stress on the body is not just from the number of miles you do. Obviously you would like to run on as soft a surface as possible but there have been people who have run high mileage on pavement."
"[In] college, I was too busy trying to hammer that day's workout, too busy recording my mileage to the quarter mile (or doing a rolling 7 day total, keeping track of the mileage on my shoes, etc), searching for the "secret" to success instead of just getting out and getting in consistent aerobic training.
"[Most] importantly, . . . you need to believe in yourself that you're going to run fast. The All-Americans, the national champs, they are no different than you or me. They just run faster and there is no doubt in their minds they can do it (sure they are nervous on the line. I always said that if I didn't get nervous before races I would quit running because what would be the point of competing). A lot of people work hard, put in the work, but feel like they are not ready to reach the next level or are not sure they can reach it. Well racing is a hugely mental thing. And if there is any doubt in your mind as to how you're going to do, when it starts to hurt, you'll start questioning yourself and that will be it."
"The best runners are not necessarily the most 'talented' (although talent helps a lot). But what is 'talent' anyway? I had just as much 'talent' in college as I do now, yet I was that good. If you learn how to run fast (which I equate with learning how to train), put in the work consistently (this is a key ingredient I'm glossing over a bit) and believe in yourself, pretty soon you may discover that you are the 'talented' one."

It is a great message and I highly encourage reading it in its entirety: http://www.letsrun.com/2006/collegesuck.php

Post-run Principles

2009-11-26T21:29:00.000-08:00

Pete Magill does it again, with a wonderful video detailing keys of the post-run routine.
My few thoughts:

Chocolate Silk is great!
Stretch to allow muscles to heal from microtears created during the run in an enlongated position.
Shave your head, Pete! ; )

The Score - The Final Score 2009

2009-11-26T12:35:00.000-08:00

Fo' Fives

The actual top fives followed by my picks and how they fared:

Women's Individuals

1 1 230 Angela Bizzarri SR Illinois 6:23 13:02 19:46.8
2 2 768 Kendra Schaaf SO Washington 6:21 13:02 19:51.6
3 3 179 Susan Kuijken SR Florida State 6:18 12:49 19:57.7
4 4 739 Catherine White JR Virginia 6:23 13:11 19:59.5
5 5 114 Allie McLaughlin FR Colorado 6:25 13:11 20:01.1

1. Jenny Barringer - Colorado -- 163rd; an interesting, if poorly edited, accounting of her race: http://runningtimes.com/Print.aspx?articleID=18230

2. Angela Bizzarri - Illinois -- Champion! Ran a smart race and took advantage of opportunities presented by the actions of others.

3. Susan Kuijken - Florida State -- 3rd after building a large lead by 3K to challenge Barringer.

4. Kendra Schaaf - Washington -- Runner-up, also ran a smart race.

5. Nicole Blood - Oregon -- 48th, apparently her West Region race was a struggle rather than a cruise.

Women's Teams

1. 86 Villanova ( 20:24 1:42:00)
2. 133 Florida State ( 20:35 1:42:52)
3. 188 Washington ( 20:41 1:43:21)
4. 191 Texas Tech ( 20:48 1:43:59)
5. 251 Princeton ( 20:58 1:44:50)

1. Washington -- 3rd, seemingly buckled under the pressure.

2. Oregon -- 9th, just tanked it.

3. Villanova -- Champions! Their Mid-Atlantic race was confirmation of their prowess and race readiness.

4. Florida -- 7th, tanked it like southern teams often do.

5. Colorado -- 20th, they thrived by Barringer's success and when her race went into the tank so did theirs.

Men's Individuals

1 300 Samuel Chelanga JR Liberty 8:24 14:10 22:47 28:41.3
2 1 432 David McNeill JR Northern Arizona 8:35 14:38 23:25 29:06.5
3 2 622 Chris Derrick SO Stanford 8:36 14:38 23:25 29:14.8
4 377 Barnabas Kirui JR Mississippi 8:40 14:38 23:25 29:24.1
5 3 425 Jordan Chipangama JR Northern Arizona 8:42 14:42 23:39 29:33.1

1. Chris Derrick - Stanford -- 3rd, still a fine race for him.

2. Sam Chelanga - Liberty -- Champion! Apparently he was ready to run away from this field as he led by over 10 seconds at 3K, by over 25 seconds at 5K, and by over 35 seconds at 8K to break Rupp's course record!

3. Ryan Vail - Oklahoma State -- 9th and as top finisher for the winning team he likely ran a bit more conservative than those ahead of him.

4. Brandon Bethke - Arizona State -- 7th, solid performance.

5. Barnabas Kirui - Mississippi -- 4th, great run.

Men's Teams

1. 127 Oklahoma State ( 30:05 2:30:21)
2. 143 Oregon ( 30:16 2:31:17)
3. 173 Alabama ( 30:20 2:31:36)
4. 190 Northern Arizona ( 30:10 2:30:47)
5. 226 William & Mary ( 30:27 2:32:15)

1. Stanford -- 10th, epic meltdown.

2. Oklahoma State -- Champs!

3. Portland -- 13th, seems to be a trend among teams from the west coast.

4. Colorado -- 6th, hats off to this team as they really stepped it up when unable to rely on their top two returning runners in the scoring and with another runner who is usually in their top five failing to score. Huge races from those who were in the top five.

5. Brigham Young -- 17th

Byran Green's recap, which is surely far more interesting than this one:
http://optimaltraining.typepad.com/blog/2009/11/ncaa-cross-country-championships-recap.html

Also, thanks to RunnerSpace for their handy compilation of results: http://runnerspace.com/eprofile.php?event_id=509&do=news&pg=1&news_id=7164&folder_id=recent&offset=0#news

Stretching (and Flexibility) Update II

2009-11-25T07:34:00.000-08:00

This from the NYT:

When the Nebraska Wesleyan researchers compared the runners’ sit-and-reach scores to the measurements of their economy, which had been garnered from a treadmill test, they found that, across the board, the tightest runners were the most economical. This was true throughout the groups and within the genders. The inflexible men were more economical than the women, and for both men and women, those with the tightest hamstrings had the best running economy. They also typically had the fastest 10-kilometer race times. Probably, the researchers concluded, tighter muscles allow “for greater elastic energy storage and use” during each stride.

In fact, the latest science suggests that extremely loose muscles and tendons are generally unnecessary (unless you aspire to join a gymnastics squad), may be undesirable and are, for the most part, unachievable, anyway. “To a large degree, flexibility is genetic,” says Dr. Malachy McHugh, the director of research for the Nicholas Institute of Sports Medicine and Athletic Trauma at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York and an expert on flexibility. You’re born stretchy or not.

“Flexibility is a functional thing,” Knudson says. “You only need enough range of motion in your joints to avoid injury. More is not necessarily better.” For runners, extremely tight hamstrings and joints have been found in some studies (but not all studies) to contribute to overuse injuries. But somewhat tight hamstrings, as the Nebraska Wesleyan study showed, can make you more economical.

Stretching Update

2009-11-21T18:58:00.000-08:00

Some confirmation of some information in a previous post:

A new study finds that static stretching before running reduces running economy and performance.

Why would a static stretching warm-up make you run less efficiently? The authors of previous studies have speculated that static stretching warm-ups temporarily reduce musculoskeletal stiffness. While the word “stiffness” generally has negative associations with respect to athletic performance, a certain type of stiffness is beneficial to running performance. When you run, your legs function as springs that repeatedly bouncing off the ground, capturing “free” energy (i.e. energy that the body does not have to generate for itself) from each impact and using it to for forward thrust. Just as a loose mechanical spring (think of a worn automobile shock absorber) is less effective than a stiffer one, a less stiff leg (resulting from laxity at key muscle-tendon junctions) bounces less effectively off the ground during running. Consequently, the leg captures less “free” energy from the ground and running economy is reduced.

The Score - 2009 Post-Regionals

2009-11-21T14:18:00.000-08:00

Fo' Fives

Women's Individuals

1. Jenny Barringer - Colorado -- Crushed the Mountain Region meet.

2. Angela Bizzarri - Illinois -- Won the Midwest Region meet going away after cruising with the pack for much of the race.

3. Susan Kuijken - Florida State -- Skipped the South Region meet, could yield helpful rest or detrimental rust -- or could even indicate a possible injury issue.

4. Kendra Schaaf - Washington -- Scored a narrow win over Oregon's frosh phenom, Jordan Hasay at the West Region meet.

5. Nicole Blood - Oregon -- Cruised in the West Region meet to qualify with her team, finishing 5th.

Women's Teams

1. Washington -- Big winners at the West Region meet.

2. Oregon -- Runners-up to Washington at the West Region meet.

3. Villanova -- Dominated the Mid-Eastern Region by 54 points over highly-regarded Princeton, West Virginia, and Penn State.

4. Florida -- Won the South Region by 21 points over Florida State.

5. Colorado -- Scored some payback with a narrow win over Texas Tech at the Mountain Region meet.

Men's Individuals

1. Chris Derrick - Stanford -- Cruised through the West Region meet, securing a narrow win over teammate Elliott Heath.

2. Sam Chelanga - Liberty -- Crushed the Southeast Region field by over thirty seconds.

3. Ryan Vail - Oklahoma State -- Cruised with his team at the Midwest Region meet, finishing 11th.

4. Brandon Bethke - Arizona State -- Cruised to a qualifying berth at the West Region meet in 7th place.

5. Barnabas Kirui - Mississippi -- Runner-up at the South Region meet.

Men's Teams

1. Stanford -- Dominated the West Region meet by 57 points over second-place Portland.

2. Oklahoma State -- Cruised through the Midwest Region meet, winning by 21 points.

3. Portland -- Some recognition for Grote's alma mater, and I am rating them much higher than he does. They were runners-up at the West Region meet, ahead of #3 in the previous poll, Oregon.

4. Colorado -- Runners-up to BYU in the Mountain Region meet by one point, with top runner Jordan Kyle back leading the way after struggling much of the season. I still have faith that their coach will peak them perfectly on Monday at the Championships.

5. Brigham Young -- Champions at the Mountain Region meet.

Bryan Green's NCAA CC Championships Preview: http://optimaltraining.typepad.com/blog/2009/11/ncaa-xc-previews.html

Note that the meet is scheduled to air live on Monday, November 23rd at 12 p.m. EST on Versus and online at http://all-access.cbssports.com/player.html?code=ncaa

Finally, credit once again to T&FN for their handy results archive.

Great Reading: Charlie Spedding's "From Last To First"

2009-11-17T17:16:00.000-08:00

I got a copy of this book recently and it has far exceeded my expectations. Well-written, engaging style, fairly short, easy reading, many great insights for mindset, outlook, and attitude. Would make a great gift for any serious runner!
http://www.charliespedding.com/
http://runwestchester.wordpress.com/2009/09/24/book-review-from-last-to-first-by-charlie-spedding/

"There is no such thing as bad weather, only soft people." -- Bill Bowerman

2009-11-17T06:51:00.000-08:00

A sentiment from Tom Fleming in a recent NYT article:

He hates treadmills, thinking that that if you want to train for road races, you have to run on roads. Treadmills, he says, are “propelling you over the running surface.” When you run, he adds, “you propel yourself over the surface,” which can include hills, flat areas, and places where the surface is uneven. “That’s a harder effort for sure,” Tom said.
So, Tom told me: Don’t go to the gym. Run outside.

The Complex System

2009-11-16T07:17:00.001-08:00

Chris Wardlaw - Olympic distance runner, contemporary of the great Robert De Castella, Pat Clohessy protégé, and currently coach of Craig Mottram - put together a training guide that has been posted to the web in .pdf format:
http://www.sport.monash.edu.au/assets/docs/chris-wardlaws-training-program.pdf

Promo No-go

2009-11-15T17:22:00.000-08:00

The sport of distance running gets little media attention, so it does not gain fans and popularity, so the media gives it little attention, so it is not exposed to potential new fans, etc. In the video interview/commentary below, Dr. Jack Daniels astutely observes that, unlike in days of yore, distance running is essentially ignored in the ever-increasing competition for eyes and ears in today's media landscape, especially in the sports media. Even in mainstream running media - like Competitor, Runner's World, and Running Times (whose website editorial comment regarding this video read: "We love the good doctor, but the media's role isn't to 'make stars'") - the runners at or near the top of the sport (domestically and internationally) get mere crumbs of coverage and promotion when compared with how the stars of other sports are highlighted and promoted by periodicals covering basketball, baseball, football, etc. It is only niche, shoestring outlets like Flotrack, The Runner's Tribe, The Cassidy Feed, RoadsMillsLaps, Elite Running, and others which really show some genuine passion for promoting running as a true sport, first and foremost. Unfortunately, these outlets have limited exposure, chiefly reaching those who know about them because they are already fans of the sport.

Track and Field Videos on Flotrack

The Score - 2009 Post-Conference

2009-11-08T16:20:00.001-08:00

Fo' Fives

Women's Individuals

1. Jenny Barringer - Colorado -- Won the Big 12 crown in dominating fashion.

2. Nicole Blood - Oregon -- PAC-10 champion.

3. Susan Kuijken - Florida State -- Dominated the women's field at the ACC meet.

4. Angela Bizzarri - Illinois -- Runner-up at the Big 10 meet, could be slipping but more likely just had an off day or was simply training-through.

5. Kendra Schaaf - Washington -- Close runner-up to Blood at the PAC-10 meet.

Women's Teams

1. Washington -- Won the PAC-10 women's team title over Oregon.

2. Oregon -- Finished a close second to Washington at the PAC-10 meet.

3. Villanova -- Romped past West Virginia (#5 in the previous poll) to win the Big East women's team title.

4. Florida -- Easily won the SEC women's title.

5. Texas Tech -- Won the Big 12 women's crown, defeating Colorado (#2 in the previous poll) in the process.

Men's Individuals

1. Chris Derrick - Stanford -- PAC-10 champion.

2. Sam Chelanga - Liberty -- Won the Big South title by over a minute.

3. Ryan Vail - Oklahoma State -- Won the Big 12 crown over a talented cast, including his own teammates.

4. Brandon Bethke - Arizona State -- A close 2nd to Derrick in the PAC-10 race.

5. Barnabas Kirui - Mississippi -- Won the SEC crown in convincing fashion.

Men's Teams

1. Stanford -- PAC-10 champions.

2. Oklahoma State -- Won the Big 12 crown in convincing fashion.

3. Oregon -- PAC-10 runners-up, could be slipping but likely trained-through.

4. Colorado -- Big 12 runners-up, they have won the team title multiple times without peaking and this year Oklahoma State is simply too strong for that to happen. Their coach has a long record of getting them to peak to both qualify for and run well at nationals, so expect better performance at the regional meet.

5. Northern Arizona -- Won by a huge margin at the Big Sky meet.

Credit to T&FN for their compiled conference meet results links.

Twin Peaks Rotary Cross Country Challenge: A Study In Jacked Up Awards

2009-11-07T14:36:00.000-08:00

Marring an otherwise well-done cross country race on a beautiful day in November, the race director for Longmont's Twin Peaks Cross Country Challenge managed to fumble the awards for the women. Here are the top finishers today:

   1. Lesia Atkinson                  Boulder CO              43    40-49      1st     23:10  6:38
  2. Kristi Jordan                   Longmont CO             46    40-49      2nd     23:40  6:47
  3. Sarah Krakoff                   Boulder CO              44    40-49      3rd     23:52  6:50
  4. Marian Salley                   Boulder CO              41    40-49      4th     25:30  7:19
  5. Colleen Cooke                   Boulder CO              37    30-39      1st     25:48  7:24

Top three overall and masters were awarded cash ($30, $20, $10) and top three per ten-year age groups were awarded gift certificates for an optometrist (at similar increments). So for this race, it was decided that since the top three were all masters runners they would be given the awards for the top three masters finishers. However, what follows is the point where the decision-making process gets really interesting. The fourth place finisher was given the 40-49 age group first place award and then the runner in fifth was given the first place overall award. Obviously overall prizes are meant to carry greater import than age group awards and yet they were not awarded on the basis of straightforward merit as reflected in performance in the results. It would seem far more ideal to award the first three the overall awards and then give the next three masters runners the masters awards, presuming based on appearance that this race wanted to avoid 'double-dipping' entirely. Or even just start the overall awards with the runner finishing immediately behind the third masters runner. I have been around the sport for over two decades and I cannot recall seeing such a ridiculous handling of race awards like this instance. Hopefully it was merely an oversight as a result of a hastily-made decision.

Choose to Win

2009-10-31T18:40:00.000-07:00

From yet another superb blog entry by Pete Magill:

When you think you're going to lose, you practice like losers. You shrug off poor training habits. You go through the motions and cross your fingers that the Sports Genie will give you an upset win here and there ... or maybe curse your opponents with poor players (which never happens, because great high school teams are built, not inherited).

And the message is the same for running.

When you accept that you're going to win (whatever "winning" implies for you, whether it's finishing first in a race, setting a PR, or just beating that old bastard down the street who always sprints past your house to show you up), you do the things that it takes to win.

You run the volume you need to build endurance.

You run the right effort level in hard workouts, knowing that the race is the place where you will shine (NOT the workout itself).

You run long hill repeats.

And short hill repeats.

And do technique drills.

You stretch and ice and do exercises after your runs that will keep you injury-free.

You stick to the diet that will get you to your proper race weight.

You have patience, spending the time to train yourself into top fitness instead of racing every weekend to see if you've arrived.

You don't do something stupid, like playing pick-up basketball with race day approaching ... or "training through" the race by running 10 miles the morning before it.

You have confidence that you WILL win.

So you do all the things that are necessary to win.

You don't cross your fingers and hope for a miracle. That's for all the losers who didn't do the correct training and preparation. All you need to do is run a good race, one that reflects your training, and you'll finish far ahead of those losers.

Seems clear enough to me!

Emphasizing Emulation Enables Equivalent Excellence

2009-10-21T17:23:00.000-07:00

This comes from a really good Bryan Green article that I read on RunnersTribe.com:

How often have you talked about a great athlete and heard people use words like "freak", "machine", "out-of-this-world", "bionic", "superhero", "robotic", "cheat code" or "Kenyan"? These words don't just serve to differentiate a person, though. They emphasize that what makes them different is something we don't have and we can't match. Be they mutant, alien, programmed for destruction, or simply from the Kalenjin tribe, the sport, we are told, is just different for them.

We see [Jenny Barringer's] times, but not her preparation. We see Galen Rupp's dominance, but not the seven years of focused training that preceded it. We see Dathan Ritzenhein's blazing times, but not the lifestyle that led to them. It's even worse when we watch runners like Wanjiru and Bolt. We see what's visible--the race, the time--and because the rest isn't visible, we use what we can see as a proxy for talent.

[What] I think coaches need to be actively doing is emphasizing process, building an expectation of excellence in preparation, and de-mystifying (and de-mythifying) the superstar's success.

You can't emulate talent. But any athlete can emulate hard work and painstaking preparation.

The Score - 2009 Early Season

2009-10-17T18:43:00.000-07:00

Fo' Fives

Women's Individuals:

1. Jenny Barringer - Colorado -- Took down Kara (née Grgas-Wheeler) Goucher's home cc course record earlier this season, won the individual crown in the blue race today at the Pre-National meet with the fastest time of the day by far.

2. Susan Kuijken - Florida State -- Second in the blue race today at the Pre-National meet.

3. Angela Bizzarri - Illinois -- Won the individual crown in the white race today at the Pre-National meet in the third-fastest time of the day.

4. Jordan Hasay - Oregon -- Third in the blue race today at the Pre-National meet for the frosh phenom.

5. Kendra Schaaf - Washington -- Runner-up (surrendering a huge lead after 3K, will need to stay within herself early in the race to challenge for the win at nationals) in the white race today at the Pre-National meet.

Women's Teams:

1. Washington -- Returns a strong crew from the 2008 championship squad, won the white team race today at the Pre-National meet (with a 1-5 spread under :55 over 6K) by 30 points.

2. Colorado -- Won the blue team race today at the Pre-National meet (with a 1-5 spread under 1:30 over 6K) by 41 points.

3. Florida State -- Second in the blue team race today (with a 1-5 spread under :29 over 6K) at the Pre-National meet, led by individual title contender Susan Kuijken.

4. Oregon -- Hasay leads a seasoned crew coming back from the 2008 runner-up squad, third (with a 1-5 spread under 1:21 over 6K) in the blue race at today's Pre-National meet.

5. West Virginia -- Won the Penn State meet (with a 1-5 spread under :42 over 6K) by 29 points yesterday.

Men's Individuals:

1. Chris Derrick - Stanford -- Won (in the fastest time of the day) the white race today at the Pre-National meet.

2. Sam Chelanga - Liberty -- Runner-up (in the second-fastest time of the day) in the white race today at the Pre-National meet; led by 12 seconds at 5K and lost by 7 seconds, so will need to realize that he cannot just run away from a field of this caliber if he is to climb into first and hold onto it through the finish at nationals.

3. Luke Puskedra - Oregon -- Won the blue race today at the Pre-National meet.

4. Colby Lowe - Oklahoma State -- Won the Chile Pepper Invite today.

5. Elliott Heath - Stanford -- Third in the white race at today's Pre-National meet.

Men's Teams:

1. Stanford -- Won the white race by 83 points (with a 1-5 spread under :43 over 8K) at today's Pre-National meet.

2. Oregon -- Won the blue race by 35 points (with a 1-5 spread under :48 over 8K) today at the Pre-National meet.

3. Oklahoma State -- Won the Chile Pepper Invite by 31 points (with a 1-5 spread under :42 over 10K) today.

4. Colorado -- Runner-up in the white race today (with a 1-5 spread under :19 over 8K) at the Pre-National meet.

5. BYU -- Third in the white race (with a 1-5 spread under :36 over 8K) at today's Pre-National meet.

Why Do You Run?

2009-10-14T16:22:00.000-07:00

Nice video:

Jonesing For A Breakthrough

2009-10-13T07:12:00.000-07:00

Nice column by Mike Sandrock on Jason Hartmann (center below) in today's Daily Camera:

Jason Hartmann races into the spotlight

Hail Haile

2009-10-10T13:15:00.000-07:00

While tracking down something else on the web today, I came across an outstanding interview from two years ago conducted with Sebastian Coe regarding Haile Gebrselassie. It is one thing to get the run-of-the-mill media member's trite string of superlatives used in lauding a highly accomplished runner like Gebrselassie, but the thoughts of someone like Coe are truly cause to sit up and pay attention. Here are some of the parts of Coe's commentary that I found particularly compelling:

Q: What makes a good distance runner and how does Haile Gebrselassie match up?

Coe: The key attributes you're looking for is the synthesis of the mental strength and the physical dominance, and in both those areas Haile clearly scores very, very highly.

Q: You talk about mental processes. What are the kind of things he needs to keep in mind, calculations?

Coe: Good running is the ability to have a very well defined on-board computer. The ability to judge distances when running in traffic. The ability to recognize that things happen quite quickly in races - being too far off the pace, not instantaneously responding to a break, recognizing whether that break may be a temporary surge and not define the nature of the race. And the ability to make those judges quite quickly - he has had that in abundance for large parts of his career. You don't win world records without understanding that. What he also has is great physical presence and the ability to conserve energy. It's an econony of effort and it is, above all, rhythm. His rhythm rarely alters. Even when I watch the race and know instinctively that he is under pressure, he is a consummate poker player. You really can't tell from his face, or from the set of his shoulders, or from the way he places his feet on ground, even though must be under pressure. I've rarely seen him show outward signs of stress.

Q: You mentioned the way he places his feet on the ground -- his running technique. Can you explain what running on the balls of your feet means?

Coe: You hope all good athletes run on the balls of their feet. You don't want them coming down heel first. The perfect style is the foot to come down with a slight supination and on a tilt to the outside. You kiss the back of the heel on the ground and you move slightly, rotating inwards so the force and the central thrust is through the middle of the foot. Rarely do you see anybody at that level that doesn't have a good foot fall.

Q: For a runner what is the difference between racing for a world record and an Olympic medal?

Coe: The Olympics are a world apart from racing for a record. You put out of your mind pretty much what anyone else doing in the race. You have pacemakers who take you to certain points. In Haile's world -- pace-making is more pronounced. Too much emphasis on pace-making does sometimes ruin the narrative of the race, as it makes races more predictable. People tend to remember great races. I will remember one of the five best races I've ever seen on the track was the 10,000m final in Sydney when Haile and Paul Tergat slugged it out toe to toe, stride for stride, down the finish. The winning margin for Haile over Paul Tergat was less than winning margin for the men's 100m. So this was a spectacular race. Frankly, I can't tell you what the time was, whether it was a record, but people remember great races much more [than] world records.

Q: What are the memorable moments from the Atlanta Olympics in 1996?

Coe: That was a spectacular set of performances. We also know the track was very hard in Atlanta, hurt his legs and caused him a year of injuries afterwards. Winning the way he did in Atlanta and given the difficulty of the field and the relative hostility of the environment is one of his best performances. He will have his own view on which is the toughest -- probably the margin of victory in Sydney still causes him sleepless nights. From a personal of view, Sydney for me was his great moment.

Q: Do you think Haile has a technique which vexes opponents -- tucking in right behind them and then overtaking in the last minute?

Coe: Of course, that is absolutely the right tactic when you have a range of physical skills that Haile does. I mean Haile is the greatest distance runner as far as I'm concerned - of all time - comparisons will be made with Emil Zatopek, Vlaimir Kuts, Paavo Nurmi, Ron Clarke from Australia, but Haile is the most talented of them all by a distance. What makes him talented is that he has the leg speed of a very good 1500m runner. He also has the great ability, as all great distance runners have, to destroy the field with a change of pace over five strides, and that is what he has done time and time again. He has struck like a cobra, got that gap and he has had the necessary physical and mental strength. That is what has made him different from anything that has gone before.

The Japanese Standard

2009-09-26T13:18:00.000-07:00

I was reading an entry on Optimal Training that included this interesting passage:

Every town in Japan has a road race, but Japanese road races aren't like road races in the States. Japanese people don't subscribe to the notion of a "fun run". Whereas local road races in the US often have hundreds (if not thousands) of people jogging them, people in Japan either race it or cheer from the side.

No doubt such a cultural mindset has both advantages and drawbacks. It clearly has an impact on the quality of distance running, particularly in the marathon, that Japan has exhibited on the international level. I would estimate that the environment surrounding the sport of distance running in the U.S. during the first running boom of the '70s and '80s was significantly closer to that of Japan than today's culture of (excessive) inclusion. While far from the only factor, this is likely something that influences the gap that continues to exist in terms of competitive depth between Japan and the U.S.A in the marathon.

Mammoth Mojo

2009-09-19T14:41:00.000-07:00

A really good sidebar to a nice Scott Douglas-penned article on Scott Bauhs in the October 2009 Running Times:

Here are a few elements of the Mammoth Track Club program that most of us can implement. The more of them you do consistently, the more the benefits will snowball.

Get With a Group: No loneliness of the long-distance runner martyrdom for the folks in Mammoth. You probably can't -- and may not want to -- run with others every day, but regularly meeting a group ensures consistency and accountability like nothing else. And even if you're as highly motivated as the Mammoth runners, you're going to have bad days, which are never as bad when you have friends by your side to pull you along.

Create an Infrastructure for Success: Having regular running dates on your calendar is an example of what behavioral scientists call "choice architecture," or the context in which we decide how to act. In running terms, Mammoth members ensure that the right lifestyle choices -- post-run drinks readily available, minimal distractions before a goal race, refrigerator stocked with plenty of healthful options when they're craving calories -- are always easy to make.

Become a Better Athlete: A body with better running-specific strength, power and range of motion is going to hold up better to hard training and racing than a less capable one. That's even more true for runners who spend much of their work time sitting in cars and at desks. Mammoth runners work six days a week to build a strong core and address underlying weaknesses. For a good starter program, see runningtimes.com/gsvideos.

Run, Recover, Repeat: Recovery is serious business in Mammoth, where the 30 to 60 minutes after a run are considered an integral part of the workout. The goal is to get the body back to its pre-run state as soon as possible through nutrition and light exercises such as drills and stretching. The latter are especially important if, like the Mammoth runners, you drive to run. For info on optimal post-run nutrition, see "Power Up" on p. 24 of our October Issue.

Set Specific Goals: Mahon sits down with his runners at the beginning of every season to come up with specific, quantifiable goals. In their case, that means things like "win Boston" or "make the world championships team," but what's important is the specificity of the goal instead of something vague like "race well this fall." Specific goals make it easier to create a training plan that results in success and to track your progress.

Set Challenging Goals: Ryan Hall's goal last spring was to be the first American man in 25 years to win the Boston Marathon. Deena Kastor's goal this fall is to win the Chicago Marathon just longer than a year after having a broken foot. Mahon wants his runners to set goals that make them stretch themselves, to have to try something they haven't done before. When setting specific goals, aim a little bit higher than might seem reasonable. Or, as the Mammoth group's Web site puts it, elevate your expectations.

Whole-Body Warm-Up Addendum

2009-09-17T18:10:00.000-07:00

This comes from a previously-referenced article that appeared in Running Times earlier this year:

Warm Up Aggressively

While watching Matt Tegenkamp and Chris Solinsky warm up before the 2008 indoor national 3,000m championship, I kept checking my watch. Didn't these guys know their race wasn't for another hour? So what was with all the drills and calisthenics and jogging and stretching? That evening, they finished first and second, and my eyes were opened anew to what warming up really means.

Mind you, this is coming from someone whose friends have often chided him for insisting on getting to races at least an hour before the start. But, like most non-elites, my usual pre-race warm-up has historically consisted of 20 or so minutes of jogging, some perfunctory stretching, and a few striders soon before the start "to get my legs used to turning over." Anything more would be just wasting precious energy needed in the race, right?

Watching Matt and Chris that evening reminded me of a discussion I'd had the previous month with coaching legend Jack Daniels. He said that the usual pre-race short sprints do little but prepare runners to start really fast. He recommends a few minutes' run at about threshold pace, ending five to 10 minutes before the start, as the last hard part of a warm-up. Doing so, he says, gets you just cognizant enough of fatigue that you won't want to go out too hard. It also produces the phenomenon most of us have noticed of the second repeat in a workout being far more comfortable than the first.

Thinking about that conversation while watching Matt, Chris and others (Jen Rhines, Shannon Rowbury, Sara Hall) warm up aggressively made me realize how ineffectual most people's warm-ups are. They're better than nothing, of course, but don't get our respiratory, muscular and metabolic systems ready to operate at a high level right from the gun. A few months later at the Olympic track trials, I again took note of how extensively, comprehensively and ambitiously nearly all the distance runners warmed up. In subsequent discussions, I've been told by many elites that they do roughly the same warm-up before their hard workouts.

So

. . . experiment - first in workouts - with a more energetic warm-up. Finish your warm-up jog significantly faster than you started it. Do a full stretching routine and a full set of striders. Before longer repeats, do a couple 200s or 400s at your goal pace for the workout. Once you're confident you've found the routine that works for you, start using it at races. There, do a comfortably hard run of a few minutes, finishing 10 minutes before the start.

The only part I would be loath to suggest is the "full stretching routine" prior to a workout or race. Save that for afterward, when moving into recovery mode.

Whole-Body Warm-Up

2009-09-15T14:43:00.000-07:00

In my last post, it was highlighted that prior to workouts and races, a good whole-body warm-up should be done in lieu of the conventional stretching routine. Some select videos on ideas for warming-up distance runners:

Warm-Up: Aerobic Work Warm-Up from CoachJayJohnson on Vimeo.

Warm-Up: Skipping Exercises from CoachJayJohnson on Vimeo.

Stretching Addendum

2009-09-15T06:40:00.000-07:00

This comes courtesy of Ken Stone's masterstrack.com blog:

This fall, a new U.S. study about stretching points away from the "static" technique in which you hold a series of stretches for 20 to 30 seconds each before exercising. This research builds on past studies, notably first coming from Australia, questioning the practice of stretching before workouts.
In the September study published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, exercise scientists at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas found typical stretches for the hamstrings (back of thigh) and quadriceps (front of the thigh) actually may reduce leg force during a workout that follows.

The subjects in the study were college athletes. They were divided into three groups that performed static stretches, ballistic (bouncing) stretches or no stretches. Both stretching groups tested lower for overall leg strength. Other studies even show that workout power is diminished even in the opposite leg not being stretched.

"Developing flexibility is important for reducing sports injury," said UNLV study co-author Bill Holcomb, who also directs the university's Sports Injury Research Center, "but the time to stretch is after, not before, performances."
In fact, the researchers recommend that coaches skip pre-game and pre-practice stretches in favor of a "whole-body warm-up."

Stretching Primer

2009-09-06T06:29:00.000-07:00

This is something I posted elsewhere a while ago and I wanted to include it here as well. I have come to view stretching primarily as recovery enhancement. During exercise (especially repetitive motion stuff like running) muscles are firing and contracting a lot and at the end of exercise tend not to return to a fully relaxed state on their own. Stretching helps to pull the fibers fully so that blood flow can more readily get into the muscles and carry in rebuilding agents and carry away waste. With that preface, here it is:

Not long ago, I opted to take in a clinic on stretching given by highly-regarded local ExPhys guru Andy Pruitt (he is the one that Mark Plaatjes has gone to when he has had problems). I took notes, which I shall attempt to present in a clear fashion here:

The four keys to remember are:
Warm-up
Regular exercise
Strength
Balance - proprioception

Why stretch and be flexible?:
Range of motion: gain and/or maintain
Body awareness - proprioception
Muscle relaxation
Recovery

Stretching cons: stress on joints, excess range of motion (congenital and post trauma)

What to stretch?:
Muscles
Tendons
Musculotendinous junction
Tendinous insertion into the bone

muscle: active, contractile, elastic
tendon: semi-elastic, small range of elasticity

An effective method of stretching involves contracting and relaxing of the muscles just prior to the stretch, which allows the muscle to stretch further.

A recommended method of incorporating stretching into the training routine:
Warmup
Gentle static stretch into a slightly ballistic stretch
Train/race
Warmdown
Static into PNF (contract/relax) stretch

Mandatory areas to stretch for running:
Lower back
Glutes
ITB
Hamstrings
Quads - extensor mechanism & hip flexors
Shins
Calf - achilles

Stretches to accomplish this:
High calf: push against wall, heel on ground, drive hips down & forward
Low calf, soleus: like above, with bent knee, driving knee towards toes
Quad stretch: pull foot up and back behind with opposite hand
Hamstrings, lower back: toe touch or lying in doorway with one leg up on the doorjamb at right angle to body and other leg
Back, upper legs: butterfly stretch - move feet out to vary the stretched areas
Also: split stretch, one leg behind and one in front, with cushion under lower knee
Glutes: figure-4, while seated bring one foot and leg up and in front of the body and use hands and arms to pull it upwards, both towards and away from the body
Also: hurdler stretch, foot of bent leg in against opposite thigh, keep pressure off knee
Finally: lay stretch, on the floor with arms above head and legs out straight, spend several minutes just stretching out the vertebrae

Newtonian Principles

2009-08-28T15:01:00.000-07:00

Dyestat recently posted a great long-format interview that Matt McCue conducted with famed York H.S. coach Joe Newton. Some highlights:

[Arthur Lydiard] he told me, “Joe, everybody thinks we’re running 100 miles a week, but I don’t tell them that in that 100 miles a week I don’t count the morning run, I don’t count the warm up and I don’t count the cool down. So everybody thinks that they can run 100 miles a week and beat us. Hell, Peter’s running 200 miles a week.”
Kids don’t care if you are an Olympic runner, the world’s greatest man, the strongest man in the world, or if you’ve got four PhD’s in exercise physiology. They don’t want to hear it until they find out that you care about them. Once they find out that you care about them, they will do anything for you. That is the secret. There has to be a relationship between you and your athletes.
When I first started coaching we had 20, 25 guys and now, 50 years later, 200, 225, but I tried every single day, one time during practice, to call a guy’s name out.
I was reading this in the ‘40’s or ‘50’s and [Abraham Lincoln] said that ‘whenever I make a decision in life, no matter what it is, immediately 50% of the people think I’m right and 50% think I’m wrong, so I follow my course to the end.’
Success is being able to do your best when it counts the most.
I have a saying that makes them laugh. I say, “When you are running fast, run faster.”
Plato, over 2,000 years ago, said, ‘The duty of education—and take that word out and say, ‘the duty of coaching'-- is to make good people,’ because good people act nobly. That’s my goal. I’m trying to make good people that will act nobly and go on to be doctors and lawyers. That’s the story of coaching. It’s more than running.

Excerpted: "An Honorable Run"

2009-08-27T16:29:00.000-07:00

Really good writing from a former CU runner:
http://www.dyestat.com/?pg=us-Misc-Features-McCue-Features-An-Honorable-Run-Excerpt

Run More, Think Less

2009-08-22T15:52:00.000-07:00

While reading a good Wall Street Journal article on Kara Goucher, I saw something that I thought merited highlighting:

On the sport's elite levels, new theories about strategy and training took hold. The Runner's Handbook, first written in 1978 by Bob Glover and Jack Shepherd, told would-be marathoners to focus on highly structured training, while articles in Runner's World told them how many miles to run on how many days and how quickly to do it.

Trouble was, U.S. runners didn't improve—they started sucking wind. Ms. Benoit Samuelson's Olympic gold medal in 1984 was the last for an American over the next two decades.

Some experts blamed the decline on a lack of competitive fire. Others believed Americans were too afraid of failure or too busy partying through the roaring 1980s to make the necessary sacrifices in training.

Meanwhile, African runners began winning everything in sight. Since 1983, runners from places like Kenya and Ethiopia have won 28 marathon medals in 18 major international events, while Americans have won four. Some went as far as to suggest the Africans weren't just more motivated—they might be genetically superior. A recent study by Swedish and South African scientists concluded that the biochemical phenotypes of many Africans' muscles are better suited for distance running than those of western Europeans.

Jim Estes, associate director of long-distance running programs for USA Track and Field, says many American runners of that era (himself included) hated the rigors of training—but the Africans never seemed to care. "Their threshold for pain just seemed much higher," he says.

Tom Ratcliffe, an agent for several Kenyan runners, says Africans "enjoy the battle" in endurance running while most Westerners "race with anxiety." He says his runners usually have no idea how many miles they run per week, or how fast. They just want to win.

Felix Limo, a Kenyan runner who has won the 2006 London and 2005 Chicago marathons, says U.S. runners rely too much on structure and scientific programs—the sorts of things described in those books in the 1970s. They fix their minds on certain speeds, he says, and aren't flexible enough.

"I don't need a mileage like the runners here," he says. "I can push myself."

One of the first Western runners to figure out the Africans was Great Britain's Paula Radcliffe, who has won eight major marathon events since 2000. She's got some structure to her training, but she's known more for her relentless attacking and competitiveness.

Ms. Radcliffe's emergence coincided with the 2001 founding of the Mammoth Track Club in Mammoth Lakes, Calif., whose mission is to advance the naturally aggressive "run first, ask questions later" style the Africans run with.

Deena Kastor, one of the club's most successful runners, finally broke through in 2006 to earn a No. 1 ranking. She won a bronze medal in the women's marathon in Athens in 2004. Another Mammoth runner, Ryan Hall, is the best American male in the event. He finished third in Boston in 2009—the only non-African runner in the top 10. "For so long, people here were focused on figuring out the exact science behind setting records," Ms. Kastor says. "But there is no exact science."

Dynamic Stimulus

2009-08-19T20:12:00.000-07:00

From a recent interview over on U.S. Distance Runner with Justin Young, one of his responses highlights an important concept that is often overlooked by coaches and athletes:

We’ve done a few things different this time around. Not that I felt the training for Tokyo needed changing – but we always like to try new things, push the limits a bit; I guess the idea is to get out of your comfort zone, since it’s quite easy to get in a rut in your training, especially if something seems to work – just because it worked before doesn’t mean it will work again.

More highlights:

The best advice I could give a younger runner is to persevere. Don’t let a bad race discourage you. Running is a very difficult sport – it’s physically challenging, yes. But the hardest part, in my opinion, is learning how to cope with failure. If you really want to find out who you are as a runner, you’ll have to learn how to refocus after a race goes poorly – and not let it destroy your confidence and determination.

---

I don’t hang out much with any group of runners outside of races or events; I don’t travel to different training locations, like many people seem to do. I just focus on being consistent each day in training. For me, running has never been a social thing – it has never been a way to meet friends. I’ve made friends along the way, but it hasn’t been something that I thrive off. I guess I’m a bit of a loner.

From the Land of the Marathon

2009-08-15T09:35:00.000-07:00

Over on his excellent blog, Japan Running News (featured in the blog list here), Brett Larner (with the help of Miko Tokairin) recently put up a translation of the blog from Yukiko Akaba, member of Japan's women's marathon team for the World Championships in Berlin. The entire entry is worth reading for insights into the life and training (including many photos) of a top level marathoner who is also a mother and a wife. Some highlights:

In Fukagawa there are a lot of road courses with kilometer marks where you can do long runs. I checked out every single one and ran two of them by myself, then picked one for my training, a 33 km single loop course. There are two places with significant hills, but 80% of it is flat without much traffic. I change the starting point when I run something other than just 33 km.
There's no easy way to become strong. It's the result of hard work every day.
The work of art we started envisioning in our minds six months ago is almost completed as we've planned. From here on out it's the polishing stage. The quality of the polishing determines that of the artwork. Losing faith in what we've done, getting greedy and trying to squeeze in more is the biggest enemy.

A couple more entries from JRN on Yukiko Akaba:
http://japanrunningnews.blogspot.com/2008/03/yukiko-akabas-sudden-rise.html
http://japanrunningnews.blogspot.com/2009/03/yukiko-akaba-aiming-for-222-in-second.html
http://japanrunningnews.blogspot.com/2009/08/showing-women-new-way-yukiko-akabas.html

The Great Craig Virgin

2009-08-08T19:00:00.000-07:00

Craig Virgin is often overlooked as one of the greats in the sport. He was every bit as good and as accomplished as any of the U.S. greats. From a profile of him from a few years ago come some great insights:

Virgin is proud of his southwestern Illinois heritage. Throughout most of his career he stayed in the Midwest and did a substantial amount of his training in and around Lebanon.

What about the bitter winter cold and the stifling summer heat and humidity?

“It’s sad that there still is no indoor track in the area for runners to do a quality workout when the weather is bad,” Virgin says. “That said, I always told people if you could succeed here then you were always going to be headed to a better place. Suffering through the cold and heat here becomes part of the training effect. It improves your endurance and mental toughness.”

---

When Virgin gives motivational speeches to young athletes, he emphasizes the importance of setting goals, writing them down, and keeping that list of goals in sight.

“In high school I would sit down in August just as school was about to start and write down my goals for each event of the year,” he says. “Those goals would go up on a cardboard poster hanging on my bedroom wall. When winter hit and my alarm went off at 6:20 in the morning and I was wondering why in the world I would leave my nice warm bed for an icy cold workout, I would look up at those goals on the wall and that would confirm why I was making the sacrifice.”

Everyone from high school runners seeking to improve in cross country to 40-year-old age-groupers trying to break 40 minutes for a 10K should follow the same approach, Virgin says. “Commit yourself to a goal, decide what it will take to get there, write it down, and then keep it in front of you as constant reminder of your mission.”

It’s also important to be confident, Virgin stresses. “You have to have the confidence that if you set a goal and follow a good training plan, you will be able to go out and capitalize on that training and succeed. Everyone who reaches the top of a sport has to have an inner confidence that he or she can do great things.”

Just don’t confuse confidence with arrogance. “Look what happened to Bode Miller at the Olympics,” Virgin says. “He passed that line from being confident to cocky and then, for whatever reason, had his lunch handed to him in Turin as one of the major disappointments on the American team. You can be confident and maintain a healthy outlook on life without turning into an arrogant jerk. But it’s a real balancing act that almost every successful athlete has to face.”

Virgin reminds athletes who seek him out for coaching advice that the key is a balanced lifestyle. They need to define their priorities in terms of how training fits in with a career, school, family, and other activities. “Certainly it’s harder for people balancing all these demands to achieve their true potential but it can be done,” he says.

---

During his professional racing days, Virgin’s life revolved around his two or three daily workouts. He was able to train so hard for all those years because he approached making the commitment to succeed as a world-class athlete and warrior as a lifestyle, not a sacrifice.

“I loved it,” he says. “And what I’ve lived through over the past nine years has helped me realize that I still love it. Running helps me find out who I am and what I’m made of. It’s not just a sport — it’s a passion.”

Mind-Body Running

2009-07-29T20:35:00.000-07:00

Mike Sandrock wrote a great article in a fairly recent issue of Running Times regarding meditation and long distance running. I began exploring meditation a few years ago with the great help of the wonderful volunteers at my local Shambhala Center, and it has provided so much benefit for my life and being. A few highlights from the article:

[Meditation] takes you to the 'right now,' which is what you want from your running and training.
It is not about leaving your body and entering some celestial realm. It is about relating to the here and now which we experience through our five senses.
The value of meditation is having a calm state of mind.
Having a greater understanding of our motivation and our abilities leads to better training and execution or race-day performance.
I am more relaxed and more joyful. When I have this attitude, every run is a new and exciting experience.

Sustained Success

2009-07-21T20:38:00.000-07:00

I have long been a fan of the Hansons Distance Project, a group that gets good results by working hard and smart. Here are a handful of recent videos of the brothers Hanson doing some Q&A:

Track and Field Videos on Flotrack

More Hansons

Recovery Considerations

2009-07-21T17:57:00.001-07:00

Just as effective training requires a certain amount of diligence, focus, and consistency, so too does what enables the greatest gains to be pulled from the training done: recovery. In a Scott Douglas article on the Running Times website, the author exhorts:

[Make] your best effort to drink fluids and get in a few hundred calories in the first 30 minutes after every run. A little protein with carbs enhances the carbs' absorption. If you're running from somewhere other than a house, bring the food with you. If your stomach doesn't appreciate solid food soon after you run, take the calories in liquid form.

Read the entire article, there are several great keys (with elaboration) within to incorporate into an effective training regimen.

Tough Mind In Tough Body

2009-07-21T17:33:00.000-07:00

Pete Magill put up a great post on his blog on training the mind. Some selected portions:

We use carbohydrates in liquid to train the brain to ease up on its physiological restrictions. We use altitude to train the brain to accept pain as an offshoot of running. We use bare feet to train the brain to monitor and control our foot plant autonomically.

Note that this is where form methods like Pose and ChiRunning have it exactly backward. These methods attempt to use conscious manipulation of our bodies to develop better running form - they want our brains to train our bodies. In fact, it is our bodies that train our brains, the principle behind technique drills and, according to McDougal, barefoot running.

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There are things most of us accept as valid parts of our training that have nothing to do with physiology - and everything to do with our brains.

I was a freshman at La Canada High School in 1975-1976. At that time, California high schools still ran 2 miles for cross country. I ran varsity as a freshman, and I was incredibly overmatched. Every race was painful. It seemed absurd to me that people my age were being forced to race that far.

So this is what I did during the summer between my freshman and sophomore years: I ran a couple 6 mile races. I reasoned that once I got used to racing 6 miles, 2 miles would be a breeze. Guess what? I was right. My sophomore year I was Top 10 in my league, Top 15 in my CIF (regional) division, and - best of all - I never thought of a cross country race as "long."

Physiologically, those couple 6 mile races couldn't have had much impact. But they trained my brain.

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Only a couple years back, I was attempting to run an American age group record for 3000 meters, but I was struggling to find a workout that provided the proper training stress. I simply wasn't getting any faster. I emailed Asics Aggies coach Joe Rubio and asked his advice. His response was simple and to the point, something to the effect of: "Race an 800 and a 5000, maybe a 400 too. Race like you did when you were back in high school and tried everything." He was right. I raced faster. I raced longer. And then I set the record. It wasn't about finding the right workout. It was about making the 3000 seem neither fast nor long.

Delineating the Concept of "Coach"

2009-07-18T16:39:00.000-07:00

Some select excerpts from a great post on Mark Bomba's blog:

What one gets from a coach and what one wants vary from person to person. There is also the variability of what level of experience and the knowledge the athlete has gained over time.

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I also feel there are three main tenets to coaching:

1) Do not hurt the athlete (either physically or mentally)
2) Each athlete is unique/different from others (both physically and mentally)
3) Make the training program suit the athlete, not the other way around (both physically and mentally)

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I always felt that good training partners are as relevant or even more relevant as a good coach, but without the coach creating that environment for successful training partners, things can be difficult. And that is where my attitude that a coach cannot treat any athlete like the other.

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As always my moral... if you’re a coach then find that way to ‘manipulate’ (I mean that in a positive way) the training environment to suit the needs of the athletes (in every way possible) and if you are an athlete you need to find a coach who understands what you need (or is willing to accommodate your needs in every way possible).

Pulling Gains From A Loss

2009-07-18T14:34:00.000-07:00

Another highlight on Jenny Barringer from this article, regarding narrowly losing in a bid to win from behind:

"The race at Prefontaine changed my life and my career as projections go for my future," says Barringer, the U.S. recordholder in the 3,000 steeplechase who will compete in the event at the Aug.15-23 world championships in Berlin.

"I went to a place of competition within myself that needed to be found and needed to come out. I just totally let go of splits and was competitive.

"The whole last couple of months of indoor and outdoor track, I've had this edge at the end of races, this aggressiveness and competitiveness that I think I've been developing for years. It's really just come to the surface this year. It's like you find an extra tool in the shed to use."

The Endless Summer

2009-07-06T11:27:00.000-07:00

This is a great article from 35 years ago, courtesy of the SI Vault. Quite remarkable for both the vision and the daring to undertake and see-through such a task as running from Mexico to Canada at such a young age as well as the ability to commit it to the written word so well at that age. Running blogs and race reports should aspire to such excellence, one of the best articles on running that I have read in quite a while: http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1088872/1/index.htm

Beck-McGee Raw Feed

2009-07-04T10:01:00.000-07:00

A recent interview by Kevin Beck with coach Bobby McGee:

What is your general feeling about localized elite training groups, such as the Hansons, the Mammoth Lakes crew, ZAP Fitness, and so on?

Know little about them in terms of detail.
ZAP seems to have a great set-up, good guest speakers. I hope the model thrives. Really it's the only way to go if we want consistently high level performances. I used to believe in a national model, a master plan sort of approach, but all the champions came from a private little group of experts. Now I think a national model works in terms of TID and standardization of stats and performance parameters, so that we can find what's working and whatnot . . . basically the US system seems to be going in the right direction, something like USA swimming where US coaches really are cross-pollinating, because they want the US to do well, not just their athletes.
I like the old-school tough approach of these groups as well. There is no way around it -- making a living coaching amateurs, or age-groupers as I call them now that I work with so many triathletes, is a question of keeping their specific goals in mind and giving them training that will optimize their time-commitment, but will not hurt them . . . in other words they'll get better, but perhaps not be the best they can be, because that would increase the injury risk significantly. The elite finds his or her limit by crashing up against it; the amateur cannot do that. To succeed at the highest level these groups need to be ballsy -- I like the unrepentant runningness of their approach -- it harks back to the '70s approach -- not everyone is tough enough to be a real runner.
The Hanson Project is great inasmuch as they have both approaches -- tough pro training that shows when they race and that logical, "get-to-the-start-line-in-one-piece" approach to the recreational runners with their max of 16 miles long run.

Top coaches in other parts of the country often have to sell their product, so to speak, because the environment may not have the best conditions (think Rochester Hills, MI) or simply may not be home and my therefore strike runners as remote (think Blowing Rock, NC). On the other hand, Boulder has so many bodies and so much talent that it may be almost chaotic. How would you say your environment has shaped what you do as compared to how you might operate in some randomly chosen neutral place, like New Hampshire?

Boulder IS chaotic -- the elites are fractured in terms of training together and the sub-elites have an interesting conundrum, their either join a bunch of pros and invariably blow up 25% into the training, or they race really well and never win anything local when the pros show up, but they have great PRs. The true average runner and triathlete is often intimidated in this community, because a 40-year old female, who runs sub 18min for 5km at altitude would often win outright in a local race in middle America and that includes men. Here she might win her age-group! You find people who train here, live here, but never race here -- it's too demoralizing for them!
I "grew up" in a province in South Africa that was not a running power house -- not so many black runners and at sea-level in a Mediterranean climate that offered so much in terms of other recreation, that few great runners emerged from there. So when I started coaching school kids (I was a teacher for 12 years), they dominated locally and ran into a freight train when they hit nationals. I learned quickly that in order for them to succeed at the highest level I had to simulate national competition standards early and downplay their local dominance. While I coach the individual, when it comes to the pro I coach the highest standard we might think they may race at. With Boulder I came here bringing top runners and coached here -- but over time, I became more of a consultant to the next generation of runners and coaches as a part of what I did moved to helping US athletes in the triathlon -- I arrived here having coached Africans -- so in a way I was spoiled. The gold medal had not yet shown up, but there were already sub 4min milers, sub 1:50 800m runners, sub 8min 3km boys and low 13:30 5km times. 2:08 was not fast to me in the marathon and sub 50 15kms, sub 2:30 marathons and sub 70min half marathons for women I had been around. So I think I was more established already, but being a foreigner, coaching foreign athletes and not having had any kind of collegiate coaching start, I was out on my own -- only later did I hang out a shingle to coach US athletes.

How much of your time is spent on working with people who would be considered "pack runners" (or triathletes) as compared to that you spend working with elites?

Nowadays, handling the whole training process of a pro is rare for me (only Carrie Messner now), I help US triathlon coaches especially with run training, running mechanics, and sport psychology. I do more of the full spectrum work with the amateur nowadays.

What led you to become a coach? Better still, what did you do athletically in the years before getting off the ground as a mentor?

I guess I knew from the start that I was not world class material -- my class mates, when studying physical education, were either national class sportsmen already, or aspired to that -- I wanted to coach from the start, especially when I went back post-grad during my teaching years. I rand and won some at school -- 4:16ish 1500m I think, on the grass at altitude, broke 2:00 for 800m, then as a recreational runner while coaching sneaked under 17 for 5km and 34 high for 10km; represented my providence in Olympic distance triathlon, but truth be told the highest level of sport I achieved was at college in field hockey -- I was a goal tender, made the Military B side and my province A side. South Africa is a good field hockey nation. I really felt I had GREAT coaching mentors, loved their magic, intuition, and passion -- never really had that as an athlete, don't recall a coach who truly inspired me as an athlete other than my fathers passion for golf and other things, he always supported my interest in all sports, so I played rugby, cricket, ran cross country and track, and even a smattering of soccer in there.

Presumably running was your initial focus. Very few top running coaches seem to venture into triathlon (Pete Pfitzinger is a notable exception). How did that branching out occur?

Firstly, I went to triathlon as a competitor in 1986 -- I'd stopped running myself as the coaching was so demanding and I said tri was my sport -- after 12 years the guys were begging me to help them and I said that's it, I've done a long race, I swim like a brick with arms, and now I'm coaching -- I'm done! Now I play golf. Libby Burrell, currently director for the ITU Sport Development (International Triathlon Union), was a good friend and we'd studied together in the same field (and I'd coached her as a road racer). She suggested Barb Lindquist, who subsequently became the World #1 triathlete for 2 years culminating, to approach me as she was struggling with her running. I subsequently became the USAT go-to guy, especially when it came to turning triathletes who came to the sport from swimming into runners. I knew the sport, had worked with the athletes at various levels and at that time was somewhat disenchanted with how the US collegiate system seemed to be hurting their chances in international track and field by the 3-focus season approach (cc, indoor, and outdoor track), so many kids seemed to burn out and not want to compete after college and I had no influence and was helping a few US athletes try to qualify for the Olympic marathon trials with no hope of actually winning a medal at the games. The tri run coaching went well, really well and then through Athens and Beijing I felt I had really had a positive impact. A by-product was the biomechanics. I realized, when confronted by the extreme lack of natural running rhythm that I saw in the triathletes, being from Africa, that perhaps this could be taught and I set out to create a methodology to do so that I still pursue today. Being involved in public debates with the likes of Nicolas Romanov (of the POSE method) and having to back up my claims with practical, high-level results has been a challenge that I relish seeing seven kids make the Olympic team, win medals at world champs has been a thrill that falls into the realm of what I felt when runners won world road running champs, or when Josia won the Atlanta Games.

Lize Brittin, who put me in touch with you, noted that you not only coach athletes, you coach coaches. Who are some of the better-known coaches who have come to you for help, and what are they generally looking for (e.g. how to prepare people physically vs. how to prepare them mentally)?

I have been involved in coach education with USAT for 4+ years now, many Level I coaches, a bunch of Level IIs and three years of of Level III coaches. I have influenced some top coaches who were already top coaches before I assisted them, but some of the highest level triathlon coaches who currently apply my methodologies -- these are mostly US coaches, but there are also others who regularly report back to me that their athletes are improving as a result of applying my methodologies. So rather than having created a great coach, I believe I have helped the coaches of great athletes with some aspects of their development.

Obviously the range of endurance events you address and the facets of training and competition you deal with is close to limitless. Is there any one aspect of your experience over the years that stands out above all others in terms of the satisfaction it's provided?

A construct of what I have read from life coaches and sages like Rainer maria Rilke, Deepak Chopra, and Wayne Dyer, and something that I have derived from reading the works of the great South African philosopher, Laurens van der Post, is that happiness is not a life objective, but service of humanity is. A passionate, full-on, ethical life of serving is rewarded by happiness along the way. I have felt in the last 15 or so years in the world of endurance sports, that while I may not be a weathly man in terms of financial reward, I am utterly blessed with ample rewards of pure satisfaction with every level of athletes who has shown some appreciation for my contribution to their careers whether they were professionals or to the quality of their experience if they were amateurs. I fondly recall the championships won, the medals, the world records, but honestly, in professional terms, my experience is a continual litany of rewards during the process of coachin and teaching at every level. I sometimes feel guilty when I move on so quickly from an athlete coached for a specific event, a book written, an artical or seminar or workshop complete -- but there is so much to do, so much to share, so much to learn, metabolize and teach, that the high, the kick, is in the process, the constant creative doing.

On Motivation

2009-06-14T13:15:00.000-07:00

From a recent article on Jenny Barringer:

After dropping Kansas State’s Liliani Mendez and Baylor’s Danielle Bradley just before the 800m mark, Barringer and Kipyego went stride for stride for the second half, with Barringer narrowly outkicking Kipyego to win in an NCAA-record 4:25.91. Barringer also went on to break several of Kipyego’s NCAA and Big 12 records.

“I finally got her in my last race against her, but I’d like to think that I spent three years really working my tail off to get there,” Barringer says. “The first time I ever raced her was my sophomore year in cross country and she beat me by 45 seconds. That’s domination on a whole different level, and I wound up second at NCAAs later that year.

“I like to think I’m a whole different runner now. But I’ll tell you what, getting stomped like that can either put you down or it can really motivate you. I realized the person who was killing me totally deserved it. And my thought was ‘I want to deserve it, too.’”

Training Notes From The Top

2009-06-14T13:07:00.000-07:00

In a recent interview with Kevin Sullivan:

I think it is a very common misconception that base phase should just be easy mileage and tempo sessions. All energy systems should be engaged at some level throughout each phase of training.

How do you deal with setbacks?
You realize that there are a lot worse things that could be happening to you. I am much better at dealing with setbacks at this point in my career than I was when I was younger. Trusting your fitness and your ability to retain fitness while dealing with setbacks is extremely important.

Goals & Attitude

2009-06-06T19:20:00.000-07:00

This comes from a rather recent great article on Colorado's Jenny Barringer, to exemplify some attributes highlighted on this blog, including the previous one on keeping one's goals in a primary spot in one's daily life:

It takes determination, confidence, passion and skill just to consider hanging a list of collegiate running records on a wall in your home with the idea of breaking them.
Actually getting the job done requires so much more.

Jenny Barringer met the challenge she set for herself several years ago when walked that piece of paper over to the wall and stuck it there, where she could see it every day. She has chipped away at them, slowly striking lines through the names of former record holders and their times and replacing them with her own.

Barringer's humble-yet-hungry attitude will serve her well and carry her far in both the sport and in any of her other pursuits:

“I cannot repay this university what they’ve given me, the resources and just the gift of the four years here,” she said. “So the closest I can come is by fulfilling the promise I made four years ago. I’m definitely staying.”

While it might seem there isn’t much left for Barringer to accomplish on the college level, she insists there is still plenty of motivation to stick around for another cross country season. After all, she earned her scholarship to CU based on her cross country successes, yet she has never won the Big 12 title in the sport, always finishing behind former Texas Tech runner Sally Kipyego.
“That’s a huge part of why I am staying,” Barringer said. “To me, that’s the most coveted award of my four years here and I still haven’t gotten it.”

Eyes On The Prize

2009-05-30T21:07:00.000-07:00

I read a nice post about keeping goals in mind on Steve Pavlina's blog today. I know that successful runners (as well as successful people in all walks of life) have used techniques that he outlines in the full post linked above.

Some very successful people advocate writing and re-writing your goals every day. Others say it’s good enough to read them once a day. The basic idea is to keep refreshing your goals in your mind, so you think about them often.

If you don’t employ such a practice, it’s easy to lose sight of your goals. You get caught up in day-to-day activities, and the most important long-term items fall by the wayside. Instead of leading your life, you merely react to whatever comes up.

Coach Knudson

2009-05-10T13:26:00.000-07:00

From a favorable article on Lyle Knudson recently appearing in RT

Marilyn Weiss, a former athletic administrator who hired Knudson at both Utah State and Florida, says, "He'll push all his athletes to the limit and then if he sees they don't want to go any further, that's fine. He's got other things to do. But Lyle's not going to coddle anybody. If you were supposed to be on time for a trip but you didn't show up, Lyle would leave you."

His formula began to take shape in 1978. Knudson, a doctoral student with four Olympians already on his coaching resume, was taking a class called Physiological Kinesiology, probing the depths of the human body. He was fascinated by the way the Europeans improved performance in world-class athletes by studying structural and enzymatic proteins in their muscle fibers; it seemed vastly superior to the American way of putting the general population on treadmills and measuring gas exchange, like VO2 max. He had seen Oregon coach Bill Bowerman succeed by alternating hard days with easy days, which maximized muscle recovery. And he knew all about the failures of LSD training, subscribing instead to speed-intensive workouts. Most fundamentally, Knudson believed in training young athletes in multiple events before allowing them to specialize -- a strategy he picked up from the Russians, who, he points out, "had 5 million kids competing in the pentathlon in any given year. It stuck in my mind."

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Where others sought polish he sought lungs on legs -- raw meat. He recruited runners nobody else wanted, then taught them his new program. In two years the Gators cracked the nation's top 10. No-name runners were winning SEC titles, chopping 3 minutes off their high school 5K times.

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The program usually works in two-week cycles, though it may be changed to a week when competitions mandate. Everything is based on a "training distance," or TD -- 1600m for the purposes of this explanation. The athlete alternates three easy days with three hard ones, finishing with a Sunday run that is much shorter (about 30 minutes) than a comparable program. On hard days, Knudson's runners begin (and end) with 12 minutes of easy running. Then they will do a sequence of what he calls "dynamic leadups," 20-30 minutes of sprint-related exercises increasing in both speed and range of motion. Next comes the meat. During a two-week cycle, there are six hard days, each designated by a different pace and volume. The paces include an "over over distance" (5,000m), "under under distance" (400m), "over distance" (3,000m), "under distance" (800m), and the TD. The final hard day will be run at a pace determined by Knudson based on where he feels the athlete needs the most work.

He uses a predetermined multiplier to get the volume of each hard day. So on the "under under distance" day, for instance, the runner will run about 1200m at a 400m pace. The key is to understand that they never run based on distance; they run based on time. So if it takes the runner about 60 seconds to run 400 meters, Knudson assigns a certain number of reps that last a certain duration apiece to reach the prescribed volume. The reps can be uniform across a workout (running 24 reps for a time that equates to about 50 meters per rep, with 1-minute recoveries) or they can vary (start short and progress to longer reps, with increasing recovery times). Either way, the volume and pace remain the same. On days when the predetermined pace is slower, the runner runs greater volumes, and vice versa. "The instruction that they are given," Knudson says, "is to run the entire workout as fast as you can. Not run every rep as fast as you can, but the entire workout." For the six easy days in a two-week cycle, the runner ideally trains alone, completing 6 minutes of easy running, then 12 minutes at anaerobic threshold, then 6 more easy minutes.

Knudson never allows his athletes to run on a track -- and for those training at altitude, he often has them run downhill to simulate sea-level speed. He never times them. "Stop watches are for people at the meets," he says, an opinion his athletes always appreciate.
"With Lyle's program, you don't have any psychological limits on exactly how fast you can run," says Kris Ihle Helledy, a former Nike-sponsored pro who trained under Knudson in the late '90s. "I had a season under Lyle where I either set personals or was within seconds of personals for eight months straight. I would even set them in training."

And yet the majority of college coaches -- charged with bridging the crucial gap between high school and international competition -- still employ the pyramid model, building high mileage with less speed. This has always driven Knudson crazy. In 2004, at one of the last national meetings he attended --a pre-Olympic gathering of athletes, coaches, and scientists -- Knudson couldn't hold his tongue any longer. "I got fed up when they were talking about speed training for the last lap. And I stood up in the back of the room and said, 'Hey, the problem isn't the last lap. The problem is maximizing pace throughout the race.'"

Training Rhythm

2009-04-17T22:00:00.000-07:00

Too much to excerpt, it is all great:
http://petemagill.blogspot.com/2009/04/morning-read-yin-yang-of-zen-and.html

Allowable, Proven Performance Enhancing Substance

2009-04-04T20:37:00.000-07:00

Recently, the NYTimes had an article on caffeine use and its benefits for endurance performance.

Exercise physiologists have studied caffeine’s effects in nearly every iteration: Does it help sprinters? Marathon runners? Cyclists? Rowers? Swimmers? Athletes whose sports involve stopping and starting like tennis players? The answers are yes and yes and yes and yes.
Starting as long ago as 1978, researchers have been publishing caffeine studies. And in study after study, they concluded that caffeine actually does improve performance. In fact, some experts, like Dr. Mark Tarnopolsky of McMaster University in Canada, are just incredulous that anyone could even ask if caffeine has a performance effect.
“There is so much data on this that it’s unbelievable,” he said. “It’s just unequivocal that caffeine improves performance. It’s been shown in well-respected labs in multiple places around the world.”

Dr. Tarnopolsky and others report that caffeine increases the power output of muscles by releasing calcium that is stored in muscle. The effect can enable athletes to keep going longer or to go faster in the same length of time. Caffeine also affects the brain’s sensation of exhaustion, that feeling that it’s time to stop, you can’t go on any more. That may be one way it improves endurance, Dr. Tarnopolsky said.
The performance improvement in controlled laboratory settings can be 20 to 25 percent, Dr. Tarnopolsky said. But in the real world, including all comers, the improvement may average about 5 percent, still significant if you want to get your best time or even win a race.

Louise M. Burke, the head of sports nutrition department of the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra, reports that athletes get the full caffeine effect with as little as 1 milligram of caffeine per kilogram of body weight. Instead of 20 ounces of coffee, a 176-pound man could drink 4 ounces of coffee, or about two 12-ounce cans of Coke.

SO would we do better if we weaned ourselves from caffeine and then took a pill or two before a race?

I asked Dr. Tarnopolsky. It turns out, he said, that you get habituated to two of caffeine’s effects right away. Caffeine can make you urinate, but only if you are not used to it.
“Athletes do not get dehydrated from caffeine,” he added, “contrary to popular myth.”
And caffeine does increase the heart rate and blood pressure in people who are not regular uses. “But after three or four days, that potentially negative effect is gone,” Dr. Tarnopolsky said.
The beneficial effects on exercise, though, remain. Even if you are a regular coffee drinker, if you have a cup of coffee before a workout or a race, you will do better, Dr. Tarnopolsky said. “There is no question about it,” he added.

How They Trained: Benji Durden

2009-03-30T15:58:00.000-07:00

Lifted from an interview on Pete Magill's incomparable blog, insights from a sub-2:10 marathoner with 25 sub-2:20s to his credit:

When I started out, I mostly did interval training and little else. I ran very few long runs, and those I did were usually too fast. I evolved over a number of years to more rational training. There were steps along the way - more long runs, less intervals, slower long runs. How I evolved would be an interesting story if I could remember all of the details. But the important thing I learned is that the mix that worked best for me was about 90 miles a week with 3 "hard days" and 4 "easy days."

A typical week would be a single easy run of 45 minutes on Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Tuesday would be my speed day. I'd usually run about 6 x 800 or 5 x 1000 in a 2 to 2-1/2 hour workout in the morning. In the afternoon, I'd run 45 to 60 minutes.

Thursdays would be my long run, and it would normally be 2 :20 to 2:45 [that's hours and minutes] at 6:40 pace in the morning, with another 45 to 60 minute afternoon run.

Saturdays would be a low-key road race in the 10K to 25K range, with enough warm-up and warm-down to get in at least 2 hours. Then I'd do another 45 to 60 minute afternoon run.

I would back off of this program about 2 to 4 times per year for "important" races, which were almost always marathons.

"Trust what is simple"

2009-03-09T16:24:00.000-07:00

From another great entry on Emuss's blog, it can be applied to so many different subjects:

"I have always been highly suspicious of things that ought to be simple but have become too intricate for me to grasp. And I am doubly suspicious of those who make them so. Trust what is simple and can be understood at a glance. Anything more elaborate, investigate carefully and thoroughly; if it's too convoluted for you to grasp, pull back." -- Paul Johnson