The Long Run 2011

Running the Five & Dimes (The Long Run 2011 Dec)

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5kDriving home from work several months ago, I found myself trailing a car sporting an innocuous little bumper sticker. In contrast to so many of today’s bumper stickers, there was nothing inflammatory about this one: a bordered oval framing the numbers 26.2. I’d like to boast that I had its meaning in an instant, but, embarrassingly, I had to turn it over a while in my mind–long after that car had turned off–as if it were some cipher worthy of my utmost concentration. Then, somewhere on the drive between Uintah and Fillmore, it came to me: Pheidippides and his fabled run from Marathon to Athens, his resulting death, the 1896 Summer Olympics, a race held in Boston in 1897, and 150 costumed Elvises (Elvi if we’re being grammatical) running 26.2 miles in Las Vegas. (And by the way, I have always wondered whether Pheidippides died from battle wounds or from the rigors of having just run the mother of all marathons; Herodotus was none too clear in translation.) To a small—but growing–sliver of the general population, 26.2 needs no introduction, and no explanation. It is the secret handshake of a fraternity, a sign understood if not by all then by all who matter. Ever since that first sighting, I see 26.2 everywhere: on the posteriors of jeeps, bugs, and minivans; on notebooks, laptops and guitar cases. I remain, however, on the lookout for my first 3.1 (5k) or 6.2 (10k). Maybe some brave soul reading this piece ought to start a trend.

26.2 is a natural buzzword (buzznumber?) for the marathoner; it is, after all, the statistic that defines his or her athletic event of choice. But here’s a question. Is 26.2 on its way to becoming the very emblem of the runner in general? If a vehicle sports a 3.1, 6.2 or even a 13.1 (half marathon) bumper sticker, is its driver relegated to some lower rung of the aerobic ladder, pitied as one who looks up in sycophantic admiration at the 26.2 rung, aspiring to someday arrive, to someday be a “runner” with all the requisite bragging rights? Would one who bravely—or naively–advertised so trifling a number as 3.1 or 6.2 be thought a neophyte, an amateur, a dabbler or, worse yet, a jogger? And would he or she be passed without a friendly beep or a knowing nod by the driver whose bumper boasts a weighty 26.2? In a supersized culture where bigger is assumed better, tall is the new small, Pluto has been demoted to a dwarf planet, and English mastiffs are trending, has the marathon become the litmus test for passage into runninghood? Is the marathon the aerobic watershed that parts the wannabe from the genuine article? Is 26.2 the thresher for winnowing the weekend warrior’s chafe from the devotee’s grain? (Did I say it was an innocuous little bumper sticker?) Have we come to a place where a runner isn’t really a runner without having reached for the Bodyglide and made the 26.2 mile pilgrimage? I fear that the marathon is becoming to running what Mensa is to intelligence. If so, even the marathoner must ultimately concede to the ultramarathoner, whose sport is in the throes of its exponential growth phase.

Say that I’m stirring up a tempest in a teacup, if you must, but I think there’s something slightly sinister—ok, very slightly sinister in the scheme of sinister things—about the confidence of 26.2’s voice and the comparative muteness of distances that dare not speak their name. To me it hints of number worship, and, dare I say, a budding elitism. To counter, what do you say we show 3.1 and 6.2 some love? There is and will always be great value in running the five & dimes, as I collectively call them. Not that there is anything wrong with marathons and ultramarathons and the milephiles (you heard it here first) who run them. There are many constitutions and characters ideally suited to these great distances, many minds salved by the meditative effects of running in excess of three hours, many dollars raised for charities, and many selves actualized in the wearing of a finishing medal upon completion of a 26.2, 50 or 100 mile event. All running is good, right? But there are many more constitutions and psyches for which less is not less but just right. Individuals seeking life balance may train for and run the five & dimes–even at very competitive levels—while saving ample time for family, career, travel, education, volunteerism, and diverse athletic and creative hobbies. For parents, the 5k race is a perfect means of introducing children to running and racing; such races make ideal Saturday-morning family outings with health benefits for all (not just the runner on a 26.2 mile quest). Like a marathon, a 5k or 10k race promises an elated finish, social bonding opportunities, and a chance to give to community charities (and to get a cool t-shirt). But unlike a marathon, a recreational 5k or 10k race can be run well on 40 or fewer weekly training miles. This is perfect for runners whose injury thresholds are crossed before the 40 mile mark. For runners who experience compromised immunity, burnout or injury on anything more than 40 miles per week, the marathon just doesn’t make sense. But running—and racing-still does. And there’s even something for the competitor in the five & dime venue: the quest for personal records at shorter distances includes all the athletic legitimacy (and all the health benefits) of pushing the distance envelope. And if you miss that personal 5k or 10k record this weekend, you can always get it the very next weekend. Try that with a marathon! (On second thought, please don’t).

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My Duel in the Sun (The Long Run 2011 Aug)

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duelThe philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson once said that imitation is suicide. Try imitating a runner who is out of your league, and you’ll get a taste for what he meant. I tried once. A mile into a four (it felt like five) mile trail race, I saw one of my local heroes improbably near. For fun, I thought I’d try saying “Hi . . . . see you at the finish line.” I dug deep. I sidled up to my hero. With a calm that belied my red-lined condition, I said “Hi” and flashed him a cocky smile. He turned to look. He returned to his business–for a second or two. He looked again, as if to say, “Is that really you?” and, “What’s the silly smile for?” He was baffled. Weren’t hallucinations a side-effect of heat prostration (it was 84 degrees that day)? He looked at his watch–the universal signal for “this meeting is adjourned.” Predictably, he hit nitro and pulled away. Ordinarily I would have let it go at that, and watched him get smaller and smaller, until I lost him altogether behind the stands of scrub oak through which my straggler’s path led. But this was to be no ordinary day. As much from an impulse to confound as from anything more valiant, I dug deep and, rather unpredictably, sidled up to my hero again, this time with a snarl that let him know I meant business (though just what my business was, I didn’t know). He looked more bewildered than ever. His mind was reeling. Everything was going topsy-turvy. What would come next: pigs on the wing? From his point of view, something was seriously amiss with the universe. Would he reach the finish line to discover that apes were running the race? Taking advantage of his stunned condition, I pulled ahead of him. That’s right, ahead. What nerve! Who did I think I was: him? It was a surreal moment. Or was it? Surely this was suicide. I was about to implode. The jig was almost up. Another minute on borrowed time and I’d be exposed for the imposter I was.

Then the improbable happened. Was that a groan? I looked around. No one else in sight. Just me and my hero. There it was again: a groan of Promethean suffering. That tortured sound had come out of my adversary. He was hurting. There was a chink in his armor; here was a god who bled. Whether the universe had gone topsy-turvy or not, I was going to make the most of it. With the changing winds of fortune at my back, I spent the next 20 minutes running my adversary ragged. I was transformed. It wasn’t my adversary I was imitating now. I was Dick Beardsley. My adversary was Alberto Salazar. We were locking horns in our own private Duel in the Sun. But for us, there were no cameras, no cheering throngs, just the occasional volunteer showing two age-group competitors the road to a plastic statuette.

And when all was said and done . . .

There were no apes manning the finishing chute. The world hadn’t gone to the meek or to the dogs. And I was—predictably—in my adversary’s rear view mirror. In the final 100 meters of the race, I didn’t even rate as a cheap knock-off of my adversary. I was a second-rate tribute act at best; he was the Beatles and I was BritBeat. Reality had kicked in—and what a kick it had held in reserve for me!

Were you expecting a happier ending—one where the underdog takes the day, where human will triumphs over a titanic VO2max, where Wylie Coyote’s investment in Acme scams finally gets him a drumstick. Now, that would be surreal. No, this was reality, and it was sweet enough. All was right with the world—really right. I—I!–had been within 100 feet of a finish line and still able to read the list of sponsors off the back of my hero’s t-shirt. Spent to the point of stumbling, I took my place behind—immediately behind!–my hero in the finishing chute. And what was that on my face? Shame? Humiliation? Disappointment? No. Just the silly smile.

Several running logs have been filled and shelved since that race, and I’ve never again come within a stone’s throw of my hero. There’s no going from strength to strength in this story. My hero’s always up there in some unattainable echelon. Maybe my derring-do was reckless, maybe even suicidal. Whatever it was, it haunted me, the way I’ve heard run-ins with death haunt one. I had briefly gone over to the other side, flirted with a place where one’s feet never touch the earth. But my place wasn’t there. It was back on terra firma, bound to race among mortals.

(Epilogue: In 2014, in the same race, I again came close to beating my hero…close but no cigar. Apparently there’s something about this course that plays to my strengths. Good to know that the years have been equally kind to each of us and that we’ve held our own relative to the other. Maybe in 2015 I can do something about that.)

Trouble In Paradise (The Long Run 2011)

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Marathon-runner-collapsed-291x300Life’s not fair. I’ve said it before in these pages; and in my forgetfulness, I’m bound to repeat it. If anyone doubts the truth of it, they need only to consult the victims of the past two seasons’ wildfires for proof positive. Often reminded of this saying in our youth, we bear the world’s slings and arrows more or less philosophically, finding ample evidence of life’s unfairness before we’re old enough to drive. Then we find running (or it finds us). At first blush running seems to be a hermetically-sealed system of fairness and justice, a microcosm in which one gets just what one pays for, a place where hard work is commensurately rewarded, a matter-of-fact world of numbers, where popularity, wealth and connections count, refreshingly, for nothing. Here is a world that aspires to purity, where medals and awards are revoked in the cleansing light of anti-doping investigations. Even luck, we reason, can’t touch running; what runner ever lucks into running a 5-minute mile when the best she can physically run is a 6-minute mile? She might yet run a 5-minute mile, it’s true, but she’ll need time, massive training volume and familiarity with a track to do it (even if she possesses the requisite genetics). Here, we think, is a kind of Utopia built on just the sort of soil in which our Puritan work ethic can take hold and bear fruit.Alright, so we’re newbies. Soon enough we wake to the reality that not only is running really hard, but it’s just as freighted with inequities as the world at large. Former London Marathon director David Bedford once said that, “Running is a lot like life. Only 10 percent of it is exciting. 90 percent of it is slog and drudge.” Yes, running is indeed a lot like life; and life, we’ll remember, isn’t fair.

Our first clue that we weren’t running in the land of milk and honey might have come with the realization that we don’t gain as much cruising the downhills as we lose slogging the uphills. Anyone descending a steep downhill knows that even a free fall comes at a cost. Similarly, we out-and-back runners are at first vexed to find that tailwinds do not aid us as much as headwinds hurt us. The same stiff breeze that robbed us of breath and energy on our way out lacks even the oomph to cool us on our way back. Later, as we take our running to remote destinations, we find that at lower altitudes we don’t gain that extra gear nearly as much as we are left sucking wind at higher altitudes. The veteran runner understands better than most that physics is a cruel mistress, and that entropy is a process from which one cannot run.

But never let it be said that running doesn’t have a sense of humor. Running is quite the trickster, in fact. Coming off a winter of injury and motivational setbacks, we decide to run a test race under a self-deprecating and mock-Irish alias, just to “see what condition our condition is in.” And wouldn’t you know it, nobody else shows up, and we are mortified to be pressed by an ornery race director to accept our age-group medal as he announces—with a straight face—“Pokey McShuffles” or “Lurch O’Dawdles.” (This really has happened to friends of mine.) Conversely, a four-month stretch of text-book training leaves us feeling giddy about our chances of garnering our best-ever placing in a modest local race with predictable competition (i.e., where “Pokey McShuffles” is most likely not an alias). We arrive. And with the swagger of the one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind, we step from our car just as a blur of singlets and racing flats zooms by at a six-minute per mile warm-up pace. Mouth agape, we’re left to wonder just when and how our quaint hometown race went viral with the who’s who of the Front Range racing set. Forget Irish aliases, we’ll need to borrow Shalane Flanagan’s cardiovascular system to be of consequence here.

If we race long enough and seriously enough we’ll feel the sting of having left it all on a race course only to find that it was the wrong race course on which we—and the couple of veterans we prudently followed—left it. And we’ll have lost more than just the course: gone will be that series ranking we had all locked up after three hard-fought races, not to mention that cool trophy that had our name on it.

Not only is Murphy (author of that accursed law) responsible for all this mayhem, he is apparently so fleet of foot that no runner can pull away from him—and if he did he’d trip on his own laces.

Many of us have heard the morale-crushing stories of the runner who fought the good fight for 26.2 miles only to miss his Boston qualifying time by a scant few seconds—on something like his 8th attempt. Sadly, not all such stories are apocryphal. Outside of our running microcosm the letters DQ are likely to stimulate our taste receptors with halcyon memories of childhood and soft-serve goodness. In the running world, the letters DQ are synonymous with heartbreak. I for one know the unhappiness of having paced a runner who failed to make the 90-mile checkpoint of a 100-mile race. Imagine having just done something that only a relative handful of people on the planet can do—run 90 miles in a single shot—and having it not be enough. Ultra legend Scott Jurek once paced a friend to within hundreds of yards of winning a scrappy, grueling 100-mile race only to see him disqualified by Scott’s having given him a hand up after he’d collapsed with the finish line in sight.

And of course there is the ultimate hard truth: if we train long enough, intensely enough and frequently enough, we’ll watch our returns diminish as our hard training turns to overtraining and injury.

In running, as in life, the deck seems stacked against us. But at least when we run in search of our personal best, we all get to play against the same stacked deck. That sounds almost…fair.

Schooled (The Long Run 2011 May)

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Little girl 1T minus 4 minutes and counting. Time to toe the line. In most races my “line” is somewhere in the second or third row, behind young men and women in team singlets and racing flats so loud as to violate noise ordinances in neighboring jurisdictions. And then there’s the kids: those pre-pubescent Prefontaines and Paula Radcliffes whose parents are calling for them from the back row, unaware that their little overachiever has apparently been spending recess training with a college track team. Kids in the front row of grown-up races are kids about to get schooled.

For my part, I’ve never reveled in tutoring the Nickelodeon crowd. They just happen to be in my way…by the quarter mile mark. It’s about then their hatchling bodies stop running on enthusiasm and Lucky Charms and they start looking green from all that humble pie they’re eating. You can’t help but smile at their opening brazenness. The first two minutes of the race will cut them down to size (as if a four foot tall body should ever need that)…until the next race. But eventually their judgment will solidify, like some late-hardening cranial suture.

Anyway, it’s t minus 2 minutes and counting. I size up the competition. What’s this? Another four-and-a-half foot interloper. But this isn’t just any lost child. This one has a two-foot-long blond pony tail. Oh, what I failed to say before is that these fledgling Roger Bannisters are almost invariably male. Boys will be boys, but girls usually won’t be, um, boys.

T minus one minute. The boys aren’t budging from the front row. Neither is the girl. This is her story and apparently she‘s sticking with it. Another child casualty. I imagine how those New Balance and Asics tracks are going to look on her clean t-shirt.

Ten, nine, eight….hands are poised on watches…seven, six, five…nervous glances are exchanged…four, three, two, one…mayhem! It took until 1954 for a human to run a four minute mile. And judging by the first few seconds of this race, 30 of us are going to run one today. I wonder whether anyone called the folks at Guinness? A minute into the race and the four or five runners who look like they actually might run a four minute mile are in the lead, untouchable as always. And right behind them are (you guessed it) the kids. Already one can see their form faltering, arms windmilling, steps making a racket like snowshoes on asphalt. For them, the finish line is less then a track-length away. Sure, many of them will finish the actual race (a 5k), having fallen in with Mom or Dad somewhere along the way, but their opening speed has been significantly checked, halved and halved again. A minute and 30 seconds into the race and three little guys are in my rear-view mirror. A minute more and it’ll be a big-kids-only race. The next kids I’ll see will be pocketing extra bagels at the post-race carb-load. Three minutes into the race and the casualty roll is complete: seven little boys sent to the back of the line. The coast is clear. Just me and the open road and that pack of runners up ahead. That’s where I need to be. With my first real effort of the race, I close the gap. Before I know it I’m in the wind-shadow of a half-dozen male and female runners who had lined up near me at the start, all of them over 5-and-a-half feet tall. I judge that I can take this pack, and when I do an unexpected sight greets me: ten yards ahead is a blond ponytail, no longer hanging but streaming behind a diminutive female athlete in a clean t-shirt. No tread marks. I worriedly check my GPS sportswatch. I’m at the appointed place at the appointed time. It’s she who’s out of place.

Undaunted, I marshal my resolve to pass her. What else can I do? I have to remedy this situation before the first water stop. My wrap-around shades won’t give me the kind of anonymity I’ll be needing if something doesn’t change…in a hurry. (It doesn’t occur to me at the time that all the pride I’m lugging might actually be weighing me down.) Water stop one. There’s Gatorade. What kid can pass up Gatorade, right? Wrong. She glides right through. What’s wrong with this kid—other than the fact that she’s making me look bad? Whatever happened to respecting one’s elders? There are runners in front of us and a lot of runners behind, but no one else matters. I’m sure she knows I’m there; my labored breathing has denied me the element of surprise. Whatever her race goals were, I’ll wager she’s ditched them now, all so she can make me look bad. I’m sure of it. Or is it that I vanquished her dad once and now she’s out to avenge his memory? Water stop two. I’m ten paces behind. She gets an ovation. I get…wait, did someone just throw something at me? This is shaping up to be the worst day of my life. Finishing chute. The moment of truth. How much muscle power can that 70 pound frame pack? There’s no way the girl can have a finishing kick. I bring mine on, such as it is. Too late. My timing is off. I finish two feet behind that blond ponytail.

If it’ll save my pride, I’ll swear that was the fastest an 11 year old girl ever ran a 5k. I’d prove it, but nobody thought to call the folks at Guinness that day.

(Epilogue: This race took place in approximately 2003. In 2013, Jen Bremser–the owner of the blond ponytail–ran a 16:48 5k as a track & field star for Air Force Academy. Somehow knowing this makes me feel better.)

bremser

Outside the Lines (The Long run 2011 Apr)

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offtrackOne of my favorite thinkers, Henry David Thoreau, once confessed to preferring a wide margin to his life. His admission is memorable to me because of how well it resonates with my own inclinations. I am no devotee of structure—especially not structure for its own sake. For better or worse, I’m a free spirit—and never freer than when I’m running. Needless to say, I have never taken to speed work like the proverbial water fowl to water. In fact, you could say I loathe the stuff. For those made like me (and many like me seem to gravitate to running), there’s a lot to loathe about speed work. Most speed work has a certifiably redundant structure. That’s reason number one to loathe it. First there’s that warm up thing. Then there’s a hard 400 meters (substitute 400 meters for 300 or 800 meters, if you like), timed. Then there’s a timed rest interval. Then there’s another hard 400—faster than the first. Another rest interval. A harder 400. Rest interval. Hard 400. Rinse. Repeat. Then finally, like a gubernatorial pardon, comes the cool down (the warm down for literalists). An advanced rule of speed work states that if you can accurately count your 400s and rest intervals, you aren’t working hard enough to achieve the level of staggering pain that interferes with elementary cognitive functions (or you spent too much money on your stopwatch). I figure that in my speed work days I usually put in an extra 400 or two—before finally splurging on a state-of-the-art GPS sports watch. Yes, there was a big, amazing world out there, and there I was going around and around between two white lines. That was before I abandoned the oval for greener pastures.

Those who have done battle with the oval know that speed work really hurts. Not just once, but eight to ten times (not counting the pain that lingers through the first half of each rest interval). That’s reason number two to loathe speed work: The pain. And for what? If you do it just right (meaning you don’t cross the tipping point of overtraining or injury), you might slash 30 or 40 seconds off your 5 or 10k time. While that’s nothing to sneeze at, it’s never been enough racing bang for my training buck.

Now I don’t mean to say that I’ve given up on getting faster. Never going to happen. But I have chucked conventional speed work. And even that didn’t happen overnight. I experimented with other less-structured forms of speed work first. I tried time trials. They really worked. But when I began to anticipate them with pre-race jitters, I abandoned them in short order. I mean, if you’re going to leave everything out there on the course, shouldn’t you at least get a bite-sized energy bar in your goody bag for compensation? I tried in-and-outs (two minutes fast, one minute slow x 10) on favorite courses, seeing a lot more of my sports watch than the great outdoors. In the end it was apparent that I’d traded running my favorite course for something like running the gauntlet.

No, the only way for a rebel like me was to trick myself into believing I wasn’t doing speed work when in fact I was. Now I’m not an easy one to dupe. Not even for me. If I wanted to trick myself with speed work, I had to be sneaky about it, call it something else and deny until the last possible second that it was actually happening—until that moment when I said to myself “I guess I’m doing speed work now. Might as well gut it out.” The only way was to unwittingly arrive at that moment when I was too far engaged to pull out, like a skydiver who had just stepped from a plane, when there would be no point in fighting it, when I would just let go, as if into the arms of gravity.

I’m no coach, so I’ll stop short of prescribing my methods for everyone. I can only tell you what has worked for me and hope that it might speak to the other free spirits among you who, in your readiness to be free of the track, have abandoned all hope of getting faster. My answer to the speed work question is the progression run. I didn’t invent it. It’s too natural to have needed inventing. It’s as natural as…well, giving way to gravity. For the running lexicographer, progression running is nearly synonymous with negative split running, except that it’s more extreme.

Here’s how progression running works for me. Once or twice a week I pick a favorite course. I start running slowly (that’s key). After a mile or two I begin to build my pace. I let the speed come to me; I don’t rush it. Still, by the middle of my run I may be at tempo pace without having given it much thought. I continue building speed gently until a mile before the finish of my run. I top out at goal race pace or faster in the final minutes. Then it’s over…except for a blissful mile of cool down time. One rising movement culminating in a crescendo of exertion. You wouldn’t expect a great film to have eight denouements. Why should a great training run?

Pros: You don’t have to kill your weekly mileage just because it’s speed work day (I’ve done 10 mile progression runs and felt invigorated afterward). It’s perfect for slow starters. It simulates ideal race pacing (negative splits). Done correctly, it gives the runner significant time at threshold and VO2max paces. Cons: I can’t think of any…oh, it may challenge your iPod mixing skills (tip: start with the Carpenters and end with Rage Against the Machine).

At Cross Purposes (The Long Run 2011 Mar)

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crossAs a runner, when you think of cross training, what springs to mind? Cycling or swimming, surely. After that, probably some form of rigorous hiking, say a slog up the infamous Manitou Incline. For you gym-goers, perhaps the spinning bike, elliptical trainer, stair stepper or rower is your cross-training bliss. As runners, we are ever watchful of our cardiovascular fitness. And we should be. It is our bread and butter, after all. But one can’t live by bread alone.

Being a writer for the Long Run, it makes sense that I’m a runner. For ten years I’ve mixed in running circles. During that time I’ve discovered that runners are very fine folks: bright, healthy, happy people with an infectious verve, and really quite sane–refreshingly sane–despite the claims of non-runners who don’t get us. But I would be remiss if I didn’t bring up something I’ve frequently observed about runners that has left me scratching my head. With runners, I have sometimes detected a note (and occasionally a thunderously struck chord) of cardio-snobbery, a kind of air that looks down its sun-blocked nose at weight training. Perhaps it’s largely the fault of weight training’s farcical media image: an image that has tried, with the aid of legitimate fitness crusaders, to distance itself from Muscle Beach, but is still, I contend, essentially alpha male, eternally teenage, steeped in testosterone, vain, and able to lift a Volkswagen while at the same time unable to run around it. Rather like Neanderthals, weight lifters have never quite cast off the primal yoke and gained the respect of enlightened modernity. (A glance at the latest line-up of grocery store muscle magazine covers may provide a clue as to why).

Being a writer for the Long Run, it doesn’t necessarily make sense that I’m a weight lifter. And yet it is so. I’ve lifted weights uninterruptedly for 18 years. Having heard my share of gym talk, I can say that hard-core weight trainers are apt to view runners as willowy breatharians who would not only be crushed to death by the workloads under which a weight lifter daily labors, but who lack even the strength necessary to change a tire (assuming they even deign to drive an automobile) or turn a wrench on a stubborn nut.

Touché.

And so I find myself feeling somewhat like H.G. Wells’ time traveler, caught between the Eloi and the Morlocks of the contemporary fitness landscape. And since I can’t flee to another time (say, 50 years in the future when fitness routines seamlessly meld the virtues of weight-training and running), I—and other hybrids like me—must work the ground between these two fitness subcultures who sometimes like to hurl poisonous barbs at each other.

So who has it right? In my view (and in the view of many experts) both sides are right—at least insofar as they regularly embrace the practices of the other side. Here we do well to remember the term hybrid vigor. Originally a term used to talk up the virtues of genetic variety, the term has wide applicability. Applied to sports physiology, it speaks to the healthfulness of mixing it up—and I don’t mean mixing up barely differing forms of cardio training. Now if we put the term hybrid vigor in one corner of the training philosophy ring, who do you suppose we’ll find in the opposite corner? Here our good friend specificity of training is ready to rumble. Specificity of training. It sounds complicated but it’s not. In fact, it’s charming in its simplicity. If one wants to excel at something, one does that exact thing again and again and again until it becomes easy (or until it feels like Chinese water torture). Want to run a fast race on the weekend? Spend your weeks running fast. Do anything else and you are just wasting energy and time required for…you guessed it, running fast. My gut feeling is that specificity of training can be maintained for a limited period of time: for a cross-country season, say. And maybe it can even see a naturally gifted runner through a high school and college career. But for one who means to take running into his or her thirties and beyond, specificity of (cardio) training paired with the cumulative neglect of an aging musculoskeletal system is an unwholesome and unsavory recipe. I personally know runners in their 40s and 50s whose cardiovascular systems are vastly superior to my own (and to those of runners 20 and 30 years their juniors) who are literally on their last legs owing to bad knees caused by, I believe, weak quadriceps, patellar tendons and patellar ligaments. (This is the equivalent of a high-performance motor on a rusting chassis.) Many more runners are plagued by hip and lower back problems most likely stemming from weak glutes or core muscles. None of this even mentions osteoporosis, the onset of which can be significantly forestalled by a steady regimen of weight-bearing exercise.

I have heard serious runners object to weight training on the grounds that any extra muscle weight they carry equates to lost seconds of race time. My personal experience is that even significant gains in strength do not necessarily translate to gains in muscle weight. They haven’t for me. If weight training has ever detrimentally affected my running performance, it has been on account of its energy demands siphoning reserves necessary for fast running. Thus I don’t advise weight training in the several days prior to a race.

I’m arguably a better runner because of weight training. And even if I’m not, I’m certainly a healthier runner because of it. For a sensible strength training routine, visit http://www.fitnesssports.com/Strengthtraing.html

(Comment: This article had potential with the Eloi/Morlock analogy but went too far in relating the animosity between the two parties. My point might have been made without graphic accounts of the more juvenile forms of virulence to which I have on occasion been privy. In recent years I have found that far less strength training than suspected is necessary for optimal health and injury prevention.)

How Low Can You Go? (The Long Run 2011 Feb)

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coldHave you wondered lately whether your porch thermometer is broken?  Have you found yourself scanning the newspaper forecasts with a longing for bigger-digit days?  Have you recently been seen sporting a running tights/shopka ensemble despite the pleadings of children and resident fashionistas?  If you answered yes to any of these questions, you might be a runner mired in a February freeze.  But as bad as that is, there’s reason to take heart.  It could be worse.  What if you had to relive the same February day indefinitely (or until you pass your cosmic exam), like Bill Murray’s character in Groundhog Day?   Or, more likely, say you were a runner in a place that actually gets cold–and I don’t mean for a week or so every few years when that frigid Canadian air rides the southbound all the way to New Mexico and stays for a sit-in.

The next time you–and I, for that matter–think of hanging it up because the thermometer reads 15 degrees (a typical February overnight low for Colorado Springs), we should warm ourselves with thoughts of our fellow runners in Fairbanks, Alaska.  Fairbanks.  Whoever arrived at that name had an ironic sense of humor or didn’t get out much.  Fifteen degrees!  If it were 15 degrees in Fairbanks, it would most likely be an April day.  Chances are that right now the Mars rovers are enjoying warmer temperatures than some poor guy lacing up on his porch in Fairbanks.  It can be 20 degrees warmer on the surrounding hilltops.  Holy temperature inversion, Batman!  And you thought nothing would ever make you want to run hills.  And then there’s the problem of limited daylight.  Or shall I say, “limited gloaming?”  Better run at lunch, or it’s lights out for you.  In late December you could boast of starting and finishing your long runs in the dark—you might think I’m kidding, but I’m not.  And even at high noon in mid-winter, a feeble sun seems to hang just above those pine trees on the horizon.  Talk about the Twilight Zone.  Well, I guess they have the Aurora Borealis to look at, anyway.  As for me, I’ll take the view of Pikes Peak (and not that tiny light at the top, visible only in the dark).  Add a 15 mile per hour wind to an otherwise lovely Fairbanks run and you might as well be on the wing of a DC-10 at cruising altitude (hey, didn’t I tell you it was like the Twilight Zone?)  “No thanks, Mr. Flight Attendant, I think I’ll pass on the in-flight hot toddy, thank you; but, say, have you got a balaclava–or better yet, an EVA suit—in that serving cart?”

Ok, you’re right.  I sound jealous because I am jealous.  I’m jealous of the stalwartness of these folks.  I’m jealous of the audacity that taunts Old Man Winter at close range.  I’m jealous of folks who can get away with wearing stylish knit caps and scarves every day for months.

You may be thinking that surely every Fairbanks runner has a treadmill or belongs to a gym with a treadmill, and that outdoor running in winter is as great an oddity as liquid water.  I wondered about that too, so I looked up the website for Fairbanks’ running club, Running Club North.  (I fancied them the Polar Bear Club, but the name, we know, is already being used by another group of extremophiles who appear a little soft in comparison to these hearty folks.)  And guess what?  People on the perimeter of the Arctic Circle really do run–in the dead of winter.  And stranger still, they actually seem to enjoy it.  The good folks of Running Club North claim, with an earned air of braggadocio, that they used to call off races at -25 degrees, but now they leave it up to the individual race director.  I’m with them; why draw the line at dangerously cold, when hypothermic hallucinations are just around the corner?  (No, that bank thermometer that reads -55 isn’t a hallucination; you’re perfectly safe.)  Club North hosts a weekly training run called Fahrenheit Be Darned (at least they keep their braggadocio clean).  To satisfy my (morbid) curiosity I clicked on a menu option entitled “Cold Weather Running.”  Among the advice offered is the suggestion that one choose his or her course with a potential refuge in mind.  I was thinking that loops around the emergency room parking lot seemed like the most prudent course (outside of an indoor track).

Ok, accuse this middle-latitude dweller of exaggeration if you will.  But there’s just something about imminent danger of frostbite that’s always brought out the hyperbolic in me.

But seriously, how low is too low?   To paraphrase exercise physiologist John. W. Castellani, more people are injured running in hot weather than cold weather.  Now that I can believe, having known the pleasure of a 93 degree marathon finish.  The good doctor gives the green light to running down to -50 degrees fahrenheit.  It should be noted however that Dr. Mom stridently challenges Dr. Castellani’s findings, never mind his professional standing.

Since the temperature has never plummeted much below -30 in Colorado Springs, I figure none of us has an excuse for not running outside in winter.  So lace up, layer up and have some hot cocoa waiting for you at home in a thermos.  And look on the bright side.  February too will pass, whether or not you ace your cosmic exam.

The Joke’s on Me (The Long Run 2011 Jan)

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ageIt’s New Years. Time to trot out my annual joke. Resolution talk always gives me the perfect segue. Jim says, “This year I’m going to get a better job.” Al avows, “This year I’m going to fix up the house.” Jane announces, “This year I’m going to put in more volunteer hours.” I add, “This year I’m going to get in shape.” I say it with a straight—and rather gaunt–face. For a second or two my remark goes unnoticed, it being just another of a billion similar vows made at this time of the year. It takes a moment for folks to process the remark and consider the source. Then it hits them. An eyebrow draws up and they give that “Are you serious?” look. I crack a smile. For the past 10 years I’ve maintained single-digit body fat and a personal fitness trainer’s build. How could I be serious? They laugh with me (sometimes it’s a strained laugh).OK, my joke (if you want to call it that) is a bit flippant. I’m careful with whom I share it. Most who make get-in-shape resolutions make them in earnest. For some, a resolution will be the crux of a miraculous physical transformation. And for a few, a resolution to shape up is the equivalent of choosing life over its untimely opposite. My joking avowal is, on the other hand, nothing more than a refuge. Staying in shape is just something I’ve been good at for over a decade. Cracking a resolution joke has been my way of shirking the responsibility of a real resolution.But this year will be different. Well, a little different anyway (it’s not like I’ll resolve to read the Encyclopedia Britannica or learn origami). This year when I resolve to get in shape, I’ll mean it. No joke.

Now before rumors that I’ve hit the skids reach the ears of my two or three competitors (you know who you are), I still look exactly the same. And I still run 30 miles a week and hit the weights. But I know the difference. My heart and lungs sure know the difference. Only I can attest to the effort I’ve put into my training (and more importantly, the effort I haven’t put into it) this past year. I’ll just say that I wouldn’t want to tangle with any of my ghosts of New Years past (not the latest ten releases anyway). But give me eight weeks of dedicated training…and voila. I’ll take them all on! Or at least I’ll be ready to tangle with the competitors in my age bracket. I just need to resolve to do it. And what do you know? It’s New Years Day, aka, resolution day.

OK, my getting out of shape didn’t happen by accident. To quote Pee Wee Herman—a first for me–, “I meant to do that.” I’ve read that once every decade a runner should take a year off from hard running (or any running—yikes). For most of 2010 I was 44 years old. 2010 seemed like the right year for taking a year off, coming at the back of the 40-44 year old age bracket. I raced very little as a 44 year old. Now I’m 45 and I need to get in shape–racing shape–to beat or lose to folks pushing the half-century mark. Don’t laugh too loudly all you 20-somethings; you’ll get here—it’s just a matter of time. So how hard can it be? I mean, I can cut myself a little slack, right? Folks will put it down to my having lost a few steps, right? Wrong, thanks to the concept of age-graded standards. These standards are designed to hold aging runners accountable for giving maximal effort; they keep us honest. Having found running late, I PRd in the 5k at the fatherly age of 37, grabbing a 19:24 on a certified course at front-range altitude. According to the age-graded math, this suggests that a 19:04 could have been mine had I taken up running in my 20s. At 40, I hit 19:48 on the same course, suggesting a 19:03. A second better, but essentially the same. At 43, I crossed the line in 20:08. In age-graded parlance that’s 18:50—a new PR by a long shot! A new PR until 2011, that is. Excuse me while I go to the age-grading calculator and see what I have to pull off this year for a new “PR.” OK, it looks like 20:30 will do the trick. Really? I let the program crunch the numbers again. Same result. I may be deceiving myself, but that sounds easy. Surely I can do that. Who said aging isn’t fun? Now I have a number to shoot for. No self-respecting resolution-maker plies his or her trade without an achievable numerical goal. I’m feeling pretty good about the resolution thing. But wait . . . here comes that if-it-sounds-too-good-to-be-true-then-it-probably-is feeling. Self-doubt creeps in and next thing I know my parade is being called off on account of a slanting deluge. There’s no way it can get easier to set “PR”s the older I get. I get the feeling that the age-graded calculator is the brainchild of some trickster over 40—who hates to concede. I long for the days when I compared myself to my glory days and felt badly about it. If “science” won’t hold me accountable, then this year I’m going to do exactly what I did (without a resolution) every year before 2010: train as hard as I can and hope to break 20 minutes. And maybe I really will take up origami in 2011.

(Epilogue: In April of 2015, at the Drake Relays in Des Moines, Iowa, I ran a 20:33 5k at age 49, suggesting that I could have run an 18:07 in my prime. Age-graded, this was the strongest performance of my entire 15 year running career. I’ll leave it to you to decide whether I lost or “gained” a minute in 12 years.)