Race Alert!

Race alert! Mountain State Forest Festival 10K Run
Sunday October 2, 2011 at 12:30 PM
Registration at Elkins YMCA from 10:30-12:15
Cost $15, satisfaction of finishing with your class=priceless
I sincerely hope to see you all there, we'll have a great day!

Time Trials and Track Workouts

Track work can be fun & even a bit addicting if you are a sports fan that enjoys data or statistics. 

Remember that this type of workout is 15% or less of your total program and yet you will often see results in the data in just 3-4 week of work. These workouts are seldom easy and because it is not easy – and it pushes the body to a new place in your running, the rest of the work will feel more effortless. Track work develops both aerobic and anaerobic capacity. You’ll get more efficient moving lactate (metabolic waste) out of your system and you’ll enhance your running form. All these benefits from only 15% of the work sounds like an infomercial – too good to be true. Well remember I said it was hard and it is also demanding on the body, so it is not for folks who do not already have four to five months of regular running under their shoes. Some of the folks in our group are already there on this which is great because speed work will tune you up for any race goal. First timers will be ready for some speed work as the program concludes and because of this I introduce track workouts. This is not intended to be a comprehensive workout description but a way to sell you on the basics and guide you through what you need to know to get started. You’ll find these workouts everywhere in magazines and online so you’ll have some tools when you’re ready.

This lesson is a chance to explain some terminology and serve as a primer to track work. You’ll need a stopwatch (or stopwatch function on your watch), maybe a buddy for motivation and to help keep count, and a paper and pencil plan about how to progress before you start the process.

How fast do I run these? Short question - big answer. Most folks will use a recent race that went well to estimate what their fast pace. Those without a race will calculate running paces based on a “miracle mile”, so what is this all about? You head to the track or a pre-marked distance on the bike trail, and run your fastest pace that you feel you can sustain for a mile and clock the time. This uses your “central governor” that we have talked about before – your own very well trained, race computer in your brain that will not let you blow up and will adjust performance by how much is in your individual tank. Once you have a race time or your own one-mile time trial you have a reference point or baseline. This is a starting point for you to calculate from & you can have a professional trainer calculate for you - for free.

http://www.mcmillanrunning.com/mcmillanrunningcalculator.htm

This tool is great because you will get a full spectrum of running paces for the types of runs you’d like to do in a given week. These times were designed with the idea that you’ll not be overtraining or stressing yourself anaerobically too often but allowing adaptations to develop gradually. You’ll still need to fine tune these with your own heart rate or level of perceived effort to make sure that they work for you.

Remember that we have already covered lessons regarding the 4 types of workouts. These are LSD runs, everyday runs, tempo work, & threshold or track work (see “the Mix” lesson). Any running above your goal pace - for a planned length of time falls into Speed/track work. We have already talked about Perceived Effort (PE) & how it relates to your heart rate & pacing (see Pacing lesson) – so you know a bit about how to not overdo it & you can estimate where you’ll want your PE to be for these workouts. You want to warm up and cool down MORE for this workout –a mile of easy running beforehand & walking a mile or more afterwards. Low level aerobic activity after the speed work helps to clear lactate from muscles faster due to increased circulation. You’ll be asking your body to run into the 8-9 range (anaerobic work) for SOME these runs/repeats but you will be careful to never go all out. You can only drive the car as fast as it was designed for – if your form is suffering, simply slow down and work up to that pace later as you progress gradually.

So here are a few terms and ideas to get you started:
These concepts you’ll see over and over – so they are the best place to begin and with just these building blocks you can begin to construct your own track progressions. 

Miracle mile – you head out and run the best mile that you can run (four laps on a standard track, 440 yards /lap or 5280 feet total) and the key here is that the pace must be steady. So go out and finish at the same pace, no heroics. This is a good measure for shorter races and a decent way to start any endurance program. You’ll know what your best possible race pace is right now – a snapshot.

Time trials – several kinds of time trials you can do. One type would be to start a long endurance program and you go out and see how long you can run without stopping, running by time. You hope to have a steady pace throughout and you simply stop when you have had enough. This time/distance trial is the starting place for your long runs (LSD runs) that are the cornerstone of any endurance program. Many who start a half-marathon or longer program do not know how long their first long run should be and this is a good measure of where to set the initial distance.

Another type of time trial is a more of dress rehearsal for race day. The Hanson distance project is famous for this type of run and they will choose a route that is 60-70% of the distance of the intended race course. Runners go out and run this trial 6 weeks prior and 3 weeks prior to the event. Running at race pace and seeking to maintain that goal pace the entire distance. Hanson distance project has found that the runners in training who can maintain that goal pace during their program will easily maintain the race pace for the entire race distance after tapering and resting properly. Giving them most of the race at this speed is a great confidence builder as well without breaking them down beyond what they can recover from.

Track repeats - a run length that mimics the endurance level required for your race which is repeated several times and includes a rest or jog between repeats. Endurance is increased by adding repeats gradually over the weeks and by reducing the rest or jog interval in between runs. 5K runners might use 440 or quarter mile repeats, 10K runners might use 440 or 880 repeats, 13.1 mile racers and 26.2 racers would use half mile or mile repeats. Think about these like the granddaddy of a walk run program – instead of running a minute and then walking one, you are running a quarter mile and then letting the body catch up by walking/jogging a lap. This gears you up for speed without the strain of running the entire distance at speed (more than we can recover from). Just like your running - you slowly add repeats and then lower the rest intervals as race day approaches and you hone the runner to race. These should not be intimidating as the system is familiar and the results are the same – you gradually become more comfortable running faster in small doses so as to not wear you down. Research has shown that this work pushes back your lactate threshold. Because the work generates lactate faster in the body, you become more adept at clearing it and thus more efficient at lower intensity running as well, making you faster.

Ladders - many programs will choose a distance that matches your race length well and select repeats of these distances which move the runner from warm up to tempo through threshold pacing and back down through tempo and cool down modes. Ladders might look like this:

 1 mile warm-up, 800 meters, 600 meters, 400 meters, 200 meters, 400 meters, 600 meters, 800 meters and 1 mile cool-down. Ladders typically add challenge with progressively shorter and faster runs at the ladder top and repeats of the difficult repetitions. After ladders there is usually a long slow run which allows lactate flushing and teaches the body what the “end of the race” feels like in competition.

Rest interval - most folks start speed work with walking the rest interval which is a good thing. Later they jog the rest interval. As repeats get easier they shorten the rest interval and push the body to better adapt to race pace running because on race day most of us do not plan on stopping to jog a lap. This is where track work differs significantly from Arthur Lydiard’s training philosophy. He felt that you should not train the body to rest but go slower to avoid damaging the runner and instead ask him to keep running. He used track work to adjust the runner to race pace and anaerobically condition the runner in the final stages of a program.

Yasso 800’s – Bart Yasso used the half mile repeat regularly as part of his training program for dozens of marathons. What he found over time in his running logbooks has proven true for many other runners and when he released his findings with the help of Amby Burfoot they coined the term Yasso 800’s. Bart starts speed work training with maybe two half mile repeats and runs them once each week. Every one to three weeks he adds an additional repeat. He tries to run all of them at race pace – what he expects to run on race day. Three weeks before the race day he hope to run 10 or more of these repeats at race pace or faster and if he is successful, then he knows he will run his race in the goal time. He also uses a slick conversion factor to gauge his speed work. If Bart wants to run a 3:00 hour marathon he runs his repeats in 3:00 minutes each. While this pace per mile is a bit faster than a 3:00 hour marathon and is very nearly threshold pace for distance runners, his estimates for this distance have proven nearly foolproof for many marathoners.

When getting into track work – remember a few key concepts that bear repeating

·        Long warm ups and cool downs

·        Very gradually add repeats first, then reduce rest intervals

·        Check your training paces carefully, have a plan, and never sprint all out

·        Speed work on the track is clearly a once a week, maximum, activity (15% of weekly miles, max)

·        Lots of good track interval suggestions at Runner World, McMillian Running, & coaching sites

·        Not for beginners, you need 5 months under your shoes before trying track work

The mix workout

Why do we do this training program stuff?

Arthur Lydiard is one of the fathers of the running movement who was a New Zealander of modest origin that used keen intuition and mileage based testing to produce great gains in humans of average athletic ability & also in that process, coach more Olympic champions than any other coach.

While gains are hard won over time the runner needs patience above nearly all else in order to see their greatest personal advancements. They also need a varied workout to expand beyond their base potential. This is largely due to the idea that aerobic capacity is not limited the way anaerobic capacity is - workload under oxygen deprivation can be expanded but has finite and tested limits.

Lydiard coined the adage “train, don’t strain” as a way to promote intense and profound development of aerobic capacity and thus stood the world on its head - as his athletes ran over-distance to the point that they would never tire in competition. Yet he started them slowly and gradually increased the loads to get these results. Much of his work is the foundation that modern coaching is based upon.

He also said that the athlete needs to know why something works and must be told the benefit of training. Not prone to dogma or pure didactic methods – athletes were better driven by understanding the methods. I personally think that this idea aids motivation as well. The FIRST program does a good job of summing up a few of the elements of the why/how equation for us.

Workout types for training

	Track repeats	Tempo runs	Long runs
Purpose	Improve speed, VO2, economy	Improve endurance, raise lactate threshold	Improve aerobic metabolism, endurance
Intensity	Race pace, PE 8	PE 6-7	PE 3-4, 90 sec./mile slower than race pace
Duration	Very short sessions mixed into a run	One per week, mid-distance run Negative split run	One per week LSD

VO2 is our maximal oxygen consumption and the ability to use this effectively. Maximal oxygen consumption is often related to “the size of the engine” you are working with at the time. A runner with a high VO2 score can run faster, longer. Folks typically score between 40-80 (ml/kg/minute). Research shows that this score can increase by 20% using endurance and interval training.

Lactate threshold is a measure of metabolic fitness. Lactate is produced when you are working anaerobically. How well your body can perform at a steady state where it is producing lactate but able to process and remove this metabolic waste without cramping or feeling miserable is your lactate threshold. Many runners might reach Lactate threshold after running 30 minutes at 60% of their MHR, while an elite runner may not reach Lactate threshold until after running 30 or more minutes at 95% of MHR. Tempo runs introduce a little bit of this anaerobic work gradually and thus slowly raise our Lactate threshold and ability to metabolize lactate waste.

Aerobic capacity is increased by all of these workout types as capillary development builds, heart and lung function increases and you body adapts to the workload being requested. Any rate of travel that gets you into PE 4 and above (65% of MHR) will quickly develop your aerobic capacity and first you develop the distance you can run, while speed comes afterwards as you are able to handle greater loads and are more efficient.

Our version of track work will allow for you to ease into speed work and what it feels like. Remember when you started running and how good it felt to get the walk break? Maybe they still feel good ;-) Well now we’ll introduce a dose of running faster and the result of that is that the regular running will feel good – kinda like the walk break did. It will also allow you to gently rev the engine and build the speed, economy and VO2 capability slowly w/o injury. Later you can try longer repeats and shorter rest intervals (shorten recover time by 15 seconds) to really build this capacity. Many folks come to love track work & it does make you fast. Unlike the name however, it need not occur on a track. If you have already measured a distance you can do your speed work anywhere. We’ll only do speed work one time each week.

AI or aerobic intervals will be sessions where you push the pace and are breathing harder (maybe PE 7) and then you follow this with slow running to allow your tachometer to come down and you are ready to resume your regular pace. Your speed play never leaves you gasping for breath but is a steady, faster-for-you effort. Try to think about that feeling you had as a kid where it was fun to feel yourself accelerate across the playground. You start with one or two and build the number of them over the coming weeks.

GP or gentle pickups are about you learning to drive up the pace and hold it there for 100 yards. You will run it up to about PE 8-9 and then gradually decelerate. You get to walk the recovery phase of these until you feel like running (maybe 90 seconds) your regular pace again. Again we’ll start with just one or two and we are giving you the sensation of “…so this is what it feels like to really get myself going fast”

Our Tempo Runs are speed work also but allow for a slow steady push of the pace. Faster running is necessary in order to improve endurance and lactate threshold. The negative splits workout allows this while slowly exposing you to higher lactate levels. Run your second half of the chosen route 5-10 seconds/mile faster than the first half. By stepping it up in the back half you lower your overall pace, finish strong and train your body to finish strong. Additionally, you get experience with faster running, just a little more challenging than what your base mileage runs are. These runs feel “comfortably hard”. You may feel like walking 10 minutes after these runs to help flush lactate from your muscles.

Our long runs are just that – measured in miles rather than time - you can go as slow as you need to and walk for 60 seconds after every mile if you need to as well. But staying out longer is the cornerstone of any strong distance program. This is the workout you may not skip – or do so at your own peril when the “rubber meets the road”. You run slower than the race pace because you are avoiding injury (none of us can race every week) and are seeking to build up endurance and oxygen utilization. We can do that at a PE 3-4 effort and simply extend the time on our feet. We have to condition and over prepare the muscles, joints and feet for the race effort. Additionally the Long Slow Distance (LSD) run burns calories like crazy and gets you used to being out there and in the groove. If I plan to run a 5k race in 40 minutes then by running LSD runs that far exceeds that time (even if they are shorter runs than 5k) I can acclimatize my body to the effects of being on the course that long. All the body systems need that experience of being upright and moving for at least as long as my goal race time, slow is good for this reason as well.

We run over distance to accomplish several goals.

·        Giving you the confidence that you can indeed run your distance

·        Develop aerobic capacity and endurance so your race feels easier

·        Allow muscles, joints and feet time to acclimatize to the workload

·        It is easier to do than you think if you “train, don’t strain” and then these longer runs becomes a regular means of high calorie burning cardio-fitness for you to use year round.

 We run the mix workout as soon as your body is ready so that you develop more tools in your tool-bag for more effortless and injury free running. The body prefers the variety and you are better motivated by a mix routine. Lydiard felt strongly that even when you are not training for a race – you will benefit from working on your speed and your aerobic capacity year round. Patience must again be emphasized – many coaches state that a runner improves the most in their third year – as lifetime mileage builds and tissues adapt to running. If you provide variety and recovery into your training there is no reason to expect that you will not continue to improve across your running career.

Lydiard was very big into hill training. His runners came from modest means as well and without the advantage of being “professional runners” they could not afford gym memberships and working a day job meant that they had a limited time to train. Lydiard proved that hills were as good as weightlifting for developing lean muscle mass in his athletes and this training offered “specificity” as well in that they were running up the hills; lots and lots of hills. New research has shown that strength training with weights can and does develop lean muscle mass which A) makes you faster, B) deflects the impact to joints in the aging runner, C) provides for a more balanced physique that moves efficiently down the road with fewer opportunities for injury. The idea is not to build bulk but to balance the body and particularly to strengthen the core muscles that support the legs back and pelvis when running. If you choose to add hills to your routine that is a good thing but do not overdo it. Give yourself just a hill or two each week, practice of the race course or something casual. No hill repeats for now. You must practice good running form with hills in order to prevent injury.

            Heels down, no running on your toes and no pushing off of the trailing leg

            Small strides to help with the effort of raising the leading leg

            Slow down your pace and look up the hill with a long back of the neck so that you are taking in air

            Run with an upright posture and use your arms to help you get up that hill

            A class on hills is upcoming – take it easy for now.

New research on intervals has just been published and covered by Runners World. The thing I love about the study is that it works with the athletes’ feel for things (getting you to listen to your body) and that it has a kernel of Arthur Lydiard’s training philosophy in it. Andrew Edwards (an exercise physiologist and former British 400-meter hurdle star) of James Cook University in Cairns, Australia, has coined the term "perceived readiness." His study asked a group of trained athletes to complete interval workouts and the study focused on time to start the next interval, which was broken down into 3 distinct groups. The first group waited until their HR was at 130 beats per minute. The second group took the same time for recovery as the repeat took (in this study about 3:18). The third group took the time that they felt they needed before they could crank out another interval at 90% effort. Group one was thrashed from these workouts with the shortest recovery time between intervals, higher overall heart rates for the workout, slower repeats and feeling worse. The second and third groups were much more similar in results but the third group that began the next interval when they felt they could generate 90% effort again (the perceived readiness group) was quicker to start the next interval, ran nearly the fastest repeats, had the lowest overall heart rates for this workout, and felt better when the workout was completed. In other words they did not feel thrashed and yet their workout did not take as long to complete and they were nearly as fast. In the perceived readiness group their bodies were able to limit the rest interval and push a bit more on the whole without breaking the machine. Very cool stuff, and similar to Lydiard’s attitude of not counting the number of repeats his athletes did, but rather asking them to stop just before they felt they were going to diminish in their training performance. While this is an early study – keep this concept in mind when you take your turn with speed workouts and I hope we’ll see more about this in future research.

Runner Time Management

“If you think taking care of yourself is selfish, change your mind. If you don’t you are simply ducking your responsibilities.” Ann Richards

So you know it is important – and yet it becomes a lower priority to the urgent tasks. As Coach Shaw said, this is the hard part – not designing a program but staying on one. To succeed at this you need a few tricks, some mental focus and a review of time management. 

Start with the truth - Stanford and Tufts Universities have each studied the long term effects of running on physiology and have found that vigorous exercise is associated with living longer and in better health – regardless of the age at which participants began their exercise program. Stanford’s 21 year study showed that runner’s age 50-72 experienced 40% reduced risk of disability, cancer, or Alzheimer’s and just plain lived longer. In the same study, runners had fewer injuries of all kinds, including joint injury. So remind yourself that this really is use it or lose it, you are a runner now and you can enjoy these benefits too if you keep with a program that works for you. I like the funny adage that we spend our youth chasing money and our money chasing youth. Well you do not have to chase it, you just have to jog along and eventually you will run it down or come pretty close to it – while I am not any richer I sure do feel better.

Remember that you are role model. While soccer players are only see by their fans, you see everybody as you run down the road and they see you. I bring this up because I have heard (and I have felt this myself at times) that when I am running I am taking time away from my family, my kids, my job or whatever else you can feel guilty about getting “you time” away from, and I have said to these people “look at how strong you are, and look at what your kids see. They do not see an uneven ledger – but someone who cares enough to exercise, get a bit of time to their selves, and take care of the only body they may ever get. Your kids need that good advice and you are modeling it” In an age where kids are inside, many obese, and more at risk of disease (including adult onset Diabetes) there is no better time for you to be a good example. While I’ll never urge my kid to join me on the road – at least when I tell him to go play and get some exercise he knows that I am serious because I do as I say. Of course I’d love to have him join me for a run but he’ll never do it unless he sees me enjoy it. If that does not motivate me to run and be an athlete – I cannot think of what will.

So let’s revisit that old Steven Covey analogy about time management. He would pour sand into the jar as a representation of what is urgent in our lives  - all the stuff we feel like we need to do, and then he would try to get the big stones, the important stuff to fit in that jar. We all know what happened, those stones did not fit. Not until he placed the stones in the jar first, did the sand all fit around the stones, and everything did get into his jar. He was showing us how to manage our time with what was important vs. what was urgent. He made a lot of money showing folks that jar, when we all know how it works already. Robert Fulgum has written “all lessons are repeated until learned”.

You have to keep a record of what you are, and are not, getting done. When you seek to re-establish a routine you probably already know what works for you. For me it is that open calendar square that is unfinished or the task item unchecked – I can’t stand it. Your Learn to Run program fits nicely on a calendar and you’ll just need a few more calendar pages or a training log to keep planning your progress (www.personallogs.com) and you’ll want to modify and repeat your current plan or build a new one based upon your goals. A free online training log is at www.buckeyeoutdoors.com and they have some training plans you can overlay onto your race targets too. Some of these plans will even email you your daily/weekly assignments if that motivates you. Others will send them to your phone if you use your inbox as a do list. So map it out to see where it fits and then you can strategize.

The more I have to think about something – sometimes that daily minutia can serve as a barrier to completion. Where am I running, how far, what to wear, have I eaten, what time -  Ahhh! Stress! Your schedule and some planning can ease this in just a single Saturday afternoon and I sleep better that night too, knowing I now have a plan of action. If this running thing is one of your “big rocks” of time management then you just have a puzzle on your hands to solve.

There is no perfect training schedule for everyone – you are “an experiment of one” and you need to listen to your body, ask for help and adjust the sails sometimes. It is not about the number of days you get out – but being ready, rested and in the mindset to make the days you do get – count as a quality effort.

How many days a week? Studies show that 95% of the cardiovascular benefits can be had with 5 days a week of running, with that said you can get nearly 80% on just 4 days a week. So can you make it work on three day a week? The Furman FIRST program is based on this very principle and they cross train and do floor exercises for strength on the off days. Strength training stimulates the production of red blood cells and stimulates muscles differently so that you are more ready to run with less actual running. If you got out less than that is it a bad thing? No – you have to make it fit your life and you should always feel good about getting some exercise. Do not let people tell you otherwise or “dumb down” the benefits of getting out and moving because everything helps. You ideally want a habit of some sort no matter how many days because A) you’ll find it gets easier B) you’ll see greater benefit and this means you’ll stay for life. It is your life, and that’s what we are building this program more - to enhance it.

In the past year there have been many weeks where I can only pull off three runs a week due to a grueling school schedule but here is the deal. In my twenties and thirties I ran backpacking and river trips that were anywhere from three to thirty days long and I always said that a three day trip and a two week trip each take the same amount of time to prepare – aside from a little more food; I take the same tent, flashlight, stove, etc, etc. and yet on the three day trip I only get three days. I would always rather go for a week because the effort is the same but the payoff is greater.

I specialize in the long run, because I am never going to be a sprinter again and I like being out there and going places – it is transformative for me. So I am running farther/longer when I am out running but by going out three times a week I am getting a full week’s worth of workouts done. I think it is efficient and it works for me because I have already worked up to that kind of mileage and sometimes inertia is the enemy. Getting out the door takes the same amount of time every day and the hardest part is getting free for a couple hours to go – not the actual running. When Dan Lehmann spoke to us he told a story of a guy who did not run all week but did run a slow and steady Ultra every weekend for his mileage. That may be taking it a bit far but it is the same basic idea that he is getting his time in when and how he is able while allowing the body some rest in between. Think outside the box to achieve your goals.

When do I do it? Think about how you can squeeze more out of your day. If you are a night owl already you can likely run in the dark and not disrupt your sleep pattern. Dean Karnazes of Ultra Marathon Man fame is famous for running hours at night when he had a day job – to make it all fit. If you are an early riser now – then perhaps 40 minutes earlier will get you a run. One high school principal found running saved his life (he dropped 150 lbs and went off his Lipitor) and he did not want to give it up. But a principal already starts the day pretty early, so he found a new pair of pajamas, in that he sleeps in his running duds, and just rolls out of bed and into his shoes to go run for 45 minutes. When he gets home he drinks the smoothie, which was pre-frozen on Sunday afternoon and is thawing in the fridge now while the shower warms up. It sounds a bit like George Jetson’s morning routine (I think a robot made his coffee and brushed his teeth for him) but it got the guy the time he needed in his schedule for the big rocks to fit. One secret that works for me is that I have is to get the run done early in the day, that way I cannot couch it as a crisis comes up later in the day. Just as long as you have the time blocked out - you are most likely to complete.

Planning is everything. So ideally I try to eat one or two hours before a run or make your fuel intake light and digestible (300-500Kal + 10oz H2O) and as I said before familiar foods are best. Remember when I asked you to test those pre-race breakfasts and mid run snacks that will sit well while you run? Those same micro meals will allow you to dash out the door when you find that you have an hour that you did not realize you had. The other day I found that my afternoon appointment was canceled and lunch was hours ago. By having something handy to fuel with (I even split the food for some before, and some after the run) I was able to get a run when it was nice and I could serendipitously grab it. Don’t think that I do not have shoes and some shorts in my locker and my car either. Plan ahead and you can get it to fit – I know some folks who run at lunch but do not have a shower on site. They use the baby wipes, some deodorant and a change of clothes to still get the workout done.

Many people say to me that the run consumes the time that they might normally have to cook a decent dinner that they need to eat that evening and so they feel like they are robbing Peter to pay Paul by getting in a run. Many large families and families who are tightening their belts in this economy have taken to a set menu. If you have two weeks of meal ideas (just like your school cafeteria – but tastes better) you can plan and budget for how you will work them into your day. You can also fine tune them to your intake needs for running so that you are not haphazardly fueled. We use Excel at home and generate lists for the grocery, as well as add and subtract favorite meals easily. The other thing this allows us to do is make a Sunday into food prep time where we store away a few good meals in the freezer for the most chaotic nights of the week.

Planning and Tupperware is how the high school principal got his morning power smoothie post run too. I have even used ice cube trays to measure out the frozen portions to thaw or puree at will and this planning will carve out a bit more time in your schedule and not leave you hypoglycemic at the end of a workout. Nobody cares if you eat breakfast in the car on the way to work if you feel good and energized when you get to your destination. Do what it takes and you’ll feel better next New Year’s when this resolution was realized.

I’ll say one more thing about food and don’t think I am on a soapbox here but great Americana style food that I was brought up on (YUM) takes time to prepare. Meat may be the most intensive as well in terms of prep, cleanup etc. and this is where again, planning come in handy. Marc Bittman and other use a lot of grains, precut veggies, and less intensive ingredients as well a bit of pre trimmed meat you froze when you got home from the store to design great meals and it has taken a while for us to find all of our favorites but I have storehouse of them now. I even like Rachel Ray because her books divide dishes but how intensive they are to make – I resort the best of those by nutrient quality and go from there. (There are some good links on the blog site and you no longer need a cookbook to cook at our house if the computer is on…)

Equipment. Some people have bad names for treadmills but the fact is that they are open to run on when the weather is too hot, too cold, and too rainy or you have to make other use of the time that day. I know I told you there is no bad weather and I believe this, but sometime you need to multitask or you are not prepared to go out – and neither is a great excuse to miss what is important. My mom watches her shows during workout time and I listen to lecture when I am safe on the treadmill and can focus. They are great for the quick fix and you should use them as a time management tool. While a good treadmill is not cheap, there are a number of great ones in town that are easy to get to and have long hours. Remember that in March or April – after New Year’s resolution time is long gone and the weather is getting nice again, you might buy some poor guy’s $2,000 treadmill on Craig’s List for half price or better. This investment will last you over two decades with some light maintenance.

Another item equipment discussion includes is anything that you need to safeguard the time that you have so carefully set aside. So you carved out the time but it is snowing or whatever the weather does to keep you away from the run – recall that there is no bad weather, only inadequate clothing choices! I wear a rain hat, or great gloves, or put in my contacts for the pouring rain but I do not let something simple derail the workout. I have a great flashlight and a reflector for night runs and my neighbor use a vest like the road workers wear when he runs at night. Maybe you need a stun gun for that bad neighborhood right out your door - but a gym membership might be cheaper and not get you arrested for assault. I have come to find that there is no weather that I dislike running in and I feel all the more accomplished and infatigable for having made the effort. We even made ice cleats last winter just by putting little sheet metal screws into our old running shoes and I save them for icy days. Yes I feel silly running in them - but I kinda feel like McGyver running in them too (and I still think he was cool). So find out what is holding you back – then work around it because you made the time, and you deserve the run. 

Shuffle the big stones. There is an increase in folks who run to work or run home after work and anyone who has an HR department at their workplace should ask about any incentive that is offered for employee wellness or carbon savings. You are saving on gas or parking fees, gym membership and keeping your workplace insurance bills low, so anything you can gain in reimbursement would be gravy and could be put into a new pair of shorts. If they put in a shower – all the better, but there are ways around that too, have someone drop you at work and run home that evening.

Several folks have gotten a spouse, relative or buddy to run and this replaces their time at the bar or coffee stop with a cheap and healthy habit they do together. Jog strollers are another great investment and Craig’s List often has good ones so Junior can come along for family time. Two of my students got super fast by taking turns pushing their offspring down the bike trails in their jog stroller. I doubt it hurt their marriage either, as they ran along and shared their day. Check carefully, regarding how old your child needs to be before they can ride in one of these strollers.

There are a lot of multi-tasking things that you can get done during a run. Like I said earlier my mom gets her TV time when she runs on the treadmill. I study many days and Audible.com has thousands of unabridged books for download so you could listen to the news, read a bestseller you have been meaning to get to or even call your Ma like you should – because we run slowly enough to talk. Your phone has a voice recorder if you learn to use it and so you could easily complete you grocery list or anything else you wanted to while you’re out there. If you need to multitask then it clears some space to exercise when maybe you do not have time for both activities. If multitasking is more fun, then maybe you are motivated to get out the door more often and you reap the benefits – either way would be good, right? The way the story goes Dean Karnazes actually wrote his first book by dictation into a voice recorder on those long night runs of his and then retyped it later for his publisher. I know personally, that I do get a lot of good thinking done “on the road”. 

Run by time not distance. You want to fit it all in and you need to know how long this will actually take. Run, snack, stretch, shower, all take time and there is pressure to get back to whatever the urgent thing is that is calling you. So make it easy and run by time rather than distance - seeking to keep your run a steady effort throughout and at PE 4. The distance thing is arbitrary if all you are looking for is fitness and wellness, and what is more important is to take some pressure off you. The funny thing is that this may actually improve your performance in the ensuing months.
 

Now any route works, because you just split the time in half and double back on your route. You will know exactly when you’re home that evening and planning may be less complicated. Adding ten minutes a week to your long run is not a difficult computation, requires no new route research and if you are not watching the pace you can relax and just focus on a steady effort. (Recall, in order to learn the most about your “experiment of one” you must be consistent. Consistency also allows you to reap the subtle benefits that come from gradual training load increases. We shoot for 10% increases or less and the 10 minute technique works great and need not go to infinity to work – but one long run weekly makes all of your runs easier – trust me.)

Dr. Philip Maffetone discusses the idea that I posted a while back of being able to run the same distance, over each successive month, at a slightly faster or more efficient pace as your cardiac capacity improves. Even if your speed never significantly increases – your ease in performing this effort will improve and this, as well as how fast you return to your baseline heart rate – are good indicators of adaptation. Running by time is a great way to do this and is very low key. If you still worry about how many miles you run or what to tell someone – just don’t tell them. Keep it a secret and they’ll just think you are training for London in 2012.

How will I find time to race, because I want a few big goals? Folks that have a regular mileage program find that they can sharpen their speed and endurance for a particular race in just 5-8 weeks depending on their physical state. Most runners plan to take a break from running one or two times a year to stay fresh and let the body rest & see no adverse affects from doing so. Build that into your schedule too so you can gear up for the events you’d like to run and can clear that time to maybe add a day to training for the big event.

When you see that race you have always wanted to try – and I want to break my record! I simply work backwards from that race day. So I want to run on April 1^st and I know that I have been really steady on my program this year. So I need 8 weeks where I can run 4 days a week instead of three. Cool, so I’ll count backwards eight weeks from April 1^st to Feb 1^st or so, and then see how can I shuffle my schedule for that one extra day of running and I’ll call Carl for a few new stretches and a route that resembles my race course. All set - and you should do that once in a while to mix it up and because it is fun.

Likewise enjoy a week (or two) of no running. Laying around or not having that extra schedule item is great because it frees you for something else, and you need not feel guilty or despondent because you know when you are coming back. Each time you do this you’ll come back to running renewed and ready to run. I hope that is what happens for any reader is that they build a habit, that they then find enriches them so much that they wish to do it every week, forever. To do that you really have to build it in and use the tricks you have to make that work. I used to work in an ivory tower – a university recreation facility so amazing it was like Las Vegas and it was all free to student use. Yet there were times that we joked that we needed to actually pay the students to exercise and recreate and enjoy themselves physically. Professionally the “tipping point” that we always spoke of was six months. If you can retain a person for six months in some fitness or wellness activity they’ll stick with it. After that amount of personal investment you have them in a habit, they have carved out a space for this in their lives and they are really seeing the benefits that we all know exist. The kicker is that many reading this have just finished a 5 month program that began in May  - so you just have to stick with it a few more weeks and then as the days get darker – you’ll be successfully inoculated for your fitness habit and cookie season will not infect you! Neither will a host of other possible ailments and while we always have dark days sometimes the running will be there for you. It is one of the things that we were designed to do.

If you have not read enough on sacrificing something urgent, in order to dream and aspire to something important, then I have a good interview for you. The female winner of this year’s Western States 100 miler is a full time Mom of four kids and works full time as a teacher at 45 years old and NOT slowing down. I wanted to see if she had any new tricks that I did not mention above and she did mention a few - some extreme – as you might imagine. But she said that she seldom cleans house and her kids have learned to do a lot of their own chores, and yet they still sit down to a family meal every night (runners are all about a square meal, right). Read her story here (http://www.runnersworld.com/article/1,7124,s6-238-511-0-13249-0,00.html) at Runner World.  Then get away from the computer and lace up your shoes…

 “Good habits are worth being fanatical about.” John Irving

pre-race review

Last week when I spoke about race preparation I got a few funny looks when talking about calculating hydration and calorie needs for racing. So I thought I would review a few easy tools to ensure that you have a good race this fall, when weather can be very hot or quite cool.

Performing  a water loss calculation as part of your homework about yourself is easy to do with a bathroom scale. Pre-run, weigh yourself naked. Post-run weigh yourself again and compare the values. Any pound of weight change multiplied by 16oz equals the amount of water lost during your run and you should drink the corresponding amount of water to replace your loss. On future long runs you can seek to drink some of this fluid as you are losing it by sipping every 15minutes. During hot days and heavy sweating most folks need 16-32oz per hour of exercise or 3-6oz every 15-20 minutes. (If you gain weight during your run, you are drinking too much water – this is tough to do and somewhat self-limiting due to sloshing or GI distress, but read the hyponatremia article posted below)

During longer runs you may want to think about eating simple foods to keep calories on board and avoid bonk. Runs over one hour fit into this “long run” category. Runners traveling over an hour need 240Kal/hour to avoid bonk. If you try to eat – use simple, low fiber, no dairy foods and document what agrees with you. The maximum you’ll be able to use is 240-280Kal/hr so you are not replacing everything – just trying to maintain homeostasis. Examples to try include: Energy gels, Bananas, Fruit chews, PBJ sandwich on wheat, Gatorade, Pretzels, Chia seeds etc. and you’ll notice that I use a lot of real foods because of price and nutrient density. See what works for you.  There are 4 Kal/Gram of carbohydrates, so you can work with ingredient panels on your food to estimate what you are getting before you try it.

Here is a simple chart for those of you who do not have a bathroom scale or possibly do not wish to remove those sweaty clothes and get weighed. Read this by body weight and you’ll see an amount of fluid (in ounces) following each temperature range (in degrees Fahrenheit).  So you might estimate this way how much liquid you’ll need per mile. For example I am 155 on race day and if the temperature is 70 degrees, I might need 5.3 ounces/mile of running to stay mostly topped off, without sloshing. How would I know this works? If you said “test it first on a long run” you win the prize. This chart is just an estimating tool and I got it here. http://www.runnersworld.com/article/0,7120,s6-242-302--10084-2-1-2,00.html

Weight 100
Fluid Ounces Per Mile Depending On The Temperature: 50°F: 3.0 60°F: 3.2 70°F: 3.3 80°F: 3.6 90°F: 4.1 100°F: 4.7

Weight 120
Fluid Ounces Per Mile Depending On The Temperature: 50°F: 3.6 60°F: 3.8 70°F: 4.0 80°F: 4.3 90°F: 4.9 100°F: 5.6

Weight 140
Fluid Ounces Per Mile Depending On The Temperature: 50°F: 4.2 60°F: 4.4 70°F: 4.6 80°F: 5.0 90°F: 5.7 100°F: 6.5

Weight 160
Fluid Ounces Per Mile Depending On The Temperature: 50°F: 4.8 60°F: 5.0 70°F: 5.3 80°F: 5.8 90°F: 6.5 100°F: 7.4

Weight 180
Fluid Ounces Per Mile Depending On The Temperature: 50°F: 5.4 60°F: 5.7 70°F: 5.9 80°F: 6.5 90°F: 7.3 100°F: 8.4

Weight 200
Fluid Ounces Per Mile Depending On The Temperature: 50°F: 6.0 60°F: 6.3 70°F: 6.6 80°F: 7.2 90°F: 8.1 100°F: 9.3

Weight 220
Fluid Ounces Per Mile Depending On The Temperature: 50°F: 6.6 60°F: 6.9 70°F: 7.3 80°F: 7.9 90°F: 8.9 100°F: 10.2

Weight 240
Fluid Ounces Per Mile Depending On The Temperature: 50°F: 7.2 60°F: 7.6 70°F: 7.9 80°F: 8.6 90°F: 9.7 100°F: 11.2