Recently in Running Category

In the last few months, I've been really into Total Immersion and their teaching method. Swimming is one of those activities which require mastery of so many little details that trying to learn swimming all at once is very very difficult. So they do a great job of breaking down technique with drills, and enforcing focus on only one thing at a time so that you can master that without getting confused by other things you're trying to learn. Thus, I've spent the last many months, and plan on for the better part of this year, in breaking down exactly what is wrong with my stroke and working on each individual part one at a time.

This has led me to believe that its teaching concepts in the area of form training can be applied to any other physical activity, especially in the case of cycling and running for me. In thinking about this, I thought I could encapsulate it in the 4 S's of form training:

1. SYSTEM: You must have a system for identifying problems, removing bad habits and imprinting new and correct habits. With TI, they've done all that for you. Running has some great methods now (ie. ChiRunning, Pose Method) that strive to break down running so that you can focus on parts of your form. I have not found that to be true yet of cycling and would love to be pointed to some that discuss cycling form.

Without a system, you will inevitably try to do too much at once and see little or no improvement as old habits remain ingrained, and you can't imprint new correct ones. It also means that you are hampering your brain/body's ability to imprint new habits; someone once told me that you have to do something about 45 days or so to imprint a new habit. This means that you have to perform the new habit in the new way that many times exactly!

2. SENSITIVITY: You need to develop and have a sensitivity to what you're doing wrong and also what you're doing right. When habits become ingrained, they become commonplace and we don't even notice when we're doing something. This is both good and bad. Correct habits ingrained means we're unconsciously performing optimally and not exerting excess energy and brain power to maintain activity. But if we've ingrained a bad habit, we may actually not know we're doing something wrong because we've been doing it that way for so long. So we need to develop the body awareness to know how are bodies are moving both when we're moving slow and especially when we're moving fast. Slow is much easier, but when we're cycling our arms and legs fast this may become too much to easily discern how and where are body parts are moving. Once we can know when we're doing something wrong, then we can take steps to fix that.

3. SUSTAINABILITY: Once we ingrain new habits, we must be able to sustain them over the course of training and during the long hours of a race. Thus, we must be constantly wary of falling into old bad habits especially when we get tired and/or we lose our mental focus. Training only good habits and extending them over time will ingrain good form that is sustainable over a long time, ensuring an efficient race (and probably also injury free).

4. SYMMETRY: One thing that gets sometimes overlooked is the importance of symmetry of habits on each side of your body. We humans are built with two halves, both mirror images of each other. But unfortunately, we often perform the same activity differently on each side of our body due to old habits, favoring our strong side, muscle inbalances, etc. So while our form may be great on one side, we may find that the other side is challenged. Therefore, training to make sure that we even out both sides to equal form is important or else bad form on one side can actually affect performance on the other side.

Going back to the first S which is SYSTEM, it may be hard to find a system for your activity. TI does a great job for swimming and there are some running ones, but for cycling it may be hard. But finding a great SYSTEM will enable SUSTAINABILITY and SYMMETRY more, and help you train your brain to be more SENSITIVE.

In recent months, I've come to realize how much I love the tempo trainer for swimming. It also sparked the realization that I have finally found a method for to ensure measurability and repeatability for swimming.

What's so important about measurability and repeatability?

Repeatability is the ability to come back day after day and train with a certain level of effort, intensity, etc. and ensure that you're creating the same conditions as you had the last time you trained. Measurability allows you to measure those conditions to ensure repeatability.

For example, weight training has both easy measurability and repeatability. That 30 lbs. dumbbell is still going to weigh 30 lbs. the next time you pick it up. Thus, you'll know if you are getting stronger or weaker, depending on how many reps you can curl that dumbbell.

The problem with us triathletes is that it's not so easy to have measurability and repeatability with our three sports. Of the three running is probably the most measurable and repeatable. With cycling and swimming it's not so easy.

If you don't have an accurate way to measure effort and the ability to create conditions to ensure repeatability, you won't know for sure if you're improving over time. For example, you may have increasing effort, but you may be actually performing worse if you're overtraining.

So it's important to be able to measure your training conditions and to recreate them so that you know with some level of certainty that you're improving, or how your body is performing so that you know when to back off or increase effort.

I thought I'd list my favorite training tools to maximize measurability and repeatability:

RUNNING:

Treadmill - The treadmill allows you to recreate running conditions with great accuracy, in both speed, duration, and grade. Its relentless nature doesn't allow you to fall behind; if you do, you either fly off the back of the treadmill or have to keep up. Thus, I can generally know if I'm either improving over time or not, or if I'm just a bit tired and can't repeat a workout on a particular day.

Track or measured distance running - Running a measured distance and recording the time allows you to know if you're improving over that distance and path.

CYCLING:

Power meter - Riding outside with my Powertap allows me to see what my instantaneous power is, as well as for the entire ride. I can compare that over a given path, or even just against other rides, and see how my power output compares to previous rides. With power measurement, I don't necessarily need to ride the same path; I can compare power outputs and see if I was able to increase overall power output or not.

Computrainer - The Computrainer is the best way to repeat workout conditions. After the calibration step, it will give you the same workout conditions as you had last time.

SWIMMING:

Tempo Trainer + Counting Strokes - You would think that swimming intervals was good enough for repeatability. However, swimming is a complex activity that is dependent not only on raw endurance and strength, but also on your technique. If your goal is not simply to just work harder (which I would argue it shouldn't be because you can only go so much faster by more effort and you can do much better by refining and reinforcing technique), then you need to not only measure your interval time but also how well you swam the interval. If you think about it, you can go faster by increasing your stroke rate. But if your technique gets messy, you might swim an interval at the same time as if you had swam it before with better technique but lower stroke rate. Thus, the tempo trainer ensures you are not changing your stroke rate, and counting strokes gives you a measure of how good your technique is.

With these training tools and methods, I can ensure measurability and repeatability of training conditions, giving me a nice picture of how I'm improving (or not!).

I'm running my first 5K tomorrow and noticed they were using RFID embedded plastic timing chips! They're pretty cool:

They sealed an RFID chip into this plastic strip, and there is adhesive on one end to attach it to your running shoe:

I wonder if they will start using these for triathlons. They look like they would be waterproof, but the strap would have to be longer and different to go around your ankle. But definitely they should work for run races.

Looks like they're powered by RFID chips from Impinj.

A buddy of mine asked me how I go out there and just run long, day after day, week after week. Here is the email I sent him:

You have hit on a key element in long distance racing, which is the mental aspect.

Some things to try:

1. Get used to the time. If you do this a lot, pretty soon you'll just be used to being out there that long.

2. Grow to just love running. If you love what you do, you can do it longer!

3. Keep mentally occupied, like having a set of intervals to run which require you to look at your watch, compute times and paces, etc. Pretty soon before you know it, you're through the workout and the time goes by pretty quickly.

4. Music helps although I don't train or race with music generally, since it's not allowed at triathlons. I never run with music, although I do like music while on the bike trainer, but not while I'm out riding as it's dangerous and I can't hear cars coming.

5. Don't focus on pain. This never works for me. I just want to quit! If anything, I try to focus on perfect form, which tends to lessen or remove pain. I never try to get out of perfect form to lessen my pain, which could cause me to hurt somewhere else!

6. Focus on repetition and perfect form for every step. I try to keep aware of each step and try to make each step my perfect step. Get used to repeating for long periods of time.

7. Focus on distance goals, like running out to a point and then back, or saying I'm going to finish this loop. Then mentally you're committed and you will yourself not to quit and turnaround because you said you're going to run somewhere and then back.

8. Interesting terrain helps.

It's one of those things where you need to train this as much as the physical aspects. Most people can get physically capable of finishing a race of any distance; you just need to swim/bike/run the distances and you're pretty much physically there. But many people don't have the mental stamina to finish. This is the will that drives you to the finish line even if your body is screaming for you to quit.

Given all this, there are still some days when you just don't have it mentally. At this point, you should just go home because on some days you'll find you just won't be able to do the workout. But make sure you're quitting for the right reason and not just slacking because you're lazy.

If you're really into some of this stuff, I often use Biorhythms (http://bit.ly/6LV2P) to help give me some forewarning on days when I may not have the right physical or mental attitude for a hard workout. I will post more about this later, but it's an interesting way of looking at your body's energy and how to apply it to training.

I often get asked how I can race year after year and stay relatively injury free. They remark that I am 40+ years old and wonder how I can just keep doing this and get faster each time.

It took me 7 years of tinkering with my own body, trying a multitude of advice and training, even trying a bunch of technology from shoes to straps, before I figured out how to keep my body injury free.

Recently, someone tweeted about an article, The painful truth about trainers: Are running shoes a waste of money? from DailyMail, which really disappointed me. It disappointed me in the fact that we often try to simplify things and try to solve our problems with one thing. But it's not just about one thing, like running shoes as the article suggests, or even the lack of shoes which the article also suggests. Running involves a whole system of muscles, joints, bones, and coordination and how it works during running and over time. You need to address the whole system and not just one thing.

In answering the question of how I stay relatively injury free and race year after year at these long distance events, getting faster every time, I wanted to start with talking about what I have learned in what causes injury. In my next post, I will talk about what I did to address these causes of injury.

Now I will do something that I hate doing, which is to simplify (haha!). I will list a few basic things which I have found cause injury in runners:

Pounding

People talk about how the ground pounds the feet, legs, and body while running. Unfortunately, it's true. Every step you take puts shock back up into your body, and you have to absorb it somehow through your shoes, feet, legs, muscles, bones - whatever. Over time, exceeding the shock absorption qualities of your body relative to your running style will injure you. The object, then, is to reduce and minimize the shock that your body experiences. A combination of reducing the shock experienced AND increasing your body's ability to absorb shock will reduce the possibility of injury.

The Build Up of Tightness and Restrictions in Muscles

Muscles get tired and tight after training. It's natural. Restrictions and adhesions form because the muscle fibers tear during training and they get stronger through this process. Lactate by-products also cause tightness in the muscles and need to get flushed out - the faster they get flushed out, the faster your muscles will recover. Depending on your age and your fitness level, your muscles can loosen up in a few hours, or require days. The intensity of the effort will also affect the amount of tightness experienced and thus also the amount of time to recover.

I have also found that muscles tend to develop a tendency to form certain adhesions or tightness in the same spots until my body adapts to a new training stress. This has happened repeatedly over the course of an entire season; very annoying!

The problem with the buildup of tightness and restrictions is that if they are not removed, they can keep building and building, causing restricted motion and potential strain of the muscles. But there is a more dangerous effect: the tightness in your muscles can seriously reduce their ability to absorb shock, thereby transferring the shock from your muscles to the tendons and ligaments, or ultimately to cartilage and bone, which causes really bad things like fractures.

Cumulative Build-Up of Injury

Related to the previous is actual injury to your body and not letting it heal. You gut your way through pain thinking that is what will build you up, but in actuality you're just causing more and more injury. Finally, something really bad happens, like a tendon gives way, or a real muscle tear happens, or even a fracture.

Not Enough Recovery Time

A lot of people get really gung-ho about training. They raise the amount they do in trying to attain their goal, whether it's to lose a certain amount of weight, prepare for a race, or just get to a fitness level that is consistent with their training friends. They may have gotten a coach, who just delivers a plan that is more valid for young athletes or those that are experienced, but unfortunately may not be appropriate for them. The end result is that in the midst of training, athletes' bodies attempt to keep up but due to some factor(s), they are unable to recover fast enough given their training schedules. The result is a build up of injury and tired muscles which leads to injury.

Many training plans, or following the training plans of others, don't account for individual needs. Everybody has their own recovery time given certain factors and the best training plans account for this.

Failure to recognize one's own recovery needs is a common problem. It's often not clear exactly how much one's body needs, and sometimes not until you get injured. Factors that influence recovery time are:

1. Length and intensity of workouts
2. Age
3. Sleep, ie. did you get enough sleep?
4. Active recovery sessions and techniques
5. Fitness level, both past and present, ie. did you run track in high school or college, or were you sedentary all the way up to the point at which you started now?

Weak Supporting Muscles, Unbalanced Muscles

I never realized how many small muscles are used in supporting running until these muscles got sore during my training. In the past, I weight trained but the result focused on the big muscle groups and didn't really build up smaller supporting muscles. Also, being right handed, my right side was used more resulting in an even bigger imbalance between my two sides.

These small muscles are the ones that maintain your form perfectly stride over stride. If these muscles are weak, then over time they will tire and then your form will get sloppy. You subtly adjust your stride to compensate and then problems can occur when your big muscles are taking on the load of moving your body and balancing, not to mention overstraining those supporting muscles in the first place.

The way I discovered my inbalance was twofold. The first was on the Computrainer on the SpinScan where I could see as I pedaled, a graph of my power output. I was clearly dominating the power from my right side! The second way was through racing. Pushing hard through Vineman, my right hip and leg got really sore, tired, and started cramping while my left leg was tired, but relatively cramp free. It became obvious to me that I was just using my right leg more.

Using my right leg more also resulted in more problems for my left leg, showing strain in my calf and IT band, and quads, while my right leg exhibited less issues. It was an issue that has taken a long time to address, and it's still not fully solved.

Inconsistency in Training

In observing friends who train, I find there is a huge inconsistency in their training. They all say they go out and run, but when you ask them daily if they ran, you start to realize that they train only intermittently. Some weeks they'll run 3 times. The next week they run once. Then the week after they don't run at all. The week after that they'll run 2 times. And then it's two weeks of no running. And so on.

Consistency is key in training. Your body does not adapt to something by doing it occasionally. You need to do it regularly such that the body will recognize it needs to adapt to a new level of activity and stress and will do so accordingly.

If you are inconsistent, then you'll inevitably set yourself up for pain and injury as you'll constantly think that you can do more, but in actuality your body hasn't even adapted to what your mind thinks your body can do.

Bad Running Form

I watched my kid run and she has perfect running form. Great body lean forward, arms pumping, barely a thump on the ground for every step, floating on the balls of their feet.

Then we get older and something changes. We get heavier so it takes more effort to run. We don't run constantly enough any more and enjoy sitting in front of the TV or computer screen more than going out and running. We drive cars and take elevators. Our bodies forget how to run efficiently and either we go out for track and train during high school, or we spend those years in high school letting our bodies forget how to run well.

Go out and watch other people run. You'll see people leaning or hunched over. They swing their arms back and forth across their bodies. They pound down the pavement and you wince with every thump on the ground as you imagine the stress their bodies are absorbing. Some lean back while they run, resisting the pull of gravity backward as they try to move forward!

Bad form means body parts don't align when you run. You're putting stress not along the strongest muscles, but against the weaker muscles of the sides of your legs. If you're heel striking, you send the maximal shock up into your leg bones. If you wave your arms across your body, you're not taking advantage of the balancing movement that swinging arms forward and back brings. If you're hunched over, then you're adding stress to your shoulders and back and you can't move efficiently if you're all stiffened up!

All this leads to wasted effort and energy, and can lead to pulled/strained muscles because you're not relaxed and not running efficiently.

Doing Too Much Too Soon

Enthusiasm in runners is great. But many don't listen to their bodies and just do too much too soon. It is often hard to know exactly what our bodies can take before we try. But sometimes, we just exceed what our bodies can do or recover from and that's where injury occurs. We go for a marathon when we should have trained for a 10K and a half marathon first, and over a period of years.

Or, in our competitive zeal, we go out and try to become the fastest humans we can first time out and we get hurt because we didn't get our bodies up to adapting to the stresses yet.

Or we have someone driving us too hard, like an army sargeant coach, or friends who are more faster and experienced who egg you onwards when you go out and run with them. These are people who make you feel bad for going too slow, and you try to rise up to their challenge. Don't get me wrong; some people need this kind of motivation. But it's bad when you try and you don't listen to or know your body and you hurt yourself simply to save face.

Doing Something New

Related to doing too much too soon, doing something new that your body is not adapted to can also lead to injury. Suppose you've never run before. Then your friends tell you it's great and they run, and they want you to go out and run with them. So you do it. Then after a few times, your legs are aching. Now why is that?

Probably because in your desire to keep up with your friends, you go out and try to keep up with people who are used to running more than you. Then your body protests because you're trying to do something that your body is not used to. If you continue to gut your way through it, you might make it to adapting, or you might go downward into injury.

My Painful Path to Ironman

On my path to Ironman, I chose to start with an Olympic triathlon first, working with Team in Training. Then I raced a half ironman, swam the Waikiki Rough Water Swim (2.5 miles), and also ran the NYC Marathon. I did each stage of the full ironman before I did the full thing. But still, it was too much too soon.

Before my first Olympic tri, I had not done any running at all. I cycled intermittently and didn't really know how to swim. My body was not damaged from a previous injury thankfully, but my lack of a history of athletic pursuits, and adding in my age of 37, and the fact that my body adapts to physical stress at a certain rate, all meant that as I built up towards my first triathlon, my body was just not able to keep up.

I was constantly getting too tight and stretching could not alleviate the tightness. I tried to keep up with my Team in Training buddies on the training schedule but that was even too much for me. I kept getting sore legs and my IT bands were really sore. My knees were also getting sore from all the tightness in the surrounding muscles and the shock of my poor heel striking running form. I just thought that I would follow the plan and everything would be all right. It was definitely not, but I did make it through my first triathlon although I thought it really sucked.

After this episode, I resolved to figure this whole thing out. I tried everything and read up on everything I could get my hands on. I found out that most doctors don't know anything about running. I found out that a lot of research has been done, but a lot of it has turned out to be false. I tried technology and that worked sometimes but not all the time. I went for another 2 years of training, gutting through my first half ironman and other Olympic triathlons until 2004 when I left my company and could spend a lot more time trying to figure this out and how to remove all these nagging aches and pains that I experienced.

The journey I went on to solve all this is my next blog post - stay tuned!

A buddy of mine was trying Pose Method running for the first time, and was having problems with calf and shin pain. I sent him these tips on starting out with Pose Method, which is changing to a forefoot runner and improving on form, strength and balance and thought that these tips might be worthy of posting to my blog as well:

1. After watching the Pose video (my buddy also bought and watched the video), I tried some of his drills. Personally I felt that I could get there without many of the drills. The essential take-away from Pose Method is to run more forefoot and to stop heel striking.

2. The static drills I found most useful are those that involve balance and core. These involve standing on one leg for a period of time, standing on one leg and moving the free leg through a running motion, etc. They improve your balance and stability and build up both the large muscles (ie. quads and calves, etc) and the tiny muscles that you never hear about. Often its the tiny muscles that are involved in efficient balance and you want them to be stronger. But if they are not, then they tire out and transfer the stress to the big muscles and once they tire out, your form goes to hell and you eventually can get injured or strained.

3. Form is key. You need to now change the way you're running to a more forward stance. So Pose's leaning concepts and the way they say you should move your legs under you work well. You have to burn this into your brain and body until it's natural. This is what takes time and practice.

4. This unfortunately means some possibly very sore calves, and it sounds like shins, in your case. Pose says this should last about a month. For constant runners and young people, I think this may be true.

But I will tell you that I am an edge case because in the first year it took months for me to adapt, plus weekly physical therapy to work out tightness in my calves. Then each year, after my off season, my calves would become sore again for some months before adapting, with PT working out the tightness. I think after my 3rd year into my 4th my calves FINALLY stopped protesting, although this year I have tightness with my flexor hallicus which is one of those small muscles that runs along the achilles tendon and under the bottom of the big soleus calf muscle. The unfortunate thing is that I can only manage it with PT and never give it time to fully heal; I am training every week and hope it doesn't get worse, which as long as I go to PT it does not.

Non-tight calves and shins are essential for shock absorbtion and the return of spring energy back into the stride so that you are light on your feet and you are running fast. Otherwise, it will feel like your stomping around in army boots, which basically means you're not lightly and efficiently running but transferring a lot of force into the ground, which returns that force back up into your legs, knees, hips and body as pounding stress which will lead to injury.

Other form tips:

Run with a head that is always level and not bouncing up and down.

Move your legs under you as if they are just brushing off the ground and you're not stomping into it. Your stride should feel light and fast. Leg turnover is the name of the game, not lengthening your stride to compensate. Thus your heart rate will rise as more leg turnover raises your heart rate but you will get used to it.

You also want a slight body lean forward to enable gravity to help you in the run, not lean back so that gravity pulls you backward as you're trying to go forward.

Your arms should be held loosely by your side, swinging only forward and back, not side to side across your body like you're trying to do the watoosi (sp?). The arms help you maintain your balance as your legs are moving under the body. Don't hold them stiffly down by your side or tense them.

Your body should be upright with your chest presented proudly, but not overly forward. This helps in the forward lean and also keeps your head up and not hunched over. You should have a slight tension between your shoulder blades to pull your shoulders back slightly; not too tensed but just a little. This also helps in opening up your chest for better breathing and maintaining posture.

5. If you can find an ART practictioner in your area, I would go weekly to work through your calves and shins if you can afford the time and money, until they adapt. Once they adapt you can back off to once every two weeks or once a month plus on demand if things pop up.

6. If regular PT is not for you, then I would get a foam roller (you find one at amazon) or better, the TP Massage Roller. I would get the longer one which is more versatile and gives you more room to roll different parts of your leg. You can then roll your calves and your shins (the meaty muscle part, which are the peroneals and anterior tibalis, not the shin bone). The rolling will help take out the tightness in a big way, and it's also a great way to warm up which is to roll before you stretch and go out and run.

7. Stretching is always good, but often you'll find that you can't stretch out some of the tightness. But keep stretching nevertheless as it's good for you, even if the protesting muscles won't stretch out.

8. I would also start out more moderately. For example, in the balance exercises, he says to balance on the ball of the foot immediately. I think this may be too much for beginners. You can start by just standing there with your foot flat on the ground first. When you get used to balancing, then you can lift the heel up. Also, I would start being more conservative on the time you balance, maybe so short that it feels dumb, like 10 seconds. Your body may need more time building up the strength in a way that doesn't leave you with sore calves and shins. So you can start with 10 seconds for 3X a week for maybe 1-2 weeks and then add 10 seconds to that for another 3X week for 1-2 weeks and so on. Jumping to 30 seconds may be too much.

9. This also goes for running, especially if you're not used to running. You can go to a flat surface like a track and then practice keeping your Pose method form. Run and walk so that you give your calves a break from holding your body up, like run for 20-30 seconds and then walk for a minute. Later you start adding to your run time and reduce your walk time as your strength and fitness builds.

Also you can start out very low in time, like 10 minutes total for running (or run/walk) straight through not counting some drills time. Then keep the 10 minutes for a 1-2 weeks, and then add 5-10 minutes every 2 weeks. I know it sounds so short, but I found during my early days that my body would just keep getting tighter and tighter until something really got sore if I ran normal workouts so early in my training. You really have to listen to your body and do what it needs, and we also have to remember we're older now and recover slower, and build up muscle slower too.

10. Doing core exercises are really good also. I am trying to find a good book which shows a lot of good exercises but don't know of any that are really great. You can try Idiot's Guide to Core Conditioning which is pretty good. I would stick to bridges and planks and avoid the twisting exercises which can stress the discs in your back. I would also go to the section with the medicine ball which has some really great exercises to build up both your stomach and back muscles. Having strong core muscles allows you to hold your body upright and not slouch during running, which ruins your form.

Or you can find a personal trainer as most of them train core these days, if you watch them work with others in a gym.

11. Don't forget to take a day off in between working on this stuff to rest. If your calves are overly sore now, then you might want to take enough days off to make sure they are finally not sore, and then start again. Hopefully this will be in 2-3 days of not running. If you find that after a week they are still sore, you might want to find a PT person to help you out.

Hope these tips help all you beginning runners too!

I've been doing this workout for a long time now. I do it through my offseason to keep my legs moving fast, and I also do it as a recovery workout since it's of such short duration. It incorporates running drills on the treadmill, and then uses the treadmill relentless speed to get your legs moving and get you used to moving them fast with less effort:

This is a great workout to stimulate your neuromuscular system in your legs and get them used to moving at faster speeds. You also practice relaxing so that you move your legs fast but don't burn out your aerobic or your anaerobic capacity.

When you first start out, do Option 1. You'll find that maintaining high speeds is really tough and that your heart rate is leaping to your lactate threshold fast. This is OK and natural. You may find that you have set it too fast to get to 20:00. Keep dialing the max speed until you find that you are able to do repeats out until 20:00. Once you have done this workout at these speeds a few times, then try increasing the max speed.

I found that it has taken me 2-3 years to get to a point where I have maxed out the treadmill. The first time through I could only get to 11-12 MPH by having a 1:00 rest interval. But another year passed and now I could get to 11-12 MPH with only :30 rest interval.

Other details:

1. You may find that your legs feel restricted and that you're having problems moving them fast. If it's a physical problem, you may need extra rest before doing this workout, or it could be a more systemic problem where you have restrictions in your muscles. This was my issue, and I solved it by having a competent ART specialist work my psoas, hip, and glutes to remove the restrictions that have been there for decades and my speed naturally increased once the restriction was gone.

2. In order to gain high speeds, you may find that you want to start doing :15 or :20 intervals at super high speeds - speeds that you can't maintain a :30 interval with. So perhaps an Option 3 would look like:

:30 high speed, :30 RI, keeping increasing the speed until you reach a speed where you can't do the speed for :30 but you can only do :15-:20 with a :45-1:00 RI.

Alternate this workout with workouts that maintain a max speed for :30 only for the entire workout.

Remember: you can't run fast without actually running that fast (if that makes sense).

Once you get into the groove of doing this workout regularly, I guarantee you will find that your normal running times will increase dramatically as your legs and your aerobic system get used to moving your legs fast with minimal effort.

A lot of focus on hill climbing in either running or cycling is on building leg strength, and aerobic capacity to support a strong push up the hill. Hill climbing for me has been a real challenge; I have been training constantly to increase my leg strength. However, I did discover another piece of training that is also important to hill climbing on both running and cycling. This is neuromuscular training.

Ever go sprinting up a hill and you're going anaerobic? Your breath is heaving and your legs are burning. You're using up all that strength and energy to accelerate up that hill and once you get over it, your legs collapse in energy output, just happy to not be exerting any more. You find that as you crest the hill, you have no more left and you just let the back side of the hill accelerate as you coast down the hill. Or worse for running, you find that you can't even move your legs because you wasted them and your aerobic capacity going up the hill and now you can't take advantage of the down hill to speed up because your legs are wiped out.

In the last few months as my leg strength has increased, I have found that neuromuscular training has played a nice role in maintaining and increasing speed as I blast up the hill and crest it. How is this so? It mainly comes from training the legs to continue their movement even while you have used up some anaerobic/aerobic capacity going up the hill. Most of the time, after we crest the hill and after a hard effort, our legs are so wasted that they can't even move any more. But this is bad. They need to keep moving so that we don't lose speed and we can accelerate on the downhill.

Neuromuscular speed training helps us to relax and become accustomed to mvoing our legs very quickly. It becomes second nature to move our legs very fast and we learn how to do it with minimal energy expenditure.

Thus, as we crest the hill, I have found that I can relax the legs to rest after the hard effort up the hill, but keep my neurons firing to cycle the legs and either keep revolutions going on the bike, or keep my legs moving and running downhill. When I relax my legs, they recover from the hard effort and it also lets my aerobic system recover as well. I don't slow down, which is the key thing. I can maintain speed or accelerate but also recover.

It has reinforced the need for neuromuscular training for both the bike and running. Fast one legged sets at 100+ RPM, and super fast short running sets on the treadmill - both of these really brought me some unseen benefits in hill climbing.

In my interactions with my coach M2, I have learned that there are 6 types of training. These are:

1. Neuro-muscular - training of the nervous system to do something either differently, better, or to some form which maximizes efficiency and minimizes effort. Example: super short high speed treadmill intervals for 15-30 seconds per interval, form focus workouts for swimming.

2. Speed - training that results in being faster. Examples: swimming speed sets, sprinting track workouts for running.

3. Strength - training that results in you being stronger, and to put out more energy at the same effort. Examples: hill climbing in running, hill climbing or more watts on the computrainer in cycling.

4. Endurance - training for the ability to race or produce energy output for some length of time. Example: gradually lengthening the duration of a long run over a period of weeks.

4b. Stamina - I make this a sub-section to endurance, which is the ability to maintain a level of speed/strength for a long period of time. Example: gradually increasing the time of your intervals and reducing your rest periods while maintaining the same wattages during Computrainer bike interval workouts.

5. Recovery - stimulation of blood flow by raising heart rate and circulation but not raising effort to flush the body of exercise by-products and promote healing. Example: cycling on a computrainer at negligible watts, but high RPMs for about 20-30min.

It is somewhat obvious that whenever you go out to train, you're most likely training more than one of these areas simultaneously. However, I wanted to point out:

1. You can train to focus on only one of these areas.

2. It's good to have a mix of all 6 areas as you're building for a race. The mix depends on where you are in your training schedule.

3. You have to be aware that potentially you could be detracting other areas if you're not focusing on these areas.

Let's talk about the first point.

Focusing on one thing is possible and many times desirable. Of the 6 training types, I've focused on mostly neuro-muscular, strength, and recovery. It's all based on what you individually need.

For example, over the winter, I did a lot of treadmill training where I'd warmup with track drills, ie. kick backs, skipping, and then started doing 30 min intervals at super high speed, building from 6 MPH to as much as 11 MPH (where the interval drops to 15-20 seconds due to the fact that the treadmill takes too long to accelerate to that speed). By the way, I have not found a gym treadmill that goes faster than 11 MPH, although I have heard that you can actually get treadmills that go that fast. What this achieved for me, is not necessarily the ability to maintain an 11 MPH/5:27 min/mile pace over a race. It does help train my neuromuscular system to fire my muscles quicker so that I get used to running at a higher turnover rate, at paces I can maintain. This results in me being faster simply because my body is accustomed to moving my legs faster.

For strength training, over the last 2 years I started climbing and doing laps on Old La Honda and Kings Mountain. These laps have built up my leg strength considerably and increased their resilience on hill climbs, where I was defeated utterly at Ironman Austria a few years back.

I am also a big user of recovery workouts. I figure out if, for a given workout, I need to back off. If I do need to back off severely, often I'll do a recovery workout. An example of this is a pedaling efficiency workout involving a lot of high RPM one-legged pedaling drills at minimal wattage. It doesn't stress my muscles from a power standpoint, but it raises my heart rate and circulation so that blood is flowing through my muscles and the flushing effect helps my recovery so that the next day I'll be able to perform a normal workout.

Second point: The mix.

Training all in one type means that you're not gaining the full benefits or reaching your potential for a race. If all you're doing is sprinting workouts on the bike, you may not be able to last an entire century. If all you're doing is running at endurance pace every workout, you may find that you aren't increasing your speed, or you don't have enough strength to pass someone when you want to.

You need to mix it up and include all types and improve on them all. You can figure out, as I have, where my deficiencies are, and do some focus on improving some areas. But overall, you need to train all 6 types as you build through your season to the big race.

I tend to focus on neuromuscular workouts during the offseason, as they don't stress my aerobic system and are great for recovery workouts. Then I move from neuromuscular focus as my training season starts to building speed and strength with a lesser endurance emphasis. This is because endurance is easiest to build, but speed and strength take lot more time. As I hit mid-season, I am adding more endurance and stamina into the mix as I try to extend the speed and strength I've built up to longer times.

Third point, watch out for what you're not focusing on and don't let it slide.

As you're focusing on certain aspects of training, you have to watch out that you don't reduce other aspects. An easy example is that as you build endurance, you may find that your form (neuromuscular aspect) gets really messy as you get tired. This is very bad! The trick is to maintain form even when you're butt tired, and as you focus on building endurance. Otherwise, you could injure yourself through poor form, as your muscles are tiring and you engage other weaker muscles to compensate.

Another example is when you're supposed to be doing a recovery workout, but yet you feel energized and so you try to push harder and do something with more energy. But then all of a sudden, half way through the workout, you find that you burn through that initial burst of energy which fails you later because you weren't fully recovered and you don't have enough stamina to continue. Recovery when you have to and don't force yourself to do something your body just isn't OK for.

Yet another example is not gradually increasing your workout intervals to improve stamina. You mentally don't feel like doing fast intervals beyond a certain point, and thus your stamina never improves. You hit race day and you find that as you try to maintain speed, you can't and you're slowing down as you move through the miles.

While training typically involves the simultaneous training of all 6 types of training, I think that there is a lot of benefit to identifying where your personal needs are, and coupled with where you are in your training season, you can focus on specific areas which need improvement and advance them greatly. Categorizing the different types of training really helps in thinking about training and how to race faster.

Since I began this heat acclimatization training back in June, I've finally begun to see some nice results. The Bay area has experienced some truly unbelievably hot weather this summer. I've never seen it reach 90+ or even 100 degrees in Palo Alto until this year. However, it's perfect for preparing my body for hard efforts during Ironman.

Every Friday, I've chosen to run mid-afternoon at my favorite park. It's immensely hot, and sometimes I feel foolhardy for training in such hot weather. I prepare my drinks and put extra electrolytes in them. I also back off considerably on pace or else I know I won't make it. Hydration is extremely important and I begin hydrating before I feel thirsty. This has worked well to keep me going. Thankfully, I have also not felt dizzy or nauseaous during running, so a combination of hydration, electrolytes, and heat adaption is definitely working.

This last Friday was a big moment for me. I went out in 95+ degree heat and ran 2:28, finishing 5 loops of my favorite hill loop. I am finding that my mental endurance for the heat has grown a lot, and I don't feel like quitting so much any more due to the oppressiveness of the high temps.

On loop 3, I did begin to worry. One of my discoveries during training in heat was that my legs tend to stiffen up. I think my fascia is protesting the heat and the extra stress it's putting on my body and it starts to lock up and make bending my legs during running a sore affair. I try to loosen up always with some kickbacks during my running and that seems to help. So on loop 3, my legs begin to lock up and I'm worried because I've got 2 more loops to do and I'm wondering whether or not I'm gonna make it.

Miraculously on loop 4, my legs loosen up completely. No more tight fascia at all. Weird. In fact they loosen up so much that I'm able to increase pace for both loops 4 and 5 and am able to complete a nice negative split workout.

All this in 95+ degree weather. Very happy!

I'm not sure that Ironman Florida will be a hot affair. In past years, I've been really lucky at Ironmans that the days have been relatively mild, with the exception of Ironman Austria where the temps were in the mid 80s. But surely I am prepared for a hot race day, as I usually hit the run around 2pm where the day is the hottest.

High temps have been the bane of my racing career and for the first time I think I'm relatively prepared for a hot race day. And if not a hot day, then I'll enjoy running faster in cooler temps.

I hate wild animals.

Ever since I got molested by a monk seal off the Big Island of Hawaii, I just hate wild animals. Can't stand encountering them in the wild. Don't want them near me.

This last Friday, I was running in Rancho San Antonio. I was about 1:30 down in my 2:30 run and I was in my second half of my negative split. I proceeded to enter into my favorite hill loop on Coyote Trail. I feel pretty good and am maintaining a good clip up to the top and right before the top, half in the trail lays about a third of a big ass rattlesnake!

I screeeeeech to a halt.

I see the rattle itself; it's almost 3 inches long and the tail it's attached to is about 2 inches thick. Crap I thought, I don't want to get bit! I look at it. It's just laying there. No movement at all. Is it dead? Or just laying there in the sun. But rattlesnakes are pretty sensitive; it should have picked up my stomping up to it well before I saw it. Still, it's just laying there. Taunting me? About to spring a trap on me? Should I move closer? Check it out? Maybe it's dead. The rattle isn't rattling. Don't rattlesnakes do that to warn off predators and stupid humans like me? Should I try to run past it and maybe it's not fast enough to strike me if I'm sprinting past?

This all goes through my head in about 5 seconds.

I say no way. I do a 180 and hightail it out of there back the way I came. No way am I going to risk getting bit by a poisonous 4 foot rattlesnake!

I hate wild animals.

Last year in the fall, I was running in Rancho San Antonio again. I'm on the trail from the parking lot to the farm and I'm behind this other woman. We're running along and all of a sudden, I hear this clopping of steps from ahead of us. It gets louder and louder and I realize it's a doe, running at full tilt. About a length behind her is this buck, with about 7-8 points on its antlers. I see the woman ahead of me duck to the side and let them pass.

But then, the doe flashes past me and the next thing I see is...antlers! Crud! I leap aside and the buck just races past and my heart rate leaps as I realize that a full speed running buck, probably weighing a few hundred pounds, driving it's antlers ahead of it would have probably put some big holes in my torso and tossed me 15-20 feet behind me. Ack!

I hate wild animals.

You know - you see them in zoos and in the movies. They look so tame and cute. They're always doing good things.

But then reality hits. You see them in the wild and you realize they are really dangerous animals. All of them. Even the plant eaters. They are all schooled in kill or be killed. Us humans, we're stupid. Spoiled. Can't even put up a decent fight against a charging buck or a rattlesnake. Worthless.

I hate wild animals. I run as fast as I can the other way when I see 'em.

If there is one training principle I have come to both love and hate, it's the negative split. It's also one of the most important.

In short, it means that you increase effort and, thus (hopefully) speed, on the second half of your workout or race. Workouts can also be gradual in increasing effort, resulting in descending time so it is some times called descending workouts or intervals (ie. in swimming, you can do a set at descend 1-2-3, which means you descend time over the next three intervals). No matter what you start at one pace, but you end up at increased pace/effort.

Our bodies race like we train. When we go all out during a race, we often put out the most effort and have the highest speed during the first part of the race, when we're fresh. Then when the second half of the race comes, we find ourselves getting more and more tired and often slow down as we hit the finish line.

This is bad! Slowing down as you approach the finish line, often starting from miles out, means:

1. You're getting tired and depleted. Maintaining speed becomes a grinding experience or impossible. Your heart rate starts leaping higher and higher and you have no choice but to slow down or else you'll flame out...or pass out.

2. Your better trained opponents are now passing you. That sucks right? You try to pick it up and you can't!

3. As you get depleted, your muscles get stiffer and stiffer as lactic acid builds up. It just becomes a painful experience as you force your muscles to keep going, and you may be reduced to walking, or weak spinning for cycling, or for swimming your stroke rate just keeps dropping as your arms feel like lead.

4. Mentally, it just makes the race feel like the worst experience ever. You're glad to hit the finish line and you wonder why in the world did you ever subject your body to that kind of torture.

However, training via negative splits or descending intervals means you condition your body to be able to perform while tired and give more energy during the latter half of the race. You learn to pace yourself and not go all out in the beginning, and your body learns to give that extra kick in second half while your energy levels begin to wane.

In every workout I do, I try to always finish with more effort than I begin. I slowly ramp effort and speed throughout a workout and then by the end of the workout, I am sprinting towards the parking lot where my car is. Or I'm on the way home on my bike and after doing laps on Kings Mountain, I'll raise my energy level pedaling and get close to sprinting home on the bike.

It's a tough workout, but over time your body gets used to it. Come race day, you'll be thankful for training this way. During races you're always putting out 100%+ effort and you need to be conditioned to give extra effort even while your energy level is dropping.

What a rush to be accelerating and passing other competitors and feel like a million bucks as you accelerate towards the finish line!

One thing that has always confounded me is percent grade.

When I'm on the treadmill, I always run at 1% grade which supposedly simulates a flat surface due to the fact that the treadmill's moving surface changes the dynamics of running slightly (versus you moving across the ground). When I train hills, I hit the up button on the grade and increase the % percent grade. Seems simple, but when I go outside to run and try to equate a treadmill grade to whatever hill I'm running on, I get confused.

It's the same when I bike. For instance, on the Tour De France, they talk about Category 1 through 4 climbs:

In general terms, Category 4 climbs are short and easy. Category 3 climbs last approximately 5 kilometers (3.1 miles), have an average grade of 5 percent, and ascend 150 meters (500 feet). Category 2 climbs are the same length or longer at an 8 percent grade and ascend 500 meters (1,600 feet). Category 1 climbs last 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) with an average 6 percent grade and ascend 1,500 meters. Beyond category climbs include an altitude difference of at least 1,000 meters (3,280 feet) from start to finish and have an average grade of at least 7 percent.

Since I'm nowhere near a Tour De France class rider, I'm assuming that these climbs are pretty brutal, especially the Category 2 and 1 climbs. I might be able to get up them, but I certainly wouldn't be winning any races anytime soon.

But what do these percentage grades actually feel like? Last year, I did laps on Old La Honda and it's about 3.35 miles long and climbs 1280 ft. According to Stanford Cycling, it averages 7.3% grade.

OK. Old La Honda is tough for me and now I sort of know what 7% grade feels like. Still there are portions which feel even steeper than that.

Now onwards to the computation. I finally figured out that grade is rise in height over a given distance, and then you multiply by 100 to get percent.

So 7% grade is a rise of 7 ft. for every 100 ft. travelled. Hmmm still tough to visualize. Let's convert that to an angle from the horizontal. So taking the arctan of the triangle formed by 7 ft. high over 100 ft of distance, that's an arctan of 7/100, that's about a 4 degree slope from the horizontal. Doesn't seem like much but definitely hell to pedal!

About 3 weeks ago I had a small epiphany. I thought about neuromuscular training for the bike and the workouts I do to make my cycling better. I thought to myself, "isn't there neuromuscular run training?"

I suppose there are things we have done on the track, like strides, skipping, high knee running and the such. But one thing I really wanted to work on was speed this year and felt that there was one area which I hadn't done much of, which was leg turnover and getting used to running fast.

So I hopped on the treadmill and did a warmup, and then proceeded to do 30 seconds run/30 seconds rest while increasing the MPH to 12 MPH. Man that was hard! The first time I reached 12 MPH (the max of my treadmill) I could only keep that up for about 15 seconds! The second time I tried this, I managed two intervals of about 20 seconds (takes 10 seconds for the treadmill to reach 12 MPH) and each time I reached and blew through my LT in that short amount of time.

I realized that this was good. I was training my body to relax and move at that speed. My body and leg turnover were being stressed and forced to maintain that rate by the relentless nature of the treadmill. There is no way to not keep it up; otherwise you'll fly off the back of the treadmill! This can't be repeated effectively outside because you'll always naturally slow down when you get tired.

I told my PT person about this and he related to me that at San Jose State, they do this kind of training all the time. They actually use a cord around the waist to tie someone to the front bar of the treadmill so that it helps keep them on the treadmill and forces you to move your feet under you. It still doesn't prevent you from falling flat on your face, so you gotta move your legs!

I am going to try more of this in my off season before I hit the track for real workouts. I am curious to see if this will have an effect on my run speed, which I really want to work on in the first half of this year. My next goal is to increase the amount of intervals I can achieve at 12 MPH and get my body used to leg turnover, body positioning, and form required to maintain these speeds.

Running for the first time on Thursday morning, I decided to see how fast I would have to move my legs in order to achieve a certain pace. Given this was my first time running after Ironman Brazil, I was going to run a form run but at the end I usually do some fast running for 30 seconds with 30 seconds break.

After 10 minutes of drills, I made it to the second half of my 20 minute run at which time I began my fast short runs. I compacted my stride and proceeded to speed up, rest, speed up, rest. I made it all the way up to 9 MPH which is about a 6:20 min/mile. Boy did my legs cycle! Normally when I run track workouts on the treadmill, I can get almost up to 10 MPH (6:00 min/mile). But that is with my normal stride. Compacting my stride really made my legs churn FAST! I knew that I would have train this specifically to get my body accustomed to such a high cycle rate for my legs.

Then today, I went out for a 2 hour ride. Feeling good upon reaching home, I decided I would start shuffle training today. So I threw on my running shoes and then I shot out the door with two goals in mind. First, I really needed to get my body used to hitting the ground running after the bike so as not to lose time on the run. Second, I ran with the Ironman shuffle as fast as possible to see just how it would feel.

It was tough! My legs were tired from the ride, and I could not lengthen my stride at all. I was forced to run with the shuffle! So I just churned them as fast as I could. I went out into my neighborhood and then around and back for only about 7:30 minutes. I knew after this run that this would take some time and effort to train. Next time I will have to bring my GPS to see how fast I am actually running with the shuffle style.

Someone just asked me about treadmills. After running on several in clubs and owning two, I have these requirements:

1. I often run for over an hour. The timer must be able to deal with that and not reset to zero after it hits an hour. Otherwise I lose count.

2. I want a keypad that can quick jump me to a given incline or speed. Hitting the up and down arrows a million times sucks.

3. It must have a water bottle holder. Gotta drink. Even better if there are two holders.

4. It must go faster than 10 MPH. 10 MPH is a 6:00 mi/min. Someday I hope to run that fast and need to practice running faster than that to achieve that speed.

5. It must go higher than 10% grade. If it can do negative grades, that's fine.

6. It should have a full size running surface and not a compact one. Some of those made for apartments are smaller than normal. If the running surface is too small, I sometimes hit the back edge while striding.

7. HR monitor optional. I don't need it although sometimes it is interesting to take a quick read of your HR.

8. Programs optional. I mostly run with my coach's workouts, so I don't use those pre-programmed workouts.

9. I don't need it to fold up.

Passing that dude at Rancho San Antonio made me think of all the times I've managed to pass people in a race.

It's a weird feeling to pass someone during a race, especially if you are very close in velocity. It isn't like driving a car where you press on the gas and you zoom up behind someone and then you pass them by. Visually, the other car grows in your eyes and then whooshes by and then shrinks behind you.

Since there isn't this acceleration for humans, the visual effect is much different for me. In fact, it's much slower.

I pull up behind someone. I usually think I'm faster than him, but can't tell for sure. I seem to be gaining, but his speed is often shifting as well, so sometimes I gain and sometimes I lose ground. But generally I maintain speed and have confidence that my constant speed is better than surging and wasting energy by accelerating. There is time left in the race and I can slowly overtake this guy. But visually, it seems as though I am barely gaining at all.

That is...until I get about 2-3 feet away. For some reason, as soon as I get to that distance, and still running at constant speed, the guy I'm passing seems to pause, and then rush up all of a sudden. I seem to accelerate and pass him in a flash.

It's weird. But what a rush to pass someone during a race.

Yesterday, I ran Rancho San Antonio and did my painful hill repeats.

The turkeys were out in force. Ten hens with one big male, tail feathers all spread out like he was somethin' else. Peacockin' ain't just for pickup artists! But it was fun flying past them and seeing a whole bunch of wild turkeys struttin' about while I was doing my intervals.

4 loops this time. I was going to do 5, but on the 4th I'm going up the hill and I come up behind another dude. He was running ok but I managed to pass him. I keep going at steady pace, but then I hear steps and his heavy breathing right behind me. I pick it up a bit just to keep ahead, but I hear him breathing and know he is only a few steps behind me. I get a bit more competitive. I pick it up more and he is still just behind me and I'm running hard now but not so hard that I'm flaming out.

He on the other hand is taking heavy breaths. I know his flame out is near and wonder if he will pass me. I pick it up a bit more and then...as I pull up to the top of the hill, I hear Mr. Heavy Breather drop off and know he just flamed out. I soar up and over and proceed fast down the other side.

Turkeys and a bit of pick me up all in one day. Nice.

Today I ran a complete workout without having my feet swell up or get major blisters. Ever since Asics changed their design, I've been going nuts trying to find running shoes that fit me good enough to run in. Everything was either too tight or my foot would flop around inside, causing lots of problems like swelling and blistering.

But today, thank God for Velocy. These cool shoes that help you get into Pose method running also have a shape that fits my feet perfectly without causing them to swell and also blister.

The downside is that Velocy isn't a mainstream shoe. They could go out of business and I'd be back to ground zero on running shoes. Time to go out there and stock up before they disappear!!!!

Yesterday morning, I ran for the first time on my Velocy shoes. If you recall, Velocy running shoes are supposed to be designed such that they help you run on the balls of your feet. How interesting a feel these shoes presented!

It was early morning and I decided to run on the treadmill with a form run, which is a jogging warmup, some drills, and then some quick, short speedwork.

I put on my Velocy shoes and I remembered the first time I put them on at the NYC Marathon expo. They are stiffer than usual and not as much cushion as you would expect from a running shoe. The sole is curved slightly to encourage your foot to roll forward on each stride and thus get you into a forefoot running style. I was not sure I believed that the structure of the shoe could make this happen, but I had to try them to be sure.

Note that I already run with the Pose Method, which is basically a forefoot running style. So I wondered what difference these shoes would make on my running style...? I do admit that when I get tired, my form gets messy. I also acknowledge that my left leg runs slightly different than my right. It's something I've been trying to even out over the last 2 years of running Pose.

Upon hopping on the treadmill, I could immediately sense a difference in running. The arc in the sole definitely put me more forward onto the balls of my feet while running. With each step, I could feel the foot rolling through the arc of the sole. I think for the most part, their claim is true that it does help get into that form. But I also wonder that since I am already running Pose, that the change is not that dramatic. I would love to have someone who runs midfoot or even heel strike to try these shoes and see what happens.

I also wonder if these shoes are acting as a crutch for running a form which I should train my body to naturally do, which is what I've been doing up to now. If I ran on these shoes more often, would I feel worse going back to normal running shoes? Or would I be better at forefoot, aka Pose, running because of them?

Hopefully before the season starts, I can run more on these shoes and be able to compare them to running with normal running shoes.

Alas, I turned in my NYC Marathon timing chip yesterday. I had hoped that some miracle would have happened and my hacking cough would have gone away. But no such luck.

I am very disappointed to be brought down by a sickness. 4 months of training, seeing great track times and growing strength on hill repeats - it was tough to realize that my body would not hold up to 4 hours of max performance in cold weather racing (it's been in the 40s everyday I've been here in NYC; the last 3 years I ran NYC it was in the 70s!).

Rather than risk this developing into something REALLY bad like pneumonia, I elected to not race. It's a first for me: to not race due to sickness and it was bound to happen sometime.

At least I was able to defer my entry until next year. Not sure if I will race it though; I've got my sights on either Ironman Florida or Ironman Western Australia and that may mean that NYC isn't possible. NYC is usually on the same weekend as IM Florida, as it was this year. IM Western Australia is usually on Thanksgiving weekend or the first weekend of December, which means NYC is very close to the race.

Onwards to off season training. I want to work on strength in my legs this winter, in preparation for a strong race season next year.

These last few weeks have been really interesting from a training perspective. I have experienced true "redlining" of my abilities in many of my workouts.

This has really shown up in my track workouts at trying to maintain a super high pace for a given distance, whether it's 800 meters or distance tempo workouts of up to 4000m in length. It also showed up last weekend for the Long Beach Half Marathon where I could feel and, later, see my effort and heart rate rise to super high levels for the entire race.

It's a weird experience being in a redlined state for a long time. At points during my track intervals, I have gotten to the point of almost feeling dizzy and passing out, and then backing off a tad to maintain as high a pace as possible. In the longer distance tempo workouts, I have focused on leg turnover and, in maintaining a certain leg turnover rate, my HR jumps to a really high level.

It's good practice. Pushing my tolerance to higher thresholds allows me to keep performance high for longer periods of time and maxes my output.

It's potentially bad in that one of these days I may push over some physical limit and pass out during a race. That would definitely NOT be good.

Afterwards, I find that my body is a bit slower in recovering after these workouts. I have maintained my effort so close to my lactate threshold for so long that I feel it in my lungs and body for days afterwards.

I don't know of any other way of training to push my performance higher; I need to continually push my body to the edge to eke out that last bit of speed. As long as I don't push over the edge, it seems that my body recovers and learns so that next time I improve and it's not so bad.

I look forward to seeing what happens at NYC in two weeks when I will maintain this level of output at marathon distance.

Yesterday, I ran my favorite hill loop, the Coyote Trail, in Rancho San Antonio. Well, favorite is a controversial term. I ran the loop seven times logging in 17 miles, legs burning out on the last two loops as I up my intensity, and feet getting totally abused on the steeper downhill coming down off Coyote Trail back to the starting area. Total time, 2 hours and 42 minutes.

Although it hurts (got blisters on both feet from the downhill action), I can't think of a better way to prepare myself for the five bridges in the NYC course - my nemesis on the last three NYC marathons.

The NYC course, sans the bridges, is relatively flat to rolling with long, gradual uphills at times. Some smaller steep hills exist as you cross into Central Park, but that's about it. What makes this course hard is the fact that there are five bridges in the course which cross back and forth from borough to borough. These annoying bridges are relatively steep hill climbs and interrupt your normal tempo rhythm through the city streets. Last year, it was the 59th Street bridge which literally sucked the energy out of my sails, and initiated the longest "wall" I've encountered to date - about 9 miles worth!

My hope is that doing those hill repeats, I can get strong enough to tackle the hills at speed and have enough left over to finish the race. I am optimistic now that I've done 7 relatively strong hill repeats which are all steeper than the bridges by far.

Yesterday, I weighed in at 150 lbs with clothes on. Wow. Dropping fast. That means I am about 148-149 lbs without clothes on. Last year at the beginning of the NYC Marathon, I was 147 lbs the morning of. I wonder if I'll be less this year with a month left to go, and the most intense endurance training coming up.

The less I weigh, the less I carry around with me, and I waste less energy because I'm not carrying around useless weight.

Onwards to more speedwork during the week, crossing over into long tempo sessions. Then, long endurance fartlek intervals on the weekends to round out the training.

I live in this apartment building. When I emerge from the elevator with my kid, she takes off running down the hallway because she wants to hide and then scare the heck out of me when I turn the corner.

Just recently, I can't help but study her running.

Her torso is very still and relaxed. It does not sway from side to side. Her arms pump easily as she takes off down the hallway. They move backwards and forwards and do not waste in side to side motion. She runs a natural Pose Method, completely on the balls of her feet and I watch her legs kick in perfect form backward, and no wasted side motion at all, on each stride.

This is the way kids run. They have an instinctive way of moving and it is very economical and efficient. Somehow, they just know how to do this. There is no learning, just doing. It is the way that we, as adults, apparently are trying to learn again, and we call this the Pose Method, or any one of many names we can call the perfect running form.

I marvel at what we've lost as we grow to be adults. Ever watch other people run? You see people's torsos bent over like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. You see arms sway back and forth across their bodies, like they're doing the watusi. Their legs churn, but yet they heel strike or have some weird foot flopping as the leg kicks backward on each stride. Watch other people run and see. Then do something really radical like videotaping yourself and...shudder....

As we grow older, we've lost that instinctive way of running in the most efficient and effective way. We learn new habits like sitting on couches and watching TV and doing that REALLY WELL. We forget what it's like to be a kid anymore, in more ways than one. Whether it's running or being creative, or being silly, or just laughing your heart out, we've lost the kids in ourselves.

People always say we have a lot to learn from our kids, and athletics is no exception.

For years I've been running in Asics Gel Nimbus running shoes. They are neutral (no motion control) and supposedly have the most cushioning of any running shoe. And they worked great for 3 years. Until now.

This year, they decided to make the toe box narrower and the tongue has padding in it. This combination meant that all of a sudden, my foot was bound by the shoe more tighter than before. After about half an hour of running, my foot started to swell and then caused bruising against the edge of my hard orthotics. Bruising the ball of your foot is no fun. You can't really run hard until it goes away and it's pretty painful to walk on.

This went on for about 3 weeks with me trying to figure out what was wrong. After 3 weeks of trying new tying methods, taping the orthotics down, new padding, etc. it boiled down to the change in the basic design of the shoe.

ARG!

I had 3 weeks of painful running because Asics chose to change the design of their shoe! The old design was fine. Why did they mess with it?

So I tried out the new Adidas A3 Microride which is extremely cushy in the forefoot, due to its cushioning cylinders which run along the bottom of the shoe. And they don't bind my foot and make it swell.

Sorry Asics. I made the switch. You and other manufacturers should learn that you shouldn't have keep messing with a working formula.

OK so after I found out about Yasso 800s, I told my coach about it and he gave me a workout progression based on 800s. I started running 800s and now I'm doing that at about 3:05-3:19 per 800.

My new (CRAZY) goal: run a marathon in 3 hours. YIKES. But given my 800 times, it looks like I can get close...?

I'm psyched and going for it!

Today I traded emails with a buddy of mine who is a sub-3 hour marathoner.

If you do the calculation, to run a 3 hour marathon, you'd have to maintain a pace of 6:52/mile the whole way, and that's not counting dealing with the terrain and environment (ie. if it's hilly or hot/humid day).

That's pretty freakin' fast.

So I asked my friend about how fast your track paces would have to be in order to have a chance of running a 3 hour marathon. My sub-3 hour friends are running 400s at about 65-75 seconds and 800s at about 2:30-2:45, and able to maintain that over as many as ten repeats.

In fact, some guy named Bart Yasso, the race services manager at Runner's World magazine, came up with this workout of 10x800 on the track, and if you can run this workout at fairly even pace, you can get a prediction on your marathon time. Another writer named this the "Yasso 800" workout. So basically, if you can maintain a pace of minutes:seconds for each of ten 800s, then your predicted marathon pace would be about (minutes->hours):(seconds->minutes). My friends on the track who are sub-3 hour marathoners typically can run 10x800 at about 2:30-2:45 per 800, so that would mean a predicted marathon finish time of 2 hours and 30 minutes to 2 hours and 45 minutes.

Ugh. Currently I could probably sustain a 400 of about 1:32 and 800 of about 3:35-3:40! Good prediction of a 3:40-ish marathon finish time so not bad. But a far cry from 3 hours!

This morning I did 10x400 and was redlining towards the end of the last few 400s to make a ~1:32 finish!

At least now I have a rough measuring stick on how to improve. To get from 1:32 on a 400 to 65 seconds, I merely need to run that twice as fast. To get from 3:35 800s to 2:30 800s, I just have to run about a third faster. Easy.

...(sigh)....

A buddy of mine just started a new site called dailystrength.org. It is a place where you can get support and advice for various problems or issues you may have in a multitude of areas of your life.

There was a post about running and knee problems, and how people were down on running and didn't know how to solve those problems.

So I posted my 3 big solutions to my running problems, as the combination of these has basically kept me running injury free for about 2 years now. In addition to that, there are 2 more solutions which also contributed to my injury free state:

The big 3:

1. I use hard orthotics. Not the soft kind you find at a shoe store, but ones that are created from plaster molds of your feet. They basically remove any and all possibility of pronation and, thus, one source of strain to your knees and muscles.

2. I run using the Pose Method, which teaches running on the balls of your feet and definitely NO HEEL STRIKING. Running on the balls of your feet means that there is one extra joint to absorb impact and has been shown through some studies to reduce impact stress by as much as 50%.

3. Every week I go to get ART and Graston Technique. The two methods of massaging your muscles remove adhesions that form and build up over time. If they build up over time, then your muscles get less flexible and the possibility of injury increases as the muscles get tighter and tighter until all sorts of bad things happen.

The 2 other things are:

1. The old method of training meant beating up your body again and again until it breaks down to the point of injury. The new way has recognized that you don't need to beat up your body as much as previously thought in order for peak performance. Your body needs rest and time to grow stronger. So no more overtraining leading to pain and injury!

2. Crossover training effects from swimming and cycling have immensely affected my running ability. It has also meant that I don't need to break down my body by running alone in order to be at some high level of fitness. I can improve my abilities through other less impact activities and run faster.

Freeze My Willies

After the race, I jump in a bathtub of ice cubes for 10 minutes. Thankfully it numbs everything and I can only stand it for 10 minutes. But on Monday, I hop in again but this time for 15 minutes. Definitely nerves are getting killed off in the icy water, or maybe I'm just getting better at being a tough guy...

The ice bath really helps flush my muscles of the lactic acid and reduces inflammation.

Delayed Onset Soreness

Whoo hoo - big time! After my first ice bath, I am pain free! BUT...the next day that all changes. My calves seize up in a lactic acid frenzy and going up and down stairs is pure torture. Also, the rest of my body aches....

Never Forget Your Salt Tablets

I think I figured out why I feel so abused after this race. I think it's because I didn't have enough electrolytes and salt during the race, which causes my muscles to perform poorly and under more stress.

After the race, I felt my skin and it was real gritty from the salt that I sweated out. Definitely something to keep fine tuning.

Nike Triax Foot Pod Off

So I wore a Nike Triax watch with foot pod and heart rate monitor for the race. I would have worn a GPS but it doesn't work very well in Manhattan with the buildings blocking the satellites.

Unfortunately, looking at my paces on the website and what was recorded by the watch, the Nike Triax is definitely off, even after I calibrated it on a track.

The Nike Triax said I ran only 25.3 miles. During the race, I remember looking at it and despairing at the pace it was showing me, which turns out to be slower than what the website said I ran.

How annoying to be thinking I was totally cratering when in fact I was not!

New Fighting Weight

Post-marathon weigh-in has me now at 147.8 lbs, versus 151 weigh-in at Ironman New Zealand. Now I have a new benchmark for what I should weigh during long endurance races....

Wise Quote

Tim Noakes in Lore of Running states:

"In a marathon, the race really begins from 32km onward, during the last 10km. From here to the finish, the marathoner's brain speaks of logic and therefore appeals to the first voice, which will argue that there is no justifiable reason to continue. The marathoner's only recourse is to call on the spirit, which forutnately functions independently of logic. It accepts that marathon training goes beyond logic - that humans were not designed to race marathons any more than they were designed to scale Everest. And the human spirit soon learns that the marathon is one way for ordinary people to define irrevocably their own physical, mental, and spiritual limits. By the 32km marker, the marathoner must be ready to define these personal limits."

Such a truism. I ran literally a 9 mile "wall" and many times felt like quitting. But it was worthwhile as I broke through the damn wall at mile 24 to speed up to the finish.

When I tell people I ran the NYC Marathon, often the first thing that comes out of their mouths is, "Oh I can never do that."

How easy it is for someone to define their limits under such favorable conditions. Is that the true test of the human spirit, to be defined on the couch in front of a TV?

I say NO.

Our growth comes from trials, and we really grow when we test our limits. Busting through a 9 mile wall was one of the hardest things I've ever done, with body aching, IT band protesting, right quad cramping, even both forearms threatening to cramp under electrolyte loss. It hardens my spirit like nothing else!

It's 430am and I get up to prepare for the race. The night before I lay out just about everything I need so that I won't forget anything. But of course, I already find out that I don't have any electrolyte tablets in my apartment, a fact that will prove critical in the race later.

But I fill up my race bottles with flat Coca-Cola, put GU gel in my fuel belt, get my race number belt ready with the race number and attach my timing chip to my running shoe. I double check that and then I throw everything into my bag and off I go.

I arrive at the NYC Public Library and it's still pitch dark. The stars are shining in the sky so I know it's going to be a warm day, as it has been the last few days.

I sit on the bus next to a guy from Oregon. He says he's trying to get to 50 marathons, one for each state. More power to him. I am not sure my bod could take so many marathons in so short a time, or else I'm gonna die before I hit 50 states worth of marathons.

The sun finally starts coming up as we get over to the starting line in Staten Island. Different starting area this year. I don't see the usual half-a-huge-PVC pipe pee-ing station. And it's organized more by color too - I am in the Blue section, so they have their own food and UPS trucks to take our stuff to the finish line.

I chat with this woman from Iowa who is running her first marathon in NYC. Hope she finishes OK.

So my pacing really sucks, and this year I decide to follow some of the pace leaders. For kicks, I decide to follow the 3:40 group since I am thinking I will finish in 3:45; but who knows, maybe I'll have a great day and finish in 3:40!

In the start of these races, my mind is usually filled with so many emotions and thoughts. I think about my goals in this race and wonder if I will do OK or crater somewhere in the middle. I think about my whole life surrounding racing and what it means to me.

I think about support, of which I don't have any live support this year, but yet so many others have friends and family to cheer people on. But I've told people not to come; NYC Marathon is not an easy one to watch for your friends. You need to plan very well. And the last two years I've been totally off my time estimates and I am sure supporting spectators would have been wondering if they missed me or not. But somehow, it is nice to have support if it's there.

I think about my daughter and how much she means to me, and missing her very much. I also think about my new life in this startup and wonder where that will go.

My brain is a jumble, but it all returns to race focus as soon as the cannon goes off.

The crowd surges forward. I am ahead of the 3:40 group for a while, but not for long. With so many people, it's impossible to keep pace. I blow right through and around people trying to get back on track, and I see the 3:40 pace leader doing the same.

The Verrazano Bridge serves to be a heavy duty warm up - it is an annoying long hill, and we are glad to see the other side where we increase our pace to make up lost time.

The next 12 miles are a blur. I manage to pull ahead of the 3:40 pace leader and the group and keep that lead until a mile or two after mile 13.1. I hit that at 1:51, a bit slow for 3:40, but in range for a 3:45 finish.

Then I reach the 59th Street Bridge and my ass is kicked. It is fairly steep and it drains me going up and over. The 3:40 pace leader has joined up with his buddy who is also leading another 3:40 group. They blow by me and I lose them.

But I never get my pace back. The climb wipes me and I don't get a chance to recover. The following miles are a series of gradual, grinding uphills where I don't get the chance to recover and rest.

At mile 20, my right quad starts twitching like it's gonna cramp. This is where those electrolyte tablets would have made a HUGE difference.

I don't get my groove back until about mile 24 when all of a sudden I find some more energy, and I get my pace back up to about 9:00-ish per mile. And miraculously, the cramping subsides as well. I manage to finish following the 3:50 pace leader and my time is 3:51, which I am very happy for. It is a new PR for me and a substantial improvement from my last year's time of 4:24.

But man, I hurt all over. For some reason, this year's race was more taxing on my bod than last year. I move through the finish line with everyone else and my legs feel very abused. I make it to where I pick up our race stuff and I change out of my sweaty, smelly race clothes, and into some clean clothes.

As I move (verrrrryyyy slowly) out of the meeting area, I reflect on the fact that I can't move very fast at all. My legs and feet hurt a lot, and I say to myself that I can't do this race again next year. I need a break!

All the while, I am wishing that some strong, muscular guy would come over and carry me home.

Don't you ever wish that this would happen to you?...No?...Never?

Hmmm...well I was just kidding then...really...

I am not in California any more. I am on the plains of Africa. The wind blows across the grasslands, the sun is high in the sky. I glide effortlessly across the land, each footfall moving me forward, the hills around me racing past my eyes.

I hear the roar of lions, and a lion is now running next to me, leaping through the brush as my legs cycle fast and endlessly, the grass whipping by me and the lion leaps....

I see the flames of a black dragon, its wings beating down above me. I feel the raw power of its jaws, its claws as it bursts down from the heavens, accompanying me on my run across a barren landscape where it dwells...

I feel the heat of the jet engine, a MIG-29 accelerates alongside me as I speed through the sky, the cloudscape racing past, and in the fury of my passing through the sound barrier they explode...

And now I am Rocky Balboa and I am running towards the city square, the crowd behind me surging with me but they cannot catch me, because I will win, I am a champion, I mount the stairs and with several bounds I am on top, and they scream Rocky Rocky Rocky...

...Motivational delusions from the Long Beach Half Marathon, 10-16-05.

I wore my favorite long sleeve shirt today by Nike. It's got this incredibly cool slogan on it - "Run Like There is no Finish Line". Wow. What a great motivator! I got this shirt last year at the NYC Marathon.

One problem though. It's black. So I put it on because there is this huge fog bank hanging over the bay area around 7:30am. By the time I get to Rancho San Antonio at around 8am, the fog is almost all burnt off.

Boom. The temperature rises about 15 degrees and now I'm roasting....!

Hard run today. My coach has me doing long intervals at speed to get my stamina up. Here's the workout:

20 min build from easy to steady
30 min broken into 9 min steady, 1 min easy -- continuous
30 min broken into 20 min steady, 5 min mod-hard, 5 min easy
15 min broken into 5 min mod-hard, 10 min steady
15 min broken into 5 min mod-hard, 10 min steady
10 mins easy

Ugh. Major pacing problems in the rolling hills of Rancho. Especially as I get into the mod-hard intervals. The last one was grueling in the heat of the morning. Gotta get more acclimatized to running in heat. If I ever make it to Kona this year, I'll need to be able to function at peak condition in 90 degree/90% humidity conditions....

But this was my third time doing this workout, and the second time on this path in Rancho. I have one more workout of this sequence and hopefully by then I'll have gotten adjusted to the pacing and the built my stamina up to handle the short choppy (annoying!) hills as well as summer heat.

On Friday I went to Metrosports to pick up another pair of my favorite trail running shoes, the Asics Gel Eagle Trail IIIs. But another pair of running shoes caught my eye this time - the NIKE Free.

Created by NIKE to allow your feet to be protected but still have the biomechanical benefits of running barefoot, the NIKE Free can take your feet from the pampered, protected environment of the nicely insulated, cushioned, supported surroundings of a century of innovation in running/walking shoes to the scary, open place of running with naked feet.

I had read a lot about barefoot running lately. Many experts tout the benefits of strengthening the muscles in your feet to reduce the probability of injury. It also changes your running stance because heel strikes are not possible (they are painful!) and you need to run on the balls of your feet. This also provides an added benefit of an extra shock absorption joint into your kinetic chain.

I took them out for a brick run after my grueling King's Mountain ascent and definitely there was a difference from these shoes to my normal Asics Gel Nimbus shoes, which are Asics's most cushioned neutral shoe. Definitely more pounding on the feet as the NIKE Free's do not have much adding at all, and also definitely more flexing of the shoe due to the slices through the bottom sole rubber.

I hope to run more on these shoes over the next few months to build up my foot muscles. They recommend a gradual buildup over the next few months, and certainly not at distances/speeds as you would normally run.

It will be an interesting experiment.