Coffee, Work, Workout, Eat, Sleep, Repeat

I have been neglecting things recently. From paying one set of student loans five days late to checking my email for 45 minutes once a week I am falling behind. Why has all this been happening? I'm up to 32 miles the last five days on my feet and 486 miles on my new bicycle the last two weeks. Plus, I spent some time socializing recently.

I apologize for all of the unanswered emails and Facebook messages. I'll get to them, hopefully. In the meantime if you wish to contact me call between 8:30 and 10pm central standard time and I am usually available. I also started a twitter feed and I will likely update that more often than this blog.

As always, thank you for reading!

The Double Century: My First 200 Mile Bicycle Ride

Yesterday I rode my new Trek bicycle 201 miles in 11 hours and 43 minutes. I woke up around 5:30, even earlier than I do for work, and spent some time eating breakfast and gearing up making sure that all of my bases were covered. I left my apartment just after 6. I don't know any of the exact times of day because I didn't take my watch. I started off slow and easy on my way to Galena, IL. I cruised the downtown area looking for an open coffee shop. The first promising prospect was closed but the owner was sitting outside sipping his morning espresso and since he lived upstairs offered to make me an espresso drink. I gladly accepted and asked if he would fill a bottle of mine with a mocha. While I waited I had a pastry and we talked about tourism a little. It seems this summer is not the greatest but better than last year.

From there I cruised back Illinois roads to Savanna, IL and Sabula, IA where I crossed back across the Mississippi. To be honest, Sabula is asking to be flooded. It's just above the river level and sits in the middle of the river. It would not be my first choice for the optimal place to put a town. I hit 50 miles in Sabula and my time was a flying 2:30:32, for a 19.9 mph average. I was in the big crank for the 30 miles from Galena to Sabula and was doing 22-24 mph pretty consistently. Of course it was with the wind and except for one uphill it was downhill and flat. From there I headed West and around mile 61 I got a flat tire. I changed it just fine and headed into Maquoketa. I filled up my bottles (5th and 6th bottle) and went to the local "bicycle shop" which is really just a guy that does it about one day a week on his off day. While he was finding an appropriate inner tube we talked about the divorce he is going through as well as bicycle technology. I thought that Sram and Shimano were both pretty common but everyone I talk to asks about my Sram components. It's just like when I bought my iPhone, I thought everyone else already had one, then found out that it was really only a few people and I was actually an early adopter.

I headed North and West out of town for some nice cross wind mileage on beautiful Iowa back roads. Say what you want about bad roads, Iowa is a great place to ride a bicycle. Less cars than New England, more paved roads than most of the Midwest, for the most part nicely paved roads, and because I live near the Mississippi the roads are old enough that they are fairly winding which makes for a more enjoyable ride than strait roads. I hit 100 miles in 5:22 something. That's still an 18.5 mph average. Kind of inspiring because it's pretty close to a sub 5 hour 100 mile bicycle ride, which is yet another thing that sounds like I could do. Although, it would have to be during good weather and having at least one other person to pull me along would be a huge help.

I stopped at mile 112 at Cascade to eat a little and get more water in my bottles (bottles 7 and 8). Soon after I left I headed North on 136 to Dryersville and into a 10 mph wind or so with gusts in the 15 mph region. My pace slowed considerably. For awhile I was stopping at every gas station I could to get ice water. The worst stretch of road that I ever ride in Iowa on is the four miles from Dryersville North on 136. There is no shoulder to ride on and there are always a lot of cars. However, when I am going into the wind cars whipping past me are a welcome reprieve. You see, I am going 15-20 mph and they are going say 55 or so and the wind put off by a car, or better yet an SUV give me 5-20 seconds of wind going in the direction I am going in. The closer that the cars are to me the more advantage I get. It sounds ridiculous but when the go past me with only 2-3 feet to spare it is better than 8-10 feet away in the other lane. However, due to the low density of fast moving fluids there is a suction effect which can be scary. When a car or SUV passes me I often get pulled over a foot or so after they have passed. Semis on the other hand will pull me toward the rear wheels, which is scary.

From there it kind of melted into monotonous road and sunburn and dehydration. I ended up on a stretch of gravel on Heiderscheit Road and turned around and backtracked and ran out of water. There were no facilities in Balltown so I trekked to Sherrill and hit up a bar for another two bottles of lemonade and water. I did not feel like eating a gel so I put the gel into my ice water, which I have never tried before. It did not dissolve until the water warmed up half an hour later. Then the maltodextrin tasted distinctly less sugary than lemonade. It tasted good enough that I think I will experiment with it in the future.

I still had 29 miles to go at the BP station  at the Sherrill/HWY 52 intersection so I headed up 52 and took Boy Scout road around to Asbury Road and Humke Road and then back up to Asbury then I did a little out and back on Grandview to get over 200 and I finished up nice and tired after 7 PM.

I did not eat much at all. One Honey Stinger Protein Bar, one Clif Bar (White Chocolate Macadena Nut flavor), two gels (one Clif and one Roctane), one package of Shot Bloks, two Jocalat Larabars, but I did have that mocha and pastry, and at least six bottles of Gatorade, Vitamin Water, lemonade, and blueberry pomegranate juice. Today I feel like I had a relatively hard 23-24 mile run yesterday. I am more saddle sore than any run but I can walk around just fine. Interestingly my core is sore. There is a little back and forth wobble on the bicycle and I think 11+ hours of that worked my core more than usual. Plus, I'm still working out the fit of my new bicycle. The stem might need to be shortened a little so that I am not bent over so far when I am on the hoods.

Three more things, people are always telling me I am insane or crazy for doing stuff like this. I suppose that if 99% of people are considered normal then I am certainly in the 1% that must be considered crazy. Second, this has been a life goal of mine for several years and now it's done. Third, every time I knock off a goal it is a little anticlimactic. There was no one waiting to congratulate me at my apartment at the finish. There were no voicemails and text messages congratulating me. There is certainly no money in it. I am finding there is no next level pain or other mental state that I have when doing this stuff. I am who I am and that is the same person wether I am 500 feet off the ground at a hanging belay or 184 miles into a bicycle ride going up Asbury hill or sitting at my desk at 2PM on Wednesday. This is my life, and I do not intend to sit around doing the same old stuff. What's next? 300 miles? I don't know. I can say that I do know that whatever the next challenge is I do not know if I can do it. If I knew I could do it, what would the challenge be?

My Old Road Bicycle

I had a question from my friend who rode a bicycle from Vancouver to Tierra Del Fuego about my bicycles after the article about my cyclocross bike. Well I currently ride a 1980 era Miyata Professional with a Dura-Ace crank and Campagnolo everything else. It has six gears on the back ranging from 24 teeth to 13 teeth. My cranks are 42 teeth and 53 teeth. It's a racing bike.

Complete with a hard saddle, and new aerobars from my uncle

It says, "Miyata" will be a cool restoration project

"Professional", "Dura-Ace" and I just bought pedals!

The bike is made from 4140 and is double butted at the joints so that thinner steel can be used throughout. It's a great bicycle. I've done several 100+ mile rides on it, I've ridden it up Mt. Evans in Colorado, and all over Kansas, Wisconsin, Massachusetts and Iowa.

It's an amazing bike. I do not plan to ever get rid of it. In fact, I would like to get it restored some day. The problem is that it does not have the best steel technology in it so it is not as stiff as the modern bicycles, which means it doesn't climb hills as well when I stand on the pedals. It also weight as shown about 23 pounds. Light in it's day but my new road bicycle is going be 16-17 pounds, because I went with low class parts. With high class parts it would totally be 14-15 pounds. For a lightweight like me that's a huge difference.

If Left to My Own Devices...

This weekend was basically a model for how I generally imagine the weekends the next few years of my life going. It is strange to get to the place that I have been expecting, because I wonder, 'is this all there is?'

Saturday I ran that four mile race, went to coffee and used the Internet. Went out to eat with my parents then did a 90 minute bike ride in the afternoon. Sunday I went to church then did a 4.5 hour bike ride in the afternoon covering 60-70 miles of back road Iowa. I watched a movie or two in there but the point is I spent 1.5 hours running and 6 hours biking. That's nearly 4 hours per day of exercising, and I probably have a stress reaction in my foot.

I am not really sure there is a point to this or a lesson to learn. Perhaps that I am less than social and self centered, or perhaps I realize that my goals require hundreds of hours of training. I don't know. However, I can say that I had fun out there on the bicycle and running. It is nice to run a race without any major injuries in a little bit of shape. I am really fortunate. I get paid. I get to exercise. People are nice to me. Life is good. But I still wonder, 'is this all there is?'

"Training" Kids

In the last week or so I learned that I might have the opportunity to work with a middle school runner who is excited to run cross country and track in high school. Just thinking about working with a middle school runner got me excited. So I spent some time reading my books about teenagers and remembering my own start to organized running.

I have been in a number of fortunate situations in my running career as well as being told by a coach that running barefoot is bad for me. I have spent thousands of dollars on shoes I should have never bought. I didn't understand training for running until 2006 after running for years. If I could do it over again would I do anything differently? Absolutely! But the past is the past and every mistake I made in my running has taught me things which I am sure I can pass on to the next generation.

As I often say:
1. Stay motivated
2. Stay healthy
3. Train hard

As I was researching kids running I read from the Lore of Running by Dr. Noakes and Better Training for Distance Runners by Dr. Martin and Peter Coe (Seb's dad). Basically you can not take full advantage of training until you are a teenager and have hormones to develop the cellular changes desired to run faster longer. In other words, you can screw up a runner while they are young by working them too hard and taking the fun out of it. (#1. Stay motivated)

Secondly, good habits are easy to build the first time instead of breaking old habits then building good ones. Knowing what I know now about injury and setbacks would have contributed months of running to my body instead of spending time on the elliptical and stationary bike. To prevent most injuries spend a little time running barefoot and most of the time running in shoes with a low heel, like racing flats. To prevent even more injuries spend time strengthening your weaker smaller muscles. You can do drills (my favorite because they are the quickest), go swimming, play basketball, play tag, go rock climbing, or work in a green house. There are other exercises and activities to help you stay healthy, but that would take many pages and pictures. In short, when it comes to kids, keep them healthy. As they grow older they will get faster because of their physical development, as long as they are not perpetually injured.

As far as train hard, well you have to be motivated and healthy first. I feel that below age 20 most competitive runners do not have what it takes to do all of the work necessary to be really good. For many runners they do not reach their optimal training level until late in their 20s. Since, the late 20s and early 30s are when most runners peak it is important to keep the training at a manageable level until the individual athlete wants to up the training load. I feel that holds true for every level of running. In other words moving a 35 miles per week sophomore to 40 miles per week should happen when the runner is ready. To gives examples from my own life, I have failed to finish workouts when my older classmates have finished the workouts. I have also done workouts, then added on more to the workout on days that I did not feel like I had had enough. Forcing me to do more than I am able is a sure way to exhaust a runner.

In summary, when "training" kids keep the motivation there and teach good habits. The training will come. My freshman year of high school track we ran five miles the first day. I had never run fives miles before. Neither had my two friends. We sat in the locker room after in a daze with blistered feet. My goal for the season was just to run six miles. Now I go on 20 mile runs almost weekly at a much faster pace than that day. Running development is a long process.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Cake is Done!

We still have to put the frosting on and maybe some sprinkles, but the cake is done! Of course when I say cake I mean the extensive specific and long workouts associated with training for a marathon. Wednesday night I managed 16 miles on a cinder rail trail in 1:32:44. That means 58:01 through ten miles and 1:15:55 for the half marathon. My second fastest half marathon and a mere two minutes slower than my personal record and it was solo on a dirt trail.

From here on out I have 2-4 workouts in the 5k to 10k range. Noting too tiring or difficult. This is the bulk of it. A few longer tempos and long runs in the bank of my legs and now the goal is to rest and do just enough work to keep my body remembering what marathon pace is. I know I still have more than two weeks, but the workouts and the experience of training for a marathon has been amazing. If I explode on marathon day or have some other setback I will be comforted by all that I have already done. This whole ability and experience of running is a gift that I am able to enjoy now and I don't take that for granted.

All of that being said I already know my preparation was not as good as it could have been. There is always something to tweak and make better when it comes to humans.

Recovery days

Last week I had two strong workouts on back to back days. That has been followed by four days of slow and very tiring runs. Sometimes our bodies just need to take it easy. As I get older I feel more and more in tune with my body. I can feel soreness and preinjury pain before I force an overuse injury on myself. I have learned to take it easy on my recovery days. After all as a long distance runner I am training for one massive performance. Several massive workouts do the bulk of specific preparation for any one event. Thus, training hard most days will only limit my training for the big workouts.

It can be hard to be patient as I try to squeeze more workouts into the ever shortening time to marathon day. I simply try to comfort myself with what I have already done and not worry about the final result. No one or two workouts is going to improve my marathon time by five or ten minutes now. As I always say:

1. Stay motivated
2. Stay healthy
3. Train hard

I'm good with one and two now and doing fairly well on three so it would be better if I did not get picky about the details and let recovery take it's natural course.

Hurt by My Ambition and Ignorance

I did it again. I forgot history and pushed ahead spurred on my ambition and I hurt myself. Yep, another running overuse injury. My right hip has some sort of problem. It hurts to run. It is going to require taking it easy and all sorts of less than extremely fun exercises in my basement and probably at a gym strengthening my weak non-dominant muscles.

Our bodies are full of muscles and many of then are relatively small and weak yet very important to maintain things like knee cap orientation. I am biomechanically very very durable. I have only broken one bone in my body ever, a sesamoid bone on my right foot. I am able to tolerate huge amounts of running mileage. Yet, despite the fact that my running stride is fairly nice, it is not perfect, nor will it ever be. A fraction of a degree out of alignment in the way that I push off of the ground will add up to thousands of pounds of imbalance over the course of several weeks. That will lead to some muscles getting stronger and other getting weaker. Eventually one or more of those weak muscles will break, in some manner of speaking, and I will be in pain or at least unable to run the way I want to.

I did not really do any weight lifting or core exercises for about seven weeks. During that time I averaged over 100 miles a week. In an effort to be "awesome" or achieve some other random goal I bumped up my mileage and ran 160 miles in nine days. It was too much and my body broke.

This is hardly a new learning experience. It is just another reminder of what I have already learned, and promptly ignored. I feel like an idiot. It takes half an hour a week to maintain strong weak muscles and despite running over 15 hours last week I didn't take the time to do 30 minutes of work to prevent this. Now I am reduced to a few miles a day fairly slow until I am strong enough to handle more. Awesome.

Tempo Running

Tempo running is one of the cornerstones of long term aerobic development. What is a tempo run? Well, that term is typically applied to runs that are are somewhat fast but not a sprint. It is typically used to describe workouts that include only one interval or repetitions, without repeating anything. That is to say a continuous run at a somewhat fast pace. This includes just about every run from a few miles up to distances over a marathon, which are at close to marathon pace. Tempos are sometimes referred to as quality work performed at slower than race pace.

The general purposes of tempo runs are lactic acid production and metabolism, aerobic respiration, and mental endurance. In my opinion, and based on what I have read from Canova and Daniels, tempo runs accomplish these purposes better than any other workout.

Below is a graph of my tempo runs over the past four years. Now this graph is incomplete and a little misleading because I spent many workouts running tempo paces over long intervals (such as 3 x 1.5 mile, or 5 x 1 mile). Which means I was training the aerobic and lactic acid systems in my body through interval training, but I was not doing it continuously. Since ending my NCAA elegibility in 2009 I have spent more time doing tempos, in large part because of a lack of training partners, but also for their benefits.


For the sake of comparison the graph below is all of my interval runs during the same time that were at least 3 miles or longer. However, these workouts include jogging between intervals so a four mile workout could be 1 mile fast, .5 mile slow, 1 mile fast, .5 mile slow, 1 mile fast. So 120 miles of interval workouts is not 120 miles of quality fast running.

One the workouts that I try to do regularly now but never really did in college, is a longer tempo run. Often seven to ten miles. Ideally, before I am comfortable running a marathon I will have at least one tempo workout over 20 miles in length. These slower tempos do not produce the immediate results that faster interval workouts do, but they contribute to making me stronger and generally faster. I notice nearly every time after a 7+ mile run that I feel faster for a few days in my other runs.

However, most of the above information aside, one of the most potent workouts in the history of sport is the 20 minute tempo run. It is run at a pace that is about the pace the runner can handle for one hour. It corresponds to a lactic acid concentration of about 4 mmol in the blood. Workouts of this duration are so widespread that I would guess every runner who runs 1500 meters or farther in the Olympics or Olympic Trials has done 20 minute tempos. Even Lance Armstrong does these workouts on a bicycle.

The purpose of a 20 minute tempo is to run very close to the limit of sustainable lactic acid consumption, but not faster, so that the body adapts to the production and consumption of lactic acid and can then run marginally faster at the limit of sustainable lactic acid consumption.

For example, anaerobically runner A and runner B can both tolerate a lactic acid level of 15 mmol in their blood before they slow to a jog. Runner A can maintain a pace of 5:30 per mile for a blood lactic acid level of 4 mmol. Runner B can only run 5:40 per mile for a blood lactic acid level of 4 mmol. Pretend that at a pace of 30 seconds per mile faster than the sustainable lactic acid consumption rate both runners produce 5 mmol of lactic acid that can not be metabolized every mile. So at a pace of 30 seconds per mile faster than the blood lactate level of 4 mmol corresponding to sustainable lactic acid metabolism both runners can run three miles before being slowed to a job. In a race runner A will win because all other things being equal he has the ability to metabolize the lactic acid that he produces at a faster pace than runner B.

It is such a great, objective workout that I feel it is one of the best ways to judge fitness outside of races and time trials which come with long recovery times, an inevitable short term setback.

How to Recover from a Long Run (Two Hours or Longer)

I just had a good 21 mile run, not terribly fast, and not the farthest I have have run but a good pace and distance for where I am today. However, what was great about this run was that I recovered nearly perfectly and only an hour later I feel relatively great.

When a runner starts to do long runs that last longer than two hours all sorts of things happen. Form deteriorates and runners cover the distance less efficiently. Good habits deteriorating into bad habits exposes runners to a heightened risk for injury. Nearly all of the glycogen in a runner's body is depleted so that more fat has to be used to cover the distance. Basically what happens is that it takes a lot more perceived effort to cover the same distance at the same pace that earlier in the run was relatively easy. This is why the wall in marathoning is so famous, it hurts. Also, during the entire run the runner is sweating and creating micro-tears in his or her muscles. This broad combination of problems can be dealt with quite quickly after the run is over, but it can also be dealt with poorly and lead to a setback in training.

1. The first 15 minutes are the most important:
• Do not quit moving around, simply walking around or standing or active stretching for 15 minutes will dramatically help your muscles cool down slowly and prevent them from getting uncomfortably tight.
• Drink some fluid. About one liter in the first fifteen minutes is pretty standard for me. I prefer milk because it contains a little of everything mentioned below.
• Eat some carbohydrates (sugars), electrolytes (salts like sodium and potassium), and a little bit of protein (to help start repairing your muscles).
2. For the next hour:
• Continue to eat and drink. The more you can eat in the hour after such a long period of exercise the better, up to about 1000 calories is a good place to start. The problem often is that after such a long period of exercise the body might not feel hungry.
• Try to be a little active before you take a nap or become a couch potato.
3. Several hours later:
• Eat a large meal if you did not eat much in the hour after your run. Your body is still replenishing it's glycogen supplies so a carbohydrate rich food like pasta is ideal. Your muscles are also quite torn up so consuming protein will help your muscles recover.
• Take a walk even if it is short walk it will help stretch out your legs. A bike ride, swim, or even another run are all positive things that will help your muscles from being incredibly tight the next day. Keep in mind that whatever physical activity you do after a two hour or longer run that your primary run for the day is over, so take it easy.

These principles apply to short runs but the significance is magnified on longer runs. Now go and suffer comfortably.

Is your workout effective? Part 2: Aerobic workouts

Aerobic paces are paces that you are able to run for more than one hour. There is some benefit to all paces from that pace you can maintain for only one hour to the pace you would be able to maintain for ten hours. For people that are interested in racing anything longer than a minute there is only aerobic and anaerobic metabolic systems.

The goal of aerobic running is more diverse than anaerobic running. The means to accomplish that is also more diverse. There is a difference between the type of aerobic workouts that a 5k runner needs and a marathon runner needs although there will both benefit from much of the same training.

The goals of aerobic workouts are:

1. Improve the pace that you can run without continuously accumulating lactic. This is accomplished through tempos slightly slower than the anaerobic threshold or lactate threshold. That is paces at or slightly slower than the pace you can maintain for one hour. The 20 minute tempo is basically the golden standard for this training goal. It is run at a pace slightly slower than the pace you can maintain for one hour, which for more competitive runners is about half marathon pace. These workouts should be uncomfortable but very manageable. A few minutes after the workout is done you should feel about as good as you did before you started.
2. Improve the ability to burn fat instead of carbohydrates. This is more important for marathoners and ultra runners. This is accomplished by running for a long time usually 2+ hours, running for about 1.5 hours at a faster pace, or running an easy pace for a long time 1-2 hours then running at a faster pace (such as marathon pace) for 20-40 minutes. These are the workouts where your whole body gets tired. You just want to sleep afterward and you feel as mentally tired as physically tired.
3. Increase your running efficiency. That is reduce the number of calories it takes to cover one mile. This is something is not greatly understood, but in general it seems that the more time you spend running the more efficient you become. When you get to mile 23 in a marathon your efficiency will make a huge difference. These workouts are every single run you do. From those three mile jogs barely faster than a walk to everything else.

These workouts should feel somewhat easy to recover from. That is to say that the day after a tempo or a long run there is a good chance that you could do another workout. These are the workouts that lead to the most long term development. There are thousands of people in the world that can run 5:30 pace per mile for an entire marathon, which is like 98% aerobic. There are millions of people in the world that can not run one 5:30 mile. The top athletes have demonstrated that pace can be an aerobic pace with enough training. If a person can run 5:30 pace miles for a marathon then with some anaerobic training they will most likely be able to run much faster for a 5k. Aerobic training is like the cake and anaerobic is the icing.

So how do you know your workout is effective? All aerobic paces are slow enough that at any time you should be able to start sprinting. Aerobic workouts do not run the sprint out of your legs like anaerobic workouts do. The classic team run is a perfect example. The team is out running together and when they come around the last corner all of the sudden a sprint for the finish is on and everyone has an extra gear. They had run most of the run at an aerobic pace and that last part they have all of that anaerobic capacity so sprinting for a few hundred meters is no problem. While you may not feel this is the case as the end of an aerobic workout a few minutes of rest followed by a sprint will result in a faster sprint than after an anaerobic workout.

A few numbers from Joe Vigil's book: the 10k is 90% aerobic and 10% anaerobic and the 5k is 80% aerobic and 20% anaerobic. So when considering what type of training to help you improve in your desired event, I would recommend that anything around 4 minutes or longer focuses on aerobic training over the course of a season. Which is to say for the six month long season that contains only six weeks of racing the majority of the workouts would ideally be aerobic. Considering a runner running seven times a week and doing two or three anaerobic workouts a week fits within the idea of mostly aerobic running.

Is your workout effective? Part 1: Anaerobic Workouts

When I was younger I would often wonder if my workouts were effective at making me faster. Now I've been running long enough and read enough that I know when the workout is done if it was effective or not.

Anaerobic workouts are workouts run faster than a pace you can maintain for about one hour. This is often called speed work, repetitions or intervals. In general this is 5k race pace, 10k race pace, mile race pace, or 3k race pace type of running. What is occuring is that lactic acid is accumulating in your legs faster than it is being flushed out. Now lactic acid alone is not a bad thing. For a trained person the body will respond to lactic acid by working to use it and flush it out so that it is possible to maintain a fast pace longer.

The goal of anaerobic workouts are two things:

1. Teach your body to accumulate lactic acid and flush it out so that you can maintain a fast pace longer by flushing more of the lactic acid out as it comes in. This is accomplished running intervals and repetitions where it is usually possible to run farther than the race distance at race pace. For example 6 x 1000 meters at 5k pace.
2. Teach your body to use as much aerobic respiration as possible so that there is less accumulation of lactic acid. This is accomplished through long repetitions or short tempos. For example a 5k tempo at 10k pace. Every distance event from the 1500 meters on up is mostly aerobic.

Anaerobic workouts should feel like your legs are going faster than your lungs can handle. Near the end of the workout your legs should get heavy like they are made of lead. There comes a point when your legs have accumulated so much lactic acid that your speed slows down considerably because you can not accumulate any more lactic acid. This is "hitting the wall" in the shorter events. I have had a particularly hard time in the past with the 5k. I would often get two miles in at the pace I thought I should be running and then my legs were just too heavy and I slowed down. In my best races the feeling of too heavy legs to push any harder came in the last 400 meters. At that point there is so little left that it is not hard to get to the finish.

Lydiard suggested running anaerobic repetitions on a loop that you didn't know the distance, didn't time them, and not even counting how many you did. The reason being that you keep doing the workout until you get that feeling of lead legs like you encounter in a race. Fartleks are run on the same principle. (Fartlek is Swedish for "speed play" which means periods of fast running and periods of slower running.)

Now one final consideration of anaerobic workouts is race specific endurance. This is also known as sharpening. These are the workouts done in the last month or two before the goal race. For these workouts running on a track or loop of a known distance and timing them is important. These workouts are used to judge what pace you should be racing at your goal event. That is to say that if you can not run 4 x 400 at 65 seconds in practice chances are low that you will run 4:20 for a mile. Although factors such as running alone versus in a pack, running on dirt instead of a rubber track, running at altitude, and even accumulated stress such as weekly mileage can be taken into account when deciding on race pace and how much race pace specific work needs to be completed.

The feelings that should occur during these workouts are something along the lines of very heavy legs, hard breathing, and a generally unsustainable feeling of running. Anaerobic workouts are like a slow sprint that keeps going. It starts out feeling awesome to run as fast you are running. However it soon enough becomes a difficult endeavor. The fun wears off as breathing becomes harder and your legs get heavy. The workout has accomplished it's goal when so much lactic acid has accumulated in the legs that it can not be flushed out in a reasonable time. For example, if the workout is 400 meters hard and 200 meters jog repeated, the first few will feel easy, then several will go by with a sort of glaze without talking or much thinking, then near the end the last 50-100 meters of the 400s will feel harder. The last 400 of the workout ends with the legs more heavy than any of the previous 400s. However, the actual time of the 400 may range from the fastest of the session to the slowest by a few seconds.

The workout should not be extended to the point where the pace is more than 5% slower than desired. In fact, any more than 2% slow, excepting for weather and other conditions, is cause for concern. Sometimes a workout needs to end early when the paces are just not being hit. Stress, lack of sleep, and other emotional factors can greatly affect running. 

Colder than the Girls

A few days ago I had a totally unique experience. A first time experience. I was driving my van with an athletic girl riding shotgun. About 15 minutes in my fingers and toes were still cold and she asked if I could turn the heat off. I did immediately and smiled to myself that I had won... against myself.

You see women generally get colder faster than men. I think they have more nerve endings close to the surface of their skin. In the past few weeks I've been riding in cars with some boys and they turn the heat off way too early and I start shivering. No joke. So having a woman the same age as me, one that is in shape too, tell me to turn the heat off was a victory in the war on fat.

When you show up at road races that offer decent money you will probably see the Kenyans wearing track suits and stocking hats and maybe even gloves even if it is in the 60s or 70s. They have so little fat they get cold very quick.

Since 2006 I have gradually gotten more and more in shape and lost fat little by little. the last five months I have gotten into the best shape of my life. A few days ago I was coughing because I was sick and I happened to look in the mirror with my shirt off at the same time. I saw a muscle that I had never noticed before. It was diagonal and on the side of my stomach. I didn't even know it was there.

I don't mean to be vain and brag but this was pretty exciting. I've never considered myself one to have a six pack or even someone with muscles that you can see. This kind of changes things. I think it is in part because I have been drinking skin milk the last month instead of 1% and those two gallons per week have contributed to losing that next quarter of a percent fat. Also I feel that just living at altitude your heart and lungs are working harder so you burn more calories in the average day than at sea level. I guess the consistent 90+ mile weeks for four months help too.

One of the side effects of this is that it has motivated me to do more core workouts because I'll probably see the results quickly. In fact, on a per minute basis, I think that core workouts and lifting weights does more for my running than running. Just an hour of hard cross training per week goes a long way.

It's just so exciting! It's like when I go to the gym and I can tell when girls check me out. That has not happened my whole life and I like it. On a side note, this whole exercising thing that I do, that's not going away anytime soon. I do plan to cut back a lot when I get older and have more fulfilling commitments like a wife and kids but then again 50 miles a week would be cutting back a lot.

Men in general reach their athletic peak at age 27 and marathon runners often peak later with Haile G setting the current world record at age 35 and Meb winning the most recent NYC marathon at age 34. The reason they peak later is the accumulated aerobic conditioning over those years which translates to half a minute or a minute for elite runners. The point is that if I'm getting in better shape so quick at age 23, how much better will I get?

I should point out one final thing. Losing weight is only good to a point. There are very dangerous and life threatening consequences to becoming too light. Due to some experiences in my past I will never get too skinny. I have seen how eating disorders destroy lives and thus I error on the side of having an extra pound. I like eating too.

Dealing with Altitude

I have gone to moderate and high altitude a number of times. When I say altitude I mean like 8,000 feet or more or 2500 meters for the rest of the world. I handle altitude very well, I think. I have gotten altitude sickness a number of times like going from 6,000 to 11,000 feet in one day or trying to sleep above 20,000. However, I have never been so sick that I threw up or couldn't do things for myself unlike the experiences of many of my friends. In fact I have dealt with altitude so well that it's hard to describe how great I felt at 23,000 feet this summer. I was hungry. I ate everything in the tent that looked appetizing. That is not supposed to happen. People are supposed to lose their appetite at high altitudes. I also made the hike from camp two to camp three fairly fast. Still twice as slow as the fastest time from camp two to three that I have heard of, but faster than many.

All of that being said trying to run at altitude is hard. I did my first workout on a track Thursday at altitude, specifically 7200 feet. I ran 200s because one third of the track was iced over and I couldn't safely run farther. Anyway I was able to run the 200s within a second or two of what I would be running at sea level. That was not the problem though. when I jogged back to the starting line I would jog far slower than at sea level and never really get my breathing under control. In another example I was running a hard aerobic effort Tuesday in Denver on a treadmill. The pace I was running is one that is not terribly hard for me, except for running it at 5300 feet. As I ran the treadmill stopped at one point and asked to take my heart rate. I was thumping at 185. That is somewhat harder than what my heart should be beating at that pace. Yet both times my legs have not really gotten tired, I just can hardly breathe.

I know from limited reading that it takes three weeks for human bodies to start making more red blood cells, which in turn carry more oxygen, which in turn makes it possible to perform better at altitude. So two weeks into my new home at 7500 feet I still have not adjusted and am running nearly a minute per mile slower than normal for many of my runs. However, I remain hopeful that this physical stress will contribute to faster race times down the road.

How to Acclimate: For Athletes (Part 2 of 2)

In the first part of this series I mentioned a few ways that people could adjust to higher altitude. Today I will suggest some details that help the process move along.

When I say athletes I only mean people doing something physical. That could be a few days of hiking or skiing it doesn't have to be a competitive sport. In my experience at altitude people can often react very negatively to the change in altitude. In fact the only place I have seen people throw up is after the first day of backpacking when they ascended too fast. So all of the suggestions from yesterday stand. Just because you think you are trained better than an average person doesn't mean you can ascend faster. So here are some additional recommendations.

1. Be patient. It takes three weeks before your body produces the extra red blood cells to allow you to transport the limited oxygen. I believe there are other changes as well that occur within the first month so it is important to remember that just because you feel better on day four than day two doesn't mean you are acclimated yet.
2. Don't compare the quality of a workout directly to the same one performed at sea level. In 2002 I was hiking up the north ridge of Mt. Elbert. There is a plateau at about 13,500 feet that is nearly flat and about half of a mile long. It took me an entire hour to walk that half mile. At sea level I could probably crawl a half mile in an hour. What I'm saying is that that half mile at 13,500 feet is not the same as a mile at 500 feet. Comparisons can be made to workouts at altitude and those at sea level but that comparison should also rely on how the workout felt, if it was harder, easier or about the same as something at a lower altitude. Then it is up to the athlete to decide if it felt better or worse, as in where is an ideal training location.
3. Get your rest! Recovery is harder at altitude because there is not enough oxygen to use for repairing your body. After exercise there are micro-tears in your muscles and they heal faster when there is more oxygen available.
4. Eat! I think that it just takes more calories to sustain life at higher altitudes than it does at lower altitudes. This could be because you heart and lungs are working harder to keep you alive. So you may need to consume some extra calories, or end up losing weight.

Pretty simple and pretty effective.

The purpose of slow runs after hard runs

Totally a running post today. So you go out and do a hard workout or a 23.4 mile long run and your legs are trashed. Instead of taking the next day off you decided to double (run twice) the next day. Why would this help at all? It seems this would ruin your body not make it better. Well, here's my take:

1. By doing a workout and running the next day you teach your body to be hungry and store up all the glycogen it can. This is repeated every day but it is most noticeable on the day after a long workout. If you plan to race longer races like the marathon you can't afford to fake it. It is important for your body to store up as much energy as possible. So your body anticipates being depleted of glycogen and uses more fat to offset that. In other words your metabolism becomes more efficient and your gas tank is bigger.
2. Unless you are sprinting full out you are not using 100 percent of your muscle fibers. So when you do a hard workout and use the same 40 percent of your muscles they get tired. When you run later that day or the next day your brain tries to reduce the stress on your muscles and recruits some of the other 60 percent to do some of the work. If you can distribute the work amongst even a few dozen more muscles fibers that will help you go faster. Benji Durden suggested doing a long run of over three hours and then running another half hour later that day to get used to spending time on your feet. Same concept but honestly, that's sounds pretty pretty tough, I can 't wait to try it!
3. Although it seems there is not much proof of this, if at all, a slower run after a hard workout works to flush the legs of waste. Not sure if I believe this one but I do know that for some reason I usually feet better after a shorter and slower run. If not immediately then the next day.

(This is all part of my secret plan to get my friends that are competitive runners to run more miles. I mean that's really the basis of it. To get better at running you have to run. But don't tell them because they might get offended that they aren't working hard enough.)

Overtraining

Now I've read about overtraining and I've watched it happen. It is not the number of miles you run or the number of hours you train. You can most likely train a whole lot harder than you ever have before. When I have seen it or experienced it in the past it has been from several recurring themes:

1. Never taking it easy. As a runner when your off day is an hour of biking or swimming and then a little lifting and your off season is less than a week you are flirting with burnout. Many very dedicated athletes train 40 hours a week but have a serious off season where their cortisol or adrenaline or whatever really gets a chance to rest.

2. School or work or personal life drama consume you. Attending a difficult engineering school caused my friends and I to stress out about important projects several times and performances to just plummet. 

3. Ramping up training too fast. Injuries happen this way too. One week you're running 30 miles a week, the next it's 50, and then 70 and then you get injured or feel tired all the time.

So train hard and take it easy! 

I'm on their website for Pakistan

Field Touring Alpine put me up on their website! I am on their team page just under all the guides. 

When I wrote my description I put down everything I had done that makes me experienced but after reading the other descriptions I kind of want to crawl in a hole. I mean one guys just wrote seven summiteer. I'm talking about 13ers and pitches of rock climbing and another guy mentions 150 first ascents.

On the upside I did an 11a and 10c at central rock last night. I also cruised two 9s and led a 10 and 9 and fell off of both while clipping the next bolt, so I had two fun 10 foot falls. I tried a 12 but fell off. about 10 feet up and could not get back going. then I almost had another 11 but about 30 feet up i fell and could not get going again. It was probably my last hard rock session. 

Harrington Buildering

I did some buildering on Harrington auditorium last night. It is a brick building on campus and it has these bricks  that are all odd shapes and stick out and make perfect flat 1 cm crimpers.

I started off by going to the back of harrington under the stairs and doing the right side which I've done before and is about V1. Then I tried to do the left side which I've tried several times unsuccessfully. Well this time I got up as high on the bricks as I could and then did a layback and managed to get a hand up and then I could pull and swing my body up over the "roof" of the stairs. I'll put it at V2 because it's more technical (harder layback) and more strenuous (worse feet at the overhang).

Now that I was all pumped up and nobody was around campus so I went to the wall by the entrance way into the basement of Harrington. There are three obvious routes here. One on the far left by the gray water streak. One about eight feet from the left on obvious holds but with a gap in the middle of the wall. Finally on the right side of the door about four feet to the right of the pull up bars there is a huge jug route. It was the only route on that wall I topped out on and I put it at V0. I even used the pipe and I'm sure it could be done without the pipe but without a crash pad over asphalt when my feet are seven feet off the ground I'll cheat. I finished off the night by doing some dynos from the bricks to the higher pull up bar and trying the two routes on the left side of the wall. I think the route on the far left is probably the easier of the two. It just involves small feet where as the middle route has big step ups. 

The one question I'm left with is: how hard is strait brick wall climbing? I mean there are lots of micro slopers which I'm prone to call 5.12 because I've never climbed 5.12 but they are so small and quite sloping that I would believe 5.13 or 5.14. If anyone can say from experience or a link to an article let me know.

My history of sports

I'm going to do a post about my involvement in sports and the different phases I have gone through. I'll probably do the same with career choices, extracurricular, and school later.

It began with baseball. I've seen videos of myself sitting on the floor of our apartment before I could walk or run swinging a bat to hit the wiffle ball my parents rolled across the floor. I also remember when we lived in Ohio I liked to go to the local park and sometimes run up or down the hill. Mostly down the hill. We also had squirt gun fights a few times although losing and getting soaked brought me to tears a few times. The was also the hide and go seek tag which I've played who knows how many times and that always involves running. Without talking to my parents and looking through old videos that's about it for Ohio life.

When we moved to St. Louis I expanded my horizons and played army a lot which meant lots of walking around and some running here and there. I also learned to ride a bike. Being so small I had this tiny red bike and honestly I saw it a few years ago and I was amazed that anyone that little would be able to ride a bike. Many of my friends were also into roller blading and I hung out with kids that were older than I and I'm not a big person so finding sporting equipment was often a challenge. I remember getting my first pair of rollerblades. We went to a few different stores but just could not find anything for a six year old. Finally at one store just before it was going to close we found this three wheel on each boot pair that fit with a brake on each boot. So I was able to rollerblade but then we played hockey as well so my dad found a hockey stick in the trash who knows where and cut the end off so it fit me.  Another interesting little story is that in St. Louis we went out at night in the winter a few times to this drain that would freeze over and chop the ice with hammers and put it in buckets. I also helped build my first snow cave one winter.

One story that sticks out is that one day at recess we got to play on the big kids playground and they had a track painted on the pavement 16 or 20 laps to the mile and my friend and I wanted to see if we could walk a mile during recess so that's all we did for the entire recess. I think we missed it by only a few laps. I haven't thought about this stuff in years and it's funny to think that I've been trying to see how far I could go since I was six or seven.

When I lived in Enid Oklahoma I was introduced to soccer. There were only three people on the field on each team at any given time.  I think I did ok because I remember playing a lot and not as much sitting on the bench. I also remember the cold days and people using hand warmers but I was not cold enough to need them. 

In Buffalo Oklahoma I played baseball. They had no soccer team. I played the outfield which got boring because unless something is hit your way there's not much to do. It was fun and I played two or three years but after one season of the pitching machine I was out because it was so scary. This ball flies at 50-60 miles an hour right toward you and even when I did hit it the bat shook in my hands so much that it kind of hurt. So I retired from baseball. We also had a basketball team of six people which was most of the boys in our grade. I got a fair amount of playing time and it was always fun to go to games because our whole team fit in a suburban and it was like an hour drive and I like long drives. We also played a lot of games in PE and got to run around a lot. Once we played football so long that we missed 40 minutes of our next class. We had boys and girls PE separate so you get us playing a game and the competition just kind of escalates.

While there we had at least one track meet where we traveled to another school and I remember running the 800 and coming in near the middle or end of the field but still beating a lot of people. 

Finally only once while we lived in Oklahoma my family took a trip to Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park. We went camping for the first time and hiking as a family and had a blast. I vividly remember hiking to emerald lake or whatever the highest lake below flattop mountain and hallets peak is and eating lunch on a big rock and staring at the vertical cliffs and mountains so high above. 

When we moved to Sabetha I went into seventh grade and at that age they started to take sports more seriously. I skipped football because I didn't want to get hurt. I played basketball and scored two points all season. I ran track and was one of maybe 2-3 distance runners. I ran the 1600 because it was the longest event they had for 7th graders. I also distinctly remember watching an 8th grader run a 5:01 1600 and set the school record. It was so impressive. I also went to summer camp at Spanish Peaks that summer and did the hiking merit badge and was never the slowest even with a 20 mile hike that we did on the last day. It was great fun because it took like 12 hours and I totally wasn't prepared for a 20 mile hike. My backpack and water bottles were all wrong and uncomfortable. My family took a vacation after that through Wyoming and Montana and South Dakota. I out hiked my mom for the first time on Avalanche Peak in Yellowstone. So now I was the most athletic in the family.

In eighth grade things started to change. I still did basketball and scored 10 points in the whole season. I was still in PE and got to try a bunch of different sports from wrestling to archery. But in track they finally let us run the 3200. I didn't do too well and often got beat by this one really good girl but never the less I scored points a few times and we had a new kid that also liked to run the long distances and having him there would push me to try and be better even though he lapped me a bunch.

In high school I was always bored after school during the fall of my freshman year so I began riding my mountain bike on this 16 mile out and back route. Sometime in September or October someone finally told me about cross country because I had no idea it even existed. I did track that year. I vividly remember the first day of practice. We ran 4-5 miles I ran 5 miles with the really good runner on our team and the two other freshmen on the track team and it was the farthest I had ever run at one time. I had blisters and I was dead. The three of us sat there on the freshman side of the locker room just in a daze because in middle school we did maybe 3-4 miles total in a long practice here the first day we did five miles. It was a shock. I think I ended up running like a 12:36 3200 and still got beat by the same girl. She was state champion a few times I think so it was really just inconvenient she was in our league. Also in our region but not our leage were these two sisters Amy and Emily Mortimer who I never raced but I saw Emily the younger sister race and she was quite a bit faster than I. We also had a runner on our team that year that was really good as in 4:20s miler and 9:something two miler. He won state in both the mile and 32 and competed at state in the 800 but was too tired to take it seriously so he jogged it. He went off to a junior college and had some success then got injured and had a fight with the coach and I have no idea if he even runs any more.

My sophomore year I did cross country. Somewhere in my brain I'm sure this season changed me. I opened with a 22:02 I think for a 5k and over the season brought it down to 19:09 I think. But the important fact is that on a team of about 10 guys I was 4-5 so I was one of he scorers. I had never been a varsity scorer so to have some importance on the team was great. Our team ended up getting 3rd at regionals and going to state but I got badly sick and even though I ran at state I didn't score so we had a bad day in 2001. Another highlight of that season was regionals i can through the two miles in 11:54 and it was the first time I had broken 12 in the 2 mile. I think that's the race I PR'd in. Also that season I began logging my miles on Million Mile Ultra Run. That includes run and walked and I started from the day I found the website so the end of September 2001. Also during xc that year I did the Multiple Sclerosis 150 mile bike ride in Septemeber which was 90 miles one day and 60 the next. Pretty crazy a 15 year old riding a bike that long and feeling good enough to go to practice Monday. I came back in better shape then I left. After cross country that year I felt good and wanted a new challenge because I didn't want to play basketball or wrestling and after spending 3-5 every day practicing it was hard to not go running. Over Thanksgiving break that year I planned to run to Bern where my mom worked which was just about 13.1 miles. I was planning to run there, eat lunch at the special Thanksgiving meal they were having a run back. When I got to Bern two hours after i started there was obviously no running back. So my dad drove me home after lunch.

After the pain of that run went away I still wanted to run so I found a half marathon from Topeka to Auburn. I had learned from the internet that marathons beat up your body so I didn't want to hurt myself and a half sounded challenging enough. I just ran some and come race day I ran and I don't remember any splits but my time was 1:35 something and I was dead at the finish. I think I cried. Before they let me leave with my mom some woman gave me hot chocolate with extra sugar and it was amazing. It took a while before I was recovered and wanted to run again but that year in track I PR'd again in the 16 and 32. I think I ran on a 4x8 that year too. 

That summer I did my three week long ROCS trek at Philmont and then tried to hike the two highest mountains in Colorado and kind of did it with a total of two peaks over 14,000 and 8600 feet of elevation and 15 miles in about 14.5 hours from 3:30 AM to 6 PM (two hours after I told my family they should start worrying about me).

Junior year more of the same. I got to 18:33 in cross country. I was number three runner on a team with only five people until our top runner got an IT band injury and we didn't have the depth to even score at league and at regionals with all five of us we didn't do well enough to go to state. I did the bike ride again only I did 100 miles the first day so I could get a little patch. I did the half marathon again and ran 1:27:52 and won the 19 and under age group. This is in part due to learning from the internet how to better train. On Friday I would do a long run 8-10 miles and on Tuesday I would run 800 at sub 3:00 pace. My best session was 10x800 at 2:52 to 2:58. It ended up being my first win of any kind. In track I had my best season of 5:03 in the mile and 11:06 in the two. While I would run 5:06, 5:07, and 11:12, 11:18 in high school i wouldn't break either barrier. 

My senior year we had a strong team and got 7th at state which was the best our school had ever done on the men's side as far as I know. Our women's team won the thing. I ran a 18:26 which I attribute to doing Yoga almost every night. Our coach also drove us to the breaking point that season. We had done 6 AM doubles in the past but this year we were doing four 6 AM practices, five after school practices and practice on Saturday. We eased off as the season went along but it was too much. People were falling asleep at the dinner table. I was routinely going to bed at 9 PM. I mean we did win league ( I think) and regionals ( I know) so we ran well but at what cost? I did the bike ride that year and got a yellow jersey for doing it three years but in the winter after xc I had no motivation to run I would try but just feel so run down so I didn't do the half marathon. During track I tried to run fast but 11:18 and 5:06 were also that I could muster. I walked off the track after the 3200 and my friend and i just hugged and cried because it was over. I never thought I would run a track race again. 

I continued running after the school year for fun and did a race the Fire Cracker 5k July 4th and then took 6 months off with not a single step of running. When I started to get back into running in January it was slow but after two months I had to join the track team at WPI because of the team aspect and my competitive nature needed an outlet. The rest is in the WPI archives of my very slow freshman season followed by summers at altitude and finally higher mileage with my first 70 mile week spring break my sophomore year and then KERPLOW I ran really fast and her I am.