An accidental cross trainer...no more!

This weeks “Take it and run Thursday” from Runners Lounge is about cross training, no not running about in a state of angriness that’s another post altogether but the oft acknowledged but then completely overlooked art of complimentary training to your running. Now I confess that my history in this field is somewhat accidental, without any real effort I found myself cross training and now with hindsight I can see the benefits that it brought to my sport.

While I have run on and off for years I have also been a frequent cyclist, either on the road or on the trails, in fact for four years or so my mountain bike and I traveled many of the trails in the Santa Monica mountains that I now find my self running. In between cycling I would run and so without any real conscious effort on my part I was cross training. Looking back, apart from the injuries caused by impact; head on rock, knee on bush, hands on trail and the like; I was actually “injury” free for that whole period of time. Last year when I was down with ITB issues my PT was happy for me to jump on my bike and put in the miles of course as I came out of the injury pipeline into recovery biking fell by the wayside and running took the main stage again and like a dolt I forgot a lot of the important lessons that I had learned. Well if the definition of an idiot is someone who is doomed to repeat their mistakes over and over then that was me as I went down in March with ITB problems…again. This time I was able to manage the problem and stop it in its tracks allowing me to complete my 'A' race for the spring but it was a close call.

Now there are not too many training programs that take you to 50 miles and beyond as a runner and so when I found myself constructing mine for my fall 'A' race I made sure to include a large proportion of miles dedicated to cross training, in my instance cycling and core body workouts which addresses not only the core but many of the joints and stabilizing muscles, I actually have a ratio of around 1:1.3 run miles to bike miles for the plan and I work on my core 6 days a week

For me there are two benefits; mental and physical. Mentally; if you do enough of one thing you’ll get bored, a little variation keeps the blade sharp and interest level high, additionally the range on a bike is so much more than running; at least for now. Physically; the benefit to me in cycling is the balance it provides in developing the muscle groups in my legs. It’s probably incorrect to state that these muscles are running and those are cycling as they are all interconnected and work in conjunction with each other and additionally there are muscles in the core and upper body that are used in both sports but here we are talking about everything below the waist. The reality is that the main muscle groups used when running are your calves, hamstrings and glutes; with the hamstrings doing most of the work. If you think about it the hamstrings, calves and glutes are on the back of your leg, that’s because the motion of running is propelling or pushing. In addition to the above groups when you hop on your bike you start to incorporate the largest muscles in your legs, in fact they are the largest in you body; your quadriceps. The quads come into play when cycling as you are also pulling, they don’t play a role in running until you start running hills, this is when they come into their own, you may have heard people talking about their quads “being mashed” after a long downhill stretch taken at speed, so ignore them at your peril.

Now in addition to the main muscle groups in the legs there are lots of smaller interconnected stabilizing muscles that hold things together (like your hips, knees and ankles) as well as the ligaments and tendons etc that all play an important role and all need to have some attention levied at them; think balance and wobble boards, stretching plyometrics, core strengthening exercises and the like. Check out some of the books in the widget thing in the sidebar. While I profess to be no expert and this is all based on my experience and my second hand knowledge the benefits of cross training are a pretty well accepted standard, just look at the FIRST training program. You may want to know why I choose cycling over swimming which is a great alternative, the answer is simple I have the aquatic characteristics of a large stone!

The message here is run all the time and your will develop all the things that help you run and ignore all the rest. Cycle all the time, ditto. Mixing it up actually benefits you overall training, ignore it and you may end up injured, sidelined and just cross!

Samson night!

I am sure you may well be familiar with the tale of Samson and Delilah, where Samson’s strength is lost after Delilah’s servant cuts away his seven locks of hair. Well my day was somewhat the reverse, no Delilah or servant of hers but there was a haircut and strength gain. So yes I got my haircut, no real biggie there. This evening I was scheduled for an 8 miler, it was significantly cooler when I headed out just after 8pm. A chirp from my Forerunner and I was off, eight miles later and 1:02:45, a new training PR, I was done! Complete with the prerequisite negative splits, it went something like this: 7:35, 8:04, 8:13, 8:02, 7:44, 7:50, 7:47 & 7:21. Not super fast compared to others but it’s been quite a while since I threw down such a run and I was just happy enough to have it in the bag; hence the post’s title.

Have you ever had one of those days?

Mothers Day came a day early in our house, my wife had planned a hike with her Mt Whitney partner and headed out yesterday at 7am returning dusty and happy around three in the afternoon. So this morning I picked up the reins and headed out, not before fulfilling my MD duties and providing breakfast for everyone and having a quick tidy up, you know how Sunday mornings are!

I was looking forward to getting out on the roads and giving the new wheels a road test. The ride started in the fashion that it was to continue in, at least the first half did, hence the post title; my back light fell off! After I had picked up the pieces, reassembled it and put it back on I started off again. Four miles later I realized I had left my water bottles behind! I stopped at a gas station and picked up a couple of bottles of water. I was only planning a short ride; my legs were feeling heavy from the week so I decided to do a usual 40 mile loop that is a good benchmark on time/fitness. I’ve ridden this ride quite a few times, it’s a nice combination of some rolling hillwork, a good flat section and then a solid climb through a canyon, my best time is 3:08 so I was hoping to shave a few minutes off and finish it around the three hour mark.

The cloud was low and moody and the sky looked like it was a pile of wet washing, I pulled out my camera to take some pictures on the go and managed one photo (see above) before the batteries went flat. Despite all these minor irritations I was making good timing and the new wheels and crankset seemed to allow me to up the ante by 2-3 mph and instead of cruising in the high teens I found myself rolling along in the early twenties. I notched off the first 16 miles in around an hour, not bad for an elevation gain of 1845’.

The ride is basically a square with a tail and I was on the third side which follows the Pacific Coast Highway, despite the traffic this can be a fairly flat and fast section and I hoped to make up some time, I rode past Malibu Lagoon and that was where trouble struck; roadworks, not just digging up the road but resurfacing it and I found myself in the middle of the process, where they have roughly removed to top layer and had scored it with so many grooves and pits that my eyes were nearly shaken out of my head! My speed bled away and I found myself tooling along at 10 mph, hmm, the worst mile in this section took over six minutes! Finally after several boneshaking miles I was back on the old blacktop and I pushed through the few remaining miles watching a pod of dolphins swimming south parallel to the shoreline, before making the penultimate turn into the climbing side of the square; Topanga Canyon. This climb is familiar to me and I wondered if the increased range on my cassette 12-27 versus my old 12-25 would make any difference. I cleared the heaviest of the climb 1459’ in four miles in just over 23 minutes, which shaved a few minutes of past rides; the extra range seemed to help as I could just sit still and push up the hill in a steady effort (my HR averaged around 140 for the total 10 miles of climbing), and then cruised through the rest of the canyon, another 1300’ making it to top by 2:26 for a total of 33.5 miles. I span down the backside and pushed hard to get home within the three hour mark making it to my driveway in 2:55:35, for a total elevation gain of 6207’ and 3412 calories; that should help with the 8 or so pounds I want to loose!

So despite a rough start it all came good, the new bike parts performed flawlessly and I know that had I not had the rocky road middle section I would have been even faster, but hey I have to save something for later.

Prep week

I studied up on Mark Vestegen’s Core Performance Endurance last week and this week I have been going through the exercises in a dry run before starting training proper next week. The foundation of the program broken down into three elements; Power, Strength and Regeneration. Power days comprise three exercise; Movement Prep (think stretching) Prehab (think core workout) and Elasticity (think pylometrics) units along with Energy System Development (ESD, basically intervals dictated by heart rate zones). Strength days consist of Movement Prep which focuses on developing mobility and stability and ESD which builds cardio strength. The last element is Regeneration which is about active recovery and involves stretching and foam rollering and also has part specific areas; knees, hips, back etc.

I will be the first to admit the program is pretty confusing to start with and to be honest this is probably why I picked it up the book last year and put it back down again. This time I persevered and this week I have gone through the “floor exercises” and avoided the ESD, just to get a feel for them and figure out what is what. The nice thing is that they while they are prescribed you can push them to own limits, and already there are some things that I can do better than others; I can hold a Pillar Bridge Front for 2 x 1 minute, but struggle to hold a Lateral Pillar Bridge for 2 x 30 seconds. Some of the stretches I am familiar with and some of them are new along with the self massaging techniques both of which take a little time and effort to get correct. The nice thing is that there is a website where you can register and get a weeks free trial and have access to a library of videos showing you how to execute the move. I am still in the process of pulling together the training plan in terms of mileages etc and will have that complete in the next day or so. I need to incorporate 30 minutes of this Core Program into my total workout time per day, this already gives me 3 plus hours worth of training before I even put on my running shoes or get on my bike. The idea here is that I will work through the first 8 weeks and see how I feel before deciding on which race; Mt Disappointment or the Sierra Nevada Endurance Run.

On the shoe front, I might have made a breakthrough and have been walking about this week in a pair of Salomon XT Wings, (in sexy sorbet sherbet orange, that's my marketing genius at work!) and while they initially felt a little loose and the Kevlar lacing took some time to get used to, they seem to bedding in quite nicely. I’ll be taking them for a trail spin this weekend, failing that I did manage to score a pair of Montrail Continental Divides off the 'net for $40.00, that's a 65% discount, so fingers crossed that one of these will work; I really would like to get this shoe thing sorted out.

Back to business...

A week has passed and I have now regained the use of my legs, the Sunday after race day was an interesting proposition I considered removing the tray from our youngest's high chair and using it as a Zimmer frame but didn’t in the end, oh the shame! I have also picked up a delightful “pack of cigarettes a day cough”, that gave everyone much entertainment as I reeled about in hacking fits which were muted by non functioning muscle groups. My assumption here was that my immune system had just thrown it’s hands up in despair, although it could, I suppose, be that my body was actually channeling an old age pensioner!?!

Going out for dinner Sunday night as a family proved more entertaining for the restaurant patrons, then I, as they pretended not to watch as I groaned and grimaced while sitting down to and getting up from the table. It was beyond fortunate that we live in a ranch style hours with minimum stairs as they proved, shall we say, challenging up until Wednesday as did getting in and out of the car, still I have no one to blame but myself. With hindsight I should have endured a little more pain on the finish line instead and gone through an extended stretching routine rather than the “ow it hurts, it hurts, that’s enough!” one, so let’s call that lesson #1, I’ll list the others below.

2. Think about the mileage your bag will be at when packing it; I packed it pretty well with “may need” items but on the day what I really needed was a fresh tasting drink, the Amino Vital around mile 42 would have helped earlier in the race along with more of it at that station
3. On the drink front I need to find and way of freshening up Perpetuem; maybe mixing it with a gel will help, I just read that you can mix the gels to get extra flavors; raspberry/chocolate or vanilla/coffee, sounds like a fun night in?
4. I need to try the Perpetuem paste theorem; here you fill a small, think 6 oz bottle, full of Perpetuem in a batter consistency and then chase it with water, so maybe a handheld of water and one of drink would work, the problem is that to trial this you need 16+ mile runs
5. Ensure is a great source of calories but only take one bottle at a time; I think taking two at once caused my stomach sensitivity
6. My race vest is always heavy, it’s packed with all sorts of bits and pieces but most of the weight comes from the water, I could drop a lot of weight if I ditched the water.
7. I could actually ditch the whole vest on the last leg or switch to my lighter race vest, the same goes for out and backs where I pass through the same station twice
8. The Hammer products worked well but I need to be more consistent with them, I stopped taking them when my stomach was icky, around mile 30 and I should have least kept taking the Endurolytes, my face was caked with salt by the time I finished
9. Turn off the moving time function on my Forerunner and use the stopwatch one only; this threw off my timing calculations for the first 30 miles as I forgot to allow for the time lost at the stopping at aid stations

This week I have bee re-reading Mark Vestegen’s book Core Performance Endurance and I can see where there are a lot of chinks in my amour that this can fill. I have been looking at the races that are open for me later in the year and there are a couple of ones that appeal Mt Disappointment in August is one and the Sierra Nevada Endurance Run in September is another, the latter gives me an extra 6 weeks so it has more attraction and it also gets me onto the trails of WSER which is not a bad thing either. But first I need to address the ITB and core. So for the next 6-8 weeks I’ll be laying the foundations for those and working on my running base with the remaining time working up to race day. I am going to tear apart my last training program and redesign it, as mentioned previously it’s too long for me and it needs to be paired down, I’ll post it once I have put it together. I’ve enjoyed the week off, kind of, but now it’s back to business!

Shhh don’t tell…

Robin, Doug, Audrey or Zanne or the several others who are suffering from early season injuries, but I’ve been running.

I didn’t make it out Tuesday night but got runs in on both Wednesday and this morning, nothing fantastic in either distance or pace but they were all pain free and once the cobwebs were blown away things were bedding in quite nicely. All three runs were on the treadmill so it’s not really a fair representation of what’s going to happen once I get outside let alone on the trails but it’s nice to get the legs turning over. I am of course I am over listening but things seem to be pretty good. My glutes and TFLs are a little tight but some stretching and rolling should work that out. Here are the highlights, interesting to note that my running cadence is pretty close to my cycling one, coincidence...maybe?

Tomorrow I am on the bike and then Saturday I have the Great Race half marathon and the family run with my eldest, I think it's a quarter mile so I should beat him (j/k). It's his first fun run, he was sick for the last one and he's super excited, he has his running outfit and shoes and everything is "all special". I actually thought it was the next day and had I not got a reminder email it would have been a very lonely Sunday morning! I picked up my race packet today and got a nice bag thing and the usual shirt although this was a technical one, but wait a minute, black c'mon this is southern California, black shirt, are you kidding me, have you never heard of reflection! Anyway I was able to replace last years shirt (in white!) which got a lovely tear in it from a thorn bush sometime during the last 12 months.

Distance wise it’ll be a bit of a jump from two weeks of nothing to a bit of running this week, oh well, in for a penny as they say.

Everybody's doing it so why can't I?

It seems that everywhere you turn in the blogosphere there are pictures of blossom, well not one to miss the band wagon and now that we have had the first day of spring, here are a couple of snaps from our back yard. The first is on the bank behind us, it's open land that leads up to a State Park, not possessing green fingers in fact I have to admit they are downright brown, I have no idea what the plant is but it is over every hillside at the moment giving everything a gold hue.

The second photo is off one of the many varmints to be found in our yard, he's actually standing on a regular sized brick so he's not quite as man eating as he seems, along with the gecko populous we have million or so rabbits, there are days when it's like living on the film set of Watership Down, and squirrels, but it's not too bad between the owls, coyotes and rattlesnakes, all of which have been in the yard at one time or another, the animal population is self regulating...such is the nature of things.

On a running note, I hopped on the treadmill for a 20 minutes session this morning, I was certainly not setting the world alight but it's a start, my knees took a mile of so to remember running but seemed ok after that, I hope to repeat it again tonight for another 3 miles or so.

New kicks...not, the tale of the illpositioned lug!

So after a long chat with the folks at Road Runner Sports about what shoes to get for trail running, my Asisc 2120 (Trail) are on their last legs, I decided on a pair of Merrell Overdrives, much to my annoyance, every size except mine was on sale! It’s a conspiracy I tell you! The good news is that I live, in relative terms, close to their shipping center so they arrived within 36 hours, oh good though I in time for the weekend. I cracked the box and immediately got to inhale that new shoe smell, you know it’s like new car smell but it’s gone after only ten miles. I pulled out the insoles and fitted my othotics inside and slipped them on, left foot; toe room - check, no heel - rub check, snug fit - check, right foot; toe room - check, no heel rub - check, snug fit - check, I stood up, what was this a stone in them? Right in the middle of my toes in my right shoe a stone, I slipped them off and check, nope no stone, put them back on and walked around a bit, their aggressive sole pattern squeaked on the floor and there it was again, I looked at the sole thinking maybe something was stuck in the grip but nope nothing, I walked around some more, same issue. I had another look at the sole, a lug! Right in the middle of the where my toes end there is a lug that is pushing back up through the shoe into my foot! I checked my wife’s pair and they have changed the sole pattern, hers is much more uniformed. Grr, back in the box and back to the drawing board! Next stop Montrial Hardrock, fingers crossed.

I had to shuffle my rest day around from Friday to Wednesday, two sick children resulted in about 2 hours sleep on Tuesday night so I was banjaxxed all of Wednesday. On a positive note my Intervals are getting quicker; I managed four sub 7 minute miles yesterday; averaging a pace of 6:55, as is my Tempo run my 2 mile tempo pace averaged 7:25 which is a 16 second improvement over last week. Watch out Doug, I'm closing in!

Back to Back; Part 2 of 2

Yesterday was Part 2 in the first of my ten weekend back to back long runs. Using Doug’s suggestion of a faux rest day I waited till the end of the day before heading out. Unfortunately the end of the day came and went and the evening was well upon us by the time I was able to lace ‘m up, such is the joy of household with two small sick children who are merrily passing morphed germs back and forth. I quick look at the thermometer reveled a toasty 45f; time to wrap up. My plan called for three hours of running, conservatively that would be anything from 18 to 21 miles depending on pace. The route was a staple of mine around the local neighborhood with some long shallow hills. The first hour passed uneventfully apart from a couple of enthusiastic dogs, fortunately high fences kept them at bay and a couple of cellphone drivers, despite a headtorch, four flashing red lights, an orange vest and various reflective bits and bobs on my jacket and shoes etc, they just don’t see me, it’s not like I am a little guy either at 6’1”!

The second hour saw or drop in temperature and while legs did not feel too tired they were starting to feel cold, even with tights on. Discretion being the better part of valor I decided to start to head for home and a couple of miles later I was there. My pace wasn't great and I want to aim for 9 minute or less miles on Sundays, I averaged 9:34 but I was pleased with heart rate data with my average being 139 and my time in Zone 3 (130-148, an average of 139 or 74% of my max of 186) of 1:45:24, great for base building. Here are the numbers:

The weekend was a good start to the back to back ones that will last for the next two months; I was on my feet for over five hours and covered a little under 30 miles, fifty minutes less than my plan called for but I have adopted the 10% under rather than 1% over mantra. For the week I covered a little more than 50 miles, it's been a while since I had a 50 mile week so a good start all round.

Ongoing Boing!

Well yesterday’s go fast beans managed to loiter a second day, which I am glad to say was not something I was doing, as I put in my 4 x 1 mile intervals. I am always worried that because I have nowhere that’s really flat, go figure living in West Hills; clue's in the name! I am just not getting the quality of speed that I should, but I suppose the rolling road is not a bad thing, as you can see from the elevation profile (the green line) they’re not major hills but they're are just enough to push your average down, although I lucked out on the last rest period and nearly made it up the hill. I actually took the time to program the intervals into my Garmin instead of just relying on the mileage readout, so I had a nice little countdown beep telling me when to transition. The data is below; the average pace is skewed because of the warm up/cool down and the ¼ mile walk in between each mile run, the last one in particular is slow where I was messing about with my iPod under a street lamp, but in isolation it works out at 7:1025, so I am pretty pleased, although I would have really liked one sub 7 min mile, it looks like my predisposition to fast twitch fibers does help!

On another note, I totally scored at Cosco today, book publishers Human Kinetics have a series of books which illustrate what muscle does what when you weight train, do yoga and stretch. There really good in helping you find out how to isolate specific muscle groups etc. Usually you can only buy them on line for around $20 each and then you have to pay another $10 or so in shipping, well I found three excellent books; one on yoga and two on strength training one for men and one for women, (ignore their needs at your peril), I skipped the stretching one as I already have a great stretching book, by them in Cosco today for the bargain basement price of $11.99 each and obviously no shipping so that nets out to over a 50% discount. Gotta love a bargain; flash your card and check them out.

The Hills have ‘I’s Pt 2...I's losing my mind!

Last night was interval night and as per last week I ran the hill loop around my neighborhood, I knew I was going to be slower this week as despite my best efforts the holiday excess has taken a toll. More worrying was that I could not remember if I needed three loops or four; I would like to blame the alcohol but a glass and half of wine in a week is really not the culprit. Not to be one to scrimp I went for the latter. Whoops! The fourth lap was a killer and the time does not really illustrate the pain, but hey pain is just weakness leaving the body at least that’s what my old Sergeant Major used to tell me. The good news was that the downhill sections were faster but this I put down to the snowball effect, that is the rotund tum’ vs. gravity battle. Here are the numbers:


Tonight was Doug'sDay for tempo and I have my new tempo route but I also have the bodyaches /shivers/sore throat etc that precedes one of those stinker colds.

Honey & lemon, and off to bed! I'll pick up the slack tommorow.

Just how fast is fast enough?

Last week I concluded that my weeks training will now comprise a tempo run, a set of intervals and a long run, what I have been pondering since then is the pace that these runs should be at. The interval run is relatively easy to calculate as I have substituted running one mile track intervals for hill intervals and I have a baseline set of numbers from last week to measure and gauge my improvement against. However this left the tempo and long run.

After some research I have uncovered three sites; Runworks.com, Fasterrunning.com and McMillanRunning.com that provide equivalent distance pace calculations based on the input of your time and distance. Using my 5k time of 20:47 from the Santa Monica Classic in May this year I have been given the following paces for my tempo run and long run as well as predicted times for the half and full marathon.

The tempo pace is at the moment a little beyond me but it gives me a target to aim at, the long run is also quicker but only by 20 seconds per mile, the marathon race pace of 7:36 for a 3:21 finish is a challenge as that would shave 24 minutes off my marathon finish time of 3:45, obviously that’s nearly a mile a minute faster…but that’s the whole point, right! Interestingly my half marathon PR is just under 2 minutes slower the predicted finish time at 1:37:32.

On another note I registered for the Calico Trail 50k in mid January, I posted on the California Ultra Runner message board if anyone had any tips etc and got the reply that it would be windy or cold or both! Not quite what I was expecting but better than hot, I had a look at the projected weather for January and the average temperature is predicted to be 61f, the record is 77f, the average is just fine for me!

Finally wishing everyone everywhere and especially all my RBFs and their families a happy and safe holiday season.

The Hills have "I"s

Yes, “I” for Intervals!

So yesterday I ran hill intervals, I actually live halfway up a hill and there is a good loop that I can run around. My schedule called for 3 one mile intervals which I thought would translate into 3 loops…it didn’t. By the time I got to the bottom, the start point, and run two loops, plus a little bit extra to return an errant dog, who thought it would be fun to follow me, back to it’s owner, I was in for 3.8 miles so I called it a day after two, and cooled down with a brisk walk up the hill to home to round out on a total of 4.2 miles. I am concious of not over doing it and over training something I flirted with earlier this year. I get to do three loops next week.

So the ups were, well, up, pretty lung busting but not vom-inducing and the downs, once I had warmed up, gave my quads a pretty good workout. I was definitely getting faster on each lap which leads me to conclude that I really wasn’t leaving it all out there; something else to work on. I manually set laps on my Garmin as per the climbs and descents, they look like this:

The actually profile of the run gave me a pretty wavy line; this is of course a very technical term! See image above. Total ascent was 951 feet, the actual climb lasts 330 feet and as you can see it lasts just under three quarters of a mile.

So now I have a benchmark upon which to start improving against.

One minor milestone for this run, I broke the 1500 mile mark for the year!

As Maverick said to Goose...

So it rained here yesterday…a lot. The are two fundamental problems with rain in Southern California; the first is that the roads have little or no drainage so the water tends to sit in large puddles by the side of the road; where I run and the second is that the typical LA driver who is typing on their Blackberry, while sipping on a decaf chai skimmed extra hot with no foam latte, while tuning in the GPS, shouting at the kids in the back and not actually being able to see anything that is less than 7’ tall in their ‘lifted’ Escalade, likes to go into a complete state of panic when it rains. I am really not sure if this is because they seriously do not know how to drive in the wet or it’s because their car is getting dirty after spending $150 having it detailed...it's probably both!

Anyway what this meant was I was relegated to the treadmill. No problem thought I, my schedule called for 7 miles so it was going to be around an hour. I stretched and strapped on the usual gizmos; Garmin 305 and footpod and iPod/Nike+ and got going. Now during the last 5 months I have noticed that my pace has gotten slower and despite my gizmos I guess it had just not sunk in how slow I had actually become, it wasn’t until I glanced down at the dashboard that I realized I was plodding along at around a 9:30 mile! This is terrible I thought to myself, I increased the speed to 7mph or an 8:30 mile and to my surprise actually found that I had to work at it. I was shocked. The rest of the run I ran mile intervals between 8:30 and 9:30 with a penultimate mile of 7:41, with some aural support from the The Prodigy, until I had reached the target 7 miles, although my Garmin conked out at the 6.4 mark, I think I have a dicky USB port and it’s not charging it properly.

I checked back through my training log and specifically at the Santa Monica Classic 5k and The Wine Country Half Marathon I ran in May and the San Diego Marathon I ran in June; now while these were obviously at race pace I was shocked to see that the average pace for each of these races was: 6:38, 7:32 and 8:30 respectively and here I was struggling to maintain an 8:30 pace every other mile on a treadmill for only seven miles!

I really have no idea where this drop in pace has come from; maybe it’s the longer distances I am covering, maybe it’s the fact that I never got fast again after my injury or maybe it's something else but one thing is for sure if I want to complete the Leona Divide in under 10 hours I’ll need to work on my speed!

Tomorrow calls for mile intervals which really should be run on a track, the problem is the local High School track is being resurfaced so I think I will run hills instead and see what I can make of it…boy do I have some work to do!

I feel the need! Do you?

Monday night bible study!

Monday night saw the start of my Winter 2007/Spring training cycle. One of the benefits of Southern California climate is that the winter is actually a really good season to train in, whereas conversely during the summer it’s just too hot. It’s been a long time since I have seen the inside of a gym and lifted any weights, apart from those I was told to do during my PT. I decided to go “home-style” and scored a good deal on a bench and rack and picked up some weights locally as well so I now have a mini gym in my garage. I recent trip to Barnes & Noble uncovered a great book (click on the book and you can read it on Google Books) that contains all of the exercises that I think I need to work things in the upper, mid and lower range and after reading through the various variations I have come up with what feels like a good all round workout, additionally I also have a medicine ball which I throw around and some small cones; these are used for jumping over and around to work out my core.

I’ll not bore you (or embarrass myself) with the reps, sets and weights but the exercises are:

• Midsection: reverse woodchop, swiss-ball weighted crunch, a “Good-Morning”
• Chest & Upper Back: bench press, incline bench press, pronated bent-over row, supinated bent-over row, pullover
• Shoulders & Arms: military press, lying tricep extension, standing curl
• Lower Body: Back squat, lunge, step up, side step up, standing calf raise
  

As it was my first session in a long time, I paced myself but I still managed to feel it this morning!

First the what...now the how!

Well this is the plan, its a modified Hal Higdon Comrades' Ultramarthon plan. I have shortened it by six weeks to avoid over-training, something that I flirted with earlier this year, and much of what I have read has advised that it is better to be undertrained than overtrained. I have also increased the cross training to focus on my ITB and avoid any repeat injury.

The shading is not only to make it look pretty it will allow me to periodize the training and compare period vs. period in terms of power output on both the weights and the bike, I have been looking at CrossFit as a means of cross training so where it reads weights this will not be a pure play on lifting but will build in other exercises as well.

Not mentioned but built in is the stretching routine that I have developed, this is done pre and post run and ideally one other occasion per day. The final thing is the nutrition and hydration plan; I am 90% through reading the Paleo Diet for Endurance Athletes and a lot of what I have read sits very comfortably with me so I will be following the guidelines of that diet and see where it takes me with a review of things after a month.

A race-pace of 9:30 will seem a bit slow compared to the road miles pace I usually run; around 8:30, but I hope to actually be training on terrain similar to that on my 'A' race (American River or Leona Divide, probably the latter due to geography; I can drive to the start line in a hour), that is hills, hills and more hills, and given that the pace at the Pt Mugu was north of 13:00 per mile I am actually looking for a considerable increase in speed!

At least that's the plan...

Turning outside things in...

It’s funny how external things always affect you internally.

WARNING, the following contains a whole diatribe that pertains to Nike+ and the 1999 movie Fight Club staring Brad Pitt, Edward Norton and Helena Bonham Carter, if you do not know or have no desire to know what either is you can skip the next two paragraphs.

I am in, well was – I just won it, a Nike+ challenge with kangator, the premise, a product of the warped mind of PMag; the challenge host, is along the lines of Fight Club, that is, you challenge another member and you fight or in our case you run, or well, you don’t but then you will typically loose, anyway I digress. Kangator had previously challenged me but I was allowed to tap out; stomach flu was raging; Fight Club Rule #4, of course I have actually broken rules #1 and 2 by just writing this, confused, just rent the movie and all will be revealed. Anyway I digress, so I re-challenged kangator, to "The Heinz-man Trophy"; the first to run 57 miles, this was a crude and, I thought, obvious play on Heisman Trophy and Heinz’, as in beans and soup, 57 varieties. Kangator proved to be a worthy competitor, he laid down over 26 miles in the first two days, I responded with 25 followed by an additional 13 by day four, at this point my eldest son, who is three years old decided that my iPod USB cable seemed of particular interest to him and made off with it and then conveniently forget where he had hidden it, this meant that I was unable to sync my iPod with the Nike+ site, a tad frustrating as by day six kangator had notched up 46 miles and was within sight of the 57 miles finish line. Day seven was a rest day for us both and it was looking like it was going to be a sprint finish on long run Sunday.

The arrival of our second son two weeks ago has had an accumulative affect on the amount of sleep I am getting; read "not a lot" and I find my energy levels are generally pretty low. The lack of sleep was taking its toll; I was tired; by the end of the challenge I would have run 150% (59 miles) the number of hours sleep (40 or so) I had got in the same amount of time. The tiredness was evident in my forth run, on Thursday; my hamstrings were tight and I felt lethargic in the closing miles, however Thursday’s upside was while looking for my son’s bedtime story book de’ jour I found my iPod cable, good news. Now to get around to the first sentence of this post, to recap I was tired, did I say that already? And I needed to run 8 miles before Sunday east coast time, we, as a family got home from a day out at the Santa Barbara Zoo around 8pm and we, my wife and I, went through the all signing all dancing performance of getting our eldest in bed, fortunately he was tired so resistance was minimal. I was not really looking forward to running late, Santa Barbara had been shrouded in fog and was cold, remember cold is relative in Southern California, the thermometer in my car said 56F, however by the time we had got home the good news was that the temperature had increased to 71F, much better and more good news. A quick check on my email; Hi, my name is SLB and I am an email addict, revealed that a project lead that I thought had gone stone cold was actually blazing away! More good news, not wanting to waste this run of good luck and the uplift in my emotional barometer and of course not to be outrun by kangator and bettered by the three hour timezone difference, kangator is in NJ, I laced up my shoes and headed out the door to run off the remaining 8 miles needed for victory. I set of on my usual route which allows me to run on autopilot and has me at mile 2.5 before you can say “crap, I forgot to start my Forerunner” I pushed on feeling, well actually pretty good, my glutes had been feeling tight over the last week but tonight everything was aligned, (well not the stars, according to my lottery ticket; maybe next week), and I was happily cranking out 8:45 or so miles and everything felt great, I reached the turnaround point at mile 5 and headed back home, I walked back up the hill, as is my modus operandi to the house and synced my iPod, the rest, as they say, is history. So the moral of the story is to make hay while the sun shines…that is don’t ignore the signs, if they’re telling you to go, then go!

On another Nike+ note the much awaited Q2K7 Quadrathlon hats and visors arrived from HeadSweats, they look great and they will, as anyone who has worn a HeadSweat product, I expect perform flawlessly. October’s Quadrathlon drew to a close, the winners will be announced soon once all the miles and points have been tallied.

OK that’s enough Nike+ tale telling. Time for a quick summary of last month.

My total mileage was 106 miles, some 37 or so miles less than the month before, however when you take into account that I had the stomach flu for 9 days and then we were dissuaded from running due poor air quality; a result of the many wildfires that really only left me 22 days for running, if you work out the month on that number of days and pro rate it for the month that would actually have been 149 miles which is more in the ball park that I need to be, although this will be increasing as my training plan will obviously increase my mileage over the coming months it still maintains my base.

Looking forward, I am still undecided about the 30k or 50k on the 18^th, the consensus so far is to go for it, thanks to everyone who answered, there is, unfortunately no prize. I will make a decision by the end of the weekend/early next week. My participation in Iron Wil’s Through the3 Wall Challenge has been all over the place, we’re about to start week 5 and I have made some progress, the stomach flu forced my to unwillingly drop 6lbs, but despite my best efforts my actual weight has changed very little and my body fat has only moved around 1%. I did manage to find the bargain of the year in the multi-gym market, a bench complete with options for a lat fly and quad curl and 80lbs worth of weights for less than $100, this will help me maintain the work put in at Blake PT on my quads and hamstrings; essential if I am really going to stick to the trail side of things.

So I start another month, a third of the way through the final quarter of 2007, with lots of targets; most of them moving, as is often the case, hopefully I can hit some of them before the year closes out?

The Appliance of Science

Two weeks ago I paid a visit to Diaz Human Performance for a VO2 Max and RMR test. The thinking behind getting them done was to establish a baseline of fitness prior to starting on my winter training program. I have discussed the RMR results in the Through th3 Wall Challenge post and there is nothing overly confusing with the figures although I am still surprised with the recommended level of caloric intake; 3074, still, as I am trying to lose some weight and some body fat using that number should help me achieve those goals. The only additional comments I can add were that the RMR revealed that my physiologiological makeup has left me predisposed to Type IIa and Type IIb or Fast Twitch; after some discussion about my sporting history my natural predisposition was further highlighted; track and field; long and triple jump, rugby and field hockey – all of which call for short sharp bursts of speed, although my best 1500 meters time from Secondary (High) school I remember as being in the five minute range, of course that was *** cough cough *** years ago. Of course this all bodes for some interesting times ahead as I look to extend my distance once again to the Marathon and beyond.

For the VO2 Max test I was strapped up in a face mask akin to a test pilot and was set off walking in a treadmill, the pace built up over 12 minutes until I was at a flat out sprint or at least until I was unable to breath and run at the same time, I signaled enough with a thumbs down.

After catching my breath we discussed the results. I “blew” a 49.5 ml/kg/min – what does that mean? Well to start the test measures the maximum capacity to transport and utilize oxygen during incremental exercise. For an age grouper like myself this result is classed as "Superior", world class male athletes, cyclists and cross-country skiers typically exceed 80 ml/kg/min and a rare few may exceed 90 ml/kg/min. Here are some people you might have heard of and their results:

• Steve Prefontaine, 84.4
• Jeff Galloway, 73.0
• Frank Shorter, 71.3

My result can be improved on over time and this test has provided me with a solid baseline from which to build. It is suggested that the test is repeated every 12-16 weeks, this will place me half way through my winter training plan and will allow me time to make any adjustments as needed. I have some more reading and research to do to full translate the results and apply them to my training plan which officially starts on October 21st. As they say watch this space.

The road to recovery...Pt 11 (Journey's end!)

Well today was my last day of PT, I am officially signed off, fit for duty and ready to go; uphill, downhill, sprints, intervals etc, I cannot express my gratitude enough to the crew at Blake Physical Therapy, they have, as the t-shirt they presented me with, re-built me! I did in fact cheat earlier this week knowing that I had the last appointment today and put in a quick set of sprints resulting in the fastest mile split of 6:33, yay! Of course the latest and greatest news is that my son and his germ-factory school-friends have decided to fire of the opening salvo of Biological warfare and share a nice case of the stomach flu with everyone round here; the upshot of this is that the house now looks like a scene from the Crimean War, although we are somewhat lacking on the Florence Nightingale front. I curtailed this mornings 12 miler after 7, after my stomach and head colluded to just overwhelm me and it was a there ‘n back rather than a loop; discretion being the greater part of valor. So here is a list the lessons learned during my 10 weeks of recovery:

• Stretching; stretching is your friend, do it before you run, do it after you run, do it in line at the bank…just do it!
• Include the above into your “run time”, I now bookend each and every run with 20 minutes of stretching, once you add the extra time in you can calculate the whole workout time and you can plan your day accordingly.
• Cross train: stretching’s best friend; running concentrates all your efforts in several keys areas; hamstrings, calves etc redress this balance by working on your quads and other muscle groups; cycling, weights and swimming are all good options.
• You don’t have to run everyday, cross training keeps you fresh and helps avoid the hidden trap door of overtraining.
• Core work; keep your core in check and you core will keep you in check.
• You don’t need to spend a fortune in gym memberships or on equipment; a bike, swiss-ball, dumb-bells, exercise mat, foam roller, ankle weights and a stretching strap are all you need…well ok you do need to spend some money but think of it as an investment.

I’ll still be taping my knees for the foreseeable future especially with the trail runs I have coming up, some of it is preventative and some is psychosomatic…but hey whatever works!

Through th3 Wall Challenge...Iron Wil's will will hopefully rub off on me!

Newly crowned IronMan Iron Wil over at Through th3 Wall has thrown down the Gauntlet! The Through th3 Wall Challenge; the goal -losing the most body fat and gaining the most muscle by January 1, 2008, the prize - a Podiumquest hydration system and 9 tubes of NUUN! Well actually the prize it the goal but SWAG is always welcome! A lot of people will be using challenge to avoid the pitfalls of Thanksgiving and Christmas during the off season, in addition to that it is actually going to work really well for me as due to my injury during the Summer resulting in best part of two months off and forced me to miss my target 3:30 marathon in San Francisco, my revised season has me shooting for a 50k run; Calico Trail in January, a marathon; Los Angeles in March, and a 50 mile run; Leona Divide in April.

Superheroben at BuckeyeOutdoors is helping out and has created a challenge section, this is great for me as I already use Buckeye as my training log and I hate to retype the same data into various places.

To start I had to take a load of measurements, conduct some strength tests, calculate my Basel Metabolic Rate, the number of calories (kcal) I need just to breathe everyday, oh yes and the dreaded “before” photo. I have to admit to being one step ahead of the game here having had a RMR (Resting Metabolic Rate) test conducted 10 days ago at DHP, this is not so accurate as a BMR but will suffice for this exercise. So here are the numbers:

Measurements:

• Chest 38”
• Waist 33”
• Upper Thigh 22”
• Bicep 11½”
• Calf 15”

Weight statistics:

• Weight 174lbs
• Bodyfat 16% (using a Tanita Innerscan 534), this saved me a whole hours worth of headache creating mathematics and is a 5% increase from June and pre-injury!

Metabolism:

My RMR test revealed the following:

• My Resting Energy requirement is 1915 calories a day, as mentioned this is the number of calories I need just to blink a few times a day and breath
• My Lifestyle and Activity requirement is 573, this is the number of calories I need in addition to my Resting Energy for things like; working, walking to the car and eating etc
• The Exercise requirement is 293 calories based on 30 minutes of moderate exercise, Richard Diaz estimated based on the fact that (1) I rarely exercise for 30 minutes and (2) nothing I do is moderate, estimated that I could conservatively double this on a workout day

So in summary the caloric input I need on a workout day is in total a whopping 3074!

I still have to carry out strength and rep tests, which I will do tonight/tomorrow and add them in. Right now I am about a week behind the curve mainly due to getting things ready for the new arrival, who is due next week....goodbye old body - hello new PR