What is that, some Welsh tourist attraction?  Nope, it’s one of my running mantras, origin as follows:

This past summer I took part in a backcountry race which I was fully-aware would be – for me – downright grueling.  I’d run the same event two years before, finishing long-after the time for which I’d hoped; exhausted, lame, doubled-over sick, and emotionally wrecked.  And even though this year I had a better idea what to anticipate, and had trained assiduously for the series of long climbs, almost from the start it seemed my view was nothing but butts disappearing into the distance.  The one-third point found me watching two runners who, when they first came up from behind had looked like folks I should be able to hang with, but were now steadily pulling away, and as we neared the end of a quarter-mile-long open meadow I looked the other way to see – not a soul visible behind me.

As I watched those two runners disappear without apparent effort into the woods – where I knew another climb awaited – discouragement settled in like a thirty-pound pack.  What was the point, an inner voice asked, if I was feeling this depleted this early, and every other runner was handling the terrain better than I?  Was I really going to be the last person to finish?

What salvaged that day was, in retrospect, nothing more or less than experience; having run enough events by now for another inner voice to pop-up and remind the first one that ‘how you feel in the middle of an effort is not necessary indicative of how you will feel at the end.’  (“Of course not – you usually feel much worse at the end!  – that’s not really true, but I just had to say it, because I know a lot of runners will be thinking it…)

Enough events too, that conditioning and habit kept my feet moving while those and other thoughts got processed, by which time I was into the woods, cresting that next climb and headed for a magical stretch of gently-undulating single track through forest straight out of Lord of the Rings.  It was in those woods I remembered someone writing or saying, ‘it’s not about the other guy,’ and realized how especially true that sentiment is for a mid-pack (or rear-pack, as the day may have it) runner.

Lead-Dogs are there to fight it out, agonizing over who is ahead of who (whom?), but we MPRs are in the game for other reasons; to find out what each of us is capable of, on a given course, on a given day, which puts it all in a whole different light.  Everyone pulling away from me?  Wish them well. No one behind me? Less pressure!  It’s a beautiful day, a wonderful trail, a blessing to be able to run – period – and me doing my best is not dependant on how well or poorly anyone else is doing.

‘It’s not about the other guy,’ struck a chord, and began repeating in my head (though I quickly substituted ‘person’), but this was a long run, and pretty quickly that simple mantra become elaborated into:

It’s not about the other person

It’s about what you can do

Today

Repeating those words over and over again pushed discouragement out of mind, and when it threatened to return I switched over to figuring out the anagram –  I-N-A-T-O-P, I-A-W-Y-C-D, T – and figuring out a way to pronounce it (no, I’m not even going to try writing that out phonetically).  Those games distracted the left brain long enough to get me to the next aid station, where encouraging volunteers (THANK YOU!), a PBJ and the sight of other runners started to turn things in a better direction.  There were plenty of slow stretches still to come that summer day, but that early one proved the worst, as focusing on the right objective put the rest into perspective. I really did feel better at the finish this year, smiling – able to stand upright – and with plenty of room to improve next year.

So keep on running, MPRs; for yourself, for your own reasons.   Every run is more experience under your belt; more proof that –

I N A T O P

I A W Y C D

T

however you pronounce it.

Winter is here on the Western Slope of the Rockies; long dark nights, cold temperatures, trails buried under several feet of soft snow, roads under a treacherous mixture of softpack, hardpack, ice, and hidden-ice.  It’s still possible to get out and run for endurance training, but pace?  Fu-gedd-abou-dit!

One answer (short of expensive trips to warmer climes) is the treadmill, and one way to use those treadmill workouts – and make them less stultifying – is what I call Wintervals – an interval workout on the ‘mill.

Over five or six minutes of warm-up, (with at least 1% of incline, to take the place of air resistance) work yourself up to a resting pace; whatever that is for you.  (I use a minute or two longer per mile than overall hemithon time.)

(This works best on a ‘mill that displays PACE, but if yours only gives MPH, you can do your conversions sometime on a calculator and memorize them, or just remember a few helpful landmarks along the scale and interpolate between them. 5 MPH = 12 min. pace, and 6 mph = 10 min. are nice round ones, then  “7.5 MPH = 8 minute pace,” and “8 MPH = 7.5”  are easy to remember ‘cause they’re sort of reciprocals.  10 MPH = an even 6 min pace if you’re at all into that league…).

Anyway, after the warm-up, accelerate to a moderately fast pace – maybe what you’d try to maintain on a shorter distance like a 5-k –  and stay there for two minutes, or three or four, until your heart rate and breathing get up pretty high, then drop back to resting pace to recover to a moderate level of breathing.

After two minutes recovery, accelerate rapidly to a 30-seconds-faster pace for two minutes (if you can maintain that long, or one if not), then drop back, for two or three minutes.  Repeat similar intervals, increasing the fast pace each time, shortening its duration if necessary, until you reach a pace you can only maintain for 30 seconds. Then cool-down and head for the shower.

(If you’re using a monitor, you can gauge the paces and durations by heart rate – the goal is to push to a peak rate for a minute or two, then rest until it drops down to a cruising rate, then push again.  What I find interesting, is that my I hit pretty-much the same max heart rate, even as the interval paces get faster – one of the reasons I think this interval workout may help to increase overall cardio effectiveness and build speed for the future.) Another benefit of the format is that anticipating, implementing and keeping track of all those intervals, paces and times breaks up the workout and keeps the mind occupied, making it seem to go much faster than just maintaining a single pace on a moving rubber belt while Judge Judy rambles on.)

I find about five increasing-pace intervals gets me to where it’s just not safe to push the pace any faster (legs getting fatigued so’s I can barely keep up with the belt – falling on a treadmill would not only be harmful, but really, really embarrassing, in a public gym …).  With warm-up and cool-down, that’s about a 30 minute workout. If you want more, instead of going directly to cool-down, try stepping the pace back down in similar increments, each interval a little less fast, but longer duration. Or/and, add hill-work intervals, each one at a steeper incline until you reach a combination of pace and incline you can only hold for thirty seconds.  That can extend the workout into the forty- or fifty-minute range, and guaranteed jelly-legs territory…)

I try to do these workouts at least once a week thru the winter; to build/maintain maximum foot speed and sprinting pace, as well as overall oxygen-processing ability.  Combined with longer and necessarily-slower outdoor runs, Wintervals help me maintain a good base-level of conditioning until the roads clear –

Which I know will happen…

Eventually….

‘Some days you get the bear, and some days, the bear gets you’ – I learned that expression back in the days of final exams, and it applies just as well to running. There are days the conditioning and commitment pays off and days it just doesn’t seem to make a whit of difference.  A recent run gave me reason to wonder how to get back on the right end of that bear.

I’d planned this event for months, trained and tapered and travelled hundreds of miles, thoroughly checked-out the course and carbo-loaded, even laid out my clothes the night before.  Early-morning wake-up, shuttle bus ride and standing in a crowd of thousands to hear the national anthem, all went great, as did that joyous adrenaline rush of starting out in the crowd.  At the halfway point I was dead-on goal time, but within a couple of miles after that could feel things going solidly the wrong way, pace slowing, fatigue like weights on my ankles, thoughts of futility and dropping out…

For an elite that might mean the day is lost – some other dog is going to finish first and nothing else matters – but for a Mid-Pack Runner the real issue is how to make the best of it – to salvage something out of all that effort and anticipation. A few suggestions:

Replenish – unless you’re sure you’ve overhydrated, or your gastro-system is obviously screwed-up, it’s probably worth taking a few good hits of water and/or calories.  Being short on one or the other is at least part of most distance bonks, especially if you’ve properly prepared for the effort, so try a thorough replenishing and see if you feel better in ten minutes.

Take a break – when what you’ve planned is just not working, maybe back-off and walk thru an aid station, or slow to a jogging or walking pace to listen to your body’s signals and see if there is something specific to address. Are you dehydrated?  Need to fuel ( gel or electrolyte)?  Is there something wrong with shoes or gear that’s taking extra effort (are you overdressed and overheated, carrying too much gear, or hobbled by an ill-fitting belt, pack or that hoodie you tied around your waist that’s now dropped halfway to your knees?).  Important point: set a limit on the break before you relax (to that phone pole, to the trash can, one minutes..), and then start back up on that schedule, building gradually back to pace.  Even if you haven’t figured out a specific cause to fix, that little pause can sometimes refresh enough for other reserves to kick in.

Or the opposite – make a break for it.  If you can summon up a temporary commitment, you might try speeding up for a short burst – 15 seconds, the next traffic cone, that kid with the sign up there… then letting your pace fall back.  If you’ve ever run Fartlks, you’ve probably observed that you can maintain a faster pace for the same perceived level of effort after a burst, than you could before the burst – though this is probably only going to work if you’re not really all-that bonked, or in the last push to the end of a run.

Set a new goal on the fly – if it’s clear you’re not going to get back to your intended pace, do not despair! Think up a new goal that will keep your effort focused and give you something to anticipate.  On my recent run I had a goal of making a new distance PR, with a secondary goal of matching the old one.  When it became clear neither of those was going to happen, I figured out (after the requisite Kubler-Ross period of denial, despair, etc…) that I’d be lucky to hit a certain significant number (X:55 mins.) and that became my new goal.  Boom – instant incentive to keep the walk breaks short, and to keep watching and pressing the pace in-between.  When I ended up beating that new goal by a couple of minutes, it actually felt like a small victory, instead of a total loss, enflaming my desire to get out and do better the next time.

So change it up: take a break or make a break; listen to your body, replenish, and if necessary re-calibrate your goal: for us MPRs, even a bad day is a chance to learn and excel.

Go for it – all the way!

One of the running mags had an article* a while back about ‘squeakers’ – folks who qualify for Boston – but only barely.  Having made my first qualifying time by 1:03 – just a minute and 3 seconds below the requirement – I put myself firmly in that category, and have spent a few idle moments considering what that means.

First, is the randomness of any finishing time.  I once finished an event in 4 hours, 0 minutes and four seconds – after having dropped my water bottle along the way and run back two steps to pick it up and replace it in my belt – easily worth five seconds.  A couple of years later, another runner I know started that same event well-conditioned and focused for an under-four-hour finish, and received an official time of 4:00:00 – I after having had to stop to re-tie a shoe.

Second, it helps to find the right event to qualify on: fairly straight route (turns slow you down, right angle intersections are the worst), trending downhill (but only enough to reduce fatigue, not so much as to pound the knees and create pain that slows you down). Also helps if it is closer to sea level than wherever you live and train – even a little extra oxygen makes a difference when you are pushing your limits.  Personally, I’d pick a small- to modest-sized field as well – it’s easier to set and keep a goal pace with at least a few feet of open space around you, than in a massive pack like the photos I see of some big-city runs.

(Not every marathon will get you into Boston either; only those that meet certain requirements of measurement and course are accepted.   Marathons that have met the standard generally make a big point of it on their websites and ads. For a list of the top contenders check out:  http://www.baa.org/races/boston-marathon/participant-information/qualifying/top-qualifying-races.aspx )

Third, is to know your training cycle – living in snow country, my fitness and speed are best toward the end of the summer – my successful qualifications have been in August and October.  If you live in a hot humid climate though, you may be fastest in the spring, when weather is more forgiving.

Fourth; know the rules.  While it varies a bit each year (and could always change in future) the recent Boston regimen has been registration in early September, based on times recorded in the previous twelve months. That means you can hit a qualifying time in October of one year, register and be accepted in September of the next, then run in April of the following; up to 17 months after your qualifying event!

(There’s no carry–over, so if you qualify in one twelve-month period but can’t make the trip the following April, you’ll need to re-qualify during the next twelve month period.  Clearly, it helps to plan ahead.)

Finally, be aware that, since the tragedy of 2013 and resulting upswing of interest and support, qualifying has become more competitive than ever.  If you beat your time by more than 20 minutes, you’re in the first group accepted. The next group is those who beat their time by 10 minutes or more, then 5, and at least up through 2015, if you were in any of those tiers you were assured of getting in.  A few days after those applications are all sorted out, registration opens up to those who made it by less than five minutes – but even then it is not first-come-first served; the faster times still take the places until they are all filled. So, if you’ve made it by, say 1:03, you won’t get in until all the 1:04 qualifiers are seated.  For 2014 the organizers increased the size of the field as much as they could accommodate, and still there were qualified runners (margin of 1:37 or less) who could not be accepted, despite having qualified and gotten their registration in on time.

For a summary of the 2015 qualifying process (a margin of 1:02 made it, 1:01 did not) check out http://www.baa.org/news-and-press/news-listing/2014/september/2015-boston-marathon-qualifier-acceptances.aspx

It’s a tough way to do things, but fair, and having seen what it takes to put on this event, there’s no question in my mind that they’ve got to limit it.

So, dream, imagine. Pick a qualifying event that suits your training rhythm and your running strengths, put a reminder on your calendar for September 1, and you too may find yourself stepping over the line in Hopkinton one year.  I can’t imagine you will ever regret – or forget – it!

(* Life of a Squeaker, by Tish Hamilton in Runner’s World, May 2013)

• It is a runner’s truth that the very same piece of terrain that was clearly a gentle uphill grade when you ran it heading one way, can also be an uphill climb when you run it back in the other direction, even just a few minutes later.

  Now if you were on a bike, you could always figure out the truth – just stop pedaling and see if you slow down, coast along, or accelerate.

  Digression – There are times I envy the cyclists passing me up as I run – how nice it must be to take a break now and then; set your tired legs in one spot and let yourself glide along, or keep on pedaling just enough to maintain your speed, breathing gently or chatting with a friend as the meters vanish almost by themselves.  But then I think of how hard it can be to get the body-machine back up to full power after a pause like that… As runners we have the burden of constant effort – there’s no coasting on feet – but that teaches us to seek out the ‘steady state,’ that level of exertion where inputs of nutrition and hydration are most nearly equal to the output of energy, so we can keep up that level of effort for quite a long time.   (Long is relative of course, at one stage in a runner’s development, ten or twenty minutes is a very long time; for others, it may be hours.  Whatever yardstick works for you, there is an immense satisfaction in looking back over a run and realizing, wow, I kept that up for that long? Hot Damn!).

  And if that conditioning benefit isn’t enough to shoot down my cycle-envy, the hammer falls for sure as soon as I see a rider squatting on the shoulder repairing a flat, or when I hear a mountain-biker friend explaining over coffee that both of his (very expensive) bikes are out of service with mechanical problems, and he is looking to rent one for tomorrow’s ride.

  But back to the issue – perception.  I’ve run plenty of events and training routes that start and finish at the same point and have established one firm conviction which flies in the face of Newton and Aristotle and everything we’re taught in science classes:  on any run that finishes at the same place it started – whether it’s an out-and-back, or a closed loop – there is always more uphill than downhill.

  Maybe it has to do with the mechanics of converting the expansion and contraction of muscle fibers into a back and forth movement of the legs and arms, and then converting that into a solely-forward movement of the entire body – come to think of it, put that way, it’s no surprise that flat feels like uphill, heck it’s a bit of a miracle it works at all!

  Then again, maybe some little gremlins have cranked up the jacks beneath the road, or moved the earth’s center of mass, just at the moment I switched directions…

  Personally, I’ve given up trying to understand how this can be – and endeavor instead to take it as part of the challenge, the wonder, the endless variation and complexity of the world around us; up-hill feet and down-hill feet are not created equal.

‘The Boston Marathon.’  Magical words to many runners.  Famed for attracting the world’s top performers to its historic route and spectator-jammed finish alley, it might seem strange for an avowed mid-pack-runner to talk about going to Boston, but then, the very competitiveness (and size) of the event ensures that even people who might stand out on other days will experience the BAA’s yearly celebration from somewhere in the middle of the pack.

It also helps that the qualifying times for Boston are graduated; though dauntingly-short for younger runners of each gender, they get considerably longer for us older folks, which is pretty much the only reason this MPR got to run there a couple of years ago.  That was one of the greatest thrills of my running life, and now that I’ve learned I will be going back in 2015, I’d like to share some observations about it all, from the mid-pack perspective.  Hopefully I can do justice to the experience, and maybe motivate some other MPRs to see themselves reaching for this particular brass ring.

Truth is, running Boston hardly entered my mind during the first seven years, and ten finishes, of marathoning.  I’d entered the St. George Marathon hoping for a new PR and thanks to a great fast course managed that plus a little more.  I don’t recall whether they listed ‘BQ’ on the results posted during the race, or if I found out later, but it was really only after learning I had qualified that I imagined going, and once I did, it was only more good luck that made it possible.

Boston registration happens in early September, opening first to the fastest over-qualifiers, then working down in several tiers to those who (like me) just barely made their required time.  These days, the field fills up as soon as that last tier opens, but in 2012, for whatever reason, there was still space even in the first week of October.  Thanks to the Internet, I was able to submit my registration as soon as I returned from Utah, and received a tentative notice the next day, with the formal printed Certificate of Acceptance (yes, the BAS does things up right: from the moment they verify your qualifying time, every runner – regardless of standing – is treated like a valued competitor) arriving by mail a week or two later.

Thus my number one observation: even before stepping on the plane, ‘Boston’ reminded this generally-pretty-pragmatic MPR of the value in looking beyond the expected, in having eyes and ears open for opportunity, and in being ready (and quick) to seize it when it appears.  To – in the archetypally-simple lyric of Mr. Lennon – “Imagine.”

Coming up, more about being allowed into this big-ring of the running circus.

If, like me, you read books and magazines about running, it seems just about the most universally-accepted truism of training is “THE WEEKLY LONG RUN!” to gradually stretch your time and distance.

Always the eager student, I hopped right on board that strategy – shorter workouts during the week which each focus on speed or tempo or intervals or something, then a long relatively slow run (usually on the weekend because those of us who have lives outside our running shoes only have the time then…) – and agree it works, but with an important caveat that I suspect may apply to lots of other MPRs:

A couple of years ago I decided to try for a particular time in an October marathon.  Being an MPR, I was looking at a high level of effort for quite a few hours, and so set out to follow the plans I’d read; gradually lengthening my long runs about ten percent each week, and it did work – up to a point.

But once that long run got around three hours, I found myself hitting the wall every week.  Instead of feeling my endurance build, I just found the runs getting harder and harder, and my pace in the latter part of each one dropping farther and farther.  It was painful and disheartening, as I imagined that goal time slipping out of reach.

That discouragement may be why, when family commitments made it difficult to fit a long run in one weekend, I let my commitment slide and skipped it, despite the conviction that I’d lose even more of whatever little edge I’d managed to build.  To my surprise (though maybe not yours…) when I did my next biggie at a two week interval, I found not only had I not lost the conditioning I’d worked so hard to build, but that long run felt better than any of the other recent ones.

In hindsight it’s clear what was going on: for this particular MPR, at that age and level of effort, one week was simply not sufficient time for biological recovery from an extended effort.  I had been going into each weekly run still tired and depleted from the last one, and paying the price.

From then on I began alternating weekly long runs with more moderate ones, though since I was doing a two week cycle but still living in a 52 wk. year, I further departed from what I’d read.  Instead of 10% pushes, the difference between one long run and the progressively longer one two weeks later was more like half an hour (or three miles).

So am I recommending that two week cycle for anyone else? Not really, just offering it as an example of how to use all running advice.

Read, talk, hear what the experts have to say. Then try it out – carefully and gradually, and if it doesn’t seem to work for you, try something different. (As a matter of fact, I’ve recently moved even farther from the big weekly, but more about that another time).

Make your running your own; no one is else is just like you, so your running life may not be just like anyone else’s, and that itself is actually one more of the many things I love about this sport – it can help each of us become even more our own particular (or maybe peculiar?) self.

And that is a goal worth training for!

OK then; you’ve got your body position slightly forward (so gravity pulls you to the finish), are landing feet beneath yourself (to avoid putting on the brakes), and you’ve even got your cadence nice and high. If it works for you like it does for me, your pace will increase, or your endurance get longer, or your perceived effort go down (or any combination of all that, depending on your own intensities and priorities).  But what if you’d like to improve even more?  If you can’t take mores strides in a given time (180 steps a minute is pretty much the limit, at least for this MPR), the only other way to cover more distance is to make the strides longer, right? But doesn’t that mean your feet need to extend out in front of you again?

Maybe not. The trick is to lengthen the duration of each stride behind you, not in front, and the way to do that is to picture your heels coming up a little bit closer to your butt.

I got wind of this when reading a description of some elite marathoner in a treadmill demonstration. The author – who was far more of an authority than I; which is not saying much – made all the expected noises about relaxed upper body, forward C.O.G., forefoot landing (you can’t land on your forefoot if it’s very far in front, unless you’re a prima ballerina – and willing to look like one), very high cadence, then remarked about how high his heels came up, like that was a really big deal.

What the heck, I thought. If your heels come up higher, they are travelling farther, but not in the direction you want to go, so how can that help?

The answer that make sense to my little brain goes back to that description of running as catching yourself when gravity wants to make you fall forward. With that in mind, if makes sense that a foot that comes up higher behind you is off the ground a little longer, and that means gravity has more time to pull you forward a little farther. And since gravity is an acceleration, its effect is the square of its duration, so a little time goes a long way.

They ain’t no free lunch though, so we must admit that pulling heels up higher takes some energy, and doing that while keeping cadence up requires your feet move faster (just as they would have to if your stride lengthened out front), but done right, it’s a high-efficiency technique – maximum performance increase for minimum added exertion. Way better than stretching strides out in front.

Once you’ve got the other stuff working the way it works best for you, try kicking up your heels a bit.  You may just find your pace goes up as well!

Falling Toward the Finish talked about using gravity to help pull a runner forward.  A similar visualization helps to clarify why landing feet way out in front of you makes for inefficient running.

First off, imagine running down a steep hill, gravity pulling you forward so much you’re in danger of losing control; a natural response – aside from just stopping (or in fact especially if you decide to stop) – is to stretch your strides so the foot hits well in front of your center of gravity.  A portion of your body’s forward momentum is then transmitted right down through that outstretched leg, pressing the foot harder against the surface (one reason your foot is more likely to skid along the ground running downhill than on level ground).  To the extent you don’t skid, it means friction between sole and earth is eating up momentum, transferring forward motion into grinding and heat. By landing the foot out front, you’re ‘hitting the brakes’ a little bit with every stride.

Second, even on level ground, since the length of your extended leg is fixed, the farther in front your foot hits, the lower your body is to the ground. (Not so obvious? You can prove it with trigonometry if you’re into that, but for the rest of us, stand with feet together, then lift one foot and place it out in front of you – feel your entire torso dropping toward the floor?). In order for your body to move forward over that planted foot, it needs to move upward, like an upside down pendulum. You see this in runners whose feet strike well-ahead of them, a bobbing motion as their bodies rise up and drop down, up and down. (When I first started running, my kids called me ‘the Energizer Bunny’ because of that bobbing, almost hopping, motion; kids can be pretty astute sometimes…) At a cadence of 180 steps per minute, that means lifting your torso, arms and head – the majority of your body weight – some distance, 180 times per minute; a considerable expenditure of energy on something that is not direct forward motion.

And third, the farther you swing your leg out forward, the longer it takes for your body to move past it, which means you can take fewer strides per minute. That might be OK – theoretically, a smaller number of longer strides could gain more distance than a greater number of shorter strides – but since those long strides require extra energy to lift the body and to overcome braking, that leaves less energy to accomplish forward motion – it’s just plain less efficient.  Studies of elite runners prove this out, showing a near-universal correlation between high cadence and speed.  Long bounding strides are relaxing and can be useful to ‘mix it up,’ relieving strains while covering long distance, but they are not as efficient as quick turnunder (that’s like turnover, only since the feet are under us… OK, so, like, forget I said that…).

Avoid the braking effect, reduce energy-wasting up-and-down motion, and allow more strides per minute – multiple reasons why landing the feet beneath the body can help MPRs achieve their full potential.