Running Shorts

GEAR CHECK is another semi-regular-when-I'm-feeling-it series like the WORKOUT OF THE WEEK and various race recaps. There's a ton of different products out there marketed towards runners, so I wanted to highlight some of the things that I use and what I think about them. It might also be telling the stuff I don't use, but that's a whole 'nother topic. This trusty ol' watch came back from the dead yesterday. Running is a pretty simple sport; at least, that's the way it should be. In the modern era of mass marketing, the amount of stuff  that you're told you need  to have to be a real  runner is astounding. In my opinion, all you really need is a good pair of shoes and a watch. That's it. Of course, even then the industry will find ways to inflate your purchase. How about $160 shoes or a $300 watch? (Side note: that price for a GPS watch is in the mid-range of all available! How insane is that?!) Screw that. I prefer a watch that is reasonabl...

Not racing for all of the last fall season got me thinking: do we race too often? Like most running-related questions, the answer is simple; but unfortunately, that's where it gets complicated. I decided to break this down into two parts with two different answers. And really, I think these parts speak to the divide between the competitive sport and the participant activity. The first one (this one) is a scholastic edition, focusing on high school and collegiate cross country and track athletes. The next one will cover more of the road, trail, and ultra racing scene. So. Do scholastic athletes race too often? Yes. Absolutely unequivocally 100% in the affirmative. Ok sure there are a select few elite NCAA teams who have the luxury of resting their top athletes for most of the season until conference champs and NCAAs (then I think the case could be made for racing more), but the vast majority of the rest do, in fact, race too often. Think of the high school team which, duri...

This is a post for all you high school track and cross athletes looking to make the leap to the next level. This is a post for all you collegians at that level, shooting for the next step. This is a post for all you post-collegians eyeing the next Olympic Trials. This is a post for all runners, of all ages and abilities, who want to PR, PB, BQ, OTQ, or any other acronym you can think of. You want to get better? You can put away your training manual. Set aside the Hanson's program, or Pfitzinger, or Daniels or Higdon or Galloway or anyone else who writes a mass program. Most importantly, if you own Run Less, Run Faster : burn that crap. There is only one Way. Here it is: You need to run more. How much more? I don't know, but definitely more than you're doing now. Could be 30 miles a week. Could be 120. That part's up to you. It can't be that simple, can it? It is. For real. Running is a simple sport; stop trying to make it more complicated than it nee...

Suffering from post-Olympics withdrawal? Turn on USA channel to find Law & Order instead of table tennis? Don't know what to do without sports on 24/7? Unsure of how to schedule out a day that doesn't revolved around a combination of live streaming, DVR recording, and spoiler avoiding? Yeah, me too. Which means it's the perfect time to talk about the Olympics that just happened! One week out, here are four of my biggest takeaways -- two about Athletics in general and two about the distance slate specifically. 1. Athletics (because that's what the rest of the world calls it) remains the premier event in the Olympics.  While in America NBC played up the swimming and women's gymnastics competitions -- because American dominance plays into the "America #1 heck yeah!" narrative -- the Athletics events were by far the most prestigious of the games. From the iconic marathon final on the last day (with the medal ceremony at the closing ceremony) to the Wor...

With the Olympics coming up in a couple of weeks, I thought this would be the perfect time for a three-part series about the state of the sport. After all, this is the one time every four years when people outside of the insular track world actually care about athletics. It would be easy to come up with a list of complaints about the sport; however, I'm deciding to take a positive outlook (on both the topic and my own running performance), so instead I'm going to fix running (and jumping and throwing) in three easy steps. A New Calendar of Competition This proposal to fix the sport is going to focus on track and field; specifically, the outdoor competition schedule. Or, rather, the lack thereof. The current calendar is...a mess, to put it mildly. Once every four years there is an incredibly important global championship -- the Olympics. In odd-numbered non-Olympic years, there is another global championship, albeit somewhat less meaningful. In even-numbered non-Oly...

With the Olympics coming up in three weeks, I thought this would be the perfect time for a three-part series about the state of the sport. After all, this is the one time every four years when people outside of the insular track world actually care about athletics. It wold be easy to come up with a list of complaints about the sport; however, I'm deciding to take a positive outlook (on both the topic and my own running performance), so instead I'm going to fix running (and jumping and throwing) in three easy steps. Shamateurism to Professionalism Athletics exists in a state of shamateurism . On the one hand, it is a professional sport, in that individuals athletes can make money from it (how much they actually make is appalling, but still...). On the other hand, athletics is governed by amateur rules that directly limit the ability of its professional athletes to make money. It's this weird, nebulous purgatory that definitely isn't amateur but isn't fully profes...

In trying to capture the running spirit of days past, I've been especially interested in reading about some of the historic greats. Ah who am I kidding? I'm always interested in learning about running history, but allow me to indulge myself a bit. My interest in doing this particular one was piqued after reading a thread on the r/running  subreddit (yes, I'm a redditor) that was about New Balance shoes. New Balance recently launched a new line of shoes named " Vazee ," and the poster mentioned he had no idea where that name came from. Turns out the name is in reference to a French slang term, " vas-y ," which essentially means "Go!" or "Go for it!" Having worked at a running store, I'd heard this spiel before, but I had to learn more. Not only is the name a fancy French word, but it is also a reference to a popular cheer for former mile world record-holder Michel Jazy (the rhyme really is catchy, it's easy to see why it be...

So take this with a grain of salt: I haven't raced a marathon in nearly three years, and of the two that I've finished neither have been particularly noteworthy. When I was in college, the 10,000m folks on Xavier's team had a saying about the 10k on the track: "controlled aggression released over 25 laps." For those who've never had the distinct pleasure of racing the track 10,000, you're not really missing out. On a bad (or even mediocre) day, it consists of a special kind of hell involving monotonous, mind-numbing misery. When you're off your game, the laps drag by. When you're on, they fly. Keeping that attitude ("controlled aggression released over 25 laps") helped keep us present in the race. Staying patient, racing in the moment, not thinking too far ahead ( don't think about the finish before the final mile... ) combine to create a positive experience. You focus on the race at hand -- not the finish -- and the results will ...

Despite all the convolutions of training -- Lactate Threshold, vVo2max, cadence, foot strike, turnover, etc. etc. etc. -- running is a very simple sport: who can cover a specified distance on foot the fastest? With all the technology and tactics and strategies and training approaches we have today, it's not really any more complicated than that. So what's my training advice for you? Simple: Do what makes you feel good. That good feeling you get in training -- the endorphin high, "full of run," effortlessness; however you want to describe it -- is your body's way of telling you, "I like this. I'm responding to this. I should keep doing this. This is playing to my strengths." You wanna get better? Listen to your body. What feels good is going to be a little different for everybody. For me, I get that effortlessly good feeling during steady-state type of runs...longer, sustained workouts at an aerobically challenging but not crippling pace. I tr...

One of my favorite places to do workouts and strides and general fast stuff is the track at Withrow High School in Hyde Park. No, it's not because of the newly renovated surface. No, it's not because it's a perfect 10-minute warmup and cooldown jog from my house. No, it's not because I'm a nerd and it has markings for both a 1600 and a mile. No, it's not because the school building forms a perfect "L" around the homestretch and first turn, sheltering the field from any drastic wind. No, it's not because I spent four years during college running workouts there. Actually, wait, that is part of it. The reason I love Withrow's track so much can be summed up like this: it's a true public track. If you've ever been to the track, then you know how packed it can get with people using it. And it's not just Withrow High School teams and random individuals -- the track is also regularly used by many other local high schools witho...

"Quenton, this is where you find out. This is the time and place. All the rest is window dressing. ... You can do very nearly anything. Haven't you figured that out?"                                                                                                  - Bruce Denton, Once a Runner If you've read this blog before, you know how I often preach training at a controlled effort. Strides should be run at a relaxed fast effort. Interval workouts should be finished feeling like you could do one more . Et cetera et cetera. And I stand by the philosophy that most of your training should be controlled. Most of it, but not all of it. Every once in a while -- maybe once or twice a season MAX -- you should think about running a workout where y...

In baseball, there's a term for the ideal position player: the Five-Tool Player. This player can hit for average, hit for power, run the bases fast, throw hard/far/accurately, and excel defensively. All players strive to master all five tools, but few players actually possess them. For the competitive runner, I believe, there is a similar set of five 'tools' they should strive to develop. Perhaps a better term for the runner might be 'five paces', as there are five sets of paces that runners should have in their training repertoire. These are the types of paces that should be touched on year-round, but at different intensity levels based on any upcoming race schedules. These paces -- these tools -- will help you train smarter and race faster. Here they are: A runner's five 'tools' (or paces): Easy.  This is an easy effort. Real easy. Like, laughably easy. So easy, it should feel like you're not really getting any work in. That's because y...

Ok now, before I get any complaints about being arrogant or an elitist or anything like that, let me first give my definition of an "elite runner." The way I think of it, in the running world an "elite" is anyone who places competition before participation. Elite runners range the gamut from full-on professionals to the local fast post-collegiate runners; the term to me also includes high school and college xc and track athletes as well as masters and age-group competitors. More than meeting a certain time standard, being an elite runner is more about having a competitive mindset. So now that that's out of the way, let me also say this: while elite runners are often the most visible athletes to the general public, they do make up a minority of the running community. People are often intimidated or put-off by elites, thinking that the faster runners judge anyone slower than them as inferior, less worthy, "not a real runner," etc. Of course, when you a...

And by 'easy long runs' I mean long runs (no matter how long) done at an easy effort; long slow distance, or LSD is how some people term it. But first, a caveat: long slow runs still have their place in the running world, but can we please stop doing only long slow runs? LSD runs are great in two situations: 1) when you are building your mileage early on in base training, and 2) as a low-key aerobic maintenance session during your peak competition season -- your focus should be on race-specific workouts, so long runs shouldn't be enough to tire you out. At any other point in the heart of your training? Change it up. Why? Because always and only doing long easy runs is the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result. Listen, I know consistency is important to train well, but so is variation. If you want to improve, you have to mix things up bit, you have to challenge yourself and push the limits of your comfort zo...

Alright, so now that cross country season is starting to gear up (first day of official practice for the high schoolers in Ohio is Monday!), I thought it'd be a good time for another post geared towards the scholastic runners. Not that this topic isn't applicable to everyone else out there, but I think it'll resonate most with the former type of runners. Showing up at practice, no matter what team you run for or who your coach is, you can bet one of the first things you will run through are the classic form drills. High knees, butt kicks, A-skips, B-skips, high skips, carioca, backwards running; the list goes on. You've probably already done some of those and you probably also do some other not on that list. And if you're in school, you'll probably do them just about every day from Day 1 without any more specific rationale than, "they improve your form." But do they improve your form? In my opinion, the answer is no. So you do you really need to ...

What is the workout? Strides aren't a workout per se , more like an addendum to your regular running schedule. Typically you'll finish up an easy or normal run with 4-10 strides of 80-120 meters. So what's a stride? It's a short sprint at sub-maximal effort (somewhere between 80 and 120 meters; doesn't have to be exact, just eyeball it) followed by full recovery between reps (about a minute or so walking around; again, doesn't have to be exact, just feel fresh before your next one). This is all done by feel...run at a relaxed-fast, near effortless speed; no straining, no flailing, no racing. Don't worry about splits, don't worry about pace; just run smooth so you can feel fast and focus on solid form. Think of these like the running version of free-throw practice. (Edit: if you really wanted to, you could make strides a stand-alone workout: warm up, then run 10-30-ish strides with full recovery , then cool down.) Why should you do it? You should do...

Alright. It sucks to write about this stuff. If you're a runner, you've probably heard about this by now. If not, here's the brief (real brief) synopsis of the report that's rocked the sport in the last couple weeks: basically, Alberto Salazar, Galen Rupp, and the Nike Oregon Project have been accused of various levels of doping over the past decade-plus. David Epstein wrote an article in ProPublica here , and the BBC produced an hour-long documentary which is on YouTube . If you haven't read or watched those yet, do it. Salazar and the NOP have long been known for using every resource at their disposal to get the best results out of their athletes: underwater treadmills, anti-gravity treadmills, team houses fit to simulate altitude, the best coaching staff that Nike can pay for (and Nike has a lot of money). However, in elite running circles, there have long been rumors swirling about NOP using drugs and supplements in ways that push the boundaries of the rules...

How did you first get into running?  It's a pretty innocuous question, but it's one that every runner gets asked at some point in his/her career. And, if you really take the time to think about, it's a really interesting question. How did you get into running? Out of all the sports there are to choose from -- basketball, baseball, football, soccer, etc. -- why did you end up just running? For me, I was always running. Both my dad and uncles were runners; competitive in high school and college, but also age-group competitive once us kids came around. I grew up with runners are role models, so the sport was something I was drawn to. But I was also a bit lucky: Mariemont had a recreational track program for elementary kids. Just like everyone played SAY soccer, little league baseball, or rec basketball growing up (I did all those things, too) my neighborhood also had a youth track team. So every spring we would "practice" one evening per week and then spend al...