Running Shorts

Well, blog, it's been a while. Just about a year, actually. I haven't been writing much because I haven't been running much. In the meantime, I've moved to a new city, changed schools, and started assistant coaching the cross country and track teams at said school. Boston last year sucked (and that's all I really care to say about it), and in the year since then I've only run one other race: a 10k at the Mukilteo Turkey Trot  where I finished second. I'm used to being second in Thanksgiving races, but I'm not used to something that doesn't exist in Cincinnati -- prize money and pumpkin pie! Imagine that! /s (I joked after the race that Danielle and I picked up dessert for Thanksgiving dinner.) Since I moved cities, I've also picked up a new race kit and not-really-sponsor-but-brand-I-like-to-race-for: Janji . They're a small running-apparel company located out of Boston that sells globally-conscious running gear and donates a portion ...

Monday:  Sick - no run Tuesday:  Sick - no run Wednesday:  Sick - no run Thursday:  Sick - no run Friday: 4 miles in 27:22 - Felt totally depleted Saturday:  Sick - no run Sunday:  Sick - no run TOTAL : 4 miles on 1 day of running Well this week sucked. What started last weekend just got worse all week. I had (still have) a cough I can't shake and I've been just totally drained of energy. It's just the kind of thing that there's no point in trying to train through. So now there's basically two months to race day, and my cram training is already off the rails. That's okay, because I've been re-evaluating my plan and I'll be making adjustments. I'm still working out the nuts and bolts, but here are the general focuses, in order of importance: Aerobic endurance , mostly at lower intensities (up to but generally not beyond Aerobic Threshold, or marathon effort). I'm a very slow twitch runner and I know I respond well to the consist...

Monday:  3 w/u; 2 x 6 x diagonals (4 min jog between sets), 1k in 3:02, 2 c/d Tuesday: Easy hour of running Wednesday: Planned off day Thursday: One hour of running with 5 surges by feeling in the second half Friday: 10 min up, 57 min marathon effort tempo, 1 mile c/d Saturday:  Very easy 8 recovery Sunday: Planned long run, but sick in the chest so no run today TOTAL : 48 miles on 5 days Well, for my first week back in a while this was...passable. I was almost really happy with it until I got sick over the weekend, but there's nothing you can do about that. Better to miss a day or two than to have a cold just drag on. Usually a head cold is fine to run through, but a nasty cough is something not to mess with. Monday's workout was exactly what I needed, both mentally and physically. Diagonals are a popular mid-distance workout in Kenya, and it consists of running diagonally from flag to flag across a soccer field, with a jog across the baseline for recovery. Th...

Welp, it's 10 weeks 'til marathon race day and I haven't run for the past two. As per usual (I feel like I've been saying this a lot) my Achilles was flaring up and small breaks weren't helping it, so I just decided to shut down for a couple weeks and hope that'll calm it down. January started with promise, but ended up being a pretty crappy month of training. So now I'm going to see what I can put together for this final stretch. In a weird sort of way, I'm actually kind of optimistic for the rest of training. Here's why: 1. Over the past two years of fighting my Achilles, I've learned that I can sustain decent training for about 8-12 weeks. Any more than that and things start to break down, but any less and I can't get into a decent rhythm. So 10 weeks to Boston? Perfect. 2. I've also overdone marathon training in the past (even just one too-hard workout or race without proper recovery can leave you crashing at the finish). But wi...

Despite the lack of activity on the blog, I have in fact been running. I did have brief Achilles flare-up in August and into September which derailed my original plans for a fall marathon (and even backup plans for a half marathon). I stayed active, but I had lost enough fitness that it wouldn't come back quickly enough for that season. However, I had a slight epiphany while I was injured: as I was cycling a lot, I saw how popular cyclocross was, and for the first time since college I missed racing cross country. As luck would have it, USATF Club XC was being hosted in December in Lexington, KY -- an easy drive only an hour and a half away and enough time to round into some semblance of racing shape. To sum up training, I did a six-week block of fundamental base-type workouts, which I then blended into about six more weeks of race-specific ones. I was definitely overly cautious with my training, because I didn't want to aggravate any injuries (I'm still managing my ...

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...

Ok wow, it's been a while. I have been running, I promise. Last fall I got so frustrated with my nagging Achilles injury that I just had to completely shut down. I got stuck in a cycle of: start running again, feel good, slowly feel that goodness deteriorate, end up back at square one needing more time off. Nothing seemed to be helping, so I finally just checked out of running entirely. After a few weeks in a walking boot, I decided to give it a cautious go one more time (this is around the beginning of November). I played it very safe, running without a schedule and entirely by feel, and by the end of December I was able to hit 60+ miles per week. Most importantly, though, I was simply enjoying running again. My goal for January and February, then, was to work in aerobic base training while gradually increasing my mileage and re-establishing some semblance of consistency.  I mostly succeeded -- my mileage didn't make it up to where I wanted it, but my base training went ...

Now that it's the heart of fall racing season and I'm getting antsy not  being able to race, I thought it'd be a good time for the first in a new series of posts. I write a lot about various aspects of training that go into race day and I also recap race efforts fairly often, but I haven't written much about the strategy and tactics  that go into each competition. In fact, not many people do talk about tactics. If anything, they get a bad rap in running circles -- as in a sarcastic, "oh great, another tactical race." When you hear people talk about tactics, they do so in a negative tone: a tactical race is one that is slow, where the runners just jog around for 90% of the time until someone finally sprints to the finish. Sit-n-kick. Of course, this is  one tactic (an effective one, at that) and one you see often in championship-style races, where place matters more than time and most athletes are of about the same fitness caliber. But race tactics can be m...

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...

Well, this has easily been the worst training stretch of my life. Four months of constantly off and on running, never more than 45 miles in one week. No workouts, no races; no summer or fall season at all for me. But you know what? That's okay. I've been very lucky to (prior to this) never have missed more than three weeks at a time for injury. I suppose I was due for something more serious sooner or later, and I'm at least happy that it came immediately after  the Olympic Trials instead of before . Now that I'm slowly getting healthy and returning to jogging (not quite running yet, and definitely not training), there are a few lessons I've taken from this experience that I want to share. Listen to your body. When you feel something wrong, stop running -- don't try to run through it. My threshold for something wrong is this: does it change your stride? If so, then you're injured and you should not run. If not,  then you're probably just sore or ach...

A word of advice: don't get out of shape. Once you are, getting back in shape sucks. And patience is hard. Coming back from injury, I've been running for three weeks; this current week will be my fourth. My progression has been as such: Week 1: 17.5 miles on 5 days (4.5 mile longest run) Week 2: 27 miles on 6 days (7 mile longest run) Week 3: 37 miles on 6 days (8 mile longest run) Week 4: GOAL 45-50 miles on 6 days with a 10-mile longest run Right now I'm just running to return to a semblance of fitness. It's base training for base training. No special workouts, and the only think I'm doing faster than easy runs are the occasional set of four strides at about marathon effort. It's tough. Progress is slow. My Achilles feels great some days and achy other days, so I have to really pay attention to it. I feel aerobically fit to run more and faster, but neuromuscularly my legs haven't caught up. I find myself almost holding back on most runs, b...

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...

"Connective tissue is what gets all runners in the end ." Bruce Denton, Once a Runner It may not be the end, but connective tissue is what has laid me up for the past month. After the disaster of the LA Trials, I just wanted to race again. I did; four races in five weeks: two 5ks, one 10k, and then a 10 miler. All of it was leading up the Flying Pig Marathon, redemption day. That all unraveled at the end of March with a tight Achilles that just got worse the more I ran on it. For most of April, I was down from running 95 miles a week to running just three days per week: one normal run, one workout, and one long run. I was trying to do just enough  to get to marathon day okay. But if there's one thing I learned for good (which I knew already, but chose to ignore), it's that you can't fake a marathon. You're not just racing against yourself and your competitors; you're also racing against the distance. On that day, the marathon won. Flying P...

...is an Ohio guy named Bob Schul. Sure, you know all the American greats: Ryun, Shorter, Pre, Rodgers, Salazar, Joanie, Webb. Maybe you even know of some of the more obscure stars: Mills, Kastor, Lindgren, etc. But how much do you really know about Bob Schul, the only American to ever win Olympic gold at 5,000m  -- which he did while also coming into the race as the favorite and world #1 at the time? The race that made Schul immortal was the 5,000m at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Racing the deepest field ever assembled to that point (including Ron Clarke, Bill Baillie, Harald Norpoth, Michel Jazy, Kip Keino, and Bill Dellinger -- all running royalty), Schul waited patiently through a tactical, surging and slowing 4800 meters until unleashing an incredible kick over the final lap. To beat out nine (9!) other runners in contention at the bell, Schul closed in 54.8 for 400m and an astonishing 38.7 for the final 300 meters -- as fast, if not faster, than Mo Farah's kick in London 20...

This week I want to feature the Fast-Finish Long Run . I've written about n ot doing easy long runs before , and this is one that can be a staple of your training no matter what distance you're training for. A Fast-Finish Long Run is exactly what it sounds like: a long run where you run the last portion of it fast. It could be as simple as closing out the final 15-20 minutes of a run (no matter the distance) at an up-tempo, aerobic threshold-type effort; or it could be as tough as the marathon-specific session of 10 miles easy straight into 10 miles at marathon pace. The Fast-Finish fits anywhere within that spectrum. The point of a long run is to build up aerobic endurance, but sometimes we end up just slogging around at a slow pace, not really stimulating any aerobic gains while just beating ourselves up. Adding on an up-tempo finish at the end can stimulate that aerobic stamina without being too destructive. (Sometimes, running faster can be less stressful on the body t...

Yes, this is a selfish post. I mostly train alone; as it turns out, so do most of the post-collegiate runners in the Greater Cincinnati area. It's time to change that. Cincinnati is way too small of a town for us all to be doing our own thing, only to meet on race day and maybe the occasional long run. When you consider that many of the best runners train in groups, it makes sense that we ought to start training together. I get that everyone has different schedules; I'm not saying that all us runners need to live and run and hang out together all the time. All I'm proposing is a track workout on Tuesday. a tempo/threshold run on Friday (or Saturday), and a nice hard long run on Sunday. That's it, just three days. Three key workouts on three days, each week, every  week. I get that life gets in the way and you won't be able to make it every time, but you wanna get better? You gotta train consistently. Who better than training partners to keep you consistent? ...

Some days you have it, some days you don't. With training and tapering, of course, you hope to have it on race day. On February 13th 2016 in the heat of Los Angeles, I most definitely didn't have it. On a day that was a battle for everybody, I was one of the many riding the struggle bus. About 60 of the 160-ish men that started the race did not finish, myself included. I made it about 10 miles into the race before calling it a day and stepping off the course. I actually felt pretty good on my short warmup jog. I fell into aerobic threshold effort real easy and was primed to go. The first two miles, even in the mass of humanity, were right about where I wanted to be: 5:25 and then 5:18, right on. I latched onto a group that felt like it was going the right effort, ready to hang on for a ride to a solid time. But by the time we got to 10k, I knew I was in trouble. That's a scary feeling when you're hurting and you realize there are still twenty miles left in the ...

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. The New Balance 1400v3  (in the pictured colorway, too!) is the shoe I'll be racing in during the Olympic Trials Marathon. I've worn this particular shoe in one previous race and a few workouts as well.  This is my review of the shoe, but it's going to be a little different that most shoe reviews: I'm not going to talk about manufacturer specs or product details or anything like that ; instead, I'm going to talk about how it fits, how it feels, and who it's for. In my opinion, that's the truly important stuff, anyway. How does it fit? This shoe fits like a cross between a pure racin...

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...

So it's been about four years in the making, but I'm now going to the Olympic Marathon Trials. I ran the B-Standard qualifying time, I've registered for the Trials race (most reasonably priced marathon ever, by the way), and I've bough the plane tickets to LA. I'm all in. Well now what? What do you do after you finally run that cathartic qualifying time? You recover, race a 10k on Thanksgiving, and then hop into marathon training. I've spent the past two weeks taking training pretty light. The first week was very unstructured, just lots of easy mileage to get my legs back to feeling good. This past week was a little bit of a step up, with more mileage and some more tune-up workouts. This coming week I'm racing Cincinnati's classic Thanksgiving Day Race (if you'll be there come say hi!), looking to get after it  a few weeks removed from Indy Monumental. I don't want to go into the race with too many expectations, but suffice it to say I'...