I read with great interest a recent article in the New York Times titled, "The Once and Future Way to Run," by Christopher McDougall.
McDougall, who has a great reputation in the running community as an advocate for barefoot running, introduces us to a drill that long distance runners can use to improve their speed and running technique. It is called 100-up.
McDougall explains that the 100-up exercise, which was invented by W.G. George over a century ago, is actually two different movements.
In the “Minor,” the athlete stands with both feet on the ground about eight inches apart, and arms in the running position. The exercise is raising one knee to the height of the hip, then bringing the foot back its original position, touching the ground with the ball of the foot, then repeating the motion with the other leg.
The "Major" is basically the "Minor," but sped up to ensure that there is a constant shifting of weight, just as there is in actual running.
In practicing these movements, I found that I did get fatigued in certain muscles.
Should runners get on the bandwagon and center their running around every new technique and running 'fad?' No.
Should runners take a look at every running practice and see if they can take away something to improve their running? Yes.
For me, it is a good workout that can be done inside and out of the gym or track, and I am always looking to improve my running form. I do find that running seems less fatiguing to me when I bend forward from the ankles. This technique uses that practice, and also offers a good exercise to strengthen muscles used in running.
Do you land on your heels when you run? Have you tried the 100-up technique?
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I have felt great benefits as a runner from getting massages. Some runners may feel hesitant to get a massage because they do not know what will happen. Here is a video from the Center for Natural Wellness in Albany, NY that shows the massage techniques used in a foot massage: http://youtu.be/qEM6IoV5jdI
I like the idea that massage strokes move blood to the massaged area, and that massaging the foot will help move fluids in the foot back to the heart.
Do you recommend foot massage as a part of your running practice?
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The book 'Mindset, The New Psychology of Success, How We Can Learn To Fulfill Our Potential,' was a great read because it gave me a deeper insight on the theory of fixed mindset and growth mindset. For more detail on her research, please check out my post, 'Six Valuable Running Lessons I Learned from Bounce by Matthew Syed.'
I thought that the chapter on fixed mindset versus growth mindset coaches would be the most valuable, but the chapter that really opened my eyes was Chapter 8: Changing Mindsets.
Sometimes I Am Scared of the Unfamiliar
Dweck shares some anecdotes of children that are "paralyzed by setbacks." These young children have a fixed mindset and, "when things go wrong, they feel powerless and incapable."
In the Video 'Teaching Growth Mindsets,' http://youtu.be/OhLJPhxuvGM, Dr. Christine Carter and Kelly Coorigan talk about parenting with the growth mindset versus the fixed mindset. This conversation applies directly to how I want to think about my running.
I think that research on children is valuable for my running, because I usually encounter my obstacles when I am at the end of a race or during a high mileage week in my training. I will be tired, thirsty, low on carbohydrates, and my emotions can spiral out of control as easily as a two year old's do if I do not know how to put myself into the right mindset with the right attitude. When I am comfortable, I can easily use a growth mindset to make life's decisions, but when I feel stressed, it seems like the little voice inside my head adopts a fixed mindset.
Do you ever feel paralyzed when faced with a setback in a race? How do you get yourself back on track?
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I learned a valuable running lesson from Hurricane Irene.
I live in Troy, in Upstate New York, and Hurricane Irene hit the Capital Region hard last Sunday. I prepared in the usual way, stocking up on nonperishable food and testing my flashlight and radios. I also had to rearrange my running schedule on short notice.
I usually run X miles on Tuesday and Thursday, 2X miles on Wednesday and Friday, and a 3X long run on Sunday after my rest day on Saturday. (at this point in my schedule, X = 2)
Hurricane Irene gave me three choices:
1. Skip the Sunday run.
2. Do my Sunday long run on Monday, which means getting up extra early and possibly dodging flooding and downed power lines.
3. Do my long run on Saturday, without a rest day.
I chose to do my long run on Saturday. I wasn't really aware of how important that my Saturday rest day was to my body until I started looking at the data my heart rate monitor was providing. I was reaching and exceeding my target heart rate much more quickly on the hills, and I had to slow to a comfortable jog to bring my heart rate down after a hill.
I am thankful that Hurricane Irene taught me a valuable lesson. Rest days are in my schedule for a reason, to allow my body to heal and recuperate.
How important are rest days in your running schedule?
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I learned six valuable lessons from Matthew Syed's book, Bounce. Syed, a two time Olympic table tennis player, explores how athletes can best handle competition and explains the science behind several of the most productive coaching methods.
How Do Top Runners Run So Fast?
Syed starts by offering data that backs up the current theory that it takes so-called 'gifted' athletes, artists and other experts ten years or ten thousand hours of practice to achieve excellence in their fields. Syed explains that when we see child prodigies, professional athletes and chessmasters demonstrate their skills, we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg. Every decision and move that they make is learned from hours and hours of purposeful practice.
Winner are winners because they make quality decisions under pressure of competition. Syed explains that good decision making, whether on the tennis court or at a chess match, is the result of "decoding the meaning of patterns derived from experience."
The ability to understand and react to what is going on inside of the athlete and around her comes from her prior experience. There are many patterns that the experienced runner recognizes, both in practice and during races. Runners can develop skills to see when their own body is close to injury and when their opponent is tired during a race, for instance.
What is the Right Way To Train For a Half Marathon?
The way to get the most out of practice is by developing skills that we do not currently master, a type of exercise that Syed calls "purposeful practice." For a runner, that could mean training the aerobic conditioning system through long slow runs during the basebuilding phase, or incorporating speedwork in the sharpening phase of a periodic training schedule.
Syed says that "purposeful practice is about striving for what is just out of reach and not quite making it; it is about grappling with tasks beyond current limitations and falling short again and again." and "Progress is built on the foundations of necessary failure."
Purposeful practice in running is accomplished many ways. One is through periodization of my running schedule. When I run my endurance runs, running at the proper pace is essential to ensure that my body receives the right type of workout.
What is NOT Purposeful Practice
The runner that runs the same six mile loop month after month at the same pace will not experience the same gains in endurance and/or speed as the runner who utilizes purposeful practice. This is also illustrated out on the road. Most drivers have driven for 10,000 hours, but I am not improving my driving skills during my morning commute because I am 'zoned out,' paying attention to the radio and not consciously practicing anything new. My driving will not improve just because I am behind the wheel for 40 minutes each day.
So, my first four lessons are that:
1. Expertise is derived by purposeful practice, and
2. 10,000 hours of purposeful practice are needed to achieve true excellence.
3. Winners are winners because they make quality decisions, which are ingrained through purposeful practice.
4. The tough thing about purposeful practice is that is hard and involves what an outsider would call 'failure.'
What About Natural Running Talent?
But, what about Pre and Ryan Hall? what about the tall, thin guy lining up next to me at the half marathon? Aren't they naturally gifted? What about talent?
Syed shows that what he calls 'The Talent Myth' is a mindset that can be holding long distance runners and other athletes back from their best performances.
If we believe that our athletic ability is predetermined by our genes, we subscribe to the talent myth and have a fixed mind set. If we think that athletic ability can be transformed through effort, we have a growth mind set.
Fixed Mindset Versus Growth Mindset
Syed writes about research that Stanford University professor Carol Dweck performed on the effects of the fixed mind set and growth mind set. Children with a fixed mind set, when faced with a difficult problem, said things like "I guess I'm not very smart" and I'm no good at things like this." What did children with a growth mind set say when talking about their work on a similarly difficult problem? They did not blame anything at all. They did not even consider themselves to be failing!
This finding made me think of purposeful practice again. If purposeful practice is tough because during this type of practice I will be constantly setting myself up against a challenge that I may not overcome, I need to redefine the meaning of failure. Just because I do not master a skill on the first few tries does not mean I am not a good runner or never going to eventually succeed.
Carol Dweck also performed a study on the effects of different types of praise. Schoolchildren were given puzzles to solve and either praised for their talent or their effort. Most of the children who were told they were smart chose an easy test for their second effort. They needed to live up to their label of 'smart.' The vast majority of the children who were told they were hard working chose the tougher test! They were interested in living up to their label of hard working.
Dweck advises that praising someone for achieving something easily should sound like, "Whoops, I guess that was too easy. I apologize for wasting your time. Let's do something you can really learn from!"
Lessons five and six for me are:
5. Athletes do best when they have a growth mind set, believing that expertise is achieved through hard work, not innate talent.
6. In order to reinforce a growth mind set already rooted in an athlete, praise effort instead of calling them talented.
How This Has Improved My Running
Now that I know the value of a growth mindset and understand that ten thousand hours of hard work is needed to achieve excellence, I will:
Value putting in hard work over 'talent,' or settling for a task I can complete easily, and
Develop my running schedule to ensure that every run is purposeful practice - I will run every day to develop my running skills and increase my endurance.
How do you incorporate 'purposeful practice' into your runs?
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I recently had the pleasure of learning about how to coach runners from Patti and Warren Finke from Team Oregon. They advocate a long-short schedule of running that enables runners to safely and comfortably build an adequate base for sucessfully running 15K, half marathon, marathon and ultramarathon distances.
My Biggest Running Issue - Injury
One of the most difficult parts of training for my first 15K and my first two half marathons was keeping my body uninjured while I increased my mileage. I was running without a coach monitoring my progress, relying only on things I remembered from my high school cross country days.
A Runner That Doesn't Want To Run - How to 'Cure' A Running Rut
This spring and summer, as I dealt with my father's death, I found myself in a running rut. I was running the same 3.5 mile loop on weekdays, uninspired to increase my mileage except for a longer Sunday run that I practically had to guilt myself into every week.
Where was the confident runner that blasted her Half Marathon PR apart last year?
Where was the excited runner that jumped out of bed to exercise before work?
My problem was that I was running every weekday run TOO FAST. I was not building up my aerobic endurance. Instead, I was just tiring myself out without improving my weekly distance or my time. I was not allowing myself aqeuqate time to recover from my runs. My body rebelled and found all too many excuses for me to skip my weekday runs.
Bottom Line: Running should make me feel happy-accomplished-tired, not uugh-gottasleepin-sore-tired.
Learning about the what I call the 'long-short' theory of running has been a godsend, enabling me to double my mileage and start once again proudly entering my runs on my running log.
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I went to the Massage Clinic at the Center for Natural Wellness for a routine massage last night. As soon as I found myself resting comfortably on the massage table, I realized that it has been too long since my last massage, almost a year.
John was my masseur. He was full of energy, and used a mixture of massage strokes, direct pressure and stretching to reduce tension and flush out the lactic acid in my leg muscles.
Massage Is Your Canary In the Mineshaft
I recommend massage because, for me, it sheds light on tension and soreness in my muscles BEFORE they become injuries. During my massage, John found tense muscles in my legs that hadn't yet impacted my workouts. He was able to recommend a stretch for my Psoas muscle, the pigeon pose.
Runner's World gives more information about the importance of sports massage for runners in their article, 'The Lowdowns on Rubdowns.'
What has your experience been with massage?
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His research has found that long distance runners can prevent their bodies from hitting the wall by running at a specific pace and consuming specific amounts of carbohydrates at specific times during the race.
An interesting tidbit from his research is that he cites a study that find the primary risk factors for ‘hitting the wall’ are male gender, running a maximum distance of 20 miles or less during training, and expecting to ‘hit the wall.’
‘Endurance Athlete’s Edge’ by Marc Evans offers advice on periodization, and training intensity zones in addition to basic information on running form, running drills and tips on preventing common running injuries.
Evans details the physiological benefits of each of the different types of running workouts. He separates workouts into Aerobic Conditioning (70 – 80% of Maximum Heart Rate (MHR), Anaerobic Conditioning (80 – 90% of MHR), Aerobic Capacity (90 – 95% of MHR) and Anaerobic capacity (100% of MHR)
Aerobic conditioning workouts should be at least 20 minutes long.
Anaerobic Conditioning workouts should be 15 to 25 minutes total running in 1 mile repetitions with rest intervals of under 1 minute. The pace should be race pace.
Aerobic Capacity workouts should be 10 – 21 minutes of running separated into 800 meter repetitions, with rest intervals of equal time. The pace should be slightly faster than race pace.
Anaerobic capacity workouts should be 4 - 10 minutes of running separated into 20 second all-out sprints with 40 second rest intervals.
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