Reflections on Boston, Thoughts on the Sub-2 Marathon, and P-K POMs

We often hear that what sets running apart from other professional sports is that the fastest and the slowest in the world mingle more or less freely at many of our major events-- the annual big city marathons, and the many large non-marathon races that attract similar numbers in places as obscure as Spokane WA, Davenport Iowa, and Falmouth MA. What enables this unique mixing of the world's best with the average recreational athlete is, in part, running's openness and informality even at the highest levels. Elite runners have never been nervous about close proximity to crowds of non-elites, and all runners the world over have been blissfully innocent of the potential threat to their well being posed by the fact that they regularly gather en mass in urban centers. Until last Monday.

The bomb attacks on the spectators and competitors at last week's Boston Marathon mark the first time that a mass urban footrace has been the target of large scale, politically motivated violence (and early indications that these attacks were politically motivated, even if possibly not international in their planning and coordination). I am not even aware of there ever having been a threat made against a high profile gathering of runners (outside of the Olympic Games, which has, of course, been both threatened and attacked on a couple of notable occasions). Runners and running, in fact, might be alone in having been so spared. Before now, who would have thought it conceivable that a mass gathering of runners and their supporters might somehow be seen as a deserving target of political violence? A mass running event like the Boston Marathon represents, after all, a kind of social truce in and of itself. Few things could be considered more inherently peaceful and non-confrontational than masses of people of all kinds, from every walk of life, of every political stripe, of all religions and creeds, gathering together to test their wills against the course and the conditions. Running is competitive, of course, but it does not entail any of the physical confrontation or aggressive regional, quasi-tribal fanship of most team sports. (Parents, tellingly, never fight or argue at children's running competitions). As such, the Boston attacks represent a profound loss of innocence for our sport; it will never be quite the same. Runners will still amass each year in the streets of Boston, London, Chicago, Berlin and elsewhere, perhaps in a spirit of defiance; but, never will we experience these gatherings with quite the same sense of ease and openness in each others' company. The Boston bombers, after all, posed as spectators waiting for the arrival of their friends or loved ones, their weapons concealed in that most ubiquitous of running accessories, the knapsack. Unfortunately, from now on, it will take a new kind of courage to line up alongside thousands of others in a high profile urban event. But, as one commentator put it in the early aftermath of the attacks, whoever would challenge the human spirit by attacking runners has chosen the wrong target. Runners everywhere will find this courage, and more. Expect Boston 2014 to be the biggest and best yet, scars and all.

The Sub-2 Marathon (and why it is not the new sub-4 mile):

The Virgin London Marathon was the first big city race to stage following Boston and, after solemn expressions of sympathy and support for the victims-- and the aforementioned defiance-- the focus shifted back to where it belonged: on the running itself. This year's men's race was billed as the greatest ever, with the field containing four of the 10 or so fastest ever, and all four of the most current "Marathon Majors" winners (i.e. champions of Boston, New York, Chicago, or Berlin). An assault on the world record was a foregone conclusion, and success was given better than a gambler's chance by many. Pacers-- all of them world class distance runners in their own right-- were assembled with instructions to tow the leaders to an almost unprecedented first half split of 1:01:30, which, if sustained, would bring the winner in under the current world best of 2:03:38. The pack would indeed pass the halfway mark at the designated time (actually, 1:01:27), helped by nearly perfect weather conditions. In the end, however, not a single man would come even close to maintaining this pace through the 2nd half, with most slowing dramatically (the winner struggled home in 2:06, taking 5 minutes to complete his final mile, as compared with a first half average of under 4:40). What does this mean? Quite simply, that even the best in the world are subject to the same physiological limits as the rest of us when it comes to the unique demands of the marathon, the mastery of which requires more than just great aerobic power; it requires metabolic parsimony. No matter how easy it might feel, and no matter who you are, if you go too fast, and thereby burn too much glycogen, in the first 30k of the race, you will hit the "wall" somewhere in the final 10k. And, for the best in the world, 1:01:30 is still, apparently, unsustainably fast.

What does this say about the prospects for a sub-2 hour marathon, thought by many to be this century's 4:00 mile? Rather a lot, actually, and none of it promising. If, after 100 years of progress by runners from the advanced industrial world, and three decades of influx by athletically and financially determined East Africans, much of it lately concentrated specifically in the marathon, the world's best athletes cannot pass the halfway mark within 90 seconds of the required pace without having to pay it back with interest, what are the chances that we will ever see a clean athlete run 26.2 miles in under 2 hours? Recent claims about the possibility, indeed the imminence, of a sub-2, including in the latest issue of Canadian Running Magazine, make vague references to improved training and other technologies, but the argument really amounts to the following: the marathon world record will continue to improve simply because it always has; we don't know exactly how, but then we didn't know how it would go down to 2:03 when the WR was at 2:06:50. Except we did, or should have, and it had nothing to do with new technologies (doping aside, it is in fact remarkable how little the basic science of training for running has changed since Lydiard's pioneering insights in the 1950s!) When the world record was 2:08, then 2:06, there was still plenty of room for greater participation by the world's best athletes, who tended to concentrate their efforts on the track, with the marathon generally reserved for championships, and the Olympics in particular. The 1980s saw an explosion of the urban marathon, a steady increase in prize money, and a steady decline in the world record. As participation in the marathon by the global best began to equal, and lately perhaps even surpass, that of track and shorter road racing, progress has, after a very rapid burst of improvement in the past 5 years, begun to show signs of leveling off (interestingly, even as depth has increased). This year's London marathon is probably an excellent indication of what we can expect for the foreseeable future-- incredible depth, but a pronounced slowing of the rate of world record decline, just as happened at the shorter track distances, in which standards have actually declined in the past 8-10 years. People may not want to look like those hapless "experts" in the 1950s who thought the 4:00 mile was a physical impossibility, but that's not likely. Comparisons between a sub-4:00 mile in the 1950s and a sub-2 hour marathon in 2013 aren't very meaningful. On the eve of Banister's historic sub-4:00, the record was 4:02, and global participation in track and field was still minimal, and could reasonably have been expected to skyrocket, as the developing world decolonized and grew somewhat richer (I can't find them, but I'm quite sure that their were other "experts" who were predicting the imminence of a sub-4:00 mile on precisely this basis, or at least should have been). In the end, Bannister's sub 4 represented a mere one per cent drop in the previous record. By comparison, a sub-2 marathon would represent a drop of almost 3 per cent, and this at a time when global participation rates and prize money are not likely to increase significantly any time soon. Add to this the fact that the current record may have been propelled by oxygen vector doping (now showing up significantly in Kenya) and the odds of ever looking silly for ruling out a sub-2 marathon look pretty long-- unless we actually break a new frontier in doping for endurance sport, in which case all bets are off (and the sport rendered all but meaningless, but that's another story.) The world is approaching the limit of quite a few things these days, including, I would argue, those of absolute athletic performance. Other than doping, the old mainsprings of rapid performance at the top end of distance running seem to be losing some of their resilience, with new ones still the stuff of pure speculation (interestingly, not even the most optimistic call for a sub 2 hour marathon in the next 15 years, with most saying 20-30-- the time scale of science fiction when it comes to sports).

P-K POMs for January, February, and March:

Serious racing by P-Kers generally slows to a crawl in January, as nearly everyone is busy rebuilding from the long fall racing season. Nevertheless, online athlete Kevin Coffey managed a very fine mid-winter 8k of 24:56 at the Kingston Road Runners Resolution Run (well below his personal best of 25:52, even allowing for a slight deviation which shortened the traditional Fort Henry course by 150-odd meters). Congrats to Kevin on his first POM win!

February saw a few of us hit the indoor track, but the racing scene was still quiet, as it usually remains at this time of year. A bright spot, and the February POM winner, was junior Adrienne Morgan's breakthrough 3k of 10:25, finally erasing her stubborn 10:36 from almost two year earlier. This result represented Adrienne's return to form after a couple of years of minor injury setbacks. Congrats to Adrienne on her second ever POM win (the last one being for her old 3k best).

March, wintry as it was, saw the opening of the road racing season for club members. Only the aforementioned Kevin Coffey seemed to have been unhindered by the months long terrible training weather. In the dark of January and February, Kevin had run prodigious numbers of kms in preparation for a breakthrough performance at the historic Around the Bay 30k. In the end, his aim was true. Hoping for a time in the 1:41-42 range, Kevin delivered an outstanding 1:39:20, passing the HM mark in a personal best. Congrats to Kevin for a performance that looks set to contend for POY when the snow flies again next January.

Stayed tuned for April's POM in the next week or two (with K-town Race Weekend kicking off tomorrow, their may be even more contenders in a month that has already seen at least two very strong runs).

P-K POMS/POY and Miscellany

Where was I? Ah, yes, promising to increase my recent rate of posting to this space back closer to the historical average(now increasing, due to my delinquency!). In honour of the recent pope-ular renewal, Mea Culpa!

In this installment, I finally get around to recognizing the top monthly performances by P-Kers in 2012, and crown the best of them-- the winner of the third annual, and coveted, P-K Performance of the Year (POY), the owner of which receives a small Mizuno prize package. I also offer a miscellany of recent observations on the sport (normally the stuff of individual posts; but, given my aforementioned delinquency, they would likely never have appeared otherwise!).

Final 2012 POMs

September's POM belongs to a winner of the club POY before this space, or indeed the online group, had been created, and it is his first such club honour since. Steve Blostein's run at the U.S. masters championships in Syracuse, New York ended a long trek in the wilderness of injury-- some run-of-the-mill masters stuff, including back and hip problems, and one acute injury resulting from a misstep while running on a partly frozen golf course at this very time of year. Having slid from a solid sub-18 minute 5k man in his mid-40s, Steve had slowed to 19mins plus at times over the years-- that is, when he had been able to compete at all. Diligent rehab, as well as a return to his first endurance love, swimming, enabled him, now in his early 50s, to once again flirt with sub-18:00-- 18:03, to be precise! After a winter of very strong training, Steve looks to get back to where he was 5 years ago, and at all distances. If his form continues as it has been, look for him to make further appearances in this space.

The nod for October goes to a new member of the Junior group, Felix Lafontant, whose string of strong X-C performances in October (at the local and regional high school championships, and at Kingston's annual Run with the Wild X-C event), any one of which could have been nominated, demonstrated his remarkable progress since joining the group in the late summer. A newcomer to the sport at the age of 18, Felix went from a back-of-the high school pack local runner to a respectable provincial level athlete with a serious future as a collegiate runner (he will attend Queen's in the fall). Rarely has a teenage athlete taken to the sport with such gusto. In terms of his desire to run long and hard, Felix is a would-be Rejean Chiasson (i.e. would be, that is, if I would let him off the leash!).

November is the heart of championship X-C season, and there were a number of worthy performances turned in on the turf. Grade 10 Heather Jaros stunned observers with her 12th place finish at National Juniors in Vancouver, beating many older and much more decorated competitors, including multiple OFSAA senior medalists (Heather had only finished 3rd in the OFSAA Junior race a few weeks earlier). At the other end of the age spectrum, masters athletes Richard Ascough and Joanne Armstrong were outstanding at the OA meet in Kingston, with Richard scoring an outright 5k P.B. over the rolling Fort Henry course, and Joanne finishing in the 45-49 medals, also in a near outright best, in her first ever X-C race! Finally, yours truly managed to become the oldest winner by three years of the National Masters X-C Championships, after sliding as far back as 4th in 2011. And the POM goes to... Heather Jaros, for the sheer audacity of her performance! Running in her first out of province race, and with National Team berths on the line (she was actually too young to be considered, had she manage to finish in qualifying position-- which she very nearly did!), Heather showed remarkable courage and self-belief.

December, always a quiet month for racing in this hemisphere, saw only one POM-worthy performance-- masters runner Jeff Brison's season best 5k (17:16 some 30 secs better than where he started in the spring) at the Wonderful Run 5k in Seneca Falls, NY.

2012 POY

And, now, the P-K POY for 2012: Regular readers will know that junior Cleo Boyd had a stunning 2012 on the track. It is an unfortunate fact that young female runners in North America (and perhaps elsewhere) rarely experience their most rapid rates of improvement in their late teens, indeed, if they manage to improve at all past age 16. Already a decent provincial level competitor, Cleo had a run of improvement in the spring of the year much more characteristic of young male athletes, who often parlay late spurts of growth and strength into rapid improvements in performance. The performance of the year-- Cleo's World Junior standard-breaking 9:33 3000m-- capped this astonishing 6 week period in which she improved her personal best at the distance by 25 seconds. Her best performance was all the more of impressive due to having been a final opportunity to make the standard, and coming only a few days after an agonizingly narrow miss (her 9:35.0, set on the home track in Kingston). Congrats, Cleo, and thanks for making this year's POY deliberations the easiest ever!

And now to 2013! Look for the January through March POMs in the next installment (I promise!).


Racing/Training/Running Miscellany

1. Training in the winter is not easy (but does it make us better?)!

The retro-winter of 2012 has served to remind many of us here in Canada that running outside in the snow and cold, and on pavement, for weeks on end is neither fun nor, I believe, as productive as running under more moderate conditions and on softer surfaces. And regular tread-milling, while a good solution to the problem of pounding one's hips and quads on cold asphalt and concrete, or pulling one's groin on ice and snow, only creates another winter problem-- monotony (and, for many, the inconvenience of finding an available treadmill everyday, especially in January, when clubs are filled with the newly exercise-resolved). But what if running in the cold had some surplus physiological benefit, such as research has revealed for heat running (i.e. that it can produce some of the same adaptations as running at altitude)? A young apprentice coach I ran into while at the CIS championships in uber-cold Edmonton said that he had seen some recent research precisely to this effect. I have yet to locate said research, but will comment when I do. In the meantime, I suppose I'll make-do with the placebo effect of believing that running in the cold is some kind of super-training.

2. I'm beginning to miss "amateur" running.

And, no, I don't mean the stuffy, aristocratic business of outlawing anyone who ever made, say, 5 bucks for pitching in a baseball game (such as happened to the great Jim Thorpe, the native American athlete who won both the decathlon and modern pentathlon in the same Olympic Games). I'm talking about the "ideal" of having something approaching an adult life and adult responsibilities outside of sport. I came to this realization while perusing the running press (Running Times and Letsrun.com), which frequently provides interviews and other such glimpses into the personal lives and daily routines of some of today's fully contracted (i.e. "pro") distance runners. Serious old-school amateur greats like Roger Bannister (who broke 4 minutes for the mile while a full time medical student at Oxford), Peter Elliot (full time engineer and World and Olympic Silver Medalist), and our own Jerome Drayton (full time civil servant, unofficial three time world champion, and still Canadian marathon record holder) would be shocked at the infantalized world in which many of today's elites, many of them in their late 20s and early 30s, dwell. In an Running Times in-depth look at his life as a post-collegiate athlete, former American junior star German Fernandes reveals how he and his fellow pros at the Oregon Distance Project, some of whom have degrees from very reputable universities, struggle against the apparent boredom of their downtime from training by playing videos games. And in a similar interview with Letsrun.com, superstar New Zealander Kim Smith, also the holder of an undergraduate university degree, is revealed as human being utterly devoid of serious non-athletic interests of any kind. Her time between runs is spent watching T.V. (despite great chasms of free time, she doesn't even bother with any of the now obligatory strength and body maintenance work), and she admits to giving no thought whatsoever to her life after athletics. Then there's Galen Rupp, America's current top distance track man, who, in spite of ample invitations, has yet to offer even the most rudimentary insight or observation concerning his own life as an athlete, let alone the wider world. He is a figure so bland and colourless that even the world's greatest marketing machine-- Nike-- cannot fashion a media image for him, and appears to have given up the effort altogether, in spite of Rupp's phenomenal recent success on the world stage. Granted, even for those with abundant talent, striving to be the best in the world (or even just very good) requires serious sacrifices; it always has. The examples of former greats show, however, that elite level sport and being a grown-up need not be mutually exclusive(and many of the best from the 70s and 80s ran times that would place them near the top of today's world lists, in spite of their having, or choosing, to do something constructive with their spare time). I would go further and say that elite athletic performance would be utterly pointless if it actually required the infantilization of performers. It does not. Indeed, participation in elite sport can promote greater maturity and adult insight, if done within the context of a well-rounded life. Many of the sport's former greats managed to derive, and engagingly articulate, interesting insights from their experience as athletes (the best example of which may be contained in Dr. Roger Bannister's underrated autobiography). And it's gratifying to see that at least some of today's top "pros" still manage to do adult things with their spare time, such as have children, start small businesses, pursue serious post-graduate studies, or even just produce interesting blogs. Thankfully, for every Fernandes, Smith, or Rupp there is the odd Lauren Fleshman

3. The beginning of the end for "oxygen vector" doping in distance running?

It could well be that a confluence of recent events, including the final collapse or the Lance Armstrong edifice of fraud, a damning expose by German journalist Hajo Seppelt, and the revelation the "biological passport" system (by which elite competitors have their blood profiles measured and stored for comparison against future results) may have netted as many as 17 new positives for endurance athletes dating back to the 2004 Olympics, will lead to a significant reduction in the rate of use of performance enhancing drugs, and so-called "oxygen vector" drugs (such as EPO) in particular, in distance running. Indeed, the decline in performance levels at the very top of the sport (with the exception of the marathon, which was a relatively underdeveloped event compared with the track distances races until a few years ago, and whose competitors are less subject to frequent out of competition testing)had already been declining back to early 1990s levels before any of this occurred, suddenly making current world records seem untouchable. The next few months could well be the most interesting-- and shocking, for those who believe our sport is largely clean at the highest levels-- period ever in the history of the sport. In short, this spring could mark the beginning of distance running's Great Reckoning, similar to that which pro cycling has been in the throes of since at least the 1997 "Tour of Shame". I look forward to a day when our most talented young athletes do not have to confront a choice between ethics and health on one hand and enjoying the full rewards of their talent on the other. And it would be nice if Canadian athletes in particular-- who are subject to one of the most rigorous domestic testing regimes in the world-- were no longer being evaluated against (i.e. for the purposes of carding and national team selection) a doping-supported set of international standards. More on this in future installments.

4. USA men beat Kenya at World X-C!?

No, this is not a futuristic joke headline. This actually happened this past week in Bydgoszcz, Poland. Granted, the Americans did not win the whole enchilada (they were, unsurprisingly, beaten decisively by Ethiopia). And, the Kenya team they bested was not comprised of the country's very best X-C men (but then, the U.S. left a handful of its top athletes at home too). Still, a win by ANY US team over ANY Kenya team at World's would have been all but inconceivable as recently as three years ago, and the stuff of science fiction a decade ago. And so the U.S. distance running revival proceeds apace. And Canada, through the influence of internet based sports media and the participation of our athletes in the NCAA system, is showing all the signs of following suit. The Canadian men were 9th in this addition, mainly due to a couple of unexpectedly sub-par performances on the day, but are showing the kind of strength and depth to finish much higher in upcoming additions. The same is true on the women's side, where Canada finished 8th, but had two athletes in the top 25, with several of similar calibre choosing not to participate this time around. The mainsprings of this revival are the subject of debate; but, I would suggest that the rediscovery by coaches and athletes of something they should never have forgotten in the first place-- namely, that general aerobic conditioning through high levels of easy running volume is the foundation for success at all distances 800m and above-- is the principle driving force of this renaissance. The feedback mechanism of young North Americans seeing one another get the job done at the highest levels, and finding out how they did it via media likes Letsrun.com and the many athletes blogs now in circulation, will ensure that this revival has legs well beyond 2016.

Not Running: What To Do When It's The Only Thing Worse Than Running

The short answer to the above question is that you drag yourself out the door for a run, once again. After all, every other non-running activity, while it may be pleasurable in itself, by definition involves NOT running and is therefore less tolerable than running (if not during said activity, then certainly after, when the fact of not having run settles in). If there are other activities whose participants often loathe the prospect of doing what they do only slightly less than not doing it at all (recreational drug use?) I'd like to know what these activities are. In my experience, runners are unique in often hating in particular what they love in general. And this is the time of year-- mid-winter, when the options are often slipping around in the frozen dark or counting the seconds on an electronic console-- when this loathing tends to peak. (In fact, the particular date on which I write-- the third Monday in January, so-called Blue Monday-- is statistically the most depressing date on the calendar here in North America).

The longer answer, and one I contemplate when the challenge of getting out the door is at its greatest, is to try and think about why I (still) love running after 33+ years of doing it an average of 29 out of 30 days, year-round. I'll admit that, after this long, it's often zombie-like unflexiveness that gets me out the door or onto the t-mill. I often think about nothing at all, as far as that's possible, and, with apologies to Nike, just do it. On the other hand, I do often think-- and talk with other runners-- about what it is I like most about running and being a runner, even when I hate the thought of having to do it. Here, in no particular order, are some of the things I reflect on:

1. Competing successfully is ALWAYS fun, and this only happens when you make the commitment to train as consistently as humanly possible. Racing is one of those things that richly rewards simple, brute consistency, and harshly punishes its opposite. Distance running is unique in that talent or "skill" will get you nowhere without dogged persistence. The imperative to get out the door and spend time on one's feet is the great leveler in this sport, and those who can manage this will often beat those who can't, regardless of natural aptitude. If there is an indispensable talent required for succeeding in this sport, it is the talent for getting one's ass out the door every day!

2. Running can be surprising on the simplest level. It's only because I'm good at getting myself to do it that I have learned that even the most foreboding running experiences-- that cold day you didn't want to step out into, or that workout you were dreading-- can end up being the most fun, satisfying, or even enlightening. Chances are, the run or workout you don't want to do will end up being like all the others, but sometimes it will turn out to be fantastic and memorable for some reason, big or small (e.g. a moment of rare an unexpected natural beauty, a chance meeting with a running friend, a performance breakthrough). The possibility of these experiences is eliminated every time you DON'T make it out the door.

3. The weather is sometimes not as bad as it seems, and becoming master of it can be satisfying. Winter running in particular, which we can legitimately hate for a whole host of reasons, can actually be some of the best running weather of the year-- something we often forget when the season is approaching in November. There is unique beauty in a crisp, clear, and white winter day, when one's body temperature has risen enough to enjoy it, and a dusting of dry snow can provide a little shock absorption on the concrete or asphalt, creating a comfortable running surface that is entirely unique to running in winter climes.

4. HAVING run, no matter how bad the run or workout itself, is always uniquely pleasurable, and it the deeper reason we find it preferable to not running, even at the worst of times. Rare is the runner who will come in the door saying "I really wish I hadn't done that; now I feel worse" (i.e. barring injury or illness), and that post-run glow can be the most intense and unalloyed pleasure that any of us feels on a regular basis. There is a reason, after all, that something as simple as daily aerobic running (note: not skiing, or playing hockey) is touted as a effective treatment for mild to moderate clinical depression. And there is only one sure route to this feeling; you can't HAVE run unless you've take that first step.

5. Simply continuing to BE a runner is worth the effort. Doing a sport as demanding as running, and doing it the way it is supposed to be done, is a source of intense pride for all serious runners. And you can't be a runner in general; to truly be a runner is a decision that must be renewed every day. If you decide you simply don't have the drive to get out today, what's to stop you from making the same decision again tomorrow, or any day after that? From the point of view of the serious runner, no day is any different or more important than any other in the larger scheme of things; they are all tiny pieces of a single whole; there are no great days without a multitude of lesser ones. The runner who decides not to run today for no other reason than it is difficult has already quit being a runner, he/she just doesn't know it yet.

In my next post I promise all you P-Kers to finish up the POMs (and also announce the POY!). I figure I'm doing well enough amid all the all hubbub (and, with the university indoor track season underway, there is much hubbub)to simply have increased my posting frequency back closer to the historical rate for this space.

How We Get Ahead in Running: The Meaning of "Consistency"

You've heard it and read it in the running magazines dozens of times before: the key to getting to the next level in the sport, whether you're young or old, is to train consistently over a long period of time. We know this means, among other things, that doing a moderate amount of running for a few months beats doing a few prodigious bouts of training, followed by little or no running at all (sometimes due to injury or illness, but also due simply to loss of interest in the aftermath of the binge itself). We also know that the longer we can go without significant down time-- several years, if possible-- the better we'll get. My experience as both athlete and coach, however, has taught me that things are not quite so simple. The real truth, once again, resides in the details-- details that are discernible only through closer inspection of what successful athletes actually do, and have done for years. For instance, while it's true that many successful athletes, myself included, have had very low rates of injury over long stretches of their careers, it is also the case that many equally successful athletes have suffered more than one setback lasting 2-4 months in the span of a few years during their careers. And while many of us have kept our total weekly training volumes within a fairly narrow band over a decade or more, with the most successful tending to do slightly more volume on average from one year to the next, plenty of top runner's diaries record quite large fluctuations within these steadily increasing yearly averages. What does this seemingly conflicting evidence tell us about the meaning of "long term consistency" as it relates to training for distance running?

The very short answer is that consistency simply means not giving up (of which more below)! It is possible to have a successful career in this sport on the basis of both a very uniform pattern of training from week to week and year to year, and a pattern characterized by wide fluctuations in total training load and intensity, either by design, or as a result of injury and other setbacks. Where possible, uniformity and careful incrementality is always to be preferred to its opposite, at least in the long term. The trouble is, it is rarely possible, because the variables upon which it depends are often very difficult to control. The trained body can be capricious and therefore hard to read; and, in many places in the world, the seasonal weather can be distinctly uncooperative. All runners must therefore deal to one degree or another with shocks and interruptions to their carefully plotted plans, and some runners must deal with regular and multiple such disturbances. Common sense may dictate that, in the face of challenges to consistency, coaches and athletes must double-down on their attempts at stabilizing the overall training plan. There may be something to be said, however, for accepting, and even attempting to exploit, the pattern of short term inconsistency imposed by life's tribulations.

I have always intuited that it is sometimes best to "strike while the iron is hot" when formulating a training plan-- to, in other words, increase volume and/or intensity when it's obvious that my or my athlete's response to the stimulus is robust. This intuition coalesced into an actual insight the other day during a post-workout chat with a particularly fast-improving young athlete. His just completed workout had been significantly faster at the same perceived effort than a similar session only two weeks earlier. When he suggested that he must have simply pushed a little harder this week-- because he "couldn't actually be any fitter in only two weeks"-- I began to think a little harder about my own experience. When I was improving (and it's been many years since I have actually improved), how did it typically happen? My recollection-- backed up by my old training logs-- indeed showed that, when I improved, it tended to be in sudden bursts of 6-8 weeks, followed by longer periods of relative stasis. There were definitely times when I really did get fitter and faster than I had ever been in a period of just a couple of weeks, often following a period of longer and more intense training than usual. My pattern over many years was therefore not linear at all. It tended to be more a matter of improving in short bursts, then simply hanging onto those gains until the next burst. It was the hanging onto established gains-- the never giving up part-- that really distinguished my career as a whole.

Then I stumbled upon the following post from Alex's Hutchinson's consistently outstanding blog on exercise science in which he reviewed a piece of research on the possible benefits of "killer training weeks"-- the kind typically done during university and club training camps. This caused me to recall the many times I had seen and heard of athletes suddenly reaching new levels of performance in the wake of breakthrough, one-day efforts in half-marathons and marathons (although much more commonly half marathons). Perhaps there really was something to be said for abandoning routine-- and even common sense-- once in a while in pursuit of that big breakthrough!

But then my more prudent, analytical side intervened and offered some needed balance. If we could always know with certainty in every case when the best odds of successfully pushing the envelope in training would occur, then the problem would be simple. Absent such information, however, the idea of introducing "super-weeks" of training into a typical routine seemed almost always ill-advised, and more likely to end in injury and over-stimulation than in a performance breakthrough. A more sensible use of the above insight would seem to be to recognize that improvement typically does happen unevenly, and to discover the points in a individual athlete's various cycles (seasonal, yearly, and career) when such breakthroughs were most likely to occur. Planning heavier (perhaps even much heavier) training during these times might prove beneficial, provided the full understanding and commitment of the athlete could be enlisted (a crucial variable).

Finally-- and here we return to the importance of simply not giving up-- we need to aware that periods of much heavier than normal training do not always produce the intended and desired result, even when very carefully planned. In fact, sometimes they result in the opposite-- injury, illness, and loss of performance. In successful athletes who have endured multiple setbacks related to injury and illness during their careers, we notice a couple of distinctive things. These kinds of athletes-- and here 2:07 marathoner Dathan Ritzenheim of the US is perhaps history's best example-- are typically very diligent and creative cross-trainers who rarely miss a beat when misfortune strikes. Successful but oft-injured athletes are also typically very good at learning from their mistakes. They will often adjust or completely overhaul their approach to training in the aftermath of an injury or period of poor performance. Very successful athletes are therefore not always "consistent" as much as simply determined! And they often learn to use the pattern of "inconsistency" that nature, fortune, or circumstance imposes on them in very productive ways. Years ago, master coach Jack Daniels discovered this fact inadvertently when he conducted follow-up physiological testing on a group of elites he had studied while at their career peaks. To his surprise, he found that those who had suffered the greatest number of setbacks, due to injury or whatever, tended to have retained the greatest percentage of their peak-age fitness. Whatever the reason (Daniels thought perhaps some combination of the down time from training and the extra motivation that might have come from feeling like they had never trained well enough to realize their full potential), these athletes managed to turn a life time of short term "inconsistency" in training into consistently high long term fitness. There are lessons here for a all of us, young and old.

A Riddle in a Mystery Inside Spandex

This, with apologies to Sir Winston Churchill, is an apt description of the older body when it comes to matching training with race performance. Putting it together on race day is the runner's greatest challenge, but why is it often so much more tricky for older athletes? Converting the hard work of training into satisfying race results can be just as challenging for teenaged runners, but this is often due to simple inexperience-- the one thing that typically does not figure in the case of masters runners. Very young and older athletes do share a couple of other things in common-- a body that is changing steadily, but often in fits and starts, and a susceptibility to what we might call "lifestyle lapses"-- but there are some specific reasons why masters runners have a harder time putting it together when they want to.

While the bodies of younger and older runners may respond to the training stimulus in unpredictable ways, due to changes in hormone levels and basic physical structures, the changes that younger runners undergo are typically supportive of training adaptation, at least in the medium term. The energy lost and additional injury risks incurred during growth spurts, for instance, can sometimes lead to flat performance; but, when managed correctly, becoming a little bigger and stronger usually ends up supporting improved performance, all other things being equal. Younger runners will sometimes take longer to show improvement relative to their increased training loads, and will sometimes see apparently unexplained, one-off collapses in performance. Their troubles rarely last longer than a few weeks, however, during which time they rarely go completely into reverse, at least not in the absence of viral illness or iron deficiency. And when younger runners eventually do level out, they often enjoy massive performance improvements as a direct result of the changes their bodies have undergone. In contrast, the changes that the bodies of older runners will typically manifest are, of course, not always supportive of increased performance. Masters runners must deal with sometime sudden bodily changes (such as periodic "tectonic structural shifts", as I called them in a earlier post)that, while not the end of the world as far as performance goes, can lead to sudden and pretty dramatic loss of performance that may last longer than a few weeks. And these changes are often highly idiosyncratic in older runners, whose bodies often seem to operate according to their own rules at times (whereas all younger, growing bodies tend to behave according to a loose script). This is likely because the bodies of older runners, like those of older people in general, have registered effects from a far broader range of biographically specific influences over a much longer period of time than those of younger runners, which are all responding to one degree or another to the same sets of hormonal signals. The bodies of older runners, in other words, are etched in very particular ways by their particular life experiences, making each one its own study.

There are differences in the way that poor lifestyle choices may affect the performances of younger and older runners too. Although they do them for very different reasons, both very young and older runners will often suffer lapses in proper routine that can have very negative short term effects on performance. Younger runners will go on nutritionally dubious binges, stay up all night at "sleepovers", or spend a hot day at the beach with friends without drinking any water in the days before a race. Older runners will sometimes spend a day or two doing unexpectedly strenuous yard work, renovating the house, or socializing late into the night with friends on the eve of a race. One group will do it out of lack of forethought, inexperience, or just the desire to have it all, while the other will do it as a result of "adult responsibilities". Neither, after all, are professional athletes with dire stakes involved (although the risks that some top runners have taken before races might surprise some people). Once again, however, sudden changes in daily routine usually hit older runners far harder and more unpredictably than they do younger ones, who will often get away with simply not improving, rather than taking a step backwards or getting injured. For reasons that remain something of a mystery, older runners can sometimes hit lifetime bests in spite of serious breaches in their race week routine-- breaches that ought to completely undermine race performance-- while other times fall apart abjectly after a single, minor break in their race week routine. This often absurd range of variability sometimes temps older runners to take more take more pre-race risks instead of fewer, even when they have a choice in the matter.

But the deeper reason why the master's body is more unpredictable on race day has to do, I think, with the social and psychological aspects of being older; in particular, it is the typical adult experience of life as "stressful" that produces the wide range of response to training stimuli that in turn cause unpredictable race performance. It is "stress", after all, that impairs recovery--and therefore adaptation to training-- most profoundly.

Most adult runners, and masters runners in particular, like most mature people, experience life as an ever widening circle of responsibilities demanding to be met. Masters athletes, therefore, typically spend much more time than younger athletes do worrying about, and attempting to meet, the many demands (usually real but sometimes only perceived) on their time and emotional energy. In order to build running into their lives, masters athletes frequently have to plan their races weeks or months in advance in order to work around work and family commitments (and one can add to this the need to enter races sometimes months in advance simply in order to get a spot on the line— one of the few downsides of running’s exploding popularity). While younger athletes also experience stress, they seem much better able to compartmentalize it; in younger athletes, outside pressures tend not to coalesce into a kind of permanent condition, as they often do with older runners. In the developed world at least, a condition of permanent stress and worry—a state of constantly managing for the future—is a badge of adult maturity. It is the fluctuation of this constant current of life stress that, I think, more than pure physiological differences (if there can be such a thing), explains the unpredictability of masters race performances as compared with those of young and peak-age athletes. Being more or less constantly under “stress”, older athletes are often not aware when they are particularly subject to it, and therefore likely to race poorly, or somewhat freer of it, and therefore likely to race very well.

Absent some kind of mass cultural sea-change (like an embrace of “minimalist” living), the experience of adulthood as perpetually “stressful” in our part of the world is not likely change any time soon. To mitigate the effects of life stress on race performance for masters athletes, I therefore offer the following suggestions:

1.Never attempt to “train through” races. Masters athletes should always taper to race, which may mean not racing as often as younger athletes.

2.Never attempt to race if your training is not going well. Racing tends to dramatically expose physical weakness, and the effect is magnified in older runners, who seem less able than younger athletes to turn a potentially disastrous performance into a decent one.

3.Don’t attempt to compete while particularly distracted, such as on vacation with family or friends. To race well, masters athletes need almost complete focus on the task.

4.Recognize and except that, for reasons that may not be entirely clear to you, there are times of year when you seem more liable to race well. Plan to race often during those times of year and very little at other times.

5.Go easy on the marathons. Racing and recovering from marathons is an epic physical and psychological ordeal for athletes of any age. For masters athletes, who often have to train for, race, and recover from them without missing a beat in their family and work lives, too many marathons can eventually destroy the ability to race well at shorter distances during the rest of the year (which, along with taking the fun out of running, will also eventually make them worse marathoners).

Project Me: Update #2

As readers of the this blog will know, I prefer not to spend much time talking about my own training. I like to leave the workout blow-by-blow and day-in-the-life cataloguing to the younger guys, who do it more entertainingly than I could. That's why this unprecedented third "me" post in a row is likely to be my last for a while. After this one, I think the usefulness of my own immediate experiences as a guide for others will have been exhausted, at least for a while. After this one, I will try to broaden the focus back to the bigger picture, which is where I prefer to fix my critical gaze.

Last week, I wrote about how I had perhaps forgotten what I knew about the importance of proper recovery when I plunged into my new/old training regime back in the late summer (which I detailed in the post before that). As I completed those comments, however, I secretly hoped that there was still some time to reap the benefits of my redoubled efforts. Sure enough, helped by a timely course of antibiotics to clear up a stubborn sinus infection, my strength began to return, and I could finally feel some of the positive effects of all those additional kilometers. The first sign that the ship may be righting itself was that my easy runs were suddenly 10-15 secs/km faster at the same effort. Then, I managed to complete 20mins at perceived 8k race effort on the Fort course (the same one on which I has just lost the AO Championships) at 3 secs/km seconds faster than I had just raced it (passing through 5k in 16:03 versus 16:19). Finally, my last session before heading out to Vancouver for the National X-C Championships-- a light session of cruise intervals-- was so fast I had to consciously apply the brakes. According to my almost foolproof formula that race feel and performance can be predicted based on the average of an athlete's previous two workouts, I was more than ready to withdraw some of my fall training investment, however diminished by the aforementioned errors in judgement (leading to illness) earlier in the fall.

In a return to form from 2-3 years ago, I was ultimately able to win the masters championsip, and with what turned out to be far less effort than anticipated. I finished completely convinced that I had another lap in me at the pace I was going ( if I had, and had been in the open 10k, I would have finished higher than the last time I ran with the senior men-- 2009, when I finished 47th). This victory was at least as easy as my previous two in the masters division (2006 in Vancouver and 2007 in Guelph). Granted, I was lucky to have drawn a good day in terms of general feel; but, the vast majority of the performance can be attributed to increased fitness, in spite of now being much closer to 50 than the 43-44 I was the last time I won. There are, I believe, some important lessons for all masters runners in all of this. My experience needs to be added to the evidence offered by the exploits of older athletes like Peter Magill (and elite American athlete who is almost as good at 50 as he was at 40-- and he was very good at 40!), Jerry Kooymans (who, at 57, and in spite of repeated setbacks due to injury going back to his 20s and 30s, manages to astound each season), and, of course, the legendary Ed Whitlock-- evidence that commitment to training has a far greater impact on age graded decline than the actual rates of decline themselves currently suggest. In short, I think the actual rates of decline (after age 45 in particular) say as much about social psychology as they do about physiology!

Granted, there is no winning in the contest with father time. There are some well documented and inescapable physiological aspects of aging that bear very directly on our ability to maintain performance levels in endurance sports like distance running, not least of which are diminished cardiac output, respiratory power, muscular power, and biomechanical range of motion. I would maintain, however, that anecdotal evidence is beginning to show that these parameters are perhaps much broader and more variable than we might imagine, based on records of past performance. There is always the possibility the athletes like me, Magill, Kooymans, and Whitlock are extreme genetic outliers, like the tiny percentage of the population that makes it to age 100 and beyond. However, based on my familiarity with the training of these and other very good, but perhaps less well known, masters runners, I’ve become increasingly convinced that training volume and intensity may rival, or even exceed, genetics in accounting for superior advanced-age performance (although I’m open to the possibility that genetics may play some underlying role in the ability of these kinds of athletes to continue training at a high level).

I may be the fastest masters athlete within P-K, but I am far from alone in terms of my ability to confound the age-grading tables. Several of my athletes have shown similar performance profiles in their late-40s/early 50s. And while it is possible that we’re all genetically lucky, it is a fact that we share, along with the likes of Magill, Kooymans, and Whitlock, an inclination to train at, or very near, the level we always have. The likes of Magill and Whitlock, in fact, train longer and harder than they did in their early 40s, the former covering up to 100miles per week, on top of a demanding regimen of strength training, and the latter routinely surpassing those totals on his daily 3 hours runs (and this, in his 70s and 80s!). As I acknowledged in my September post, I was exhibiting the typical late 40s slippage until I decided to go back to the kind of training I knew to be the bulwark of performance for runners of all ages-- longer, slower volume, and less frequent but heavier race-pace sessions. My inspiration for doing this was, in fact, some of my own masters athletes—Agathe Nicholson, Bob McGraw, Clive Morgan, and Steve Blostein—all of whom, I noticed, had been training harder than I had for a year or more since turning 50! (And what are the odds of so many genetic outliers appearing in one small group in one small town?)

I plan to continue with my current plan in the hopes of running faster at 49 and 50 than I did at ages 46 through 48. With some luck and good coaching, I may even manage to defend my National Masters X-C title next fall, at the age of 50.

Finally, there are lessons for peak-age runners to be found in the exploits of late-age masters athletes. Superstar Cam Levins and his 150-190 mile weeks are one thing, but can 20-something distance runners really imagine that they are doing all they can to unearth their potential when there is an 80 year old man logging more volume than they are!? If Ed Whitlock’s ancient tissues can absorb and respond to this much pounding, is there a serious runner under 40 who couldn’t also benefit from running as much as he does, if he/she really entertains thoughts of breaking through to the next level, or the level after that? The trick, it would seem, is understanding, and truly believing, that running more is the only way, and proceeding to find a way to do it. North American athletes are just now absorbing the lesson that the East African’s example had been available to teach them for more than 20 years-- the post-Lydiard years, when we seem to have misplaced the great Kiwi’s seminal insight, namely, that general aerobic conditioning is the basis for all distance running. American runners (and now Canadians too, thanks to the success of Cam Levins, Mo Ahmed, and our marathoners—high volume trainers all) have taken this lesson to heart, and have struck a small crack in the monolith of Kenyan and Ethiopian dominance. It is my hope that, with the help of the internet(!),no young North American or European runner with big dreams will ever enter the sport under the illusion that “quality” (hard interval training alone) is a substitute for “quantity”, as they did during the decade of decline (the 1990s).

P-K at the National X-C Championships:

Big congrats are in order to a number of other P-K athletes who made the trip to Vancouver last weekend. Heather Jaros stunned with her 12th place finish in the Junior girls race. For an athlete who was only there to gain experience, this was completely over the top running. And,for once, this is an early teen prodigy I am sure is not overdoing it in training! Meanwhile, in the Junior Men's race, Nick Belore, running in his first ever national championship, tore through the field to finish 22nd, ten spots better than his OFSAA result a month ago. Finally rounding into top form in November, Nick no doubt would have been shooting for top 15 had the race been a couple of weeks hence.

In the masters division, the P-K men's 50-plus team (with support from Myra Levac) won the thing, propelled by Bob McGraw and Myra's top three individual finishes. Clive Morgan and Steve Blostien were the other two members of that team.

I will finally update the P-K performances of the month next week.

Project Me: Update # 1

You may not be able to teach an old dog new tricks, but you can certainly refresh that dog's memory concerning the tricks he used to know but may have forgotten. The first and most important lesson any runner learns-- and that any veteran runner has had to repeatedly re-learn on his/her way to becoming a veteran-- is that stress without adequate recovery is simply stress, and not training. Training, we can never forget, is stress followed by adaptation, or physical overcompensation for said stress. Training entails introducing the body-- a conservative thing when it comes to the allocation of resources-- to a new condition, that of aerobic distress and glycogen depletion, in the hope and expectation that it will progressively morph itself into a system better able to cope with that new condition. Ordinarily, it will do just that, after a period of time that varies from individual to individual. And it will do it more readily when it is younger, and more readily equipped hormonally for growth and adaptation. When it is older, it can still be encouraged to allocate some resources for adaptation to training-induced stress, but it is more reluctant. Whether old or young, however, the body ranks the stresses to which it will respond, with those that most immediately threaten the well being of the organism coming first. Threats to the immediate health of the body-- typically those posed by inadequate nutrition, sleep, or psychological/emotional trauma-- trigger a primitive fight or flight response in the body, a central component of which is the release of cortisol, the "stress hormone". It is well known that the presence of high levels of cortisol in the body is associated with poor health and shortened lifespan (tellingly, the poor typically have higher average levels of cortisol than affluent).

Runners hoping to benefit from all their hard work, and particularly those of us who are older, ignore this reality at our peril. If we add the stress of training to an already stressful life situation-- one in which we are already hormonally compromised-- we can expect poor results, both in terms of our training and overall quality of life. While no one can completely eliminate the typical cortisol-spiking stresses of modern life, runners can learn not to add to them by repeatedly making the mistake of eating poorly and not sleeping enough, or unnecessarily putting themselves into psychologically stressful situations (did you REALLY need to freak out at that guy who cut you off on the way to work this morning?). We can also learn when these sorts of stresses are running abnormally high, and adjust our training stress accordingly. In fact, if we're really attuned to our level of life stress, we can actually use our running to help us reduce its negative effects. A certain amount of easy aerobic running can actually help reduce cortisol levels and raise dopamine (the "pleasure" hormone) in stressed people. If we're realistic enough in our assessment of how our life is going, and nimble enough in adjusting our level of training stress accordingly, we can not only get through periodic difficulties more successfully, we can hang onto more of our hard won training adaptations-- which, for serious runners, it itself a cause for greater happiness.

As for yours truly, I made my decision to embark on a new/old and more ambitious training regime at the very beginning of what I knew would be-- because it always IS-- my busiest and most stressful time of year (although, in my defense, the fall is also the best time of year weather-wise to train long and hard). Add to this some unexpected personal stress and the entirely predictable result was that I caught a virus late in September that, because I could not reduce my life-stress levels, and would not reduce my training stress levels, progressed to a bacterial infection (my old nemesis, the sinus infection, with which I was plagued all last winter and early spring). The upshot in terms of race results what that I ran a personal worst over 5k in Syracuse (15:59 on the fastest course in the east), followed by a couple of better but hardly inspiring X-C outings in October and this past weekend on the home course in Kingston. Granted, I got a little older over the past few months too, but not enough to justify losing 30+ seconds over 5k since late June! I'm still hoping for a good result in my final couple of races of the season, but I have relearned a lesson I should never have forgotten-- live well, train well, race well. I'm not ready to fire my coach just yet, but we'll be having a serious end of season chat! I have no plans to back off on my training, but will readjust my heaviest loads to the times of year (early spring to late summer) when I anticipate the lowest levels of overall stress-- a moving target, to be sure, but that's life itself!

Stay tuned for the P-K Performances of the Month for September and October (i.e. after I have had time to actually review results!).