Juniors Redux and More Belated POMs

A very busy fall season of coaching and travel has kept me away from the blog for far too long. Redress is now in the offing!

For the third time in five posts, it is the junior/high school program that has drawn my attention. Three posts ago, I took stock of the junior program at its four year mark (equaling one complete high school cycle), detailing both its rapid success and the challenges it still faces. Two posts later, I discussed what is perhaps the main challenge faced by the program (securing the understanding and support of public high school x-c and track programs during the high school championship seasons). This month, I want simply to celebrate the ground-breaking season that our club athletes enjoyed "over the country" this fall. And what a season it was! When the last mud-caked shoe was removed last week, the number of all-time OFSAA top-10 finishes by group members had more than doubled, going from 3 to 7; we had recorded our first CIS (Canadian University Championship) top 10 result; we had crowned our second OFSAA individual champion (to go with Nicole Armstrong's win at 800m in the spring); and, we had our first national team X-C qualifier and our first national junior top 10 finish. But, this was only the tip of the iceberg. Many athletes, including some first year members, showed remarkable rates of personal improvement-- rates that, if sustained, will have many wondering "where did that kid come from?" over the next 2-3 years! Below, in alphabetical order, are the P-K Juniors who raised eyebrows (mine, at least) the highest:

Chris Adams: Chris came quietly into our group late last spring, looking for a way to improve on his results from his first season of high school track (which failed to move him beyond the first round of OFSAA qualifying in the 800 or 1500m). After working hard in the girl's group all summer, Chris would come into his own on the X-C course, beginning with an eye-opening 10th place finish in the junior boys division of the prestigious Trinity Harrier Meet in Port Hope. He would go on to post a couple of top 3 finishes in smaller meets before narrowly missing the final individual OFSAA qualifying position, with his 6th place finish at the EOSSA meet. Thus,in a few short months (albeit filled with many challenging workouts and much long, easy running) would Chris establish himself as a young athlete to watch, both on the track this spring and in his senior years as an X-C runner. He follows in the spike marks of recent Sydenham High grads and P-K members Jeff Archer, Dylan O'Sullivan, and Rob Asselstine, all of whom arose from the same relative obscurity to become Junior standouts, not only locally, but nationally.

Jeff Archer: In his final year as a Junior, Jeff finally tasted some of the success promised by his late and rapid rise through the high school ranks. After finishing 10th at OFSAA X-C in his final year, Jeff would struggle mightily (albeit not always quietly!) over three seasons to recover his upward trajectory, recording a number of results that he, his coach, and his team mates in P-K and at Queen's would prefer to forget (and which, for that reason, are best left unmentioned!). Finally, after undergoing systematic treatment for exercised-induced asthma, Jeff would streak to the front ranks of Canadian Intercollegiate X-C running with a surprise 10th place finish at the annual championships, a result 6 places better than his arguably career-best effort from only two weeks before (his 16th place at the Ontario University Championships). In only his second year as a university athlete, Jeff looks set to contend for top individual honours-- and, in the process, to lead the Gaels to team glory-- in years to come.

Nicole Armstrong: The extent of Nicole's potential as a middle distance runner seems to grow with every season. Her 4th place finish in the OFSAA Junior race (age 15) and, perhaps more strikingly, her 6th place result in the Youth (age 16-17) division at the club provincial (Athletics Ontario)championship, clearly show that she has all the makings of an international class mid-range runner. Breaking through to the top levels of the sport will take both luck and years of very hard work; but, who is more likely to see the top of the mountain than a 15 year old who can both medal provincially at 400m and run with the best teenage long distance athletes over 4kms? Thirty-odd years of watching age-class runners develop (and fail to develop) tells me that Nicole is as real a deal as we're ever likely to see in these parts-- a once in a generation or two athletic specimen, to be sure.


Hannah Ascough: Starting at the back of the girls group in grade 9, Hannah has been the most rapidly improving junior female athlete in the group over the past couple of years (helped, no doubt, by the discovery and treatment of her iron deficient anemia last spring). This season, running in her difficult first senior high school season (senior in the Ontario high school system encompassing both grade 11 and 12), Hannah made yet another of the performance leaps for which she is becoming known in the group. She finished 26th in her OFSAA qualifier, setting the stage for a run at top 10 in her final year. At this rate, Hannah can look forward to a solid career as a Varsity X-C runner (and rumour has it that Queen's will be her number one choice when decision time comes! Right, Hannah?).

Cleo Boyd: The August POM honoree was at it again this fall, but this time against all odds and expectations (except for mine, truth be told!). Suffering a calf strain just before her massive 3k P.B. in late August-- a problem that would be driven deeper by the race itself-- Cleo was almost exclusively confined to the elliptical trainer in September and October. However, logging 90+ minutes per day on the machine, including numerous mind-numbing and body-wracking high intensity sessions, and running just enough to both heal and maintain her local muscular conditioning, she was able to literally hit the ground running in November. Her two-race X-C season (Provincials in Hamilton and Nationals in Vancouver) would prove to be spectacularly successful, all things considered. Running tentatively, she would finish a strong second at Provincials, giving her the confidence to make an aggressive, and eventually successful, attempt at making the Junior National team for the North American/Central American/Caribbean X-C Championships to be held in Trinidad next March. Her 9th place finish-- the first National Junior X-C top 10 by a club member-- would put her 3rd among first year junior athletes and well into the national team selection pool of 8. With a little more time running rather than spinning, there is no telling what she might do next time out!

Heather Jaros: A primary school superstar, big things were expected of Heather, and she would not disappoint in her first season as a high school athlete. Her season would peak with a spectacular win in her OFSAA qualifier over arch nemesis Brockville runner Emily Carmichael, one of only two in their many meetings. A naturally strong middle distance runner, Heather will no doubt deploy her X-C fitness with devastating effect on the track this spring.

Mitchell Kirby: Like Chris Adams, Mitch joined the group in the spring with little fanfare. A good primary school runner and all-around athlete, he was nevertheless several notches down the ranks within what longtime observers would recognize as the most naturally talented cohort of grade 8 boys ever to emerge from the Kingston area system. A few months of steady work, however, and the gap would be all but closed. Mitchell's performances in the early season high school meets, including an 8th place finish among grade 9s in the aforementioned Trinity Harrier Meet, forced the heretofore more successful Kingston boys to learn his name. He would finish the season without a single weak result, and would, with his outstanding 21st place OFSAA finish, help his school team to an historic silver medal performance (behind, of all schools, Holy Cross of Kingston, with whom Mitch's Frontenac Falcons would trade team honours all season-- like I said, an unprecedentedly strong cohort of grade 8 graduates!).

Kieran L'Abbe: A year ago this fall, Kieran was struggling to hold his own against the best of the aforementioned grade 8 cohort, finishing a well-beaten fourth in the city public school X-C championships (and likely a little further back still, had this race included the separate school boys). His entry into the P-K group in the spring of the year, however, would launch a run of improvement such as I have rarely seen in the sport at any level. With no serious sports background to speak of, Kieran was an athletic tabula rasa. By June, we would have beaten all of the boys who bested him 7 months before, setting several local track records in the process. Fours months later, he would be looking back on an undefeated record in his first season of high school X-C, including an OFSAA championship. It's safe to wager that no OFSAA midget X-C champion has ever had such a scant background in the sport, or in sport in general. He will enter his first high school track season almost as great an enigma as he did this X-C season; as such, knowledgeable observers (myself included), are likely to be just as surprised 7 months from now as they were in November. There is literally no telling what he might do next.

Clara Langely: Clara's 2011 X-C season marked something of a comeback, although she hadn't gone far, or for all that long. A period of injury and low iron that began shortly after her stellar, province-leading 10:04 for 3000m in the final race of her grade 10 track season would finally end late this summer, with her encouraging 17:55 track 5k best. Two weeks later at the Trinity Harrier Meet, she would signal her return to full strength with a decisive, course record-setting romp over perhaps the strongest field in the meet's history. The remainder of her races leading up to OFSAA, including the pre-OFSAA meet itself, would be solo affairs. Suffering a little from the effects of a slight virus in late October (as well as, perhaps, from the lack of competition in the lead-up), Clara would be relegated to 5th (albeit close) at OFSAA-- an outstanding result on its own merits, but a couple of spots below reasonable expectations. Three weeks later, she would round out the strongest and most consistence X-C season of her high school career with an solid 18th place finish at the muddy National Junior Championships in Vancouver (minus the mud, I've no doubt she would have been further up the field). Like the others, Clara looks forward to converting her superb X-C conditioning into a season of personal bests on the track.

Danae Morris: Quiet and determined, Danae went about her business in the thick of the very strong P-K girls group, knowing she was improving, but never quite sure how far her fitness would take her. She and everyone else would find out in late October, when she executed a tactically perfect 3rd place finish in her OFSAA qualifier, outkicking a former OFSAA top 10 finisher and punching her ticket to the season finale in the process. Lack of experience would get the better of her in the championship itself and she would finish well down the list; but, more of the bread-and-butter consistency that got her this far, this quickly will make her a good bet become an OFSAA track qualifier, and eventual top 20 X-C performer.

September, October and November POMS

September's POM owner appears for the first time in these annals. His September POM was the first of two monster efforts that saw him lop a total of 5 minutes(!) from his 10k and HM bests. Congrats to Joe Dunford of St. John's NL on an amply deserved POM-- his 1:14:57 HM, which utterly embarrassed his old best of 1:19:20. So strong was Joe's September that his 10k best of 33:47-- a race in which his poor early pacing probably prevented him from going even faster-- is a worthy runner-up performance!

October POM deliberations ended with a rare tie. The first performance belongs to a frequent flyer in this space-- masters ace Rick Minichiello, whose long run of steady improvement shows few signs of abating. The victim this time was his one year old HM best of 1:12:21. Rick's fall training indicated big gains in his running economy (the final element in his transformation from elite cyclist to elite runner), setting him up for an assault on one of the big benchmarks of elite masters running-- the 70mins 21.1k. However, like all entrants in this year's Scotiabank/Waterfront races, Rick would have to overcome some 7kms of strong headwind to reach his goal. Tucked carefully in a mixed pack of marathoners and half marathoners, Rick would make it well beyond the 10k mark before losing his grip on the required 3:20/km pace. He would ultimately limit his losses to a mere 30 seconds, however, crossing the mat just less than two minutes below his old best, easily taking the masters' win in the process. With this result, Rick solidifies his reputation as the best masters runner in Canada for the second straight year!

The second performance belongs to resurgent P-K master's star Agathe Nicholson, who capped a remarkable year with her best performance yet-- a 4 minute revision of her now 3 year old marathon best. As it turned out, Agathe's time of 3:01:18 narrowly missed (16 secs) the Canadian 50-55 best, held by Quebec's Louise Voghel. A concerted attempt on this mark-- this time in calmer conditions, one hopes-- is Agathe's next goal. Don't bet against her!

In the event that these marks enter consideration for POY, I will have to break out my age-grading tables!

With the number of strong X-C performances turned in by P-K members, November was perhaps the most difficult month so far this year for picking a POM. Among the contenders were: Kieran L'Abbe's improbable OFSSA victory; masters athlete Christy Barber's outstanding win in the AO X-C Championship (in the blazing time of 18:50, which would have been more than respectable in the junior girls division); Jeff Archer's redemptive 10th place finish at the CIS championships in Quebec City; and, fellow junior Cleo Boyd's national team qualifying run at the Junior championships in Vancouver. Because national team qualification of any kind is perhaps the most difficult feat to achieve in our sport (short of winning a national championship or setting a Canadian record), the nod goes to Cleo's run, which was made all the more remarkable by the route she took to accomplish it (over two months of 90min to 120mins per day on the elliptical trainer, much of it at high intensity). Of the many remarkable success stories in the lore of x-training, this is one of the most astonishing I have yet seen or heard of.

"Teaching" Running; P-K POMs (belated!)

What is the difference between being a running "coach" and a running "teacher"? An article last month in the Life section of the Globe and Mail* on the proliferation of organizations and individuals offering expert services for recreational runners-- from old-fashioned coaching, in which an experienced hand designs and oversees a regime of running at different paces, all with the goal of achieving better racing performances, to instruction in "how to run", focusing on the simple act of putting one foot in front of the other as quickly as possible-- set me to thinking about this distinction.

To begin, there is clearly a teaching element to all coaching, and running is no exception. As I suggested at length in an earlier post, effective coaching engages an athlete's creative, intellectual, and emotional capacities, and, over time, equips him/her to become an more active participant in the training process. On the most basic level, good coaches encourage athletes to make a study of their own body's response to different training stimuli, while providing a framework of experience (both their own, if they are runners or former runners, and that of others they have known or coached) within which to situate this growing knowledge. The best coaches are also well versed in the lore of the sport, and are able to inspire and instruct athletes with stories about the success and failure of those who have gone before them. As a result, runners frequently recall their favourite coaches as not simply "programmers", but as teachers and mentors. There are some strict limits, however, to what a running coach can actually "teach" his/her athletes.

I have always been very skeptical, for instance, of the notion that coaching extends to the level of teaching athletes literally "how to run", and nothing in the new spate of commercial offerings to this effect has altered my reaction. Today's running "teachers" are often sincere and well meaning, but what they offer is based on an entirely faulty premise, and they survive by exploiting for commercial purposes the ignorance of new runners concerning the basic elements of successful running performance. In particular, they exploit the widely held misconception among non- and beginning runners that fast runners are fast, and often look different ("better") than slower runners, because they "learned" how to properly move themselves across the ground, and that this "knowledge" can be made available to the uninitiated through detailed instruction. Often the first question I'm asked by neophyte runners, or the parents of young runners, is whether I might be able to "fix" their running form, or tell them how to run "properly". There is, indeed, money to be made in plying this particular area of the trade, but only at the cost of indulging the consumer in the basic misconception that good runners are good because at some point they learned to "self-monitor" their way to more fluid, aesthetically pleasing, and therefore more efficient, running mechanics.

It is a misconception, and, I think, a form of coaching malpractice, to suggest either that physiologically "efficient" running mechanics can be seen by the naked eye, or that, to the extent that efficient runners do move in some broadly similar ways, this way of moving can be simply imitated by anyone, regardless of their particular configuration of body parts, angles, tensions, and muscular strength. The question of our ability to "see" physiological efficiency or inefficiency (i.e. the relative energy costs of running) through an athlete's pattern of movement was definitively answered when veteran coach and exercise physiologist Jack Daniels asked a selection of experienced coaches to identify the most physiologically efficient runners within a sample simply by watching them run. The result was that there was no correlation between the coaches perception of "efficient" form and actual physiological efficiency as measured through the use of oxygen at sub-maximal speeds on treadmill. As it happened, the least classical looking-- or, if you will, the most awkward looking-- runners in the sample were often the most physiologically efficient-- and physiological efficiency in the only kind that really counts when the object is cover long distances as quickly as possible. The question of whether, to the extent that faster runners do tend to move in similar ways in comparison to slower runners, and beginning runners in particular, is a more difficult one to settle. Packs of fast-moving elite runners really do look broadly similar to one another, and different from groups of recreational joggers. The lessons we can take from this fact, however, are not nearly as straightforward as today's running "teachers" would have their clientele believe.

To begin with, faster runners have generally been "selected" based on optimal running mechanics. Those with gross skeletal asymmetries or malformations, muscle imbalances, etc., are generally weeded out of the top ranks of the sport, as harsh as that may sound. Furthermore, the front ranks of any race are made up of runners who have trained longer and harder than beginning runners, in spite of being generally younger than the average recreational and beginning runner. In other words, elites, by definition, are rare specimens in almost every respect, and their running form, no less than their physiology, is a product of this uniqueness-- a uniqueness that is not the product of conscious learning, but of simply being and doing. No amount of analysis and conscious imitation of the way fast runners move is going to enable a runner with a physiognomy that is not optimally suited for running, a runner without many miles of running to help refine his/her neuro-pathways, or an older runner, move with the same power and economy as a younger runner who has reached the top of his/her game, and who has done so in large part by running prodigious numbers of kilometers. The best distance runners in the world did not themselves "learn" to run the way they do through conscious self-monitoring or instruction; they either moved more or less that that way from an early age, and thus tended to excel at the sport, or else developed as refined a pattern of movement as they could for their particular bodily configuration through simple repetition, in precisely the way that all physical movements become more automatic and economical the more they are repeated (think, for instance, about typing, or tying a shoelace). This is why, in spite of the general similarities among elite runners, there remains a subtle range of different postures and ways of moving that constitute the biomechanical “signature” of each athlete.

But whether beginning runners can be "taught" to run "properly", or like faster runners (which I'm completely convinced that they cannot) is not the point. Every runner, whether fast or slow, young or old, must adapt a way of moving that is in accord with his/her particular body. Since running is as innate and basic a form of human movement as walking, the most immediate way to find the line of least resistance in doing it is simply to do it very often. This is precisely how young runners go from gangly foot-stompers to compact and light-striding speedsters over a matter of a few years, without a single minute of "technical" instruction. And, if nature or the civilized life has left one's body in a poor state for beginning to run, or too much of one kind of running has created weak points and asymmetries, then some care must be taken in starting a running program, and in addressing basic muscle weaknesses and imbalances through targeted strength training (something that must remain a standard feature of any athlete's training regime as its demands grow). The goal of every runner must be to adapt the most efficient way of moving for his/her unique body. Distance runners can certainly benefit from general “postural/form cues”, such as “run tall”, or “drop the shoulders”; but, they should look askance at any claim that there is one optimal running form for everyone, and that it can be acquired through technical instruction. (Matters are quite different for sprinters, who are concerned not with physiological efficiency, but with sudden, maximum power output. Here, technique is crucial, and is subject to conscious adjustment in racing and training).


*The Globe’s Life section has done an excellent job lately of covering our sport. We’d preferred to be covered as a sport, of course, but we’ll take whatever can get at this stage!

P-K POM honourees (July, August):

The summer months are generally the time for junior athletes to do their thing, and 2011 was no exception. The owner of the July POM joined the junior group at the beginning of grade 11, with the goal of one day running in the NCAA. After showing great early promise, Dylan O’Sullivan struggled through 2 years of injury and illness before gaining some traction in the spring of his final year of high school. Already having run well enough to gain admission to the Ivy League’s Dartmouth College in Hanover NH (a school with a strong, Division one cross country and distance track program), he lined up for what would be his one and only National Junior Track Championship appearance on July 14, in Winnipeg MB.. Running aggressively from the front whenever the pace showed signs of lagging, Dylan broke through with an outstanding bronze medal winning performance, chopping 6 seconds from his personal best and breaking the club junior record in the process. His performance was the stuff of which young dreams are made, and he is a very worthy first time POM winner.

The August POM winner also showed great promise throughout her high school and junior careers, but suffered from enough minor setbacks to prevent her from showing the full extent of her ability; that is, until her track final race of this summer. Coming off a solid 6th place performance at the national junior meet in July, Cleo Boyd embarked on some of the best track training in her young life, with the goal of assaulting the 10:00 barrier of 3,000m in August. She would reach her goal in spectacular fashion in the inaugural P-K Distance All-Comers meet, held on the track at M.A. Sills park in Belleville on August 30th. Running on a warm and windy evening, she would string together kilometres of 3:19, 3:20, and 3:19 to slice a whopping 16 seconds from her personal best in one mighty cleave, and break the one year old junior club record. Congrats, Cleo, on an outstanding performance!

High Schools, Clubs and the Differentia Specifica of Running

Since my reference in the last post to the seemingly perennial "schools versus clubs" problem in junior distance running attracted attention in some unlikely quarters, I thought I'd take the time to say a few things about what I think drives it and how it can be resolved (i.e. both for the record, in the event that these parties are still looking in!). For some, the simple solution to this issue is for school coaches, backed by administrators, to insist that all athletes train with their school teams during the school season, or else quit them in favour of the club system. I'll argue that such an a approach is no real solution at all for distance running-- that is, if one is at all concerned with building the sport, including school programs, or behaving reasonably towards serious student athletes in publicly funded schools.

But first, I should say this this really isn't a problem in most instances, even in Ontario, where it has long and notorious history. Most high school runners who train year-round in clubs, including members of P-K, continue to enjoy excellent relations with their school coaches and administrators. In most schools, coaches and administrators either don't see an issue at all, and are content to allow athletes to satisfy team and federation participation rules in ways that do not interfere with their year-round training plans, or they welcome and encourage club-based athletes because of the example of serious commitment, drive, and, yes, competitive success, that they bring to school programs. It is the tiny majority of conflict situations that are responsible for the impression that there is some kind of intractable incompatibility at play when it comes to club-based athletes competing for their schools.

Why has there been such a problem in running (X-C and distance track) in the first place? (And I have heard accounts suggesting that conflicts between club athletes and their schools date back as far back as the 1950s in Ontario!)? As I see it, there are really two possible broad explanations:

1. Club-based coaches are, and always have been, uniquely and determinedly meddlesome, and club athletes particularly oppositional in disposition, such that each is determined to go looking for trouble, in spite of the availability of perfectly reasonable alternatives that involve no sacrifices on their part.

or,

2. There is something inherent in, and specific to, the sport of running that continually recreates the potential for this kind of conflict, while athletes in other sports manage to move more or less freely between their club and school teams, or simply choose to do one or the other exclusively.

My own experience as an athlete and coach (including within a school-based program-- Queen's) attract me to the second hypothesis. It's implausible to suggest that that any one group of people can be so irrationally and unreasonably demanding over such a long period of time; furthermore, what I know about club-based coaches and athletes in other sports-- sports where simultaneous school and club participation are more or less the norm, and rarely the subject of conflict-- has led me to believe that runners and their coaches are at least as reasonable, and probably by nature more averse to conflict, than their counterparts in these sports.

And it really is true that athletes in other sports, particularly team sports, manage to participate fully, and often simultaneously, in school and club programs, just as young actors, musicians, and singers tend to move freely between their non-school and school-based programs, usually with full support on all sides. In the vast majority of cases, the volunteer coaches and instructors who operate school sports and arts programs recognize and support the year-round involvement of more serious participants (as part of the mandate of schools to promote excellence across the curriculum and extra-curriculum), and are happy to accommodate students' movement between school and outside programs during the school season, when these students express a desire to participate in the school-based program. They do so both out of concern to accommodate the goals of individual students, and because these more serious students often add considerable value to their school programs, in spite of their sometimes more limited weekly involvement. But there is a more specific reason why there tends to be less club-school friction when it comes to school activities other than distance running: In most school activities, and sports in particular, students can easily accommodate the extra practice demands associated with participating on both a club and school teams, because practice time tends to much more skills and strategy-focused than conditioning-focused (of which more below). Moreover, full participation in other school sports actually requires more or less full time practice attendance, because the vast majority of school sports (or plays/musicals, and other arts-based activities) are genuinely team-based activities that actually, functionally require active cooperation on the field of play. We could also add that most other school sports are more popular than distance running, meaning that the competition for scarce team positions enables school coaches to simply force students to choose between school and club programs when there is deemed to be incompatibility (interestingly, however, they rarely do, as club-based athletes in team sports are almost always among the most skilled, and team-sport coaches, understandably, like to win!).

I would thus submit that there are certain fundamental differences between running (and distance running in particular) and the vast majority of school sports and other activities that uniquely generate pressures, year-in and year-out, leading to conflict over simultaneous club-school participation. (A fact that is actually born out by the existence of "minimum practice requirements" at the Ontario federation level in X-C and track-- something that does not exist for team sports). Among these differences are the following:

1. That training for it is grossly physiological in focus (i.e. aerobic). If there is any "skills" component to running it is very small (witness the number of athletes who have become world class without any formal coaching at all). This means both that athletes serious about doing their best must do at least some running year-round, and that the vast majority of the training runners do can be, and often is, done without any "team" cooperation (although runners will often train in groups, of which more below). It also means that there are strict limits on the amount of really intense training a distance runner can do in typical cycle (e.g. one week). As a result, there really are not 7 training days in the weekly cycle of a distance runner; there are 2 to 3, surrounded by several days of easier "recovery" efforts.

2. Distance running is not a team sport in any meaningful sense. As a result, it is entirely possible for athletes and "teams" (which, in running, are really aggregations of individual performances, or placings) to reach the highest level without engaging in any group or "team" practice whatsoever. For instance, in cross country, members of national "teams" rarely, if ever, train together, and may not even have formally met until convening at a championship event! The simple fact that it is possible to train for running alone (and very effectively so) means that distance runners, including very young ones, will often want to do it this way, creating the potential to run afoul of school coaches and administrators who insist on treating running as a team sport like any other.

3. While not a team sport in any meaningful sense, running is nevertheless an activity that athletes of similar levels of experience, ability, and commitment choose to do in small groups. Such groups usually evolve in a club rather than a school setting for a variety of reasons, including that volunteer school coaches cannot be expected to run the kinds of year-round programs that serious athletes must have in order to realize their potential (see point 1. above), and because school programs are often much smaller in size, and tend to be comprised of athletes with very widely varying levels of ability. Year-round running clubs are the vehicle of choice for athletes choosing to train in a group setting because within them it is possible to train directly alongside athletes of similar levels of ability and interest (and of the same gender, which often makes clubs more socially attractive for serious female athletes). The attachment of runners to their club group training environment thus tends to be very strong, making it inevitable that these athletes will seek to maintain them during the school season. Add all this to the fact that school teams don't functionally require a "team" approach (i.e. unlike a basketball team, which can't function at all without a team approach), and that serious athletes often lack suitable (or any) training partners within their schools, and it is inevitable that club athletes will seek the kind of dispensation that can lead to conflict with a certain kind of school coach.

4. Underlying much of the above is the simple fact that distance running is a uniquely challenging form of sport activity-- one that increasingly goes against the cultural grain for young people, for whom the most strenuous form of physical activity is likely to be their daily gym class. As a result, distance running is likely to remain a fringe sport in the vast majority of high schools, in spite of the best efforts of volunteer high school coaches to build numbers. And, when a school coach is moderately successful at attracting more than a handful of athletes, the disparity in their levels of ability and interest in the sport are bound to be huge, making effective group training all but impossible (something that is simply not true of team sports, in which participants come from a much narrower range of ability and interest). The inevitable result is that the tiny minority of serious athletes (very often only one or two athletes, in fact) in any one school is likely to prefer training alone (particularly when this is what they invariably end up doing at school "team" practices anyway), or will tend seek out training partners of similar levels of ability at other schools. The result is that, if year-round clubs/training groups for serious runners did not already exist, chances are the athletes themselves would create them-- either that, or the sport would collapse completely in many communities.

5. Because serious distance running (i.e. not the weight-loss activity we see at the average road race) is increasingly a fringe activity, the level of coaching expertise in the sport varies much more widely than in the more popular team sports, where literally thousands of ex-participants with moderate to high level experience are available to work with young athletes in and outside of school programs. The result is often that there is a considerable difference in the quality of guidance on offer from club versus school coaches in running versus team sports. Serious young runners are able to recognize this difference immediately, and will be inclined to want to continue accessing the best available coaching guidance available, even when the difference is not all that great (because success in sport is, after all, often a matter of very small differences multiplied repeatedly). If, all other things being equal, athletes perceive that the quality of coaching is superior in a club versus their school program (and, because there are no measures of coaching prowess beyond the actual preferences of serious athletes themselves, perception is all that matters here), they will want to continue receiving principle guidance from their club coach on a year-round basis, even if this brings them into conflict with a school coach or administrator. This is, after all, only human nature, and would be equally true of serious school-age musicians and scholars, many of whom retain outside teachers and tutors during the school year. And any policy that seeks to force a person who is serious about developing his/her full potential in a particular area of expertise to compromise his/her efforts will tend to encounter resistance. Imagine, for instance, if students in an enriched science or math class were asked to give up their special instruction "for the benefit of the 'team'".

6. School competitive programs are very attractive to school-age athletes, and students at publicly-funded schools, who were assigned to them by administrative fiat (unavoidable in a publicly funded system, but still a fact), feel as though they have a right to access such programs on terms that are compatible with both the nature of the sport and the needs of others. Even where club competitive opportunities exist, student athletes, runners included, enjoy participating in school-based programs, and feel they have a right to do so if their abilities qualify them. In Ontario in particular, the high school competition program is top-notch and highly elite-focused, with athletes participating in qualifying competitions than winnow fields down to a highly select few at the championship (OFSAA) level. But, as it happens, there is also space on 99% of school teams for every interested student athlete to participate (i.e. running is a "no-cut" sport in almost all schools). What this means is that there is a great demand for participation in school-based cross country and track programs by club-based athletes (indeed, the vast majority of the top athletes in the system are club-based), a widespread feeling among club-based athletes that they have a right to participate in these programs, and an understanding that simultaneous participation in club and school programs is very easy to facilitate (much easier,in fact, than in team sports). Once again, the result is the potential for conflict between club-based runners and school coaches who insist that X-C and track teams are no different than teams-proper, and make no exceptions.

Recognition of the above, combined with a desire to accommodate the legitimate aspirations of serious student athletes to participate in publicly funded sports programs at the schools to which they have been assigned, without compromising that seriousness, is the secret to ending conflict between club-based athletes and their school coaches/administrators. Indeed, it is precisely this kind of recognition that happens in the hundreds of schools where this conflict has never been allowed to develop. Club-based athletes can also help avoid contributing to this conflict by actively suggesting way that they can participate in their school programs without compromising their year-round training plans. For instance, in the vast majority of cases, performing easier, recovery sessions with the school team (if there is an active team), or pacing younger, slower members through their harder sessions on recovery days is considered more than sufficient to satisfy school coaches and administrators. This way, it is often possible for club athletes to spend even more time training with their school team than the average school-based athlete!

But none of this matters in those rare instances where a high school coach or administrator is determined to treat the school cross country and distance track teams, and distance running in general, as though they were no different than any other team or sport in the school, and to set about enforcing participation rules that they have have been informed (and should reasonably know in any case) will interfere with the desire of more serious athletes to maintain continuity in their year-round programs. Such a course of action will ultimately serve no one but the coach or administrator bent on having his/her way*. School distance running programs are not likely to be more successful, either in terms of competitive results or participation numbers, using such an approach. The subjection of serious athletes to rules that neither serve their interests (as they, as young adults, understand them) nor do anything to promote broader participation in school programs are doomed to fail everyone concerned. Serious club-based athletes will either abandon school teams entirely, or will be forced to make compromises for which they will see no legitimate justification, and that have no real parallel is an education system that is meant to encourage both independent goal-setting and initiative, and the pursuit of excellence in all areas of the curriculum and extra-curriculum.

*Looming over this entire discussion is the curious power that has been bestowed upon volunteer school sports coaches to exclude student athletes from school programs for reasons other than ability or poor behaviour. Imagine the fate, at the hands of parents and administrators, of the school teacher who insisted on failing students for poor attendance, regardless of performance on assigned work! Yet, I have seen and heard of highly qualified young runners being threatened with expulsion from their school X-C and track teams for failure, not just to attend team workouts, but to perform at designated effort levels as specified by volunteer school coaches-- and this, with the full backing of school administrators! Thankfully, these examples remain in the extreme minority; but, one wonders-- given, among other things, the great power within the system of the disgruntled parent-- how they are ever allowed to stand at all. Perhaps the martial tradition in sport, according to which the coach is the unquestioned commander and the athletes his/her troops, is at work here (misapplied though it would be in distance running, where collective cohesion on the field of play/battlefield is not among the relevant variables).

Thanks, Ramblers of Reddendale!

Sleepy, bucolic Reddendale-- a post-war, lakeside suburb in Kingston's west end, and the neighbourhood where I live-- received a modest livening up last Saturday when P-K (with the help of co-hosts, the St. Andrew's By-The-Lake United Church)decided to turn its winter training loops into a race course, and invited runners from across the city and province to join us. Edition one of the Reddendale Ramble 5k was a modest success in terms of numbers but, we think, a great success in terms of concept and execution. The Kingston road race scene, while well established and vibrant, has been lacking a summertime, evening fixture. We think the Ramble's 6pm start time, and Summer Solstice scheduling (to say nothing of its beautiful location), is sure to make it a big hit among Kingston racers in years to come. And we aim to support this basic appeal by ensuring that it is the best executed and most affordable event on the local calendar-- which, thanks in principal to race director extraordinaire, Clive Morgan (with support from Neal Scott, yours truly, and an ample crew of volunteers supplied by both St. Andrew's and P-K), it is well on its way to becoming. The course, which hugs the lakeshore until just past the 4k mark, was accurate (including the individual kms), well marked, and extensively marshaled (including lead and rear cyclists) right up to the highly visible finish line on Redden St., immediately adjacent to the awards area on the lawn of the church. And, for the modest fee of 22.50 (including online registration fee)for the Ramble, and a mere $5 for the kid's Metric Mile, a runner could not have asked for more in terms of awards and draw prizes (thanks to our main sponsors, Mizuno Canada and Gears and Grinds Cycle Shop). We can't speak for them, of course, be we think our runners, young and old, had a great first experience with the race, and will be back-- along with friends, family, and training partners-- in 2012. A core of satisfied first-time customers, along with a full year to eliminate our weaknesses and build on our strengths, is sure to make the second edition of the Ramble bigger and better. Among our goals for next year and beyond is to become part of the Kingston Roadrunners Association annual series, and to secure a prize money sponsor. Stay tuned!

Among the 2011 Ramble Highlights were:

-that we managed to raise around $300 to support the costs of running the no-fee Junior P-K group (with another $300 going to St. Andrew's).

-the fact that very close to half of the finishers ran under 20mins, despite a very rare (for this time of year) southeast wind on the predominantly eastward course.

-the near perfect weather (the K-town airport, which is less than 1 mile from the start line, was the cool spot in southern Ontario that day, as it always tends to be at this time of year).

-the great battle for the men's win between P-Kers Mike Gill and Richard Minichiello (a masters runner, no less), with Mike securing the inaugural title over the final 250m.

-the strong, negative-split win on the women's side by junior Clara Langely, who showed a welcome return to form following a year of injury and iron deficiency.

-and outstanding battle for the masters women's win between 50 year old P-Ker and local ace Heather Ostic (won over the final km by Heather).

-the turn-out for the kid's race, and the extremely strong performances by the winners and runner's up-- Kieran L'Abbe and Ben Workman on the boys side, and Christina Papadakis and Branna McDougall for the girls.

Full results are at runnningbydesign.ca

See you all in 2012!

P-K Juniors: Reflections on Cycle One

OFSAA track 2011-- at which P-K junior athletes had good success, including two medals by grade 9 phenom Nicole Armstrong-- marked the end of the first 4 year cycle since the inauguration of the junior division, which has remained steady at between 12 and 17 members. (Before September of 2007, P-K had been comprised mainly of masters athletes and a few senior elites.) Now would thus seem to be a good time to take stock of the successes of the younger members of the group, as well as to record some of the lessons learned by this foray into what I called, in an earlier post, "the funhouse of coaching", where things are rarely as they appear, and nothing can be taken for granted.

I'll start with the competitive successes:

-one national team medal (the 2009 Junior Boys X-C team).

-two OFSAA team medals (won by the KCVI and Sydenham senior boys teams, both of which were comprised of athletes who trained exclusively with the club group.)

-3 Athletics Ontario team medals (the youth and midget boys in 2008, and the midget girls in 2010)

-one individual top 15 national X-C finish (Rob Asselstine).

-one top 5 national junior track finish (Rob Asselstine).

-two OFSAA track medals, one gold and one bronze* (both by Nicole Armstrong).

-three individual top 10 OFSAA X-C finishes (Jeff Archer, Cleo Boyd, and Nicole Armstrong).

-sixteen OFSAA track final appearances or top 10 finishes by 12 athletes (Kyle McKellar, Cleo Boyd, Alex Hinton, Charly Allan, Jeff Archer, Rob Asselstine, Clara Langely, Brianna Bradley, Rebecca Jaros, Dylan O'Sullivan, and Nicole Armstrong.

-two successful NCAA D-1 recruits (Dylan O'Sullivan and Rob Asselstine).

-one successful CIS scholarship recipient (Blair Morgan).

*Three if one counts Clara Langely's second place finish in 2010, for which she was (I'm convinced) wrongly DQ'd.

Since I have not made a point of keeping precise track, I've no doubt overlooked some noteworthy performances. And, this list does not take account of the record of individual improvement of group members; there has not been a single member who has spent more than a few weeks in the group who has not enjoyed improvement, and most have done so significantly, many dramatically. Nor does such a list say anything about the closeness of the social bonds that have been forged within the group. As is almost universally the case in the best training groups, many lifelong friendships were begun at the P-K training sessions and social gatherings over the past four years, I'm certain. I would thus considered the P-K junior division to have been a great success on every level, making it source of pride and satisfaction to assistant coach Pat McDermott and me. With the new track facility nearing completion, and a new crop of very keen eighth-graders ready to embark on their first season of high school X-C, we look to the next four years with great enthusiasm.

And what of the lessons learned?

Against the great record of success of the group, it must be said that we have also seen a handful of potentially very successful athletes abandon the group prematurely (in our view). While it's true that most have remained active in team sports, we count it as something of a failure that we did not manage to make the case to these athletes to stick with running. As I discussed in the aforementioned earlier post on coaching kids in running, there is often a frustrating mismatch in this sport between talent and potential on one hand and motivation to train for it on the other. Thus, while we take responsibility to failing to retain these athletes, we have also begun to recognize that the emotional and physical demands of training properly for this sport tend to elevate non-physical attributes-- such as emotional resilience, patience, a tolerance for loneliness, and an ability to defer gratification-- to nearly the same level of importance as natural speed and stamina when it comes to determining long term success. Simply put, running, though a simple sport, is not an easy one on any level, and requires a unique (and I would say stronger) kind of character in order to succeed.

And perhaps the greatest test of character in training to race is injury. While the injury rate for the junior group is below average for the sport as a whole, it is always distressing to see young athletes sidelined by injury, even if only for a few weeks. (Dealing with injury is developing athletes is also the most nettlesome of all coaching problems.) Over past four years, we've learned a lot about the kinds of injuries and other health problems that tend to beset developing runners. Most of these are the same things that afflict more mature athletes-- e.g. anemia, asthma, minor tendonitis and muscle strains of various sorts-- but younger athletes, and girls in particular, seem far more prone to problems in the lower leg and hips, especially during and immediately following periods of rapid growth. We've learned that there is always potential danger when an increase in a young athlete's training load is accompanied by a significant growth spurt. In fact, this observation has led me to adjust my understanding of the proper age for younger athletes to begin significantly increasing their training loads. Age 15-16 for girls and 17-18 for boys remains an excellent rough guide, but these numbers need to be revised upward by a year or so in the case of physically later-blooming athletes, or athletes who have recently gone through very dramatic growth spurts. We have also come to a renewed appreciation of the importance of strength work-- particularly of the core and lower legs/feet-- in preventing and treating injury in young athletes. But, as anxious as we have been to avoid them altogether, we have also learned the continued improvement is possible in spite of injuries. In the P-K junior group, a small group of athletes account for almost all of the injuries the group has suffered; however, among this small core are some of the most successful, both in terms of rate of personal improvement and of absolute success. With timely and aggressive cross-training, and with effective rehab, the injuries typically suffered by young athletes need not be a barrier to success, nor to long term enjoyment of the sport. Besides, running injuries are very rarely serious or permanent in nature, unlike those routinely suffered by team sports athletes (e.g. concussions and serious trauma to the knee), and are an unavoidable risk for all serious runners at any age. The only alternative to courting the risk of injury in this sport is not trying at all. P-K juniors, like all serious athletes, have not shied away from this risk, even as they have done their best (for the most part, anyway; they are kids, after all!) to avoid injury and to deal effectively with its consequences.

And, perhaps most unfortunately, work still needs to be done ensure that junior group members retain the free and fair access to the publicly funded high school X-C and track programs to which they are duly entitled. The little they have asked for in terms of maintaining continuity in their year round training programs-- i.e. that they be allowed to carry out their two hardest workouts of the week with their regular club training partners, in return for completing easy runs with their school teams-- has not yet been granted by all schools in the system, in spite of concerted efforts on the part of some of their parents. And P-K kids in some schools have been subjected to a blatant double-standard when it comes to school participation rules, in which less serious athletes, or those playing on other school teams during the track and X-C season, are allowed to miss school practices without consequence, while they are threatened with expulsion from their teams for refusing to perform key sessions in the presence of school coaches. Their would appear to be no easy long term solution to this problem that does not involve completely useless sacrifices on the part of P-K athletes themselves-- who, ironically, remain the only kids in the city serious about pursuing this most demanding of sports.

Finally, my experience of working with young athletes over the past four years has done nothing to change my sense of the often maddening unpredictability of the entire enterprise. We are regularly confounded by apparent randomness of the pattern of our young athletes' performances, and by degree to which these performances can fail to match what we see in practice. While the general trend for the group has always been a positive one, we are continually surprised, pleasantly and otherwise, by the distribution of good and bad performances among its individual members on a given day or week. We are thus resigned to a faith that, if we continue to learn, and to apply our knowledge and experience as effectively as we can, the latent potential of every member will eventually surface, if not always at the appointed time and place!

May P-K POM:

Apropos of the theme of this post, the May POM goes to a junior member (indeed, most of the racing action by P-K athletes this month involved the high school athletes). For junior members, spring track is dominated by the quest for a ticket to the Ontario Federation of Schools Athletic Association (OFSAA) championships, which is earned by negotiating a series of three increasingly competitive qualifying meets. In the final round--the regional qualifying meets-- athletes must place in the top four of their event to be entered in the championships. This month's POM winner-- Adrienne Morgan-- chopped 20 seconds from her personal best over 3000m, leapfrogging several higher seeded athletes in the process, to punch her ticket to OFSAA by a mere .2 secs. Add to this the fact that she ran the most tactically disciplined race of her young career-- sticking to her pacing schedule while watching the other would-be qualifiers mixing it up some 50m up the track in front of her, before launching a powerful finishing drive over the final 200m to claim the final qualifying spot-- and you have the makings of a slam-dunk choice for POM. Congrats, Adrienne!

Hard Snell: Peter the Great on The Fundamentals

It would seem that some lessons, though ultimately quite simple, must be relearned ad nauseam. This is often because, as in the case of the revolutionary mid-20th Century Kiwi coach Arthur Lydiard, and what he taught the running world would through the exploits of his champion athletes, their implications can be hard to face. In a recent interview , Lydiard's greatest exemplar, three time Olympic champion Peter Snell, who would later embark on a career as a exercise physiologist, offers us a refreshingly straightforward reminder of that which is fundamental to success in running, from 800m to the marathon-- aerobic conditioning.
http://www.garycohenrunning.com/Interviews/Snell.aspx

For those how have never heard of them, New Zealanders Lydiard and Snell (along with Murray Halberg) took the distance running world by storm in the 1960s by returning a total of 4 Olympic gold medals (Snell's 3 at 800 and 1500 in 1960 and '64, and Halberg's in the 5000 in '60) to the island nation, population 2.5 million. Snell remains a candidate for best middle distance runner of all time. And the revolution wrought by the Lydiard group would continue into the 1970s and 80s, with the Finns adopting his methods with great international success, and a new crop of New Zealanders, led by the likes of John Walker, Dick Quax, and Rod Dixon, claiming world records and Olympic hardware.

At the core of Lydiard's revolutionary approach to distance training was the counterintuitive insight that high volumes of sub-maximal running volume could improve performances at maximal running efforts in the middle and long distances (with the difference in the two speeds being more than 2mins per mile!). This insight was conveyed to a young Snell, then only a national level performer at 800m, in a conversation with Lydiard about how the former might go about reaching the international level. Like many young athletes, Snell instinctively believed that the solution to matching strides with the best in the world would be to improve his maximum speed, creating a "speed reserve" that would make his current race pace feel more manageable, and his finishing drive more potent (Snell's instincts were in part the product of being repeatedly told that he lacked the "top end" speed to win beyond the national level-- a message driven home practically by the experience of being regularly and soundly out-sprinted in the final 200m of races). Instead of attempting to increase his maximum sprint speed through regular drilling at maximal efforts, Lydiard advised Snell to add more long, easier "aerobic" running to his regimen in the months leading up to his competitive season. As Snell relates it, Lydiard explained to him that his inability to run under 1 min 50 in the 800m (the then threshold for international success in the event) had nothing to do with his inability to reach the requisite speed (55 secs per 400, which Snell could do with relative ease), but with his inability to hold that speed beyond 600m. The latter, insisted Lydiard, was function of aerobic endurance and not the difference between Snell's full-out sprint speed and the desired pace-- his so-called "speed reserve". The catch, of course, was that Snell would have to commit himself to a program of daily running of up to 15 miles per day during the non-competitive months-- a difficult sell, when the standard approach for middle distance runners was a staple of shorter track sessions at race speeds or faster. Snell decision to trust Lydiard's then unconventional approach, and to begin to train like almost like a marathon runner for large stretches of the year, would prove history-making. His newfound endurance would very rapidly propel him to the front ranks of his event nationally, then to an upset victory at the Rome Olympics, with a time more than four seconds faster than his pre-Lydiard best. He would go on to defend his Rome title at 800m four years later in Japan, and add a gold at 1500m for good measure. In between, he would claim the world record in track's then glamour event, the mile. In top form, Snell would prove all but unbeatable in the latter event.

Years later, as exercise physiologist Dr. Peter Snell, the legendary Kiwi would offer a theoretical explanation for the revolutionary success of the Lydiard approach, variations of which would go on to become standard practice within the most successful distance running nations, with the metaphor of "aerobic base" (months of easy aerobic running) and anaerobic superstructure (weeks of race-pace interval training) becoming common currency among coaches the world over. Dr. Snell believed that Lydiard's keen intuition (born of his own experiences as a club-level athlete) had led him to discover that so-called "fast twitch" muscle fibers-- those responsible for producing the more explosive contractions that produce top-end speed-- can be coaxed into responding to a low intensity training stimulus once the "slow twitch" fibres that are first recruited at easier training paces had become depleted and exhausted. In other words, what appeared counterintuitive about the Lydiard approach could be explained in terms of the two-for-one training benefit that easy aerobic running could produce, provided the athlete was willing to run far longer than conventional wisdom would suggest. The athlete would still have to spend a period of time practicing race paces on the track; but, with the benefit of the endurance gained from the "aerobic base" training, he/she would be able to attain and hold these speeds for longer periods, and even be able to attain higher speeds when required at the end of races, as a result of fast twitch fibres that had been conditioned to perform better when fatigued.

Whatever its precise physiologic basis, the practical success of the Lydiard paradigm over the past 50 years remains undeniable. (Although confusion is sometimes generated by a failure to distinguish between the Lydiard paradigm and Lydiard's own sometimes idiosyncratic programming-- a distinction that would become one of Snell's own life lessons. See Snell's blunt words of advice on how to adapt the Lydiard method in the linked interview). From East Africa, to Japan, and now to the USA, where a distance running renaissance has saved America athletes from the ignominy now being suffered by the once great British and Europeans, high volume programs of the Lydiard type are the foundation of global success from 1500m to the marathon. Yet, in some quarters, the lesson that to run fast one must first run far remains a difficult sell. Indeed, in the USA itself, where the prevalence of high mileage training in universities and post-collegiate enclaves put American runners in the front pack internationally from the 1960s to the 1980s, this wisdom was temporarily set aside in favour of an approach emphasizing basic speed over endurance (the prevailing wisdom at the nadir of the sport in the USA was that "long, slow distance" makes for "long, slow runners"). The truth that, in distance running, more is indeed more can be difficult for some to accept, both because it is counterintuitive, and because to sustain a higher volume training program is a hard and tricky enterprise.

It continues to seem obvious to the casual observer that, because most races are won with superior finishing speed, the secret to winning is to increase one's sprint speed, rather than trying to become aerobically stronger. Thus, many high school and club coaches will continue to drill their distance runners, season-in and season-out, on "leg speed", "turnover", and running form, while cautioning them against the dangers of trying to run too far. The result is that often that young athletes, by the time they reach their university years, have become intimidated by the prospect of running more than 30 or 40 minutes per day; or, they worry if they become too tired to attain personal-best middle distance speeds on demand, 12 months per year. And, in truth, even when approached correctly (i.e. at genuinely easy paces, on soft surfaces, and in the company of partners where possible), completing the kinds of daily aerobic volumes required to promote steady improvement is psychologically difficult for younger athletes (and age 15-16 is probably the minimum age for following a serious training program in distance running), particularly in places where the daily routine of children requires nothing more strenuous than walking back and forth from the car, or playing a ball sport. To engage in this form of activity simply goes against the cultural grain in many ways in contemporary society: it requires a degree of tolerance to discomfort; great patience; inner quiet; and the courage to take short term risks (however minor) in pursuit of greater long term rewards. In the end, it can take years to acquire a taste for the pleasures of long, easy running for its own sake-- a pleasure that mature runners universally enjoy, and that gets them out the door every day, often well past the end of their competitive careers. The general bias towards hard interval work over easy aerobic running today for younger runners (i.e. between the formative ages of 15 and 18) would thus seem to be the result both of the basic misconception about finishing speed that Lydiard sought to dispel, and a concession to the cultural reality that contemporary young people are generally averse to running for up to an hour a day at gentle paces (which I'm convinced they are inclined to see as an activity for older people trying to "stay in shape"!) The line of least resistance in building a youth club or high school team is thus to offer a program modeled after the team sports with which young people are most familiar-- i.e one that meets frequently in large groups for relatively short and intense "practices". Unfortunately, the result of this approach is that, while rates of participation may climb, and while age class success may abound in the bigger clubs and schools (because hard, intense training actually can produce very dramatic short term results), young athletes receive a miseducation in the sport, both in terms of what's required to reach the highest levels, and in terms of their own longer term potential. By the time they reach their university years, many young athletes have become wary of or averse to running even moderate amounts of easy volume, let alone the amounts required to reach their full potential, and often stuck in a event range that does not suit their basic physiological makeup (hence, in Canada, the relatively large volume of 18-24 year old middle distance runners and the almost complete absence of serious long distance runners, and marathoners in particular).

How can we cut against this general tendency and ensure that Lydiard's basic innovation becomes and remains the centre of our sport practice here in Canada? We can make a start by challenging the persistent myths and misconceptions that threaten to undermine an aerobically based approach to training for distance running, chief among which are:

1. That lots of easy running volume leads to "burnout" and injury. If, by "burnout", we mean lack of enthusiasm to train and improve, then I would submit that the opposite is true. Lots of high intensity running, which leads to rapid improvement followed by flattened or declining performance, requiring several periods of complete rest during a year, and producing little year-over-year improvement, is more likely to dampen a young athlete's enthusiasm to train over the long haul. (It is no coincidence, BTW, that such an approach is the norm within seasonal high school programs, whose goal is to whip untrained athletes into shape in the shortest possible time.) Those who know anything about the history of the sport will know that this high intensity approach was standard practice in the pre-Lydiard days, when the conventional wisdom was that athletes would reach their lifetime peak performances within about five years of commencing serious training. Since the advent of the Lydiard paradigm, it is not uncommon for athletes to continue to improve as much as ten years into their mature careers, and at a range of different distances. Furthermore, as even the average recreational runner knows, long easy running is a psychological tonic rather than source of stress; it is the kind of training that still attracts us long after we have ceased to improve. As for the question of injury, there is no doubt that running longer creates a greater risk of injury; but, I would argue this risk is no greater than that associated with high intensity training, and probably less than that associated with hard or long training of any kind performed intermittently. Greater injury risk is an aspect of all serious training in any sport. In running, however, the injuries incurred are very rarely serious or debilitating in the long term, and the risk can be mitigated very easily through good daily management, including the timely use of cross-training. In any case, for athletes committed to realizing their full athletic potential, there is really no choice but to court a degree of risk. Is it better, after all, to have played it safe and avoided injury than to have strived for more and suffered the occasional setback?

2. That too much easy running will make you slow. As Snell suggests, and as the experience of the world's best runners clearly indicates, lots of easy running is more inclined to make you faster, including in a finishing kick. The greater endurance it promotes enables athletes to draw on more of the basic speed they possess at the end of races-- and most good distance runners have more than enough basic speed to produce fast finishes, provided they still have the legs to do it when the time comes. Even at the highest levels of the sport, most distance races are won with top speeds that even a very good primary school athlete could muster when fresh, and athletes with less top-end finishing speed frequently out-sprint athletes who are faster-- that is, when the former are not already safely ahead, due to the faster pace they can sustain over the vast majority of the race!

In the end, we have to be persistent in pointing out to doubters and the uninformed that high aerobic volume running is the global norm at the top levels of the sport. And, we have to introduce young athletes to this reality from the beginning, even as we scale their programs to their age and level of experience. The actual amount of easy running that young athletes do is secondary to the general message that simply getting out the door every day to run at an easy pace is the basis of training for this sport. It's what distance runners do the vast majority of the time, and it's what young runners need to become accustomed to if they want to reach their full potential, whatever that may be. We need to teach young runners (and their parents) that it is this, and not so much what happens twice a week at "track practice", that is the principle basis of training to be a runner. The vast majority of young runners will not go on to become serious runners, of course, but this is no excuse for not giving every runner the best chance of maximizing her inherent potential, should she so choose. After all, while we may know that, statistically, most runners who try the sport will not pursue it beyond school age, we do not know who among them just might! There is thus no excuse for foreclosing the options of young runners by taking the line of least resistance in the development of their training programs.

P-K POMs for March and April:

P-K athletes-- local, online, and junior-- began lining up in force as the spring road and track season launched in early March. There isn't time to review all the nominees, so I will get straight to it. The March POM goes to on-line athlete Peter McGregor, for his outstanding run at the legendary Around the Bay 30k (now in its 1000th year, or something). This year's addition saw stiff winds and below zero temperatures, neither of which seemed to deter Peter, who, at 50-something, passed the HM mark not far off his recent personal best of 1:27 on the way to a 6+ min course personal best. Peter is back at it this weekend in Ottawa, where he hopes to drill the aforementioned HM best into the dust! And the POM for April goes to another online athlete-- one who has been mentioned in this space many times before. After another winter of slogging it out in his beloved NL, Tely 10 champ Colin Fewer overcame a prolonged bout of nagging glute and achilles problems to chop 14 seconds from the 10 best he set in Victoria last year. In his first trip to the Vancouver Sun Run, Colin finished a hard-fought 8th in 30:27. He too will be back on the line in Ottawa in a few days, hoping to trim a little more from this mark.

The Paradoxes of Canadian Women's Distance Running

In my last post I talked about an apparent renaissance in Canadian marathoning-- Canadian men's marathoning. Sadly-- and, as I will explain, paradoxically-- the past couple of decades have witnessed a decline in the quality and depth of Canadian women's distance running-- from 5000m to the Marathon, and on the track, roads, and turf-- that has been much steeper and more absolute than in the case of our men. And this is largely because, for a while there, our top women were among the best in the world, and the depth of their ranks was cavernous. Here is but one of many possible data points from what might be considered the peak of Canadian distance running-- the late 1980s-- that conveys the extent of this erasure: Sue Lee, two time Olympian (and finalist in 1988, finishing 8th), and Canadian record holder in the 10,000m (a mark that lasted almost 20 years), never won a single national championship in her illustrious career, losing to not one but half a dozen different athletes over a period of 7 years! Today, a runner of Sue's calibre and consistency (31:52 for 10,000m, and World Road Best holder for 4 miles), would rarely, if ever, lose a single national championship race on the roads, track, or turf, let alone to multiple athletes over period of years.

What happened, and why is it paradoxical?

As with Canadian men, the efflorescence of Canadian women's distance running was a largely demographic phenomenon. All other things being equal, having a larger percentage of one's citizenry in prime sporting-age bracket-- 19 to 35-- means a larger pool of potential participants and, if that participation can be successfully encouraged, more intense competition, leading to better average performance levels. And, in North America in the 1970s and 80s, all other things were not equal. The women's movement, which removed much of the remaining social stigma surrounding elite women's sport, and led to the famous constitutional guarantee of equal funding for women's intercollegiate sports participation (Title IX) in the U.S., combined with simple demography to dramatically increase the ranks of serious female athletes in all sports across the continent. And, in Canada in particular, a few of the same factors that help explain the greater relative performance of Canada's male distance athletes contributed to the per capita spike in women's success, including: the Montreal Olympics, which led directly to increased funding for elite "amateur" sport; the appearance of few successful Canadian role models, such as outspoken middle distance star and pioneering sport activist, Abbie Hoffman and marathoner Jackie Gareau (with her home province of Quebec being a significant source of female talent in the 1980s); and, of course, the promotion of opportunities through provincial and national funding for a few knowledgeable coaches to spend more time developing their knowledge and experience-- opportunities that led directly to the creation of very powerful training groups in places like Vancouver, Victoria, Toronto, and Montreal.

As with the men, however, by the early 1990s, the effect of changing demographics would slowly begin to register, with many of our best from the 70s and 80s retiring and the pool from which their successors might appear becoming a little shallower each year. The simultaneous loss of one or more top athletes from some of our key training groups would also begin to undermine the depth and strength some of the these enclaves (e.g. the loss of both Sue Lee and Lynn Williams from Vancouver's Kajaks group within a couple of years). And, with the loss of top athletes and the slow erosion of the depth of their training groups would come a slow decline of the "demonstration effect", in terms of both training and high level racing, that a concentration of elite-level athletes tends to have on younger runners and their less experienced coaches within a given system. In short, just as with Canadian men, there was a subtle and gradual "forgetting" of the collective knowledge concerning precisely how an athlete manages to claw herself from the age class to the senior elite ranks, and a reduction in the number of active role models for this process. (And it is one thing to talk about great athletes from the past; quite another to actually watch one doing her thing on the track or roads, at least as far as the effect on aspiring elites.) In spite of this gradual decline, Canadian women distance runners would (and do) continue to produce outstanding individual performances; and, as a group, they would go on to enjoy a spectacular day in the international sun, when Canada claimed a bronze medal in the now defunct short-course IAAF XC championships in 2003. But this has been increasingly against a general trend of declining overall numbers and quality at national championships and major road races, with the 10000m and marathon suffering the greatest hollowing-out in recent years. The nadir of this decline was reached this past summer when the women's 10000m at our national track and field championships had to be cancelled due to lack of competitors-- a moment that long time observers could see coming, as the size of the senior women's fields at the bigger provincial X-C championships as well as the national championships began to dwindle almost to vanishing in some years, and this in spite of the enormous and ever deeper fields of girls in age-class events across the country.

The continuing high participation numbers and level of performance in girls age-class events, and the continued, if somewhat more sporadic, success of Canadian women distance runners at events below 10,000m/10k constitutes the aforementioned paradox, the heart of which is that the Canadian system (if it can even be called that) continues to produce as many or more top-notch female age-class athletes, many at very young ages indeed. Our success in the NCAA system, the worlds most competitive "league" for espoir athletes, continues to be remarkable (and currently greater than that of our men), perhaps even unprecedented in our history; and yet, the ranks of our peak-age senior elite athletes continue their steady yearly thinning. The story of the decline of Canadian women's distance running is therefore a story of failed promise, of the inability of our current system to convert our abundant age class talent into greater senior elite success. The disappearance of our once great regional training enclaves and the paucity of successful role models explains only part of this problem. The rest of the explanation is more broadly sociological cum sport-sociological.

Broadly speaking, the story of girls and young women in North American over the past 30 years has been one of steady inroads into higher education in general, and the professions in particular, relative to boys and men. In fact, the remarkable educational success of girls and young women relative to boys in the past few decades has led some commentators to speak (baselessly, I think) of a "crisis of masculinity". Regardless of what boys have or have not been up to, girls and young women have without question, and in great numbers, seized the opportunities that years of feminist activism succeeded in prying open for them (or, at least, girls of women of the middle classes have). Paradoxically, this has lead to increased levels of athletic performance among young girls, particularly in those sports that require the kind of discipline and focus that also correlates with high academic success, and a simultaneous decline in the number of young post-collegiate women willing to make the sacrifices necessary for success as at the senior elite level. Post-collegiate women distance runners, it would seem, have become increasingly reluctant to risk sacrificing career and other personal aspirations for a shot at success at the highest levels of this most demanding of sports-- a sport that requires another tens years at least of serious training beyond the collegiate ranks to be sure the full realization of personal potential. And to this we can add a possible and related sport-sociological variable specific to distance running: Today's post-collegiate women, having often started very intensive, high performance-oriented training at very young ages, and in pursuit of external rewards such as athletic scholarships, may lack the drive to continue the sport at the senior elite level with or without the career sacrifices entailed. This hypothesis would require further study to substantiate, but my own personal experience as both a teacher and coach of high school and collegiate women would seem to support it. Early 21st Century Canadian life is generally more utilitarian and work-dominated than ever before, and girls/women seem to be succumbing to this new cultural imperative more completely than boys and young men, for better and worse.

With the weight of such seemingly intractable variables standing against the possibility of a return to 1980s and 90s levels of participation and performance in women's distance running at the national level, what is a sport enthusiast and coach to do?

First, wherever possible, we need to tone down the seriousness of age-class competition for girls (and boys too, of course). Training at adult intensities in order to win age class accolades, or to perform far ahead of the curve for one's age, is a recipe for disaster at the senior elite levels, notwithstanding the gains made by a tiny minority in terms of lucrative scholarships (which the most talented can likely win with more modest training and racing in any case). Today's intensely achievement-oriented girls are far too easy to convince to make extreme early sacrifices in the pursuit of immediate success. Coaches interested in the long term success of female athlete should therefore go consciously against the prevailing cultural grain when it comes working with young girls. It is, after all, no less fun to train and race in a way that promotes more gradual improvement rates, and that thereby allows some room for post-collegiate success, than it is to go for everything all at once.

Second, coaches need to commit to working with post-collegiate women, and to making the case that longer term success is both possible and worth pursuing. Years ago, in an era when they were expected to enter gainful, lifetime employment immediately following high school, college, or university, many of our best ever male performers managed to reach the highest levels of the sport without making debilitating economic sacrifices. The case must now to made to our many talented and career-minded post-collegiate women that vocational success and elite level athletic success are not mutually exclusive; that what might appear at first to be sacrifices are, in fact, life enhancing in the long term. Over the past 10 years, I have worked with many late-blooming female athletes who, upon experiencing rapid rates of improvement in their late 30s and 40s, have belatedly realized that they probably could have pursued the sport with great success at the senior elite level in their 20s and early 30s, if they had had both the opportunity and the courage to break rank and give it a try. Our talented post-collegians will ultimately make up their own minds about this; but, we sports veterans, coaches, and enthusiasts need to be there to make the case for the vast intangible rewards of taking risks in pursuit of higher glory on the field of play. Every spring, literally dozens of very experienced and highly talented female distance runners pour out the collegiate ranks, never to lace up a pair of flats or spikes again. Surely more can be done to convince a few more each year of the many rewards of sticking with it.

P-K January and February Performances of the Month:

The demands of my first season of varsity indoor track at Queen's are responsible for this long delay in announcing the last two P-K monthly performance winners. A usually quiet time on the competitive scene for club athletes, the nominees for the winter months are few but of very high quality.

The two nominees for January come from opposite ends of the age spectrum, but for performances in the same event, the indoor 3000m. Junior Blair Morgan, who has been on a tear this winter, chopped 13 seconds from his personal best in going 8:52 at the Dome Louis Riel in Orleans. Finishing with his usual flair over the final 200m, knowledgeable observers could clearly discern that there would be more where this came from. Meanwhile, masters athlete Steve Boyd (with whose competitive record I am somewhat familiar) broke a 16 year old age group national record with his 8:49.17 on the University of Toronto oval-- and this in his (my!) first indoor track race, and second outing at 3000m, since 1995. Since a national record, even a lowly age-group mark, is always a very difficult achievement, the nod for January POM must go to the old guy.

February would feature two more outstanding indoor track performances. Remarkably, Blair Morgan would strip another 6 seconds from his 3000m best with his 8:46 at the Winternational Meet early in the month. This revision would bring his total improvement since late November to 23 seconds! And late one evening two weeks later, road specialist and multiple 2010 POM nominee Christian Mercier of Quebec City, would reduce his 5000m best by some 22 seconds, in the process putting on a display of metronomic pacing the like of which I, in my 3 decades in the sport, have never seen. Aiming for a time under 15mins, we joked before the start that all he would need to do was run 24 thirty-six second laps (15:00 pace per 200m), followed and a single 35 second lap, and the job would be done. When the clock was stopped 14mins and 57 seconds later, he would in fact have run 23 consecutive 36 second laps, one 37 second lap, with a final turn in 32 secs, spurred to a frenzied kick by being told that, for the first time, he had slipped above goal pace! Anyone who has ever attempted a 5k on a 200m track will appreciate the feat of sheer psychological hardness and old-fashioned attention-paying under pressure that such a performance represents. Nevertheless, for sheer scale of personal improvement that it represents, the monthly win must go to Blair's 8:46. Congrats to Blair on his first ever POM!