Rainy Runs

There is nothing like heading out for a run after a rainstorm. Here in the DC area, the late spring/early summer offers us ample opportunity to get out the door under these conditions. The air seems a little easier to breathe, the trails have gotten a bit sloppy and sometimes you can see a little steam rising off the ground. These are the times I love to lace up an old pair of shoes and see what kind of mess I can make. I liken it to mud-bogging without the aid of Detroit’s technology. After a particularly heavy rain (sometimes during), you’ll probably see me mucking up the trails, thick mud up to my shins and generally looking like a soaked dog. All with a huge grin.

I don’t know what it is about the rain, or precipitation in general, that revs my engine. Perhaps I’m an overgrown kid and I like getting dirty. Maybe it is that little voice in the sub-conscious that repeats the old cliché, “Somewhere in the world someone is training, and when you race them, they will beat you.” It also could be the “Wow” factor. I don’t mind being told that I’m crazy for running in those conditions; In fact, I sort of revel in it! Largely, I believe it to be that I appreciate the extremes of what Mother Nature throws at us. Storms and flooding are interesting to me and I enjoy being a part of them (in a safe manner of course).

As far back as I can remember in my running life I’ve loved the pure soaking of storms and high water. In high school, we had plenty of water crossings on our trails. At William and Mary, we had storms that would fill blocks of the main Colonial drag with 12-18 inches of water. It was hard to resist getting your feet (and knees, butt and shoulders) wet! It was a magnet.

All of this leads to my run yesterday. After the strong storms of the weekend, it seemed like a perfect opportunity to head out and survey the stream valley just behind my neighborhood. I figured the stream would be pretty high, the cement pylons for crossing would be totally covered. When my wife and I got to the stream, we found it to be about 4 feet higher than normal, dirty water rushing its way toward the bay. Neither of us are fools, we’ve certainly seen the videos of people swept away by fast flowing streams…crossing was immediately off the plate. So we chose a path that paralleled the stream, close enough to see and hear the roaring water, but far enough away for safety’s sake. We passed some kindred spirits along the trail, each gazing at that mystical flowing stream. Splashing through some small puddles, we came upon a particularly low section of the trail. Having run this section a hundred times, we each knew the course, but the entirety of the trail was underwater. We continued moving forward, feet getting wet, then ankles, then shins, then knees. At this point I should mention that my wife is a bit “vertically challenged”. I call her Smurfette even if she is just a bit taller than their standard 3 apple heights. The water is getting deeper and we are pressing forward. I hear her stop her watch and I glance backward with a questioning look. She is standing waist deep in this “puddle” and tells me that she can no longer get her knees out of the water, so she has to walk the remaining distance. Fortunately, it did not get any higher and we did not have to swim our way out. However, my wife declined the invitation to make it an “out and back” run…we looped our way back along higher ground. I was pleased to initiate her into the rainy run club and find that she did not entirely hate it.

One note for rainy run days: Make sure you place towels by the door so you do not have to traipse through the house while in drowned rat status. :)

Back to the Future

Occasionally living in the past is a good thing. It is nice to remember what you’ve done and to be proud of past accomplishments. It is great to get together with folks who knew you “when”. Falling comfortably back into the old days, even for an all too brief weekend is a wonderful way to recharge the batteries.

I had the opportunity to literally and figuratively step back in time this weekend. My college roommate was inducted into our school’s athletic Hall of Fame on Saturday and my wife and I headed to Colonial Williamsburg to attend. The College of William and Mary at springtime is one of the more glorious places to be. The flowers bloom a little earlier, the air a bit warmer as a sleepy tourist town re-awakens. Shelly and I got there early, in time to run a few of the old routes that used to be my days and ways. I probably bored the heck out of her, recounting old stories of teammates and some of the silliness that occurs when you pack 35 fit and (generally) focused distance runners into a recreated colonial town. Sometimes you had to make your own fun given the surroundings.

As with many of the runs from campus, we started down the main colonial drag, D.O.G. Street. Per usual, the streets were crowded with school groups and tourists eager to soak in the atmosphere. Some of the more memorable moments of my college career occurred on this street, warming up and cooling down for races and workouts. [BEGIN FLASHBACK] There is always a brave child who wants to impress his or her schoolmates by yelling at the passing runners (runners are cowardly by nature, right? I mean, they are running away!). Each thought they were being original when yelling, “faster, faster” or “Run Forest Run”, not realizing that we had heard this hundreds of times. The one comment that ever stopped us in our tracks (figuratively, we kept running) was while cooling down from a long session of 1ks on the track. Several of us scholar-athletes were making the usual loop, shirts off, happy to be done with the workout. We could see the kid, probably 10 years old, get the wild eyes, inspiration brewing in his little skull. He popped off with, “How are you going to get girls with chests like that?” Academic All-Americans, Monroe scholars and valedictorians among the 15 of us and what could we respond with? Certainly it would be witty and slightly cutting sarcasm. Nope, the best we could manage was a hurtful “shut up”. It was a sad day for academia. [END FLASHBACK]

The weekend was a wonderful time to celebrate the career of my former teammate. He was a three time all-American at the 800m event and is currently a lawyer in NYC. Several of our old teammates showed up as well; we had a great time reminiscing and reconnecting with old friends. We even got to see the current team members hammer a workout on the track. It was as if everything came full circle. Here were the young, bright and talented athletes of the present lapping a track that also contains our blood, sweat and tears. The current team members were just as focused and driven as we had been at that time. They were polite enough to listen to our stories, just as we had done when alumni visited. My hope for them is that, in 15 years time, they also get to come back and experience the feelings and memories of a weekend in the past.

Weekend Schedule

Looks like it will be a fairly rainy weekend. Can you really stand to sit through another DVD movie that you’ve seen a hundred times? If you are a track fan, I’ve got all your weekend plans and you don’t even have to leave your computer!

No matter what level of track and field that you prefer, it will be on your interwebs this weekend. Enjoy watching the elite athletes? Head over to Universal Sports and their website as they broadcast from Doha and the World Indoor Track and Field Championships. Don’t want to root for your country? How about your alma mater? The NCAA Track and Field championships will be on ESPN360 and Flotrack throughout the weekend. Perhaps you’d like to cheer on some of the nation’s future stars? The dueling high school national championship meets also occur this weekend, one in NYC and the other in Boston. Check out Dyestat (if you are a high school track aficionado, you already knew this) for all the HS information.

Lots and lots going on! I’m excited to get some results and check out some great racing. If you’re more in the learning mood, check out the PRR Youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/PRRunning1 for some info on Dynamic Flexibility and a simple strength circuit.

Enjoy!

Spring is in the Air!

This is my favorite time of year. Both the weather and the racing are starting to heat up! There are more and more races on the docket and results are starting to pour in. We can legitimately wear shorts and tees without looking like crazy people.

Beyond the temperatures, this is the time of year when we can get down to business, training-wise. This winter, clearly, was particularly brutal for the DC area. Many runners were forced inside or to slide around on slick roads. This limits our abilities to stretch our legs out and pick up the pace. Now that we have some sunshine and clear paths, let’s get the speedwork going! It is time to finish your run with some accelerations and start to feel the strength you’ve developed from long, slower base miles. Strides are a great way to get back into speedwork. Find a flat to slightly downhill 150m path. Slowly accelerate for the first 50m, hold for 50m, then, take your foot off the gas and coast for the last 50m. The idea is to get out of the rhythm of your distance run, to break from that slower pace work and get back to some free flowing speed. It is also a great opportunity to focus on proper mechanics. Fine tune your arm movements and the full body tilt. Most athletes become a bit more efficient at speed (unless you are Oakton and W&M alum Jacob Frey, who’s shift into “Frey Speed” has been deemed by several coaches to be a “biomechanical disaster”). Take advantage of this! Start with 4-6x 150m, then move to 6-8x150m.

This is also a good time to remind you that the shoes you wore for the Army 10miler or the MCM are ready to be replaced. Even if you put them in the closet after the race and didn’t use them again. You may want to consider a new outfit as motivation for a new season. Perhaps a water bottle belt for those of you entering into new, longer distance races. Sunglasses are a must at this point...As I said, we are starting to get out in shorts and tees. Lots of bright paleness going on out there. For you pale folks, get some good sunscreen.

It was fun to see folks out at the races this weekend. The first event of the Loudoun Race Series kicked off, and there was a lot of support for PRR employee Moise Joseph and the PRR Run for Haiti. Thank you to all that came out for one or both events, and for those that donated to the cause. Moise is off to Doha to run the 800m at the World Indoor T&F Championships this week. Be sure to check for his results soon!

Good luck with your spring racing season!

The more things stay the same..

A high school friend recently reminded me of the efforts that we used to make to get our workouts in during inclement weather. This seems especially poignant given the recent conditions that runners have experienced in the mid-atlantic.

While actually in school, our coaches had a good hold on us. They did exactly what they should have to help keep us safe. When it was icy, we’d run the hallways of the school (something not allowed anymore) and do circuits of weighted jump rope, push ups, lunges and the like. We’d get in the gym before the basketball teams started up and get in some sprints, followed by a devilish wall-sit routine. Some snowy weeks we had to sacrifice a little mileage for the sake of safety.

The days when we were out of school, off days brought on by dumping snow and hazardous driving conditions, were the special ones. These were the days when we “proved” our dedication to each other and our sport. We used to meet at a rarely used parking garage central to all parties. This meant that everyone had to drive a distance to meet up. Our parents told us we were crazy or that we were being stupid. However, we were young, fit and invincible (don’t forget incredibly lucky that no one got stuck or hurt while getting there). The standard parking garage workout was a fartlek of hard loop, easy loop. It would go on until all parties were satisfactorily tired. We would stretch, talk a little smack and return home, not remembering the arguments we’d had with our folks in order to get ourselves out there. What these workouts did from an athletic perspective was very limited. What they allowed from a mental perspective was the actual benefit. Not only did we gel more easily as a team but we were able to convince ourselves that no one else was as hardcore as us, training in these conditions. It formed a sense of strength in each of us that was invaluable to our performances later in the season.

As I said, I had forgotten our winter storm workouts until my friend brought them up. During the recent winter storms, I realized that my mindset had never changed. I’ve run on ice, driven to neighborhoods where streets were cleared, worked out in the basement of a parking garage, run on the treadmill, even run on a trampoline! It has been nearly twenty years and I’m still trying to gain a little edge. I’m not even competitive anymore, but I feel a compulsion to get workouts completed during the poor weather. Feel free to call me crazy, it’s not like I’ve never heard it before. The more things change…

BE SURE TO WATCH THE U.S. INDOOR CHAMPIONSHIPS ON ESPN2 SUNDAY 7-9PM!

Magic Miles

If you follow NCAA track and field like I do, you have to be excited. There are a ton of middle and long distance athletes that are pushing the limits of what is expected from collegiate athletes. The mile, especially, has my eye right now. It is a thrilling event, a wonderful combination of speed, strength and tactics. And it is seeing a resurgence in the college ranks. The magic number for the mile has always been 4 minutes. Four quarter miles in one minute each. Through today, there have been 17 collegiate men this season that have powered through the event faster than that magic 4:00 mark. In fact, 10 American men ran their first sub-4 mile this last weekend. This brings the total number of American men that have run sub-4 in our nation’s history to 342. Over the past 3 years, we have added 44 Americans to the sub-4 list. What has caused this rapid increase in our totals?

One of the causes of our recharged Mile totals, I believe, is an ease of getting race results. We used to have to wait for a month or two to find results from out of the way events to be published in a magazine. Now, we can fire up our laptops and find results within hours, if not minutes, of an event being completed. There are many times that we can actually watch the race online and find out instantly! Every race from UW this past weekend was streamed live online, as well as the US Cross Country Championship races from Spokane. So, it is easier to find out which athletes are doing what. This allows athletes to play the “why not me” game, and step up their achievements.

Part two, our coaches are not afraid to put our athletes in positions to run fast. This means getting the athletes into races where all the other great athletes are competing. Having a large group of very fast athletes banging heads in a race is where we get these bulk additions to our all-time lists. They know the race is going to be fast and only have to worry about beating the guy next to them. Additionally, we seem to have moved away from the “loneliness of the long distance runner” and more into group training. There are several post-collegiate groups that cater to middle distance athletes, as opposed to only focusing on marathoners.

I believe the biggest reason for the influx of names to the USA mile list comes down to one name: Bernard Lagat. When Lagat became a US citizen, he brought with him a list of accolades and accomplishments that few Americans had ever achieved. Heck, he even had an Olympic medal! Lagat forced the other American athletes to step up their games. He caused them to train and race harder than they previously thought possible. Since Lagat became an American citizen in 2005, there have been 77 Americans that have run a sub-4. That averages to 12.8 per year. In the previous 45 years we only averaged 5.8 new athletes running sub-4. If you want to wear the USA across your chest, you still have to go through that man. To beat him, you have to train ridiculously hard. Lagat is a product of the American collegiate system and has had amazing success on the international level. It comes back to athletes seeing that success and saying, “Why not me?”

Cabin Fever

Whether you are calling it “Snowpocalypse”, “Snowmageddon” or simply “a huge pain in the butt”, the Washington area has experienced the second major winter storm of the season. In fact, the second top 10 snowstorm of all time. When twenty to thirty inches of snow has fallen, there is really little else to do besides shovel and get back inside. Personally, I am fed up with shoveling. So, what to do with the extra time? Perhaps I have a short attention span, but I cannot watch 9 hours of “Big Game” coverage. Nor can I watch the Live StormTeam coverage from the networks. That leaves reading. Fortunately, I’ve got quite a library of running related books to get me through times like these.

Below are a few of my favorites, broken down by category.

Fiction: The classic “Once a Runner” by John L. Parker. If you’ve already read this several thousand times, try the follow up “Again to Carthage” to read of Cass’s venture into the marathon.

Non-Fiction: “Running with the Buffaloes” by Chris Lear chronicles the 1999 cross country season of the University of Colorado.
“Sub 4:00” by Chris Lear about Alan Webb and the Michigan team.
“Bowerman and the Men of Oregon” by Kenny Moore is an inside look at the man that co-founded Nike and basically brought interval training to the U.S.

Training Manuals: “Daniels Running Formula” by Dr. Jack Daniels, simply the best read if you want to learn more about training and don’t want to be bogged down by the technical terminology. Dr. Jack does a fantastic job of turning complex physiology into concepts than anyone can understand. He also includes a ton of tables to help you customize your training to your current fitness level.

“Better Training for Distance Runners” by Martin and Coe…If you enjoy all the Xs and Os of physiology and coaching.

“Run Fast” edited by Kevin Beck. This is a compilation of chapters by various elite coaches from around the country. Each person breaks down a particular topic related to training, from mileage to nutrition. A very solid read!

Have fun being snowbound. There is virtually no reason to be out driving around. Use it to your advantage and become a student of your sport. I will be doing the same...right after I finish the next round of shoveling!