And Russ said, ”What… no Coaches’ Couch this week?”
It’s been a busy one with the Olympics and life. We should all get a gold metal for surviving the last 2 weeks. I haven’t watched this much hockey in 10 years. It’s been great! Canada’s “Own The Podium” attitude has been rather successful on an individual and team scale.
But… what about the rest of us? What commitment are we willing to sacrifice to do our best… and can we? And, should we? Maybe we are already doing our best. Our individual best is after all… ours!
Just because some little guy can run a marathon faster than I’ll be ever able to run one of his miles again doesn’t take away from the fact that I do my best with the time I have to put into it. Given a scale that could measure the level of input of physical, mental, spiritual and general life qualities (family, friends, work, other stuff); there would be a TON of world record holders out there. From the fastest half-marathoner cabbie with a wife, two kids, mortgage over 100K and going to med school during the day to the master’s marathoner single working mother with one teenage child in rehab while looking after her baby too category. Come on… there are so many different and truly awesome stories out there. All these people try to find time to run too. Most of these people are not running for anything but some kind of personal “glory”. It’s not about the competition. It’s about surviving another day.
We pick the occasional races to do something a bit different, or to get away. But the idea of training to win doesn’t fit into the schedule. I listened to what some of the National team members were going to do after the Games. One said (at 30) she’s going back to school to finish her degree. I wish her all the success in the world. It will take a super-human gold medal effort to do it if you don’t have a good support system behind you. I’ve known other people who tried or are trying to go back to school. They are succeeding but the pressures from family and friends to “give it up” and “get a job” are great. Sometimes, all’s it takes is that one person to stand behind them and say, “I believe in you” and it keeps them going when it seems like all the odds are against you. So… if you really want to do it (whatever “it” is), you are probably going to have to make some more sacrifices.
Waldemar Cierpinski 1980
So, the big question is, do you have room to move? In our case, do you have more time to put into your running? If you don’t… that’s okay. Everybody wishes they could do the stuff they wanted to all day, but that’s not the real world. We generally all have other commitments. We can alter the running program to maximize the effort to gain the most success - for a couple of years. There are a lot of successful programs out there based on limited mileages. But eventually, if you want to get to the next step, you have to put in more time on the road. I was reading a recent interview with former Olympic Marathon Champion Waldemar Cierpinski talking about his son. He was saying his son who is currently at 2:13 has to get up into the 250KM per week range if he wants to compete against the African marathon runners. I guess his son doesn’t work in a sawmill or deliver mail. All I’m saying is we have to put things in perspective too.
I look at my runners. With what they do… with all their family and social commitments… they are champions. It’s really great to see. Sure it may be kind of cool to watch somebody win a race. But even more impressive to me are the people who have the day job, the spouse and kids, the mortgage, and paying off the mini-van too - and my hat’s off to them! When they come across the line they are making a statement to me. They made a sacrifice to be away from home just to train to be able to run ‘their’ race. That’s a huge accomplishment. I like races where everyone gets a medal because they all really do deserve it.
There will always be that little thing in all of us that no matter how impossible it might seem given our busy lives; we want to be better. The “what if I…?” scenario. That takes planning. Here’s the thing about a plan… once you start it, you have to see it through to the end. Don’t start changing things mid-stream. In the beginning you chose a certain path and to change now, will change the outcome of the event you were training for at the beginning. We’re not talking about making adjustments like slight changes in training paces or modifying stretching routines to address issues. You shouldn’t be making significant changes like huge jumps in weekly mileage or pace, or swapping certain workouts for others or adding other sports suddenly. You can however test yourself to see if the program is working. There should be some ‘testing’ built into your program. If not… you may just have to put something in that doesn’t interfere with what you are doing. This was one of the reasons we (Peninsula Runners) started the FRIDAY NIGHT MILE series. A one-mile race can give you a ton of information as to where you are right now and what you have to do to either stay on track or to get back on it. Plus the distance is so short; you should practically recover over night. The big thing here though is planning and making sure you are on track.
You have to have a good idea of what your current conditioning is. You have to know which workouts are the most important for you for improvement. It takes a plan. First of all you may want to consider keeping a journal if you don’t already have one. If you can graph your workouts, this is even better. Graphing can show you the entire year instead of a one-day at a time journal. You may also want to keep track of your morning pulse-rate and weight for any indications of over-training. An increase in heart rate and decrease in body-weight at the same time could be a signal of over-training. You should have had some kind of recent race at the beginning of the clinic and an idea of where you would like to be at the end. Since most of our group is at the middle of their program, there should be a short race about now to see if you are on track. From the results, you can see what needs to be done if anything other than staying on the program.
This may seem contradictory. First we say stay on the program and then we say make changes if need be. Let me explain. In this case I am more interested in making sure people are training at the right paces. If you do a race and find you are not anywhere near your goal, then you will have to adjust your training paces accordingly. It is very rare that we would tell an athlete that he or she has to pick it up a bit. In fact, it never happens. However, telling someone to slow down is constant. This is why we have training races and I especially am going to encourage people to come out and try the FRIDAY NIGHT MILE. This may seem like a gratuitous “plug”, but it’s only a dollar entry fee, so it’s not about the money.
Let’s say you wanted to run a 3:50 marathon and your previous best was 4:03. According to the McMillan calculator, your previous best mile would have been around 7:11 (not the store chain). In order to run a 3:50, you should be around 6:48. That’s a 23 second difference. That’s not impossible but it will obviously take some effort. Since we are half way into the program that means if we divide 23 by 2 you should be somewhere around 11-seconds faster. Using the McMillan calculator, eleven seconds would currently put you in 3:56 shape. Let’s say you do a couple of the miles and you are around 7:03. This would mean you are currently in 3:58 shape and therefore on pace for a 3:53. Now, according to McMillan your long runs at 3:50 should be around 10:17 at the bottom end. We are trying to get people to slow them down another 30-seconds to 10:47. At a 3:53 marathon, the long runs should be about 7-seconds slower. I believe there is enough data there to warrant an alteration, but what if the time was like 7:06? It’s still an improvement, but take a look at the results. It looks like instead of a 3:50 finish; the runner is more likely to be looking at about a 3:57. At 3:57 the long run pace should be around 11:03. Which means he or she has been training almost 1-minute faster than what they are capable of doing. That’s significant. It means not only the long run pace has to be adjusted, but also the entire interval, tempo and steady state run paces have to changed too or the athlete is most likely to get injured.
Here’s the kicker… this little demonstration was based on all things considered equal. Well… it’s not. Generally your first 9 weeks are your most progressive and now it’s a bit harder to get the rest off. Therefore, you actually should have been one to three seconds faster on your mile time at the half way because it gets harder to take more time off as you reach your peak. But, hopefully shows you the value of knowing where you are at least at the beginning middle and at the end.
Have a great running week and think “MILE”.
Russ and Lorne
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