Another Day, Feeling Slightly Better

I ran six easy miles this morning, but despite the beautiful weather, I never got into the run. My right ankle felt a bit stiff and my form felt clumsy. As a result, I decided to take things easy and try to enjoy the spring weather.

On a positive note, my abdominal muscles felt much better. I think a few days of easier running and a lot of ice have done them some good. I now feel confident that I will be able to rehabilitate myself. My biggest problem is that I want to go farther and faster than I should. Let’s face it, I love to run, and what runner doesn’t want to cover more distance in less time?

Sometimes, though, running doesn’t feel as smooth or as effortless as it should. Sometimes you feel like you can run fast and forever; other times, you feel like you can hardly jog four miles. For example, I ran eight miles this Monday and felt like my feet weren’t even touching the ground. Then I ran my 12-miler from hell on Wednesday and felt like I was a hundred years old -- aching stomach, hips, and all. On my run this morning, I felt much better, but still not as light on my feet as I would have liked. I think part of the issue is that I am still not fully acclimatized to early morning running. I tend to be very inflexible in the morning, so I have to remember to start slow. Maybe another day of Grandma running will help.

12-Miler and Growing Older

I woke up early this morning and decided to get in a 12-miler by running two loops of Deer Grove East. I love running the trails of Deer Grove and try to hit them as many times as I can each week. There is an asphalt path that runs over gently rolling terrain with marshland, open grass fields, and some wooded sections. There is also a gravel path that follows the main path and you can run on the grass as well. I usually opt for the gravel path and grass to save my legs a bit.

The temperature was in the low 30s when I started, so I wore a light wind-breaker and some gloves. Otherwise, the weather was perfect.

I felt a few painful knots in my muscles, so started slowly. Eventually everything warmed up and I increased my pace. The run was supposed to be easy, so I held myself in check.

The only sour note was the pain in my lower abdomen. I felt it from the very start of the run and it waxed and waned throughout the run. It was never so painful that I felt I should stop, but still unpleasant.

I am still not sure what the cause is. I have actually had this lower abdominal pain for over a year. At times it has been worse than it is now, so I am not as concerned at the moment. Still, I would prefer to run without any pain at all.

Since it has lasted for so long, though, I am beginning to suspect that I might have what is known as a sports hernia. This is not the same as a traditional hernia as there is nothing protruding through the abdominal wall. Instead, it is caused by strained muscles that never heal. I have heard of people resorting to surgery as a cure. I don’t want to go that route.

I am still convinced that it is the result of combined weakness in the lower abdominals and excessive stiffness in connecting muscles. I will continue to stretch, strengthen, and apply contrast therapy. The last is a method of applying heat followed by cold and then alternating between the two. The goal is to stimulate blood flow in the injured area. For the heat, I use a bottle filled with hot water; for the cold, I use ice packs.

I am feeling less sore as I type this, so I will remain hopeful that I will beat this “injury”. I have managed to deal with all other injuries I have been afflicted with since I started running two years ago. And yes, I am an old decrepit man—I turn 40 this year.

Running Like Grandma

So I woke up Sunday morning with a pain along the inner side of my foot—it hurt just walking. I was planning on running five miles, but wondered if I should just take the day off. That would be the reasonable thing to do. After all, why risk an injury just to fit in a few more easy miles?

But that isn’t what I did. I decided to run, but with a difference. I call it “grandma” running. “Grandma” running is when you run slow and with a shortened stride. You’ve probably seen some older people running like this, thus the source of the name. And no, I am not trying to insult grandmas or slow runners—I actually find great wisdom in the way they run. You see, sometimes it is better to run slowly than to not run at all. And if you really have a problem with running this slow, just think of it as a faster alternative to walking, which is what you might be doing if you have an injury and want to get some exercise.

What are the advantages of “grandma” running as opposed to total rest or some form of cross training?

First, running at any speed is more specific to the sport of running than any other exercise. As we all know, the principle of training known as “specificity” states that the best way to train for a given sport is by practicing the actual sport or using movements that are close to the movements used in that sport. Therefore, it is better to run than to cycle, swim, or lift weights. Yes, a bout of hard cycling will do more for your aerobic system and weight lifting builds muscle, but neither help train the specific muscles used for running. Better to run slow.

Second, and probably an elaboration on the first principle, is that by running at any speed, you are continuing to put stress on your connective tissues and to build up the strength of these connective tissues. The thing that causes most injuries is not the stresses placed on the body by running, but the excessive stresses placed on the body by running too fast or too far too soon. Total rest might make the symptoms of an injury go away, but rest does not get to the root cause of most injuries. And often these root causes are weak bones, tendons, and ligaments. How do you correct these weaknesses? By running.

Third, running can actually loosen up tight muscles and work the kinks out of the legs. That is what happened with my run on Sunday. I started with a pain in the side of my foot—that was actually a cramp—and by the end of the run the pain was gone. If I hadn’t gone for those easy five miles, I might have been limping around for a week!

Dem Bones, Dem Bones

You know that old song about the thigh bone being connected to the hip bone? It’s true. Every part of your body is connected, and what effects one part can have collateral effects on other parts.

So, I have had this on-again off-again pain in my lower abdomen whenever I run hills or in deep snow (like I did this winter). At first I thought it was just a strain in my lower abdominals—makes sense, right?—but I also noticed that there was some pain and stiffness in my hips and down into the muscles that run along the inner side of the thighs (i.e. adductors). When I decided to stretch those tight thighs and hips, I soon realized just how stiff they were; we are talking rigor mortis stiff. Conclusion: tight muscles in the hips and thighs are causing related problems in the abdominals. Solution: stretch everything out.

Also, as a result of this experience, I have become obsessed with strengthening my abdominal muscles. I have been doing crunches and such since I started running again two years back, but I now realize there are more muscles then those 6-packs—or abdominis rectus for those who want to get all scientific and fancy. For instance, there is the transversus abdominis muscle. This acts like a corset around your middle and provides stability rather than motion—and while you can’t see them on the outside, you can certainly feel them on the inside when they aren’t working properly.

One good exercise for the transverse abdominis is the “Vacuum”. I’ve actually done vacuums back in the day when I was into yoga. To do them, you exhale till your lungs are empty, and then you suck your stomach inward and upward as if trying to touch your belly button to your spine (yes, I know that sounds painful). You can do this exercise while standing, sitting, or laying down—so it’s a good exercise to do while in the office.

So right now I am stretching my hips and thighs, and doing those vacuums. Only time will tell if my efforts will eliminate the pain or if I will have to go visit a medical professional after the running season is over.

My Favorite Fitness Myth

I was just recently thinking about a piece of fitness wisdom that you hear just about everywhere these days: the more muscle you have, the higher your metabolism will be and the easier it will be to lose weight.

My question: if your metabolism is higher, what stops you from eating more food and eliminating any possible calorie deficit that might exist? Or to put it another way, couldn’t you just eat less food without raising your metabolism and still lose weight?

In fact, while it is true that muscle adds to your metabolic rate, it is also true that fat also increases your metabolism. So we should all just put on the pounds to boost our metabolisms!

Don’t believe it? Just watch a reality TV program like The Biggest Loser to see high metabolism at work. Those guys lose like 10+ pounds a week, and they do it because they probably need like 5,000-10,000 calories a day just to support all that excess weight; so they can easily cut 2,000 calories and still meet all their nutritional requirements and get enough food on a regular basis to maintain blood glucose levels. As they drop the pounds, though, it becomes harder and harder for them to lose as quickly.

I suspect that the reason people like the contestants on Biggest Loser get fat in the first place is because their bodies cannot regulate blood glucose levels and burn fat very efficiently, so they are constantly hungry and eat too much—emotional eating issues might also be a factor. But if you can manage your blood glucose and improve the efficiency of your metabolism, then you can also lose fat more easily by simply exercising more, eating less, and not being ravenously hungry all the time. Therefore, I feel that the most important factor in weight loss is not having a fast metabolism but having an efficient metabolism.

Of course, for the competitive marathon runner the real concern is not about losing fat—most marathon runners tend to be, how shall we put it, extremely lean; but the marathon runner does benefit from an efficient metabolism because it allows him or her to get the most bang out of the fewest caloric bucks. This might involve a combination of teaching the body to store more sugar in the liver and muscles (i.e. glycogen), burn more fat during exercise, or tolerate lower blood glucose levels without bonking or hitting the wall. In other words, it is all about making the most out of limited fuel resources so that you can complete 26.2 miles without running out of energy. Maybe this is yet another reason why body builders don't make the best marathon runners--they've got those overly fast metabolisms to worry about!

But how does the marathon runner improve the efficiency of his or her metabolism? My theory is that he or she accomplishes this by depositing as many miles as possible into the weekly, monthly, or yearly running bank. I have also heard some claims that running longer without ingesting any calories before or during exercise can teach the body to become more efficient. Since I am now on the early morning running schedule and do not have enough time to eat a breakfast and digest it before going out on a run, I am essentially taking this approach on all of my longer runs. Perhaps that is why I never hit the wall during Chicago last year? Hmmm…..

Sore Legs and Lactate Threshold

There is still some lingering soreness in my shins, calves, and upper thighs—but after doing an easy 6 miles today, I am feeling better. The slight tenderness in my legs constantly reminds me of my 5K last Saturday. I keep thinking of what I need to run faster at that distance. It’s not aerobic conditioning, that’s for sure. I didn’t feel like I was running out of oxygen during the race, not even in the final sprint to the finish. I can remember faster 5Ks in the 1990s where I was hyperventilating in the final stretch. I never felt I was at that point during the race. In fact, I felt like my breathing was fairly under control and there was no shortage of oxygen for my system.

What I did feel, though, was heaviness and burning in my legs, and a feeling that I just couldn’t make them move faster. So I suspect that I lack leg speed and, more importantly, a solid lactate threshold.

“A lactate what,” you might ask? Let me explain. There are at least two factors that contribute to your running success at distances ranging from the half mile up to the marathon. The first is your aerobic capacity, commonly measured by the oh-so-scientific-sounding VO2max; basically, this is the amount of oxygen your body can transport to your working muscles at any given moment. Some might think it is a matter of lung capacity, but the true limiting factor is actually your heart and circulatory system. The best way to improve VO2max and overall aerobic conditioning is to just go out and run lots of miles, preferably at a slower, conversational pace. All this running also has the added benefit of toughening up your bones and connective tissue and teaching you to run more efficiently, which ultimately helps you avoid the bane of all runners—injuries.

The second factor is that lactate-something-or-another-thingy—we will use the more scientific term, lactate threshold. Lactate is the stuff that your muscles produce when they are making energy from oxygen. Lactate is actually not bad stuff, since organs such as your heart and kidneys can use it as a source of energy. The bad stuff happens when lactate starts building up faster than your body can use it. The next thing to happen when this occurs is that the lactate binds with hydrogen ions, forming lactic acid. This is the bad stuff that makes your muscles burn and your legs feel heavy and non-responsive when you are running fast. The lactate threshold is the turning point at which your body starts to accumulate more lactate then it can deal with. If you can push back the threshold, you can run faster for longer without your legs falling apart.

How do you train your lactate threshold? Easy, you spend time running at your current threshold. The most common workout for this is called a tempo run. This is a run where you start with an easy warm up, run several miles right at your lactate threshold, and then finish with a cool down. To progress the run, you increase the time you spend at your lactate threshold by adding more miles—also, you will eventually find that as you get better, you will be able to run faster at your threshold.

To determine the pace that you need to run, you can take your most current 5K race time and add 30-40 seconds to your per mile pace. Another way to measure your lactate threshold is to wear a heart rate monitor and run at 80-90% of max heart rate. You should be able to hold this pace for one hour if running a race. Finally, if you are really crazy, you can buy lactate monitors that measure the lactate in your blood—you prick a finger. You can run some intervals on a track and measure your blood lactate while slowly increasing the speed of each interval to find the point where you blood lactate spikes. This last method is a little nutty, though, so I would just go with the 5K race time or heart rate monitor methods.

What this all means is that I will probably be doing some tempo runs within a couple of weeks once I stabilize my mileage at around 50 miles per week. I have also started doing some 100M strides to increase my leg turnover speed. We shall see what effect this all has on my 5K and 10K times. Stay tuned.

Getting Faster

Good news. I ran this Saturday’s 5K in 19 minutes flat! That is a lot better than I was expecting and puts me nicely on track for my goal this fall. The interesting thing is that I carved off 30 seconds from my PR without doing any interval training or tempo runs. I just ran pure mileage.

The only other thing that could have helped my time would have been the amount of running and racing I did in the snow this winter. You see, I ran this trail series out in Rockcut National Park that started with a 5K in December, a 10K in January, a 15K in February, and a very muddy 20K in March—all run on single track trails with about two to three hundred crazy runners. To train for it, I did part of my running in snow ranging from ankle deep to shin deep. My training run the weekend before the 15K consisted of running twelve miles, 10K of it through the snow.

Other than putting in the miles and the races over the winter, though, I have done no special training for the 5K. No 400m intervals on the track, no hill repeats, and definitely no tempo runs of any kind. Total mileage per week is currently at about 50 miles.

So what is the moral of the story? Simple: putting in the miles (especially in the snow!) can help you get faster; no need to visit the track.

First 5K of the Year Tomorrow!

My first 5K race of the year is tomorrow! It’s a flat course and the weather should be cool and sunny; so while I am not expecting to break any land-speed records, I do hope to run a half-way decent time. I am thinking 19:30 or even a little faster should be fine considering all my mileage this year has been of the slower, easier variety.

Now some of you might be wondering what the big deal about running a 5K is? I’m training for a marathon, after all. I’ll tell you.

All races are good indicators of your general fitness, and the shorter ones are good indications of your speed. And if you want to run a good marathon, you need to have some speed. Your 5K times tell you if you have that speed. In fact, there are charts or calculators like this one that tell you what your predicated time should be for one race distance based on other race distances. While you generally want to use longer races for a good prediction, I find that my 5K time is a good general approximation for this early in the year.

So, I have an easy 3 miles this morning—just enough to stretch the old legs out—and then I will be resting my legs for the race tomorrow. Next week I will return to building my mileage, hopefully hitting 50 miles for the week. Of course, if my 5K time is off, I might just be tempted to add in some speed work…

Sub-3 or Bust

I ran my first marathon in ten or so years last October in Chicago. Time was 3 hours 13 minutes and some seconds. It was a lot better than I was expecting. Now, after years of being a fat ex-runner, I am feeling some of my old fitness return—and with it, my old goal of breaking 3 hours in the marathon. For those of you who don’t know a good marathon time from a good Korean restaurant, let me explain: three hours is probably faster than most marathon runners will ever run; if you run a two-something marathon, you are in the same hour range as the fastest runners in the world, albeit, at the further extreme. Many runners set this goal, but only a few make the cut.

Why do I think I can do it? Because I was this close [picture of two fingers barely touching] to doing it back in the 1990s when I was running marathons somewhat regularly. I was a lot younger then, probably a better than average runner, but severely undisciplined. My idea of tough marathon training was to run 40-50 miles a week with some track workouts. My best time back then was 3 hours 2 minutes and change. Not too far off of a sub-3, huh? Imagine what I could have achieved if I had been more consistent in my running and if I had applied some of my current running wisdom to that much younger body?

Now I am older (40 this year), but I am also wiser—at least I hope so. I know how to pace myself; I know what will get me injured, and what will boost my performance. I also have some better ideas on how to run the marathon; for instance, how to run it fast and not hit the wall at 20 miles. This blog is the place where I will document my journey.