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SPORTS MEDICINE SPECIAL: TODAY’S TOP REHAB TECHNOLOGY

NOVEMBER 2010 // ISSUE 381

TUNE YOUR

INNER ELITE + 3 WORKOUTS TO DEVELOP YOUR BUILT-IN GPS + 10 KEYS TO STRONGER SELF-MOTIVATION + THE RHYTHM RUN: AN ELITE TRAINING STAPLE

FIND YOUR

TRAINING

SWEET SPOT + 4 OVERTRAINING FLAGS

BOOST YOUR GROWTH HORMONES + 5 THINGS THAT BLOCK PRODUCTION

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HEIDI H HE EID DI WE W WESTOVER EST STOVER OV O VER ER + 2:35 MARATHONER + FULL-TIME TEACHER

RYAN HALL

MEB KEFLEZIGHI

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Northeast Regional Long Island, NY 11.27.10

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2008 U.S. OLYMPIAN

2009 ING NEW YORK CITY MARATHON CHAMPION

National Finals San Diego, CA 12.11.10

BECOME A FAN

CONTENTS NOVEMBER 2010 // issue 381

FEATURES_

45 WORKING FOR THE WEEKEND Three elite runners in this year’s U.S. women’s marathon championships who also work full-time by Abigail Lorge

MEDICINE TODAY 52 ASPORTS look at how new technology is coming to the aid of injured runners by Brian Metzler, Brian Fullem, D.P.M, and Richard A. Lovett

RUNNING THE RED CARPET 66 Can a VIP spot near the front of the pack in the New York City Marathon lead to a new PR? by Justin Nyberg

BECOME A BODY WHISPERER 70 Three workouts to learn Lydiardesque inner monitoring by Lorraine Moller

COLUMNS_

THE RUNNER’S WITNESS by Tamara Lave 20 The Dark Secret: Eating disorders plague young runners PAGE by Greg McMillan, M.S. 22 PERFORMANCE Find Your Sweet Spot: Maximal vs. optimal adaptation rate OF THE RUN by 101° West Photography 84 AART muddy day at the 2007 U.S. cross country championships in Boulder DEPARTMENTS_ EDITOR’S NOTE LETTERS SHORTS OWNER’S MANUAL

36 38 40 75

COLLEGE MASTERS TRAILS RACING

From Top:

Joel Wolpert

Victor Sailer/Photo Run

Paul J. Sutton/Photo Run

06 08 11 25

COVER ART Heidi Westover trains for the 2010 New York City Marathon near her home in Walpole, N.H. design by Alan Luu / photo by Peter Baker

SUBSCRIBER INFORMATION (ISSN 0147-2986; USPS 376-150), Issue 381. Running Times is published 10X a year, monthly except bimonthly in January/February and July/ August by Rodale Inc, 33 East Minor Street, Emmaus, PA 18098 (610–967–5171). Periodicals Postage Paid at Emmaus, PA and at additional mailing ofﬁces. Subscribers: If the postal authorities alert us that your magazine is undeliverable, we have no further obligation unless we receive a corrected address within 18 months. Postmaster: Send address changes to: Running Times, PO Box 5886,Harlan, IA 51593–1386 Postmaster (Canada): PM #40063752 GST# R122988611 Return undeliverables to: Running Times, 2930 14th Avenue, Markham, Ontario L3R 5Z8, CANADA

ON THE COVER 52 Sports Med Special // 70 Tune Your Inner Elite 22 Training Sweet Spot // 25 Boost Growth Hormones 45 Heidi Westover

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EDITOR’S NOTE effort level of the run. Th is is the argument of LORRAINE MOLLER’S article in this issue: early one morning wearing a GPS to measure the route for my wife, who that we need to learn to listen to and trust was going out later. I couldn’t help glancing at the pace feature on the our bodies. Moller advocates doing workwatch, however, which looked appropriate when I started out slowly, but as outs without any external feedback to relearn I warmed up and sped up, seemed to stay surprisingly slow. I sped up more, these skills, but during the conversations we but could barely edge the pace faster on the GPS. True, the route was hillier had discussing the article she acknowledged than usual for me and it was humid, but surely I was going faster than that that watches and GPS and heart rate moniat this level of effort. How out of shape am I, I wondered. I sped up more. tors can be useful, if they reinforce your skills at self-monitoring rather than replace those At the turnaround, I enjoyed the view over time. Thus what I thought was my fi nal pace skills. She advocates using such devices after the bay, then headed back with renewed was actually the average for the run, includ- you’ve started to tune in, with their data provigor. Still, the GPS told me I was running ing the stop at halfway, and the top pace for viding additional information on what you’re 30 seconds per mile slower than I would have the run on that fi nal downhill was nearly 2 learning from your body, such as, “OK, this predicted. I must be dehydrated from the minutes per mile faster than I had planned morning a threshold effort is 6:35 per mile fl ight, I told myself. On the long fi nal down- to run that day. with a heart rate of 155.” hill, I fi nally managed to lower the pace on The moral of the story is that I should One phrase Moller said stuck with me: the GPS. As I staggered into the hotel, I looked have trusted my inner sense of pace rather “You have to view the data from your devices at the watch more closely, and discovered I than the watch. Even were the data correct, as information, not a judgment.” This seems had been reading average pace the whole I shouldn’t have sped up beyond the planned to strike at the heart of the issue. The problem isn’t with the technology, it’s with our interpretation of the data the technology gives us. Too often I treat every run as an indication of my fitness, seeking reassurance on every run, sometimes every mile, that I’m the runner I hope I am. Given the smallest feedback that I’m not, I tend to believe that data before I trust the feedback from my body and my years of experience. At worst, this leads to overtraining, injury and burnout. At the least, it ruins a lot of good runs as my focus changes from running well to berating myself or making excuses. Th is may be one of the key psychological differences between elites and the masses: Elites know that they’re good already, and native of Central Massachusetts and R I A N F U L L E M was an all-state can relax and run — fast, slow, in between, a resident of New Jersey, ABIGAIL cross country runner in high school paying attention to their bodies’ messages on LORGE is a graduate of Columbia, in Utica, N.Y., and ran in the Millrose that day, that mile. Ditching the watch and where she captained the cross country and high school mile. While competing for Bucknell following Moller’s workouts may be the fi rst track teams. Her writing has appeared in The University he ran 8:50 for 2 miles and 14:25 for step toward that mindset. New York Times and Tennis magazine. She has 5K. Post-collegiately, Fullem competed for the Another way elites are different is that they covered five Olympics for NBC, most recently the Westchester Track Club and captained three have access to the latest, greatest technol2008 Beijing Games, where she was a track and winning Hood to Coast relay teams made up of ogy when it comes to sports med. We take a look at some of these new toys in our sports field producer. Unlike the working women run- Bucknell alumni. Today, he treats runners and med package (and discover that those of us ning in the national marathon championships others as a podiatrist in Tampa, Fla., where he she profiled in her story for us this issue, she is recently moved with his wife, Annemarie, a who can’t afford them needn’t be too jealrarely awake at 4:45 a.m. On researching their DIII All-American and school record-holder for ous), learn from a podiatrist about new, more story, Lorge commented, “I was struck by the fact 1500m at Hunter College, and their two children. effective surgeries and visit a lab that might that all of the women I spoke with have a tread- Fullem’s articles on injury treatment, rehab and be able to help you fi x pestering problems mill in the home and do a significant portion of prevention are perennial favorites on running- through detailed gait analysis. While techtheir mileage on it, both because it’s a time-saver, times.com. For this issue, he suggested a piece nology might get us into trouble at times by distancing us from our bodies, any technoland because sometimes it helps them avoid the on foot surgery, commenting, “In my practice heat or the cold or the darkness. We don’t usually I rarely suggest surgery unless all conserva- ogy that helps us heal and run better will associate treadmills with ‘serious’ running, but tive treatment has been exhausted. People are surely be welcomed by all. •

LAST SUMMER WHILE visiting family in Maine, I ran unfamiliar roads

CONTRIBUTORS

both WENDI RAY and LAURIE KNOWLES have often afraid of surgery but with newer techdone speed and hill workouts on their treadmills, niques and approaches it is rare that my patients while HEIDI WESTOVER has run more than 30 are not back on the road completely pain free miles in one stretch on hers.” after surgery.”

06 /

RUNNINGTIMES_NOVEMBER 2010

JONATHAN BEVERLY Editor-in-Chief

PR O M O T I O N

Time Management by Chris Carmichael, Lance Armstrong’s personal coach and CEO of Carmichael Training Systems Sometimes it’s hard to squeeze a run into your busy day, and when unanticipated delays cut into your already-limited training time, people often wonder if shortened runs are worth the effort. The answer is yes, so lace up your shoes and get out there! Focus on intensity. If you have only 20-30 minutes, do a quick warm-up and then go race pace or faster for 2 minutes, slow to a moderate pace for 2 minutes and repeat for at least 12 minutes. You’ll do more for your ﬁtness than running those 12 minutes at a steady and slower pace. For severely timecrunched runners, hill sprints and stair/stadium climbs are a great way to get in a killer workout. Warm up, then complete repeats that last 1-4 minutes. These are great for leg strength and the ability to surge and recover during races. Running gear can be stashed anywhere, so keep a bag with clothes, shoes, and snacks ready to go. Toss it in your car, leave it in your ofﬁce—if it’s ready to go then you can be ready for a run in no time.

Want more training tips and a chance to WIN great gear? Visit runningtimes.com/AquaphorTraining

Healing Help for Peak Performance Hard training can be hard on the skin. Aquaphor Healing Ointment helps you prevent the skin irritations that prevent peak performance. It’s recommended and trusted by Chris Carmichael.

Use Aquaphor before every run to prevent: Blisters Fight friction and painful blisters by applying Aquaphor to your feet and ankles Chaﬁng Apply Aquaphor anywhere your shirt or shorts rub or irritate your skin Windburn Take the bite out of the wind and apply Aquaphor to prevent chapped lips, or to soothe and help heal cracked, very dry skin

LETTERS SKIP THE CARBS, NOT THE ELECTROLYTES I had one question regarding your article “Running on Empty” in the May issue: With respect to your “3 Strategies for Low-Carb Work,” in your fi rst strategy “Skip the gels,” you indicate that drinking only water is enough for long runs, but, as you know, long runs make you sweat, which makes you lose electrolytes. It’s known that electrolytes are important for proper muscle performance, so how do you compensate for the electrolyte loss if you’re drinking only water during runs of up to 20 miles? Or is electrolyte consumption during the run not necessary, as long as you’ve had sufficient electrolytes during the days leading up to your long runs and plenty of electrolytes after your run?

— MARIO FONSECA / WINNIPEG, MB, CANADA

KEEP THE CONVERSATION GOING. Join us on our blogs. Go to runningtimes.com/blogs/member.

WRITE TO US. Send your emails to editor@runningtimes.com with your address included. Letters may be edited for clarity and brevity. LSAM_1-2 pg horiz.pdf

9/9/10

Dr. Krista Austin responds: My advice on electrolytes is to always have that as part of your fluid intake. Usually in a marathon-type or long run situation, I have a person carry gelcap electrolytes that they can drink with available water. I recommend one electrolyte tab that contains ~200mg sodium per 8 oz. Going totally without decreases muscle function and can lead to cramping or, worse, hyponatremia.

MAGNOLIA MEMORIES Thanks for the article about Magnolia Road (“Rare Air, Common Ground,” September 2010) just west of Boulder. I had some of the best runs in Boulder up there at Mags. The views, the air, the road… man it really makes me pine for Boulder. I’d love to get one more stint up there.

11:37 AM

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RUNNINGTIMES_NOVEMBER 2010

MAGNIFICENT MAGNOLIA ROAD • MIGHT Y MUSCLE FIBERS

I remember my fi rst run up at Mags: I met up with the Army elite I have one question regarding the “Recruit Every Fiber” article in running group in January. The road was still frozen on some stretches. your September issue. The part of the article dealing with VO2 max I’d been to the Foundry the night before and had no idea what Mags told us to work at 70, 80 and 90 percent of Maximum Aerobic Speed was about. What an introduction! But it was a blast on that road! (MAS). What’s the formula to quickly calculate that pace? Do you What was almost as much fun on Mags for me, though, was the divide pace by x percent, multiply by the percentage? And, what’s drive to get to the 5-mile mark on the road (where it changes from the best way to deal with seconds when multiplying and dividing. I pavement to dirt). It reminded me so much of the roads that you see am sorry for my poor math skills but I’ve asked around and not goton the rally car racing circuit, with all of the twists and turns and ten an easy, good method. I love the mag. changes in elevation. I had an Acura Integra Type-R that I would try — DAN WALSH / WEWAHITCHKA, FL to drive as fast as the laws of physics (and vehicular traffic) would allow. After the run, my senses were a bit more relaxed or tired so I Pete Magill responds: Think of training as a pie. When we run a would just try to coast all the way back to Canyon Boulevard. mile all out, we’re eating a full pie. Now cut that pie into ten pieces. When we run 90 percent MAS, what we’re really doing is eating 9 — JERRY LAWSON / JACKSONVILLE, FL slices of pie, but stretching it to take as long as it took to eat all 10 slices at mile race pace. At 70 percent, we’re eating slowly enough Lawson is a former American record-holder in the marathon. to gobble down a mere 7 slices in the same period of time. As for the best way to deal with seconds, I’d say to pick a different flavor FABULOUS FIBER Thank you for publishing PETE MAGILL’s superb article, “Recruit of pie, since eating all apple or pecan makes Dan a dull boy. Every Fiber.” Th is is the fi rst article I’ve read that not only explains the physiology of muscle fibers in an understandable manner, but As for a serious answer, divide by the percentage, e.g., MAS/.70 also provides practical evaluative measures, along with how cer- for 70 percent. Excel has a “time” format for this, although it’s a bit clunky as it wants to keep reverting to the time of tain training affects each of the muscle fiber areas. I’m certain that the information provided in the article will serve day. You can do the old standby of converting all to seconds me well as I continue my fall marathon training and goal of running (6:30 = 6*60+30 = 390 seconds). For 70 percent divide by .70 = 557 seconds. To get back to minutes divide by 60. a Boston Marathon qualifying time. Thus, ⁄ = 9.28 minutes, and .28*60 = 17, so 9:17 pace. — BRITT SMITH / OAK PARK, CA

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SHORTS

ART ACADEMY RUNNERS • QUOTE WORTHY

that fi rst year,” says women’s assistant head coach ANNE RICKETTS, a full-time English as a Second Language instructor who volunteered to coach the women’s program two years ago. “We just kind of did whatever we could to get started.” Last year, their first competing in the Pacific West Conference, the men’s team won the championship meet by placing five runners in the top seven, including a onetwo fi nish from AMOS MARU and DAVESON MARINDICH. The women’s program struggled with injuries and, at times, running with a full-scoring team of five runners, but still managed fourth in the conference meet. But things are looking up for both programs this fall. The men’s team returns intact, while the women’s program has No. 1 runner IRINEL ZAMFIR back after an eighth-place finish in the conference meet and being named the PacWest Newcomer of the Year The Academy of Art University men’s team won the PacWest title last season. last fall, along with junior STACEY TOTH (22nd in conference), senior MONICA ANGUIANO BY BRIAN METZLER (24t) plus several new recruits and walkons. And new head coach CHARLES RYAN was hired in August. The school started the process of requesting NCAA Division II membership last year and, if all goes as hoped, it could receive provisional status next year, which means the Urban Knights cross country programs could IT’S A SCHOOL WITHOUT A CAMPUS, it’s not yet recognized by be competing in an NCAA regional chamthe NCAA and it doesn’t host any home meets, but the Academy of Art pionship meet next November. The school University cross country program won the Paciﬁc West Conference cham- would then be eligible to compete in the pionship last year and has even more aggressive goals. NCAA Division II championships, if it qualifies, in 2012. The men’s and women’s cross country teams few promising freshmen from Bay Area high Founded in 1929, the Academy of Art were two of 14 sports programs started two schools, a handful of students from Kenya University is one of the top applied arts years ago after the school’s president, Elisa and just about any other student who was schools in the country and the only art uniStephens, endeavored to create a more willing to join the team. (Spino had been versity with a cross country team. Every well-rounded student experience with the working on his dissertation in Kenya and student-athlete on the cross country teams addition of an intercollegiate athletics divi- recruited several runners through his con- is studying some field of art: graphic design, sion. She hired former San Francisco 49ers nections there.) Without membership in architecture, interior design, animation and player DR. JAMIE WILLIAMS as athletic an athletics conference (and thus no rival mass media and communications. director and in the fall of 2008, the Urban schools to run dual meets against), the Urban So is there a correlation between Knights sports teams were born. Knights had to beg their way into whatever running and art? The cross country program, headed by invitationals would take them. “You can’t really say we’re then-coach MIKE SPINO, got started with a “It was kind of a hodgepodge situation Continued on page 12

St-ART-Up PROGRAM SAN FRANCISCO ART UNIVERSITY EYES NCAA DIVISION II ACCREDITATION

From Top:

Kevin Hill

Brian Metzler/Zephyr Media

QUOTEWORTHY

“We Aussies might not be as fast as the Ethiopian team, but I’ll bet you we beat them to the beer table when the race is over.” — THREE-TIME AUSTRALIAN OLYMPIAN LEE TROOP, A 2:09 MARATHONER, WHILE SPEAKING AT A PRESS CONFERENCE PRIOR TO THE INTERNATIONAL TEAM CHALLENGE AT THE BOLDER BOULDER 10K ON MAY 29. ETHIOPIA’S TEAM OF LELISA DESISA, TILAHUN REGASSA AND TADESE TOLA WON THE TEAM CHALLENGE HANDILY BY PLACING ONE-TWO-THREE WITHIN A SECOND OF EACH OTHER AT 29:17, WHILE THE AUSTRALIAN TEAM OF TROOP, ANDREW LETHERBY AND GREG BENNETT WAS EIGHTH. RUNNINGTIMES

/ 11

SHORTS

SHOWCA SE R ACE • RUNNING DVD • RECYCLED R ACE SHIRT

Recycled RACE SHIRT I spotted Geoff rey, a 25-year-old unemployed builder, wearing a shirt from the Two-Bear Marathon and Half Marathon in Whitefi sh last spring in Kampala, the capital of Uganda. Nothing surprising in any of this, you might think. But Geoff rey is not a runner, has never been outside of Uganda, and, in fact, didn’t know where Montana is on a map. So why was he wearing that T-shirt that came from 8,500 miles away? Most Ugandans wear imported second-hand clothes donated by charity organizations in the U.S. and Europe. Known locally as mivumba, the used shirts, blouses, pants, caps, shoes and other articles of clothing reach Uganda (and other East African countries) in huge bales. Geoffrey bought the T-shirt for 1,500 Ugandan shillings (or 80 cents in U.S. currency) at Owino Market, the main market for mivumba in Kampala. Who knows, you might be able to fi nd one of your donated race shirts there, still with lots of life left in it. — KEVIN O’CONNOR

START

Continued from page 11

all the same kind of people, but if there is a common thread it’s that we’re all creative and dedicated to what we’re passionate about,” says junior team captain SHAWN DAUT, who was recruited by Spino after running a 4:18 mile in high school. “We’ve got a lot of talent and we’ve got a lot of heart.” Adds Ricketts, 30, a former distance runner at UC-Davis: “It makes it tough to recruit, but there are a lot of kids who want to run and study art. A lot of them just don’t think it’s a possibility. They think they have to choose one or the other.” The school occupies several historic buildings in downtown San Francisco but doesn’t have a main campus, athletic facilities or locker rooms. But it does have buses to take the runners to various workout locations. The teams used to train at the Presidio, but now

they typically meet five or six days a week at Golden Gate Park for workouts. On weekends, they often do long runs in the Marin Headlands north of the Golden Gate Bridge. Daut acknowledges that the program has been a work in progress. It isn’t easy starting from scratch, nor is it easy having three coaches in three years. (VICTOR HUDSON, a former college and semi-pro basketball player who owns a personal training business in San Francisco, was the head track and cross country coach last year.) But, he says, so far, so good. And it doesn’t hurt that this year’s conference meet is slated for Nov. 6 on Oahu. “We didn’t really have someone saying, ‘OK, this is how we do things here.’ But at the same time, it’s been fun to be able to make things happen on our own,” he says. “Now we just want to get to the NCAA regionals to see how we can compete.” •

Next year, maybe it will come with an entry.

SHOWCASE RACE

THE GRAND CANYON MARATHON

DVD REVIEW

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C an obese, heavy-drinking Average Joe become a sub-elite maraCan tthoner? Ambitious British filmmaker ALEX VERO wanted to find out, aand he cast himself as the subject of a documentary on the topic. With a backdrop of the demise of British distance running — 102 British runners b broke 2:20 in the marathon in 1985, but only fi ve did so in 2005 — and b his own poor fitness as a motivation, Vero, who was 24 when he started h tthe project in 2006, set about getting in shape and training with the idea of making his country’s 2008 Olympic team. He went from a 224-pound o ssloth to a fi t and trim 1:13 half marathoner in three years and made a ccompelling film, even though he fell well short of his stated 2:30 marathon t goal. Along the way, he ventured to Ethiopia where he discovered hotel bellboy MENGSITU ABEBE, who has since become a 1:01 half marathoner. He also profiled up-and-coming Brit BEN MOREAU, who this year lowered his PR to 2:16:46 at the London Marathon. Vero was both praised and lambasted for self-publicizing his endeavors and making a documentary about himself, but his determination and training eff orts — not to mention his progress — were commendable and inspiring for the rest of us Average Joes. ($19.99, alexvero.co.uk)

Kevin O’Connor

RUNNING TO THE LIMITS

n 1934 the National Park Service constructed seven miles of scenic roadway along the rim of the Grand Canyon heading west from Grand Canyon Village to historic Hermit’s Rest. That road now makes up the out-and-back first 14 miles of the Grand Canyon Marathon, an event that returns this year after a year off following its debut in 2008. The marathon has a jagged elevation proﬁle, ranging from 6,800 feet at the start, to 7,200 feet at mile 14 and 6,600 feet at the finish line next to the National Geographic Visitor’s Center. There’s also a new half marathon that runs concurrently with the initial out-and-back section of the marathon. Both races reached their 300-runner limit in June, so if you want to run in these scenic races, you’d better sign up early in 2011. For more, go to grandcanyonmarathon.com.

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RUNNINGTIMES_NOVEMBER 2010

TRIUMPH 8

H A L F WAY U P A H I L L I S W H E N YO U REALIZE AN OUNCE C A N AC T UA L LY B E A SIGN IFICA N T A M OU N T O F W E I G H T. 1 OZ . LIGHTER. THE NEW TRIUM P H 8 .

W E K N OW B ECAU S E

S A U C O N Y. C O M

WE RUN.

SHORTS

PAIGE HIGGINS • BY THE NUMBERS

5 MINUTES WITH

Paige HIGGINS PAIGE HIGGINS has developed into one of the top marathoners in the U.S. since moving to Flagstaff, Ariz., in 2008 to train under GREG MCMILLAN. She won the 25K national title in 2008 and last year ﬁnished 30th in the marathon at the world championships in Berlin. Earlier this year, she took fourth at the Houston Marathon in 2:33:22 (16 seconds off of her PR) and then placed 13th at the Boston Marathon (2:36:00). She and McMillan worked on changing her form and building her speed during the summer. Now the former University of Kansas standout is gearing up for the Nov. 7 New York City Marathon, which will double as the U.S. women’s championship race.

Q What did your marathon

makeover include last summer?

BY THE NUMBERS

0.72

Seconds of improvement in the 800m world record in the past 30 years after Kenya’s DAVID RUDISHA lowered the mark by a total of onetenth of a second over two races to 1:41.01 last summer.

Number of times U.S. runners have broken 13:00 for 5,000m since 2009. (That’s compared to a total of 4 times in all previous years.)

11.5

We put in some speed work during the offsea- Actual distance in miles of the Navy Ten son to get me more ready for New York. I know Nautical Miler road race held on June 6 in it’s a challenging course, but I’m pretty strong Millington, Tenn. (A nautical mile is approxalready, so we wanted to pop in that speed imately the distance of one minute of arc of training for about two or three months before latitude on the earth’s surface or 1.15 miles.) I started into the marathon training. I also spend a lot of time working on form drills so I can stop being a shuffler. We ran with metronomes on our off days to get our cadence up Miles of the new Napa Valley Vine Trail from and we did some 100-meter repeats, basically San Francisco Bay to Calistoga, Calif., when things that aimed at getting my nervous completed in 2013. system used to running fast and lifting my legs more when I run. running a course for the fi rst time and not really knowing what’s next.

It’s the perfect marathon simulator. Up here, everything is burning, everything is hurting and that’s what you have to get used to. You feel horrible, but you feel great when you fi nish it. We recently did a 30K tempo run and it felt like 26 miles at race pace. And you’re really out there by yourself and in your own head, so it’s really good mental training, too.

Q What are some of the things you do to prepare for a race when you haven’t seen the course?

I kind of know the course in New York, but I really don’t because I haven’t actually run it. But I’m surrounded by other runners who have run it, so I have gotten a lot of good tips from them. Greg has been good about getting the elevation charts and fi nding places around Flagstaff where we can simulate that. I’ve also seen a lot of footage of previous races, and the New York Road Runners offered to drive me on the course, so those things are helpful. But there’s also an excitement about 14 /

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Q What kind of mileage did you hit during your peak weeks?

I’ve never had a problem with mileage. I can hit 150 per week pretty comfortably, but Greg would never joke with me about running 200 miles in a week because he knows I would. But you can only run so many miles, and there are other things I need to work on. You get stronger by working on your weaknesses, and what I’m lacking in is speed. So our goal has been to implement a few more speed sessions during the weeks I’m running high mileage.

Q How have you improved your

refueling on the race course?

At Boston, I grabbed a gel packet and waited to take it. I made sure I got three really good swigs of electrolyte drink in me. It was a massive epiphany that’s so common-sense it’s ridiculous. In the past, I would take the fluid in my mouth and let it sit there for a minute, but this time I made sure to swallow it right away. I don’t know why I did that, but my new approach has helped a lot, even in training. •

John Barnhart/Photo Run

long tempo runs at altitude?

Photo:

Q What’s it like running hard,

SHORTS

UP-AND-COMER STEPHAN SHAY

STEPHAN SHAY COMES INTO HIS OWN FOLLOWING HIS BROTHER’S PATH SOMETIMES IT COMES to him when he least expects it. Other times he relies on it and knows it will be there. But i f t here’s a t i me a nd place when STEPHAN SHAY always feels the presence of his late brother, it’s out on a long run when his mind has time to wander, time to be calm, time to remember. Approaching three years since his older brother, Ryan, collapsed and died during the 2008 U.S. Oly mpic t r ia ls ma rat hon in New York,

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Stephan is starting to come into his own by following a path his brother started down years ago. And he’ll be the fi rst to tell you the inspiration of his fallen brother is one of his best and most reliable assets as a runner. Just 24 years old and 18 months out of college, Stephan has had a respectable fi rst year as a professional runner. As of late he’s been focusing on making the jump to the marathon, fast-tracking his mileage to make his 26.2-mile debut on Jan. 29 in Houston. “Things are starting to come together, in some ways better and faster than I had thought,” he says. “I’m still a pretty young and inexperienced guy out there, but I’m learning a lot about racing and training.” A t f i r s t , St e ph a n Sh a y didn’t know how to react to his brother collapsing and dying during what might have been the biggest race of his life three years ago this November. But who would? As an improving collegiate runner at the time, Stephan loved, admired and t ried to emulate his older brother. His brother had been an NCAA 10,000m champion and a five-time U.S. road-racing champion (from 15K to the marathon) and everything that young Stephan had dreamed about becoming. So to have that glowing example ripped away was devastating. “Pretty much for the rest of the school year after it happened, I was just kind of in a fog. Nothing seemed real,” Stephan recalls. “I thought about just giving up running. At

“Pretty much for the rest of the school year after it happened, I was just kind of in a fog. Nothing seemed real.” After taking time off to grieve, Stephan found solace in running and found even more reason to trust Eyestone’s coaching. Still, while he gained a lot from the training, he never raced to his potential in school. As a senior, he ran good but not great PRs of 13:59 in the 5,000m and 28:55 in the 10,000m. He capped his career with a 60tplace effort at the 2008 NCAA cross country championships, followed by a 17t-place showing in the 10,000m at the 2009 outdoor track championships. After college, he headed back to Michigan with the intent of ramping up his training, but after a month back home he knew he needed to be somewhere else. There were too many reminders of his past life and not enough inspiration or isolation to allow him to shape his immediate future. With his car not yet unpacked from his return trip from Continued on page 18

Victor Sailer/Photo Run

Inspired Footsteps

first it seemed like a burden to keep running after my brother passed away. It kind of pissed me off.” Stephan was a good runner in college, but he admits he’s probably one of those guys who never quite reached his potential. After following in his brother’s footsteps at Central Lake High School in East Jordan, Mich., he started at Michigan State but found too many distractions in the social scene and partying routine. He transferred to BYU, but that was a 180-degree shift on the moral compass and it was initially rather abrupt. Still, he really connected with coach ED EYESTONE and had started to respond to the two-time Olympian’s training at about the time his brother passed away. That’s when Stephan realized in Eyestone he had a mentor and a friend, a bright shining light in the darkest hour of his young life. “He did a lot for me and my family when my brother passed away,” Stephan says. “He was really great about making sure I was taken care of. I’m forever indebted to him.”

Photo:

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SHORTS

STEPHAN SHAY • WHAT’S NE W AT RUNNINGTIMES.COM

INSPIRED

Continued from page 16 to pay off, and have helped him secure an Provo, he decided to head to Flagstaff to endorsement deal with Saucony. immerse himself in training for last January’s “Stephan really looked up to Ryan, and I Houston Half Marathon. do know that Ryan really thought a lot about It was there that he really started to dis- Stephan,” says Sharon Barbano, Saucony’s cover what kind of runner he could be, as well vice president of PR, athletes and events. as how much his brother had meant to him. “Given what Ryan meant to us and still means He had been to Flagstaff before when Ryan to us, to be able to bring Stephan into the was training there, so there was a familiarity Saucony family means a lot to us. But even and certainly an inspirational connection. aside from all of that, he’s fast and he has a He crashed at the condo of Alicia Shay, his great future ahead of him.” brother’s widow, and received some training Lew y Boulet thinks Stephan has huge insights from coaching legend JOE VIGIL, who upside as a marathoner, just like his brother. formerly advised Ryan and, although he was It will take time to get there, she says, but so retired, was willing to help Stephan out for a far he’s responded well to higher mileage and few months leading up to the half marathon. has shown he has the mental acuity it takes

WHAT’S NEW AT RUNNINGTIMES.COM

I’m a runner, and so every day I go out and run, I think about him. It’s good and sometimes it’s hard. It’s hard because sometimes it’s like I never want to forget him.

18 /

RUNNINGTIMES_NOVEMBER 2010

Ô National high school champion CHELSEY SVEINSONN blogs about her cross country season. Ô A three-part video series tracking an injured runner’s progress to health using gait analysis. (For more on high-tech gait analysis, see p. 52.) Ô Our extensive, behind-the-scenes coverage of New York City, Chicago and other top fall marathons.

101° West Photography

to survive over the long haul. They hope to have him race two marathons before the 2012 Olympic trials race in Houston. “I think the marathon will wind up being his best distance,” she says. “But it’s going to take a little while and a few races to get there.” RYAN SHAY died way too soon. Everybody knows that. It wouldn’t be right to say that Stephan feels his absence the most, knowing how his parents and Alicia still grieve. But three years later, he probably feels Ryan’s presence more than anyone. He’s still chasing most of his brother’s PRs (13:35, 28:03, 2:14:08) and he’s wondered what it would be like to be in the same races as professional runners. “He’s my brother and I just wanted to do great things like he did,” Stephan says. “But to me, it was always more about running. I saw his character and just wanted to emulate that and use him as the great role model he was. “It was hard, and it still is. It’s something I think about every day because he was a runner and I’m a runner, and so every day I go out and run, I think about him. It’s good and sometimes it’s hard. It’s hard because sometimes it’s like I never want to forget him. But one thing I’m grateful for is that I can go out and run and feel his presence.” •

Photo:

A month into logging 100-mile weeks in Flagstaff, MAGDALENA LEW Y BOULET came from Oakland to train at altitude under the direction of coach JACK DANIELS, and the two hit it off. Stephan asked the 2008 Olympic marathoner to coach him and she agreed, eventually bringing him into the Bay Area Track Club she was in the process of forming. With the best block of training of his life under his belt, Stephan had a breakthrough race in Houston (a race that doubled as the U.S. championships), fi nishing fi fth in a stellar 1:02:26 debut. His efforts netted him only $1,500, but gave him invaluable confidence and made him start to realize he might be able to make it as a professional runner. He followed that effort by fi nishing 10t at the U.S. 15K championships on March 13 at the Gate River Run in Jacksonville, Fla., and then moved out to Oakland in the spring to train with Lewy Boulet and new BATC teammates. Since then, he lowered his 10,000m PR on the track to 28:41, fi nished ninth in the U.S. 25K championships on May 8 in Grand Rapids, Mich., and 12t in the 7-mile championships on July 24 in Davenport, Iowa. While those efforts aren’t necessarily on par with his breakthrough in Houston, his determination and hard work are starting

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THE RUNNER’S WITNESS

BY TAMAR A RICE L AVE

Dark Secret The

EATING DISORDERS PLAGUE YOUNG DISTANCE RUNNERS

20 /

RUNNINGTIMES_NOVEMBER 2010

fitness and sickness. “A lot of the things we see in eating disorders are things we see in athletes that are conditioned, but what’s happening in someone who is starving is different,” says Colette Auerswald, M.D., associate professor of pediatrics, UCSF Division of Adolescent Medicine. “They have a low heart rate because they are getting a message from the brain that they are starved. … People get positive feedback for a long time because they seem disciplined or that they’re doing great, and so when they run into trouble people are at a loss or don’t recognize it.“ For those who are trying to remain fi rmly on the side of healthy, it can be difficult to spend time around people with eating disorders. At times, I avoided eating with other athletes because the tension they felt towards food made me uncomfortable. Shannon Rowbury, a 2008 Olympic 1500m runner, tells a similar story about her experience at Duke. “When I went to college especially, there were a lot of women on my team and in the NCAA that had eating issues and I really kind of had to dissociate myself from them as much as possible,” she says. “It was too hard for me to have to be in that situation.” The irony, as Rowbury points out, is that in the long run, eating well is essential to success. “I think it is really important for people to realize that the highest prevalence of eating disorders tends to be at the college level, and yet at the professional level the ones with staying power are thin in a healthy way,” Rowbury says. “They’re the ones who are lasting in the sport [and] really getting to the highest level.” Now age 43, Laura still suffers the effects of her early bout with anorexia. “In the last couple of years I was diagnosed with osteoporosis,” she tells me. “I’m on medication. Those are the kind of things that when you’re 20 years old, you’re not thinking about.” In my next column, I’ll discuss practical suggestions for combatting eating disorders, including advice from experts on how to best approach someone so that they can get the help that they need. • TAMARA RICE LAVE, Ph.D., represented the U.S. in the marathon at the 2003 IAAF World Track and Field Championships in Paris.

Illustration:

Although the majority of those with eating disorders are women, men aren’t immune. A.T., a former varsity rower, had bulimia for fi ve years. “In response to stress I started overeating and purging as a way of rewarding myself in a manner that I didn’t do in the rest of my life,” he says. Before he got help, A.T. felt isolated. “Even when you’re not binging and purging, you’re thinking about binging and purging … and you feel kind of detached to what’s going on because you have something else always in the back of your mind.” Over the years, I’ve known too many people like Laura and A.T. Often they get immediate results from losing weight — their times drop. But eventually, it catches up to them — leaving them with an assortment of ailments including stress fractures, depression, gastrointestinal problems, tooth decay, heart damage, osteoporosis, infertility and even death. According to the National Eating Disorder Information Center, anorexia has the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric illness. It’s estimated that 10 percent of those with anorexia will die within 10 years of the onset of the disorder. Eating disorders are often tacitly accepted. Sara M. Buckelew, M.D., medical director of the University of California, San Francisco Adolescent/Young Adult Eating Disorder Program, is concerned by patients who tell her that no one on the team is getting their period. “Coaches should be aware that this is a dangerous sign,” she says. In addition, people often dismiss signs of disordered eating

Charles Bloom

LAURA GRIGNANO’S STORY is too common. A high school phenom, she earned a full ride to the University of Florida, but the team doctor wouldn’t let her run. Although Laura weighed less than 90 pounds, or evidence of excessive injuries. I’ve heard otherwise rational peoboth she and her coach were incredulous. How could ple accept dubious explanations for why a marathoner eats only Laura be sick if she was running so fast? Laura trans- vegetables, and I’ve witnessed thoughtful individuals proclaim that ferred to Clemson after her freshman year, but by then, a top runner was healthy despite the fact that she had experienced she was so saddled with injuries that her running career multiple stress fractures, including in her spine. was effectively over. Part of the problem is that it can be hard to differentiate between

SCIENCE & NUTRITION

NEw

b y m A r k H A ns en

research UNCOVERS HOw ELITE ATHLETES ARE GAINING THE EDGE: critics call technique an “Unfair Advantage”

Athletes of all ages and from all sports have long sought ways to improve their performance through nutritional supplements and creative training strategies. A new supplement developed for competitive athletes is generating controversy and threatening to revolutionize several endurance sports. The product that has been generating so much debate is EPO BOOST™an all natural supplement developed by U.S. based Biomedical Research Laboratories. EPO is industry shorthand for erythropoietin, a hormone produced by the kidneys that regulates red blood cell (RBC) production. Increasing red blood cell production has long been the focus of competitive athletes due to the impact of RBC levels on oxygen intake and utilization. The greater the red blood cell production, the greater the body’s ability to absorb oxygen, which in turn gives an athlete more strength and endurance. Strength and endurance are precious resources to any athlete. Thus competitive athletes have tried various techniques to gain an advantage by increasing EPO and RBC levels. Traditional techniques for boosting RBC levels include synthetic drugs and blood doping. These practices are both dangerous and banned by organized sports associations. Fans of EPO BOOST™ point out that the patent-pending formula is all-natural and is clinically proven to increase erythropoietin levels, resulting in greater strength and endurance.

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with 5 km to go I really turned the screw on my competitors and increased my pace signiﬁcantly over the last 5km.”

Mr. Walkley is not alone in his praise of the product.

Ursula Frans, a top marathon runner from South Africa used EPO BOOST™ in her preparation for this year’s Two Oceans Marathon. Having ﬁnished in the top 20, she stated that her performance and endurance were substantially improved with EPO BOOST™. The product has appeared in several magazines and dozens of websites and blogs. According to published reports, the promise of EPO enhancing products has even been picked up by Olympic athletes such as Jenny Thompson and Dara Torres. Not everyone is so endeared to the product. Several athletes have said the supplement gives some athletes an unfair advantage. They describe the performance improvements as “unnatural” and pointed to athletes from cycling and long distance running as evidence that people are catching on to the supplement and using it for a competitive advantage. Any athlete can use EPO BOOST™ without a prescription and without changing a diet or exercise regimen. The company offers an unparalleled guarantee. Athletes can use the product for a full 90 days and if not completely satisﬁed, send back whatever product is remaining - even an empty bottle - and get a ‘no questions asked’ refund. A company spokesman, speaking off the record, admitted that the product doesn’t work overnight and that most athletes won’t see the extreme performance enhancements for up to four weeks. In a world infatuated with instant success, that kind of realistic admission might cost some sales but is likely to keep customers happy.

The scientiﬁc evidence behind EPO BOOST™

does seem to represent a breakthrough in sports medicine. A 28day double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trial, performed by Dr. Whitehead from the Department of Health and Human Performance at Northwestern State University, showed that the ingredients found in EPO BOOST™ increased EPO production by over 90% compared to the group taking the placebo1. The supplement group also showed dramatic improvements in athletic performance (as measured by VO2max and running economy). One of the active ingredients in the formula is Echinacea Purpurea, an herb that stimulates the immune system and is normally associated with alternative treatments for the common cold. Surprisingly, Dr. Whitehead’s study revealed that Echinacea promotes a substantial increase in natural levels of EPO (erythropoietin). Industry experts were shocked to discover that this simple herb had such an effect on the body. Since its release last year, competitive athletes have flocked to this new supplement, which offers all the benefits of greater EPO levels with none of the dangerous side effects or legal trouble. A company spokesman confirmed that the patent-pending formula contains active components that have been shown to boost EPO levels, resulting in greater strength and endurance. Jason Walkley, a member of the Royal Air Force Elite Triathlon Team in the United Kingdom claimed an increased tolerance to fatigue after taking EPO BOOST™. Jason stated, “I recently ran a 26.2km race completely at my Lactate Turn Point (LTP) without a drop in pace, and

While the controversy over the advantage athletes using EPO BOOST™ are obtaining is unlikely to go away anytime soon, one thing is for sure: blood doping and synthetic drugs are a thing of the past now that amateurs and professionals alike can tap into a natural product that generates Olympian-like strength and endurance. Biomedical Research Laboratories accepts orders from its website at www.EPOBOOST com. A company spokesman conﬁrmed a special offer: if you order this month, you’ll receive FREE ENROLLMENT into the company’s Elite Athlete Club where you’ll qualify to receive a full 25% discount on all your bottles of EPO BOOST™. And so you don’t go a day without EPO BOOST™ in your system – increasing your endurance, you’ll automatically receive a fresh bottle every 30-days and your credit card will be billed the Elite Athlete Club Member Price of $44.95 plus S/H – not the $59.95 fee non-members have to pay. There are no minimum amounts of bottles to buy and you can cancel at any time. The number to call is 1-800-590-6545, and you can call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. 1. Whitehead et al. Int J Sport Nutr Exerc Metab, 17 (2007): 378-9.

PERFORMANCE PAGE

BY GREG MCMILL AN, M.S.

Find Your

percent, or even 100 percent — it’s to train at around 90 percent. Great coaches such as Arthur Lydiard, David Martin, Bob Larsen and Bill Squires advocate this method of “controlled” training. You’ll fi nd that your body is never overstressed and adapts gradually but progressively, always leaving you hungry for more. A little control will make training more enjoyable and lead to greater overall improvement and, most importantly, better race performance. I call it fi nding your sweet spot in training. Once you do, you’ll never have so much fun with your running. Consider Brian, a non-elite but ambitious runner I coach. Brian is a naturally competitive person. His drive and tenacity helped him become very successful in the medical sales industry. He carried this same drive into his running but quickly hit a plateau. He worked harder. Got slower. Worked even harder. Got even slower. Like many driven HOW MANY TIMES has this happened to you? You perform incredi- runners, he constantly tried to “beat” the ble workouts but your racing performances are disappointments. You train training paces from my online training harder only to race even poorer. You begin to ride the highs and lows of pace calculator. an emotional roller coaster. You’re confused and frustrated and begin to I saw Brian’s pattern early in our coaching search for the latest and greatest training method that will help you. Often, relationship and knew he was training maxwhat you really need is to understand a simple training concept, one that imally, not optimally. It was a tough change will put your training back on track and open the possibility of new PRs. to back off slightly in workouts, but he soon started setting PRs at every distance. He’s When training results outpace racing results, the training is too hard. now qualified for Boston and blows away his rivals from just a year You’re asking your body to adapt at a greater rate than is possible. ago. Brian is the perfect example of fi nding a sweet spot in training. You can maintain your intense training regimen for a short while, Challenge yourself just enough but not too much, and you’ll race but something has to give eventually, and in the end your too-hard well. Push yourself to the max in every run and workout, and you’ll routine is your downfall. (See “Coach’s Notes” for signs of if you’ve soon get injured or see your performances level off. Brian learned fallen into this trap.) to control himself in training and now has his sights set on a new Great runners and coaches have learned how to avoid this disas- PR at Boston. trous scenario. They recognize that each runner has two rates of As someone who has suffered through the maximal training sceadaptation: a maximal rate and an optimal rate. Adaptation is nario far too many times in my running career, I’m committed to defi ned as the physiological and psychological changes that allow controlling my excitement and training optimally, not maximally. us to perform better. Shouldn’t you commit to doing the same? • The maximal adaptation rate occurs when your body is adapting as fast as possible to the stresses you put on it. It summons all its resources to build new blood-delivering capillaries, energy-producing mitochondria, and stronger muscles and tendons. But adapting at the maximal rate requires that your body be stressed to its limit. MAXIMAL TRAINING RED FLAGS Over time you’re bound to push past that limit and get injured or Ô Training results outpace racing results. burned out and perform poorly. Ô Injuries pop up suddenly after you feel you’re in super shape. The optimal rate of adaptation, on the other hand, occurs when the body is stressed to a tolerable level, allowing it time to adapt Ô A string of poor workouts interrupts your string of without having to draw on every ounce of its physical and mental amazing workouts. reserves. It gradually adapts and is at far less risk for injury or burnÔ Your racing performances quickly plateau and you feel “stuck” out. At the end of a training run you feel pleasantly fatigued but also at a certain pace. know that you could have done a little more. Thus, the challenge during speed work is not to give the old 110

Spot

MAXIMAL VS. OPTIMAL ADAPTATION RATE

COACH’S NOTES

GREG MCMILLAN is an exercise physiologist and USATF-certified coach who helps runners via his Web site mcmillanrunning.com. 22 /

RUNNINGTIMES_NOVEMBER 2010

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Illustration:

Nick Hensley

Hormonal balance is essential for reaching peak fitness. But that hasn’t stopped coaches and athletes from trying to game the hormonal system. From altitude tents that increase EPO to post-run weight routines designed to trigger spurts of testosterone, efforts to elevate levels of specific hormones have become commonplace. But do these efforts work? And, more importantly, are they safe? “ T h e b o d y d o e s n ’t m a k e p e r f o rmance-enhancing drugs,” says JEFFREY BROWN, M.D., a nationally renowned endocrinologist who has treated 15 Olympic gold medalists and consults for Nike and USATF. “It makes hormones to keep us normal. The body is so well-tuned that you can’t overproduce unless you have a metabolic problem.” Which means that before we start training above timberline, adding power lifts to our post-run routine or drinking potions spiked w ith plant phy tohormones, we should spend a minute becoming familiar with some important human hormones and their effects.

week increases secretion of the hormone prolactin, which begins a cascade of events that can disrupt the menstrual cycle. “As a result,” says Brown, “women don’t make estrogen. And as a result of that, not only is there infertility, but their bones suffer.” Bottom line: We should exercise caution when considering activities that aff ect our endocrine system. While increased levels of certain hormones may appear attractive on the surface, hormonal getrich-quick schemes can prove dangerous to our health.

HORMONES THAT AFFECT RUNNING

It would be impossible — not to mention undesirable — to adopt a running program that has no effect on hormones. training efforts do more to stimulate So u ndersta nd i ng ou r growth hormone release. “GH is really hor mones a nd how r unyour body’s way of acknowledging the ning affects them can lead hard work,” says Cotner. “The more intense WHAT’S A HORMONE? to smarter training decisions. the work you do, the more you produce.” Hormones are chemical messengers within Growth hormone (GH or HGH) But there’s a limit to this production. “The our bodies that govern growth, mood, hun- leads the pack of hormones prized by ath- body has safety mechanisms,” says Brown. ger, metabolism, immune system response, letes. TOM COTNER, a biology Ph.D. and “It will turn growth hormone production off reproduction and all aspects of our biolog- the distance coach for Seattle-based Club after a certain amount of time.” The body ical function. Hormones secreted into the Northwest, says, “You can organize your train- also adapts. While a weekend jogger gets a bloodstream are produced by our endo- ing around growth hormone. It serves as the large GH release from a short run, a fit runner crine system. Without hormonal messaging, trigger for adaptive response to training.” (See might have to go miles and miles to stimumuscles wouldn’t rebuild after exercise, “Maximum Growth Hormone.”) late an equal dose. cells wouldn’t absorb nutrients, and oxygen GH affects protein synthesis, muscle mass, Cortisol serves as both an anti-inflammatory couldn’t travel throughout our bodies. bone density, tendon and ligament strength and catabolic agent. Anabolic hormones, like GH, Hormonal imbalance occurs when we and many other vital running functions. “It promote tissue growth. Catabolic hormones have too much or too little of a particular tags the exercising muscle by increasing the break down protein and fat. hormone. And any deviation in our body’s receptor for insulin-like growth factor,” says “In healthy males who are not overtrainself-regulated hormonal equilibrium can Cotner. “It gets the muscle ready to import the ing,” says Cotner, “you always see a wave of result in system-wide failure. For example, building blocks — glucose and amino acids.” GH, followed by the uptake of GH, followed a woman who runs more than 20 miles per Cotner and Brown agree that harder Continuted on 28 RUNNINGTIMES

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OWNER’S MANUAL

HORMONES THAT AFFECT YOUR RUNNING

Runners use altitude training and altitude Epinephrine (adrenaline) triggers the Continuted from page 25 by cortisol release hormone.” While a nor- tents (which simulate hypoxia) to increase fight-or-fl ight response. It increases heart mal person uses cortisol to “remodel” about EPO naturally. “You can get a 10 to 15 per- rate, relaxes airways, contracts blood vessels 1 percent of their muscle mass per day, an cent increase,” says Brown. and stimulates the breakdown of muscle athlete will increase that process up to 3 to But Brown has some words to the wise for glycogen and fat. It prepares us to do battle. 4 percent with training. runners who would go this route: There’s no On the negative side, long-term elevation But when athletes overtrain, their bod- proof that elevated EPO works. “The oxygen of epinephrine can cause high blood presies can become overwhelmed with cortisol, that gets to the muscle is actually dissolved sure, heart problems and sleep disturbances. leading to excessive protein breakdown and oxygen in the plasma,” he says. “You go from Brown suggests psychological stimulation sleep disturbances, such as insomnia and red blood cell to plasma to tissue. There’s a as the best method for increasing epinephnight sweats. homeostatic mechanism in the body that rine levels before competition. “The speeches Testosterone increases muscle mass and maintains oxygen levels in the plasma. And that coaches give before football players take bone density. In elevated levels, it creates plasma is not affected by EPO.” the field are good hormonal therapy,” he says. larger muscle fibers and decreases recovery “They actually increase these hormone levels. time from workouts. Although referred to as A rousing coach can win a game!” “male hormone,” it’s present in women too Thyroxin (T4) is released from the thy(at about one-tenth the level found in men). roid gland and then converted to a hormone Testosterone’s effects are a prime tarcalled T3. As T3, it plays a major role in deterget for athletes looking to gain an edge. mining metabolic rate and maintaining However, there’s no natural way to increase muscle, brain, bowel and overall hormonal secretion of the hormone. “In fact, if you function. A malfunctioning thyroid can lead do too much [hard training], it’ll have the to hypothyroidism (under-secretion of T4) opposite effect,” says Brown. “If you look at or hyperthyroidism (over-secretion of T4). male hormone levels before, during, and Training can bring on thyroid dysfunction in runners who have a family history. after a very stressful run, they go down. The pituitary turns off the stimulation. To Brown believes the improved perfor- The stress of running “induces the antibody,” turn it back on, you have to recover. And mances turned in by athletes on EPO might causing the body to attack its own thyroid. the quicker you recover, the quicker you get have a simple explanation: Elite runners tend “It’s the actual training, and I don’t mean overto be anemic. “Pounding pavement with their training,” says Brown, “that causes the gene male hormone levels back up.” When asked if there isn’t some stimulus feet breaks up red blood cells,” he says, “and to turn on. With either too much or too little for temporar y testosterone increase — they lose them. So you bring somebody back thyroid, your muscles don’t contract norresistance training, hill sprints, etc. — Brown to normal [with EPO], and they do remark- mally. They don’t have the power to contract. says, “No, there isn’t. Not ethically or legally. ably better!” So sprinters don’t run as fast, jumpers don’t There is no way. Unless you have a tumor.” Endorphins produce the “runner’s high” jump as far, and distance runners’ times get Erythropoietin (EPO) stimulates bone — a feeling of euphoria associated with slower.” Treatment brings runners back to marrow to produce red blood cells. Red blood prolonged endurance training. Seasoned normal without conferring any advantage. cells carry oxygen from our lungs to our runners develop increased sensitivity to Insulin causes our cells to take up glucose cells. Because it increases our oxygen-car- endorphins, but we also produce less of the from the bloodstream and store it as glycorying capacity, EPO is the drug of choice for hormone. “Each tissue has receptors,” says gen in our muscles and liver. Insulin is also many endurance athletes — 1500m runner Brown, “and receptor sensitivity goes up so a favorite of drug cheats — and for good RASHID RAMZI was stripped of his Beijing we can get the same response with less stim- reason. Too much insulin lowers our blood gold medal for use of CERA (advanced EPO). ulation. If we didn’t, we’d overly stimulate.” Continuted on page 30

HORMONES

Seasoned runners develop increased sensitivity to endorphins, but also produce less of the hormone.

MAXIMUM GROWTH HORMONE

“P

icture this,” says Tom Cotner, the longtime distance coach for Seattle-based Club Northwest, describing the pituitary gland. “It looks like an elephant’s trunk and has a ring of muscles right near the tip, which basically squeezes and growth hormone squirts out.” Cotner explains that growth hormone (GH) is released during delta sleep (our deepest sleep) and when we exercise. The more intense the training we do, the more GH we produce. But the adaptive response triggered by GH has two stages: ﬁrst work, then recovery. “You don’t get faster on hard days,” says Cotner. “You

28 /

RUNNINGTIMES_NOVEMBER 2010

get faster on your recovery days.” According to Cotner, ﬁve things can block this multi-day adaptation: • SLEEP DISTURBANCES — anything that interrupts delta sleep. • POOR NUTRITION — especially insufficient calories. • TRAUMA — GH’s top priority will shift to any acute injury. • SICKNESS — especially involving a fever. • ALCOHOL — one beer can block 30 percent of nocturnal GH secretion; two can wipe out 75–80 percent. On distance runs, GH isn’t produced for the

ﬁrst 10 minutes, and after 75 minutes secretion diminishes. To maximize GH production, Cotner suggests two workouts: • THRESHOLD RUNS — 8 to 10 miles at 25 seconds slower than threshold pace (what you could race for an hour), then 2 miles at threshold or below. • FARTLEK — fast surges separated by slower rest intervals. Club Northwest runs 10 x 2 minutes (3K to 5K pace) with 1-minute recovery intervals. “The two natural stimulants of GH are sleep and exercise,” says Cotner. “This is an adaptation process. And it takes days.”

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OWNER’S MANUAL HORMONES

HORMONES AND RUNNING • RHY THM RUNS

Rhythm

Continuted from page 28 BY JULIA LUCAS sugar, and the pituitary gland’s response to low blood sugar is a burst of growth hormone. “It’s a very risky business,” says Brown. “You can die doing that.” Glucagon counteracts too much insulin by stimulating the liver to release glucose. Because glucagon is secreted when glycogen and blood glucose stores are falling, it’s helpful in longer races like the half marathon and marathon. There’s no natural way to speed its release for shorter races or runs. Estrogen is best known for its function as a female sex hormone, but like testosterone CHRIS SOLINSKY CAN SEE THE FINISH LINE. He and his it’s present in both sexes, although at lower teammates round the ﬁnal turn in tight formation, two deep and two wide. levels in men. It facilitates the breakdown of They know every step of this course. A quiet 3.5-mile loop up in the hills of stored fat into fuel. Portland, it’s the same place they always come for rhythm runs, a main-

RUNS RULE HOW TO DO ONE OF CHRIS SOLINSKY’S STAPLE WORKOUTS

stay in coach JERRY SCHUMACHER’s program. They anticipate each rise and fall and turn in the road. They know just how far they’ve come and how We’re all familiar with the hormonal mis- close they are, but they don’t pick up the pace.

30 /

RUNNINGTIMES_NOVEMBER 2010

Photo:

deeds of Balco, professional baseball and pretty much the entire peloton of the Tour “We call them rhythm runs,” says Solinsky, gasping or lying on the asphalt after the finish de France. But while we condemn the former “and, the way I see it, their purpose is callus- line. Today is an investment. as drug cheats, many runners are slower to ing. Rhythm runs are all about controlled They keep their metronomic clip until they denounce supplements that claim to act as effort, a quality strength program. We’re cross the line and stop their watches. They precursors to hormones — and which can starting slower, working up to find the gradually slow to a walk and a moment’s be found on health food shelves. rhythm in the middle, and then break before trotting off on a cooldown. There were no heroics here “Mostly garbage,” says Brown of these sup- staying in that small window. It’s today. While finishing a 12-mile plements. “There is some evidence that you not a killer effort, just a slow, conmight be able to stimulate GH for maybe trolled, callusing.” run at 5:00 pace may seem like an four to six weeks. But then the body adapts Schumacher sent them off impossible effort to mere mortals, and shuts off production. And any of these an hour ago with brief instrucSolinsky’s effort was contained. things that say they’re going to increase tions: “12 miles. 6:00 down to Consider that his 5K race pace is 4:08 male hormone — garbage. The only time it 5:0 0. Prog ress appropr iately.” per mile, 2 minutes faster than works is if they’re actually male hormones Solinsky, MATT TEGENKAMP, he began today’s workout. The themselves. Andro [androstenedione] is SIMON BAIRU and EVAN JAGER, pace was much closer to a typa hormone. DHEA is a hormone. These world-championship runners ical easy day, which he runs aren’t supplements.” all, don’t need further explanaat 6:00 to 7:00 pace. Yet, these men are confident The competitive spirit drives athletes to tion. They’ve run this workout seek any natural advantage. But when it more times than they care that, under Schumacher’s comes to hormones, the best approach has to remember. They’ve run tutelage, they are another 8-milers and 18-milers this a familiar ring. day stronger. “Diet and exercise,” says Brow n. “If way. They’ve fi nished in 5:30 “Jer r y,” to t he g uys, you keep healthy, the hormone system pace and, years later, 5:00 has fostered devotees stays healthy.” pace. They’ve run in big of his athletes, and not So while some athletes toss and turn in groups and in solo runs without reason. Among his altitude tents, spike their diets with supple- with Schumacher along on stable are national recordments and cut short distance runs to pump the bike. In every month of holders, Olympians and world cha mpion sh ip out sets of squats and push-ups, sensible run- the year, at every point in the finalists. Most recently, ners should stick with that old mainstay: Eat season and in every condition, Solinsky shocked fans, right, train smart and get a good night’s sleep. S c h u m a c h e r ’s g u y s a r e competitors and himIn the long run, our bodies know best. rhythm running. And self-regulated hormonal balance — These men know that the self with a 26:59 10,000m. not hormonal stockpiling — creates the purpose of the day is to put He broke the American best environment for cultivating our run- in the time, to add to their Continuted on page 32 already enormous aerobic ning lifestyle. • base, and to do so as easily and fluidly as possible. No Senior writer PETE MAGILL gritting their teeth. No musholds three American age-group records in the 45–49 division. cling through. No sprinting or

Stacey Cramp

GAMING THE SYSTEM

OWNER’S MANUAL

CALL IT WHAT YOU WANT, IT WORKS W hile Schumacher’s results have been g rou ndbrea k i ng , h is met hods a ren’t. Rhythm runs, for instance, are a part of nearly every successful runner’s program. Elsewhere they are known as long tempos, sustained efforts, quality days or just runs that get out of hand. No matter the terminology, any distance program worth its spikes has devoted a significant amount of time to the in-between pace. At Stanford University, for instance, they call them progression runs. “They’re really the meat and potatoes of distance running,”

SOLINSKY’S SAMPLE WEEK Here’s how American 10,000m record-holder Chris Solinsky ﬁ ts a rhythm run into a typical training week. Sunday: Long run Monday: Easy Tuesday: 15-minute warm-up, 8-mile rhythm run, 15-minute cool-down Wednesday: 25-minute warm-up, short hill sprint series, 25-minute cool-down Thursday: Easy Friday: Hard track session Saturday: Easy

Rhythm runs led to an American record.

says DAVID VIDAL, former All-American at things. They work different systems and chalStanford currently in his fi fth year on the lenge your body to adapt in different ways. coaching staff. “They’re the miles you’ve just The reason progression runs are a good thing got to put in to be a great runner. The diffi- is just because they bring a different set of cult part is applying them with purpose and stressors. Significant time at every pace is restraint.” The Stanford men will run an 8- what’s important. Running 6:00 pace isn’t to 10-mile progression run as often as every just making you better at 6:00 pace. It’s fi llother week, progressing from 6:00 pace to ing in gaps in who knows how many places: 5:00 pace or just under. It’s a nearly identi- your muscles, your bones, your nervous syscal workout to that of Schumacher’s group, tem, your head.” GET THE RHYTHM RIGHT with similarly impressive results. Vidal has helped coach 51 All-Americans and 18 Pac- FIND YOUR RHYTHM Ô DON’T NEGLECT YOUR WARM-UP, but 10 champions, and he credits much of his Rhythm runs have malleable parameters don’t overdo it. Chris Solinsky shortens his success to embracing simplicity. and elusive defi nitions. It’s not really in their typical 25-minute warm-up and cool-down to “To become better at running, you have spirit to assign them precise paces, but here’s 15 minutes. to run,” he says. “Progression runs are sim- the rough and dirty of it. ply great practice running.” Vidal lifts a Stanford athletes begin their progression Ô RUN YOUR PACE. This isn’t the day to test hand and counts off the benefits gained. runs at about 1:30 per mile slower than 5K yourself with a faster group. You’ll get far more “It’s aerobic development. It’s raising the race pace and end at about 30 seconds per physiological gains from running a little too lactic threshold. It’s building capillaries. It’s mile slower than race pace. Vidal emphaslow than a little too fast. strengthening neuromuscular connections. sizes that the paces vary by the individual, Ô USE A HEART RATE MONITOR if you’re It’s causing more adaptations than I can list. the time of year, the day, the conditions, the having trouble feeling the pace. Check out But, in the end, it’s just making you a better schoolwork load, and on and on. runningtimes.com/hrmonitor for an easy guide runner, as simple as that.” Both Solinsky’s squad and the Stanford to ﬁguring out your heart rate zones. RhythmHe continues mumbling physiologi- runners do rhythm runs year-round, but run pace will be between threshold and easy cal and anatomical terms, too many for with varied frequency. During base buildrun pace. his fingers, before waving his hand and ing these will account for 10 to 15 percent Ô START SLOW. David Vidal tells his runners beginning again. of weekly mileage, and be run at least every to start slower than they think they should. “The thing about the typical runner is they other week. As racing season draws near It will prep your body for the harder eff ort go out and they run 7:30 pace every day, and and the emphasis switches from strength to come, and you’ll end up running faster they get really good at running 7:30 pace,” to speed, they’ll be run less frequently and more easily. Vidal says. “And, maybe they do workouts less predictably. at race pace. They think that as long as they “In the end, it’s all about practice,” says Ô DON’T WORRY. Feeling paces takes experihave the mileage, and they have the speed Vidal, “like playing the violin or riding a ence. Experiment with pace, and make a pledge work, they’re going to be ready to go. But they bike. To get better, you’ve got to practice. to learn from failed experiments. still have these huge gaps in fitness. To get really good, you’ve got to practice a Ô TAKE INTO ACCOUNT THE WEATHER. “Being able to run comfortably and well at lot. That’s just all there is to it.” • The longer the eff ort, the more a hot day all paces makes running each one of those will aff ect performance. Adjust paces and paces, including race pace, more efficient. JULIA LUCAS is a member of the Oregon distances accordingly. Different paces and workouts do different Track Club with a 5,000m best of 15:33.

32 /

RUNNINGTIMES_NOVEMBER 2010

Getty Images Courtesy of Nike

Continuted from page 30

record and become the fastest non-African of all time in his fi rst try at the distance. Schumacher clearly knows what he’s doing. His is a program based in strength. His athletes accumulate mileage and increase workload slowly over time. They progress methodically and steadily, and they improve reliably. Solinsky’s recent breakthrough wasn’t due to any great change or experimental training, but rather the cumulative strength gained over his eight years of work under Schumacher.

Photo:

RHYTHM

BENEFITS OF RHY THM RUNS

WHO CARES WHAT TIME IT IS. ™

HIGH SCHOOL

Two

THE POWER OF A PARTNER

BY MARC BLOOM

Time

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MAXIMIZE RESULTS WITH A CLOSELY MATCHED TEAMMATE

WHEN SENIOR ADRIAN ETHERIDGE, the top

says McVicker, returning this fall for his senior season, “we ran every single day together. We would do workouts the same way as races.”

PUSHING THE PACE

Even national stars like New Jersey twins JOE and JIM ROSA of West Windsor-Plainsboro North High rely on twosome aid to master the rigors of a hilly 5K cross country course. “It’s understood that I’ll go out hard to try and lose the field and help Jim through the middle parts, and at the end he’ll try and pass me and I’ll be making sure he doesn’t,” says Joe, who set a number of course records last fall with Jim only a few seconds behind. Now seniors, the Rosas’ starring act continues this fall as they contend for state and national honors.

girl on the Oak Ridge High School cross country team in Tennessee, lines up at the race start with her teammates this fall, she’ll make sure that the Wildcats’ secondSHARING THE WORK leading runner, sophomore MARIAH ZAWISZA, is at her Another set of twins, nationally ranked KATHLEEN and JOANNA side. Last year, in the state championships, Etheridge STEVENS of Blacksburg High in Virginia, did a lot of lead switching placed fourth with Zawisza ﬁfth as Oak Ridge won its last season. “We shared the workload,” says Kathleen, now start13th Class 3A title. ing her college running at Virginia while Joanna is at Georgetown.

PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT

Etheri Etheridge and Zawisza have been running together t since Zawisza was in sixth grade. “We know each other’s moves. I grade can te tell when she’s going to surge,” says Etheridge. The same twosome closeness Ether helped Fairmont Senior High win its helpe West V Virginia regional last fall and place third aat state. The Polar Bears’ DAYTON MCVICKER and PATRICK STANTON M rran second and fourth at regionals, separated by 18 seconds. “For a year,” Joe and Jim Rosa push each other in workouts and races. 34 /

RUNNINGTIMES_NOVEMBER 2010

BEATING THE DRAFT

RUNNING A SMART PACE

SIMULATING RACE CONDITIONS

Runners farther back can also get a big break, mentally and physically, from ducking behind a teammate. If you collaborate with a teammate like cyclists in the Tour de France you can get periodic breathers, saving valuable resources for the kick to the finish.

As part of a twosome, you’ll also avoid running a reckless pace, says Blacksburg coach JAMES DEMARCO. Though not quite as strong as her sister, JOANNA STEVENS’ job was to ensure that the race pace was fast enough, says DeMarco, as Kathleen didn’t have as fi ne a sense of pace. Last year in New Hampshire, state Class L champion FRANCIS HERNANDEZ of Bishop Guertin would tell younger teammate JEFF LACOSTE to slow down if he went out too fast. At state, LaCoste took second, enabling Guertin to edge Pinkerton for the state title.

Last fall, the Rosas ran on the state meet course on Sundays. The West Virginia duo of McVicker and Stanton trained as they hoped to race. “I would take it out, run faster than Pat, then he’d come back and pass me, and I’d hang on,” says McVicker. •

At runningtimes.com/highschool: • National cross country team rankings updated throughout the fall. • News and results from around the country. • Commentary by national and regional champion runners as they progress through the 2010 cross country season.

Victor Sailer / Photo Run

“We would say, ‘The fi rst mile I’ll lead, the second mile you lead.’ It gives you a break from thinking about the pace.” With these mental breaks, the Stevens girls sustained a long season, in which they led Blacksburg to sixth in the Nike Cross Nationals last December and were half of the Blacksburg foursome that set a national distance medley relay record in June.

Photo:

Th is season, if Oak Ridge adds another championship, it will be largely thanks to Etheridge and Zawisza, who work together as a team within a team. The girls enhance one another’s strengths and produce better performances than if each had to compete alone. “We’re really competitive,” says Etheridge. “One of us gets out and the other works hard to keep up. Whoever feels good pushes the pace.” Last fall, Etheridge fi nished ahead four times and Zawisza three times. At state, while Etheridge pulled away and hit the line 22 seconds ahead of Zawisza, their combined low scores were enough to overcome the one-two fi nish by team runner-up Knoxville Catholic. While high school coaches stress “team running” in which all five scorers try to race together in a seamless fashion, that ideal is rarely achieved by even the best teams. For example, the 2009 Nike Cross Nationals boys team champion, Boerne Nationa of Tex Texas, had two runners within 7 seconds of one another in the 5,000-meter race, with its next three scorers much farther back. farthe But what most cross country teams have are two runners close enough in ability to try to stick together, each helping the other and both helping the team. Athletes and coaches forge this twoAthle runner alliance in many ways. runne

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LIBERT Y UNIVERSIT Y’S SAM CHEL ANGA

5 MINUTES WITH BY BRIAN METZLER

Sam CHELANGA

have confidence. But my mentor, Paul Tergat, ran 26:27, so I still have to run faster. I’m lucky to have such good role models to raise the bar. I’ve defi nitely learned a lot from them and they’ve given me a lot of inspiration.

LIBERTY UNIVERSITY SENIOR SAM CHELANGA is definitely Is there a difference between the way Americans and Kenyans train? the guy to beat as the Nov. 23 NCAA Division I Cross Country Championships approach. A year after finishing second to Oregon’s Galen Rupp, he blew It ’s not rea l ly about a d i f ferent w ay. away the field at last year’s NCAA meet with a record-setting 28:41 on Americans train smart, but they analyze it the 10K course in Terre Haute, Ind. In the spring, he broke his own colle- a little bit more than Kenyans do. Kenyans giate 10,000m record with a blistering 27:08.39 effort and later won the just get out and run. They don’t care about a NCAA title in that event. Chelanga grew up in the small Kenyan village of lot of the details. You’ll never hear them talkKabarasel but didn’t really start running until he was a teenager after his ing about a workout or how it went. To them, family moved to Nairobi. It was there that he discovered his distance run- it’s just about getting out there and running ning talent while going on long runs with his brother, JOSHUA CHELANGA, a and racing hard. 2:07 marathoner, and PAUL TERGAT, a five-time world cross country champion and marathon world record-holder. Expect Chelanga to push the pace What are your plans after your college running career ends? at the Oct. 16 Pre-National Invitational in Terre Haute, Ind.

Based on what I’ve done and my family background, I think I can get a lot done through running and still get faster. I’d like to fi nd a Did you do anything differently this summer? running group here in America that’s not just The only thing I did differently this year What about cross country interested in being the best in America, but makes you a better runner? being t he best in the world. I like the idea of was that I wanted to get in shape before October. Last year, I was so late reach- Running cross country is never smooth and being part of a team and training with runing my top form. My goal was to get ready easy. In track, you can sit there and relax ners on a world-class level. I think eventually sooner this year. Not too quick, but at least and pay attention at times. Because the I’ll run the marathon, but I still want to run in good shape by mid-October. I ran 70 to course changes so much, cross country is fast on the track, too. And some day I might 80 miles a week in the summer with the always challenging. It mentally and phys- want to run for the U.S. I love it here and goal of ramping up to a couple 100-mile ically prepares you. In cross country, you hope to stay here for a while. I don’t miss Kenya, but I do miss weeks by September, then adding some might run 200 meters and then you have to hills and speed work before my first race in turn left and another 50 meters you have my family. • October. We use Pre-Nationals as a check- to turn right. You go downhill, point, so last year that was an indication you go uphill, and it’s kind of that I was too rusty. [He placed second to annoying in a good way. And Stanford’s Chris Derrick last year.] And it prepares all of your muscles, then after that, if you’re not careful what so when you get back to doing you do, it might be too late. But it was a speed work and running fast on shock to me, kind of like a wake-up call. the track, you’re stronger and more ready for anything.

Q What do you like about cross country?

I like the fact that cross country is not about time. You can’t say this guy ran 13:50 in the 5,000m or this guy ran 28:15 in the 10K or whatever. It’s all about racing. It’s about different courses. Some are flat, some are hilly. It’s always outside. Sometimes it’s rainy, sometimes it’s cold. Everybody runs cross country and there’s only one champion, so it’s kind of prestigious. If you win it, you know that you’re definitely the man.

Q What’s your favorite workout?

I like the 1K and mile repeats we do several times in the fall because you can see how much you progress as the season goes by. But I think my favorite workouts are the

36 /

RUNNINGTIMES_NOVEMBER 2010

Q How much have your

brother and Paul Tergat inﬂuenced you as a runner?

I think that’s the most important thing that made me who I am today. Right now when I run a time that people in America think is amazing, where I’m from it’s not that fast. My brother ran 13:14 for 5,000m so before I can say that I did good, me and my brother always joke and say, “It’s never amazing until I break the family record.” I beat his 10,000m PR last spring and that makes me At runningtimes.com/college: ege: • Catch up with Stanford’s Chris Derrick. errick. • An interview with Washington women’s men’s coach Greg Metcalf.

Photo:

Cheryl Treworgy/PrettySporty.com

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MASTERS

Fast Karrh

BY JULIE THRELKELD

TAMARA KARRH WILL RUN THE OLYMPIC MARATHON TRIALS AS A MASTER

TAMARA KARRH ISN’T SATISFIED. A 41-year-old latecomer to the marathon, Karrh has amassed a set of personal bests that any amateur runner would envy. And yet, nearly every day she’s up and out the door between 4:00 and 5:30 a.m. — with only the local possum population of Marietta, Ga., for company — striving to get faster and faster. Karrh is among a handful of masters women who have qualified to run in the 2012 U.S. Olympic marathon trials. She ran 2:40:22 at Twin Cities, which doubled as the national championship, last fall to earn a trials bib — her fi rst. It’s hard to know what to be most impressed by about this performance. Is it the fact that she was pushing 40 at the time? Or that it was only her third marathon? Or that she has four kids under the age of 12?

the Healdsburg Half in October 2008. Now it was time to take on the marathon. Six weeks later, at the California International Marathon in Sacramento, Karrh started with the 3:00 pace group. “But I realized I needed to go a little bit quicker, and took off and ran a 2:51:33,” she says. Next stop: Boston. But Karrh hadn’t merely qualified for Boston during her fi rst attempt at the distance; she’d run fast enough to be invited

“I really don’t believe in this whole age thing in the running world.”

Karrh races with open runners as a master.

want to come home without qualifying,” she says. As it turned out, she had one of those rare, perfect days, when everything comes together beautifully. Karrh hit the halfway mark in 1:18 and slowed just slightly in the second half. Is she happy with that time? Yes to run as an elite. There, she chipped another and no. Yes, because she was thrilled to have 2 minutes off her PR and was headed to the made the trials. No, because she hasn’t hit national championships in Minnesota. the 2:39 “A” standard time. Yet. In October 2009, Karrh was on the start Karrh runs for herself and trains alone. line at Twin Cities, where, like many of her She doesn’t follow professional running. She peers, she was hoping to run a trials quali- had never heard of this magazine before I fying time of 2:46 or better. “I really did not contacted her for this story. “I absolutely look forward to my runs,” she says. “I love the training. I love getting up to the starting line. Of course, I love crossing the fi nish line. The whole process to me is nothing but enjoyable.” Mon: 10 miles moderate She’ll be 42 at the trials in January 2012. “I really don’t believe in this whole age thing Tue: AM: 5 miles warm-up, fartlek of 12–15 in the running world,” she says. “I do think x 1 minute with 1-minute recovery jogs, 5 that you can go out there and compete with miles cool-down; PM: 5 miles easy some younger gals and do really well.” As Wed: 10 miles easy for the trials race itself, “just being there is something,” Karrh says. Still, even now, she’s Thu: 4 miles warm-up, 7 miles tempo driven to improve. “I’d like to do a sub-2:40 eff ort, 4 miles cool-down before I get there,” Karrh concludes. •

While Karrh may be a relative newcomer to the marathon, she’s been running all her life. Growing up in Texas, she ran the mile and 2-mile in high school, winning the majority of those races. She’d planned to compete in college, but after years of regimented training needed a break. “It was nice to have a little bit of freedom,” she says. That hiatus from competitive racing lasted until she was well into her 30s. But Karrh never stopped running, occasionally entering a local 10K for fun. Those early race times — in the 46:00 to 51:00 range — gave no hints of what was to come. By late 2006 Karrh was feeling the itch to race competitively again. “I started doing a few little runs, half marathons and stuff. And then,” she says, “I decided that I’d like to compete and that I really should be running faster. I started cranking up the training. Every race, I’d get a little bit faster. I started moving up. I had a nice, long stretch of fi rst-, Fri: 10 miles easy second- and third-place fi nishes.” In less Sat: 24 miles steady than three years Karrh bludgeoned her debut Sun: 6 miles easy 1:47 half marathon time down to a sub-1:22 at 38 /

RUNNINGTIMES_NOVEMBER 2010

Victor Sailer / Photo Run From Left:

To read more stories of masters women pursuing a 2012 Olympic marathon trials qualifier, visit houstonhopefuls.com.

Leona Browne

SAMPLE TRAINING WEEK

OLYMPIC TRIAL S RUNNER TAMAR A K ARRH • AGE-GROUP ACE CHRISTINE KENNEDY

AGE-GROUP ACE BY MIKE TYMN

Christine KENNEDY YOU DON’T HEAR MUCH about “the loneliness of the long-distance runner” these days, especially in mega-events like Boston. CHRISTINE KENNEDY, however, was very “lonely” during this year’s Boston Marathon. It wasn’t because Kennedy was so far ahead of her competition, winning the 55–59 division by more than 13 minutes in 2:57:19. Rather, it was because her personal best of 2:35:05, recorded in the 1989 Berlin Marathon, earned her a place on the starting line with the elite open women, who started well in

TRAINING REGIMEN (two-three weeks before 2010 Boston Marathon) Sunday: 20 miles in the Santa Cruz Mountains, elevation gain 2,011 feet, average pace 8:22/mile Monday: 8.53 miles rolling hills Tuesday: AM: 9 miles on trail; PM: 4 miles easy recovery run Wednesday: 8.64 miles on road Thursday: 13 miles Santa Cruz Mountains, elevation gain 907 feet, pace 7:30–8:15/mile Friday: 8 miles moderate Saturday: 11 miles ﬂat trail, moderate Sunday: 17.52 miles in Santa Cruz Mountains, elevation gain 1,450 feet Monday: 9 miles recovery run Tuesday: AM: 2 miles warm up, 3 x 1 mile (5:52–5:55) with 2-minute recovery, 2 x 800m (same pace), 2 miles warm-down; PM: recovery run, 30 minutes Wednesday: AM: 4 miles easy; PM: 5 miles moderate Thursday: 10 miles Santa Cruz Mountains Friday: 6 miles moderate on trail Saturday: 9 miles on road, rolling hills

At runningtimes.com/masters: • Magill on Masters: Age-group record-holder Pete Magill details how older runners can safely (and legally) get a hormonal boost in their training. • Why masters runners might be the best candidates for regular general strength work.

advance of the rest of the women’s field. “After the fi rst 3 miles, I was all alone for most of the race,” Kennedy explains. “I mean there was nobody near me — ahead of me or behind me. It was a strange feeling running all alone in front of the cheering crowd.” In an effort not to be too lonely, Kennedy ran the fi rst few miles considerably faster than the 6:30-mile pace she had planned on, and she paid for it later, ending up with an average of 6:46 per mile. A native of Galway, Ireland, Kennedy was inspired to take up running after watching the finish of the 1981 Dublin Marathon on television. Upon hearing that the women’s winner was married, had two small children and was only 5–1, characteristics Kennedy shared, she told her husband and brot her-in-law t hat she was going to take up running and also w in the Dublin Marathon. “They just laughed at me, and that made me even more determined,” Kennedy recalls. She followed t h roug h, w i n n i ng the 1990 Dublin race i n 2:41:27, a nd she repeated her victory t he f ol lo w i n g y e a r, while also winning the Irish national championship, with a race record time of 2:35:56. Now living in the Silicon Va l le y a rea of Nor t her n California, where she operates a running shoe store, Ken nedy d id n’t compete from 2000 to 2005 because of a herniated disc in her low back. She credits HARRY HO, a San Jose chiropractor, for rehabilitating her and giving her renewed vigor. She

TRAINING PHILOSOPHY “I know so many runners who live in the past and don’t make adjustments physically or mentally for their age. They end up injured and not racing. I try to dwell in the present and recognize the limitations placed on me by age. Just because a person is 55 doesn’t mean she can’t get out on the track and do some speed work. I love the feel of doing speed work. Running has made me who I am and I don’t want to lose that, and I hope I can inspire some women to keep running as they get older.”

returned to racing with a 3:06.35 effort in the 2005 Big Sur Marathon, but her comeback has been gradual. “I’ve been injury-free for about a year and a half now,” she says with some jubilation. “I’m back to running 70–80 miles a week and training like I was during my 30s and 40s. I’m also back to the track twice a week and almost feel like a kid again.” At press time, Kennedy was hoping to run the Chicago Marathon or the St. George Marathon in October and then run Boston again next year. If she breaks 3:00 next year at Boston, she should become the oldest woman to go under t hat mark, t he current olde s t bei ng BERNARDINE PORTENSKI of New Zealand at 56 years, 65 days. However, K en ne d y h a s her sights set on 2:54:21, the over-50 race record, and isn’t ruling out the possibility of challenging the 55–59 American record of 2:52:14 set in 1998 by RAE BAYMILLER. “It would help, though,” she says, “if the race officials would expand the elite field to include more runners in the 2:45 to 3:00 range to start with the elite women.” • CHRISTINE KENNEDY STATS BORN: DECEMBER 29, 1954 LIVES: LOS GATOS, CA OVER-50 BEST TIMES: MILE: 5:44; 5K: 19:49; 10K: 38:45; 12K: 46:58; 10 MILES: 1:05:22; HALF MARATHON: 1:25:13; MARATHON: 2:57:19 RUNNINGTIMES

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TRAILS

MODES OF MOTIVATION

The author on the trail before dawn, a habit that has become part of his nature, not a daily decision.

How Do YOU DO IT?

BY ERIC GROSSMAN

DEVELOPING INTRINSIC MOTIVATION

Go to runningtimes.com/trails for a series of articles by Eric Grossman elaborating his motivation principles. 40 /

RUNNINGTIMES_NOVEMBER 2010

In many endeavors, motivation has been institutionalized. We study hard in school because of teachers. We fight hard in the Army because of drill sergeants. We work hard in business because of managers. It even seems that playing hard at sports has come under the purview of parents and coaches. With running, however, the stakes are relatively low. There’s little hope for college scholarships and even less for a professional career as a runner. Running requires intrinsic motivation. It’s relatively easy to answer the question of why you should run. I want to outline ways to help you stay motivated to run. For that you’ll have to answer the daily question, the one that comes up when you’re tired, or when it’s raining hard, or when the lawn needs mowing and it’s getting dark out: Will I get out the door today? You can try to outsource the job. You can join a class, start a Continued on page 42

Photo:

COACH WORFUL carefully tended my budding running career. He took the team to the sports rehab clinic to learn stretching and strengthening exercises. He spoke privately with my parents about my potential. He actively involved me in important training and racing decisions. But I set the alarm for 6 a.m. so that I could rise in time to fi ll a thermos with orange juice and ice cream, drop my backpack at my friend’s door, and then run the 4.5 miles to school holding the thermos in my hand so that I could have an OrangeJulius-style shake when I arrived. Twenty-eight years later, I still rise before dawn on many mornings to supplement my training mileage. My wife, burrowing deeper under the covers, thinks almost audibly: How do you do it?

Joel Wolpert

REMEMBER WHEN the multipurpose shoes kids wear were called tennis shoes? I wore them to practice when I ﬁrst went out for high school cross country. When coach took me to the running store, we picked out the gray-on-blue Tiger X-Calibers. When I wore through the soles, I got another pair, and then another after that. If I lined up all the shoes I’ve worn out since then, heel to toe, they’d make a trail clear from my hometown to where I’ve landed, 321 miles away.

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TRAILS MOTIVATION

MODES OF MOTIVATION

Continued from page 40

program, or hire a coach. These are legitimate and worthy options. Better, however, is learning to motivate yourself. To start, your motivation won’t depend on that class, program, or coach, so you won’t stop running because class is over. More importantly, self-motivation depends upon a change in perspective that may serve you well in other aspects of your life. The objective is a resiliency that will serve you in a variety of situations. How does a person will herself to eat healthfully, rest when needed, and run regardless? In my experience, you won’t fi nd a battlefield pitting unhealthy inclinations against what’s best. If we think of ourselves as powerful deciders who can intervene “at will,” we’re bound for a losing struggle. If we pit the voice of our conscious self against deep-seated urges, we’ll fail. Willpower doesn’t work that way. It’s not a force that enables us to counter our darker desires. It works at the same level, using the same mechanics, as any other mover of behavior. The will to run emerges gradually where we cultivate it. It requires humility — we can’t just decide spontaneously and make it happen. Yet we must hold ourselves and others accountable for anything about which we can say: “I could have done differently.” Willpower grows gradually, and is more like coming to know yourself well enough to accurately predict what you’ll do. Given time, however, you can change that predicted behavior, and you can do better. Here are twelve steps that may help develop your ability to will yourself to get the next run in.

DISMISS DISTRACTIONS

OBSERVE YOURSELF AND ACCEPT WHAT YOU SEE

CONTINUOUSLY RE-CENTER YOUR STORY

What are other people doing, and why? Can those strategies be generalized, and if so, how can you apply them?

DON’T LET OTHERS OFF TOO EASY

ACKNOWLEDGE EFFORT

GIVE YOURSELF NO CHOICE

We can be too nice. If someone skips a run, or runs slower than they should, give them grief in due proportion. You need them to do the same for you!

Expect that we can all do better, and then give yourself, and others, credit for trying.

Here’s an important poem I learned working at an outdoor school: Whether the weather be fi ne, Or whether the weather be not, Whether the weather be cold, Or whether the weather be hot, We’ll weather the weather Whatever the weather Whether we like it or not.

Distractions will fi nd you. Something will scuttle the focus you have to run. When it does, dismiss it. Open combat will only create a bigger commotion. Let the distraction wander off like a summer cloud.

You’re the way you are for a reason. Take note — without judgment. If you’re carrying a lot of extra weight, that’s OK. Ask why, and accept the evidence.

ALLOW OTHERS TO OBSERVE YOU

NO EXCUSES

PLAN FOR IMPROVEMENT

Be yourself. Shed the layers of baggy clothing. Don’t wait to get in shape before you run with others.

’Nuff said.

BE ATTENTIVE AND RESPONSIVE, NOT PASSIVE AND REACTIVE

Engage. Willpower takes brainpower, not magic, and not divine intervention. It requires anticipating, observing, analyzing and reflecting.

MAKE FRIENDS WITH TIME

Enjoy each run. Reflect on and relish the memories of past victories. Take some solace in the promise of what you may yet be able to do. Most of us enjoy watching the successes of others, even in our competitors. It reinforces the idea that we can make good things happen for ourselves. The only failure, as the cliché goes, is not trying. •

Be prepared to answer the question: How can I do better?

07 42 /

OBSERVE OTHERS

RUNNINGTIMES_NOVEMBER 2010

ERIC GROSSMAN is a member of the Montrail ultrarunning team. At age 40, Grossman won the 2008 USATF 50-mile national championship.

Joel Wolpert

Photo:

You’re now the central character in a story that includes running. What do you choose to say about yourself? Have you done any fact-checking recently? (Confi rmation from your mother, or your sweetheart, doesn’t count.)

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Peter Baker Studios LLC. 2010 Photo:

WORKING FOR TE WEEKEND

MEET THE 4:45 A.M. CLUB: ELITE RUNNERS IN THIS FALL’S NATIONAL MARATHON CHAMPIONSHIPS WHO HOLD DOWN DAY JOBS By Abigail Lorge

Having just completed an exhausting travel day that began at 4:30 a.m. with a run in Birmingham, England, and ended with an 11:30 p.m. arrival at her home in Walpole, N.H., Heidi Westover could have been forgiven for wanting to sleep in last October 13. Westover was back stateside after having represented the U.S. in the 2009 world half marathon championships, where she had finished 38th overall, and fourth of five Americans, in her first international assignment for the Stars and Stripes. But a grueling return trip wasn’t enough to derail Westover’s über-rigorous training schedule for even one day. The morning after she got back from England, Westover was up at quarter to 5, as usual, so she could churn out 15 miles on the treadmill before work. Westover isn’t the only woman in this year’s U.S. marathon championships, to be contested on Nov. 7 as part of the ING New York City Marathon, whose alarm clock is perennially set

for 4:45 a.m. Although the field for the 2010 women’s nationals contains three Olympians (Deena Kastor, Shalane Flanagan and Blake Russell) and several other runners for whom running is their sole profession, the roster of participants also contains a handful of elite marathoners who manage to combine training and racing with full-time employment. Wendi Ray, a 10thplace finisher at last year’s championships in Minneapolis, works as a speech therapist during the week and helps her husband run his northern Wisconsin restaurant on weekends. Laurie Knowles, a 2:44 marathoner, serves as vice president of an Atlanta construction company while coaching a high school cross country team and caring for her infant son. And perhaps most notable of the working warriors is Westover, an elementary school teacher and 2:35 marathoner who during the winter regularly logs 200-mile weeks.

RU RUN R U N NIN UN NIIN N I N G TIM TIIM T I M ES ES

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HEIDI WESOVER HIGH-MILEAGE TEACHER

“It’s so much of a routine that I don’t ever miss days,” says 29-year-old Westover of her high-mileage habit. “I drive myself out of bed. I tell myself, This is what’s going to get you to where you want to go, so you’re gonna do it.” Westover has been a high-volume runner since her days at the University of Rhode Island, where as Heidi Westerling she starred in the Atlantic 10 Conference while earning a bachelor’s degree in physical education and a master’s in elementary education. But it wasn’t until a breakthrough in 2009 that her performances began to reflect the cumulative effect of the tens of thousands of miles she has put in since graduation. During a 10-week stretch last year, Westover set a 3-minute PR in winning the New Bedford (Mass.) Half Marathon in 1:11:35; placed 14th in the Boston Marathon; and, a mere five weeks after Boston, shattered her marathon best by 6 minutes, running 2:35:02 to claim her third Vermont City title (she added a fourth this May). The New Bedford Half Marathon mark made her the fourth-fastest American woman at that distance in 2009. “I’d say the high mileage definitely started to pay off,” Westover says of the PR spree. “I had put so much time in, and had done so many long runs, and it just was really clicking at that point.”

Both teachers and distance runners are notoriously regimented creatures, and as someone who is fully dedicated to both roles, Westover’s days are as maxed out as her aerobic capacity. Fitting in 200-mile weeks is no easy feat for even a full-time runner; most of the top American male marathoners don’t approach those totals. But what makes Westover’s training even more remarkable is the fact that she works full-time at North Charlestown Community School, where she’s in her fourth year as a fifth-grade teacher. On a typical school day, Westover is awake by 4:45 a.m. and setting her treadmill to 9 miles per hour (a 6:40 per-mile clip); she does 15 to 20 miles at that pace before work. She’s showered and out the door by 7:10 to start the 20-minute commute to the public school in Charlestown, N.H., where she teaches from 8 a.m. until 2:45 p.m. After the school day — and any requisite faculty meetings — she heads to Fall Mountain Regional High School at around 4:40 in the afternoon to do a 10- to 15-mile run at 6:30– 6:45 pace with her coach, Larry Sayers. After heading home to have dinner, 46 /

RUNNINGTIMES_NOVEMBER 2010

grade papers and generally unwind, she’s in bed between 9:30 and 10 p.m. so she can get seven hours of sleep before she does it again the next day. The volume doesn’t ease up on the weekends, when Westover’s long runs last anywhere from 2 ½ to 3 ½ hours. (She’ll sometimes follow one of those mammoth morning sessions with a second run in the afternoon.) A frequent road racer, Westover doesn’t do track workouts or even tempo runs. Instead, she just puts in the miles — on the roads, on the trails and on her treadmill — and uses races to work on speed and gauge her fitness. Running more than three hours a day requires commitment, and that’s a quality she has attempted to instill in her students. The fi fthgraders enjoy tracking the race results of “Mrs. Westover,” and last year she started a program whereby every morning, rain or shine, she took the kids on a 1-mile walk — eschewing the typical homeroom period fare of

Photo:

Peter Baker Studios LLC. 2010

In addition to teaching, Westover actively helps at her in-laws’ dairy farm, part of the family routine for 10 generations.

sharing and show-and-tell in favor of a daily constitutional. “It’s a four-loop course that I came up with, and they really got into the routine of it,” says Westover, who outfits her students in her wornout Mizunos and winter running gear. “One of my kids hit 150 miles, and as a class we logged over 3,500. They really understood the whole exercise thing — getting into a habit and doing it daily. And they didn’t like to break their routine.” Westover’s own routine allows for no wasted minutes. Both teachers and distance runners are notoriously regimented creatures, and as someone who is fully dedicated to both roles, Westover’s days are as maxed out as her aerobic capacity. Everything she needs for school and for her afternoon run is packed the night before. While her fellow teachers are chatting during lunch, she’s correcting papers. When her students are

at art or music, she’s working on lesson plans. And she passes the miles of her morning runs by contemplating how to most effectively present the upcoming day’s material to her students. “It keeps me entertained on the treadmill,” she says. Teaching is a particularly difficult profession for an elite runner because it’s a physical job — even if you’re not, like Westover, taking your students on walks or emceeing dance-offs before cursive lessons. Tisha Waller, a 1996 and 2004 Olympian in the high jump, taught kindergarten and first grade during her track and field career, and 1992 Olympian Annette Peters was an elementary school teacher when she won the 1500m-3,000m double at the 1993 U.S. championships. But neither of those athletes put in close to the mileage that Westover does. “My coach is a teacher, too, and he asked me, ‘Have you noticed what it RUNNINGTIMES

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48 /

RUNNINGTIMES_NOVEMBER 2010

Victor Sailer/Photo Run Courtesy of North Charlestown Community School From Top:

feels like to run after two weeks of summer vacation versus what it felt like to run after work?’” Westover says. “And I said, ‘Oh, yeah, it’s completely different, because you’re not on your feet all day.’” It was Sayers who convinced Westover to take the summer of 2010 off from work, instead of managing the town pool as she had the previous eight years. She spent July and August running, resting — and, for the first time in years, reading books — and says she enjoyed her first taste of life as a full-time athlete. “This summer was a huge eye-opener for me,” she says. “I feel like I’m recovering a lot better. You have all this extra time, and you do wonder, what if I did this permanently?” Westover keeps her weekly mileage between 130 and 160 during the hot New England summer, but supplements her running with three to four 2-mile swims per week. Her husband, Rob, a former downhill mountain bike racer whom she married in August 2009, thinks that given her prowess in the pool and on the roads, Heidi should give the triathlon a try. “We have talked about it, and he says that biking is the easiest part to pick up,” she says. “But there’s that time aspect. How much more can you fit into a day? Right now I’m just concentrating on running, and the New York City Marathon is definitely a big one on my list.” Westover’s primary goal for New York is hitting the Olympic trials “A” standard of 2:39, though ideally she’d like to improve upon her career best by breaking 2:35. But though she admits she daydreams about being in the mix at the 2012 trials, she’s too attached to her students — and to her identity as a teacher — to consider abandoning her career in education while she trains. In fact, at last year’s world half marathon championships, she talked about her students so much that her teammates thought she was discussing her own children. “I was like, ‘Oh, no, they’re not mine. I give them away at quarter to 3 every day,’” she laughs. “I’ve just always seen myself as a teacher. It would be really hard to imagine only running and not teaching.” And so Westover continues to log early-morning miles as her schedule requires. Now on her third treadmill — she wore out the first two — she has run as far as 31 miles in one session on her trusty Sole. (That ultra-long run came when she got the call, 20 miles into her run one morning, that school had been cancelled because of snow, and she decided, hey, let’s do a 50K.)

WENDI RY MULTITASKING MARATHONER

Daily runs in the dark is a familiar concept for most of the employed elite running New York. Working full-time and running at that level requires waking up before dawn, and the in-home treadmill is an essential tool for women trying to squeeze serious training runs into their work days. During the winter, the combination of a lack of daylight, poorly maintained rural roads and freezing temperatures confines Wendi Ray, a 2:38 marathoner, almost exclusively to the treadmill in her house in Sister Bay, Wis. “I invested in a pretty good one,” says Ray, 37. “The YMCA is 25 minutes away, so time-wise it was just easier to have one at home.” Ray is a speech therapist who works with children, ages 3 and under, who have autism, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, or other developmental issues. She covers all of Door County, and as a contractor who works in her patients’ homes, she’s able to make her own hours, scheduling most of her appointments for Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. That flexibility, however, doesn’t mean that she’s living a life of leisure on the weekends. Instead, she says, “Friday is when the tough part starts.” Ray gets up by 4:45 on Friday to do an 18- to 24-mile run. She’ll do a second run on Friday afternoon and then head to Mink River Basin Supper Club, the Ellison Bay restaurant and bar owned by her husband, Linden Ray. There, she works the first of four long weekend shifts as a waitress and hostess. “I guess in an ideal world, I would love to have time to put my feet up and relax,” Ray says of the grueling shifts. “I mean, sometimes I’m on my feet for 13 hours a day on the weekend. But I try to not get too worked up about it because I know that’s the way it has to be.” Though she laments that the long hours do take a toll—“I’m not a night person, and it’s when I’m working the dinner hours that I start wishing a little that I didn’t have to be there” — Ray’s results haven’t suffered from her work schedule. In fact, she’s running the fastest times of her career. Last year at the Twin Cities Marathon in Minneapolis, Ray broke 2:40 for the first time, notching a 2:38:58, good for 10th in the U.S. championships. And in June of this year, three months after turning 37, she broke her half marathon PR by more than a minute, running 1:14:55 in placing third in the Duluth, Minn., Grandma’s Half. “I always feel like I could be in better shape,” admits Ray, who says the half marathon PR was a particular surprise, given that she and Linden had just opened up a coffee shop and she’d found herself busier than usual in the weeks leading up to the race. “I have to trust my training, because I don’t get a chance to race that often with the work that I do.” Coached by email by Greg McMillan, whom she has never met, Ray strives to run 80 to 100 miles per week, with a recovery week of about 70 once a month. She does all of her speed workouts early in the morning on the treadmill, with Linden conked out upstairs. In the summer and fall she heads to Peninsula State Park to do long runs on the same trails she if that would make a difference,” she says. The demands of her three jobs traversed as a high-schooler 20 years ago. She runs alone, but isn’t with- — speech therapist, restaurant worker, and baker of breads and biscotti out company, frequently crossing paths with deer, turkeys and skunks. for the Rays’ new coffee shop — preclude her from finding out. But she When the days get shorter and she starts to hear coyotes howling, she nevertheless prioritizes her athletic career over her other roles. knows it’s time to take her training indoors for the winter. “I’m who I am at the moment, but I’m a runner every day,” she says. Ray does wonder how much faster she could run if she had time to “So although my jobs are definitely important, I try to put running first, increase her weekly mileage. “I wish I could get it to 120 or 130, just to see because you can be competitive only for so long.” 50 /

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LAURIE KNOWLES VP, COACH AND COMPETITOR

Also conscious of the fact that her elite running career won’t last forever is Laurie Knowles, a 33-year-old working mother who calls the Olympic trials “realistically a twice-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” Knowles, who ran a personal-best 2:44:03 at the 2008 trials in Boston, missed most of 2009 because of a difficult pregnancy. She delivered son Cooper, her first child with husband Nathan Knowles, via C-section in January, and resumed running about a month later. She hopes to break 2:40 in New York City, although her coach, Roy Benson, says her training indicates she’s in 2:37 shape. Knowles has managed to prepare for the U.S. championships while working full-time and coaching boys and girls cross country at the Marist School in Atlanta. Her task has been made somewhat easier by the fact that Cooper, whom she calls “an absolute angel,” takes well to the baby jogger and has been sleeping through the night since he was 7 weeks old. But squeezing training runs around work nevertheless requires creativity and flexibility.

Clockwise from Top Left:

Jiro Mochizuki/Photo Run

Victor Sailer/Photo Run

Courtesy of Laurie Knowles

Kristi Appel

Knowles has managed to prepare for the U.S. championships while working fulltime and coaching boys and girls cross country at the Marist School in Atlanta. Nathan watches Cooper while Knowles meets her Atlanta Track Club teammates at 5:30 most mornings for an 8- to 10-miler at about 7:15 pace. She’s home by 7:30 to feed the baby and start working. As vice president for Sparrow Pond Construction, a large-scale residential renovation company, Knowles, who has an MBA from Georgia Tech, runs the office side of the business. She either works from home, or brings Cooper into the office with her and plops him on a play mat near her desk while she handles accounts payable, insurance, payroll, permitting and the like. At 3 p.m., Knowles is off to the high school to supervise practice, after which she may do a second run of the day, on her own or with Nathan, whom she met when both ran for the University of Arkansas. Sometimes Knowles’ parents, who live part-time in the Atlanta area, watch Cooper while she does her second workout; otherwise he goes with her. The term “baby jogger” might conjure images of mother and son enjoying a leisurely tour of the neighborhood, but Knowles says that as long as she avoids hills, she’s able to do serious training, including tempo runs, while pushing Cooper. “I did 6 miles at 6-minute pace with him last week and it went fine,” she said in August. “It’s definitely a hard workout, but it works.” In her preparation for New York, Knowles plans to run up to 100 miles per week, done mostly on roads and trails. And if she doesn’t have time to get to a track for speed work, or if it’s a particularly brutal hot summer day in Atlanta, Knowles, like Ray, relies on her treadmill — “my big Christmas present last year” — to sneak in a few fast miles or hill repeats when she can. It’s a hectic schedule, but the slow economy is conducive to fast times for Knowles: less business for Sparrow Pond lately has allowed her to devote more time to her running. And while she admits to being “completely envious” when her close friend and college teammate Amy Begley,

a 2008 Olympian and a full-time runner, tells her about her sleep and training schedule, Knowles thrives on the challenge of balancing work, training and motherhood. “Running is something I absolutely enjoy, and I’m very competitive, but I’m not sure I could make a career out of it,” she says. “I see myself as that level right below professional. And I like to work. So I wouldn’t trade my life for anything.” • RUNNINGTIMES

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SPORTS MEDICINE TODAY

SPORTS MEDICINE TODAY Unlike in sports such as bicycling, skiing, even swimming, technology can’t help you run faster. It may, however, help you recover from injury faster, diagnose problems better and stay healthy longer. In this sports medicine special, we look at three areas where new technologies are having an impact on our sport. From a lab that analyzes every force and micromovement of your gait to today’s lessinvasive surgeries to the rehab choices of the elite, here’s a look at running early in the second decade of the 21st century.

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HIGH-TECH GAIT ANALYSIS By Brian Metzler

Photo:

Joel Wolpert

The SPEED Performance Clinic at the University of Virginia can ﬁnd out what’s ailing you A year ago, Stephanie Pezzullo was on the verge of giving up on running. Two and a half years removed from a brutal ankle injury and subsequent surgery, she couldn’t run without severe pain in her right leg. It wasn’t the ankle that was actually bothering her. Although she had undergone a fairly complicated procedure in the spring of 2007 to successfully reposition the talus bone in her right foot — it’s a small bone that sits between the heel bone and the terminus of the tibia and fibula — she had done extensive rehab to get back to running by the end of that year and was hoping to qualify for the 2008 U.S. Olympic trials in the 3,000m steeplechase. That’s not how things turned out. Pezzullo was a soccer player at Penn State and later played on a semi-pro team in Charlotte, N.C., before ZAP Fitness coach Pete Rea discovered her and invited her to train under his tutelage in 2006. Despite her limited running background, Pezzullo’s well-developed aerobic system responded well to distance running and she ran an impressive 16:23 in her 5,000m debut. Rea figured her strength and agility would be ideal for the steeplechase, and after she ran 10:17 and qualified for the 2007 U.S. championships in her first race, it looked like a brilliant plan. But then in a tune-up race before nationals, Pezzullo clipped the first barrier with her trailing leg and badly injured her ankle. Fast-forward through almost a year of rehab, Pezzullo started training on her own while working full-time as a personal trainer in Charlotte. Even though she had regained some of her fitness and was running pretty well in road 5Ks, she had developed some gait imbalances and had constant pain in her hamstrings, quads, IT band and glutes. “I felt like I had torn muscles on my whole right side every time I ran,” she says. She started cycling last year to reduce her focus on running and found some success in duathlons, winning her age group in the first one she entered. She was still trying to run some, but the pain persisted and she was beyond frustrated. Worse yet, none of the many doctors she visited could figure out what was causing her pain and each one came to the same conclusion: Quit running. “A lot of doctors told me I was never going to be the same after the surgery,” she says. “At some point, I said to myself, ‘This is ridiculous. I’m getting a little older, maybe I should listen to them and move on.’” So as somewhat of a last resort, Rea suggested that Pezzullo make an appointment to see physical therapist and renowned running gait analyst Jay Dicharry, the director of the SPEED Performance Clinic and the coordinator of the Motion Analysis Lab at the University

of Virginia’s Center for Endurance Sport. The state-of-the-science lab is housed in the Musculoskeletal Office Building amid the 54-acre Fontaine Research Park adjacent to the university’s main campus in Charlottesville. The SPEED Clinic, which opened in 2004, is one of the only such labs in the world open to the public, a place where, for a $300-$450 fee, a citizen runner can make an appointment to receive professional biomechanical evaluation, physiological testing, technique training and gait and motion analysis. (SPEED is an acronym for Strength, Power, Endurance, Education and Development.) In recent years, the clinic has been a popular place, which should come as no surprise given that studies have shown 40 to 50 percent of all runners are injured every year. Dicharry and his staff see several runners every week and upwards of 250 per year, ranging from world-class performers to determined lifers who want to keep running. Pezzullo, who falls somewhere in between, drove five hours from Charlotte to Charlottesville with hopes that she could finally rid herself of the physical, mental and emotional anguish brought on by more than two years of not being able to run without pain. “We see more recreational runners than elites,” says Dicharry, who’s also a USATF-certified coach. “We see everybody from someone who has a medal around their neck from a big event they’ve been to, to someone who says, ‘Look I’m the mother of four kids and I can’t run 30 minutes four days a week if I have this injury, and if I can’t fi x this, I’m going to go insane.’” With all of his patients, including Pezzullo, Dicharry starts by spending up to 45 minutes conducting an in-depth running history interview. He wants to find out how you got to that point. How long have you been running? What other minor or major injuries have you had? Where is the pain or discomfort you’re experiencing? What do you think causes or changes the pain? What kind of training are you doing? What kind of shoe are you wearing? Are you doing core stability exercises, weight training or any other ancillary workouts? “I don’t just talk about it with you, I’ll watch you go through those exercises,” he says.” I want to know exactly what you’re doing and how much. Most people come to see me after they’ve failed with five doctors and physical therapists and coaches, and usually there are a lot of in-depth things going on, and one of the things we have the luxury of doing is spending some time with folks. I don’t rush that because it tells me where we’re going to target a lot of things that day.” From there, Dicharry puts his patient subjects on a RUNNINGTIMES

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Once at that pace, the system records data related to joint mobility, muscle flexibility, rotational alignment, lateral alignment, the ability to stabilize joints, the amount of force the runner generates upon ground impact and the forces impacting various joints. The raw data is culled into functional graphs that point out asymmetrical body movements, force imbalances and various degrees of joint extension. Dicharry takes 54 /

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Joel Wolpert

THE SPEED CLINIC IS ONE OF THE ONLY SUCH LABS IN THE WORLD OPEN TO THE PUBLIC, A PLACE WHERE A CITIZEN RUNNER CAN MAKE AN APPOINTMENT TO RECEIVE PROFESSIONAL BIOMECHANICAL EVALUATION, PHYSIOLOGICAL TESTING, TECHNIQUE TRAINING AND GAIT AND MOTION ANALYSIS.

cues from those numbers and then puts Physical therapist Jay the patient through a musculoskeletal Dicharry walks a runner through his gait analysis. exam that includes a series of dynamic clinical tests similar to a physical therapy appointment. From there, he can understand why the body is acting the way it is and can make a diagnosis and offer up exercises for correcting any deficiencies. “I’m looking for three things: muscle flexibility, joint mobility and the ability to stabilize joints,” Dicharry says. And with Pezzullo, he found that her right leg had atrophied so badly after surgery that her foot strength and balance control on the right side were very poor compared to her left side. Basically, her left side was doing most of the work and she was essentially limping through all of her workouts. “Steph had compensated for so long that her compensations were all she knew,” Dicharry says. “Every time she tried to do various exercises or ran, she was reinforcing her poor technique. The foot is the first thing to hit the ground. If you can’t stabilize correctly, the runner begins to limp and keeps limping. And the limp begins to feel normal to the point they don’t even notice it. “The difference in vertical ground reaction force production on her right leg was staggering. Her gait pattern caused extra metabolic effort, with no return on investment. Thus she had trained herself into an excessive limping pattern that she perceived as normal.” The good news is that Dicharry found Pezzullo to be fairly symmetrical in alignment and structural mobility. And that meant, by focusing on the underlying weaknesses that allowed her to develop the poor gait pattern, she could focus on building foot strength and balance and rectify her situation. Using the lab’s real-time feedback training to get data on the forces Pezzullo was generating, Dicharry was able to cue her to “find” correct form for herself by activating and isolating the proper muscles, enabling her to correct the imbalances. “Even a trained eye can’t see forces — you have to measure them,” Dicharry says. “That’s one of the reasons

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SPORTS MEDICINE TODAY

state-of-the-art triaxial treadmill that, when purchased for $750,000 a few years ago, was one of the first two in the world. It has a very firm feeling underfoot, one that Dicharry says closely mimics an asphalt road. More importantly, it has a 12-foot-long force plate built into the conveyor system to record footstrike impact data at a rate of 1,000 times per second while a runner is cruising along at steady-state pace. Many labs have small force plates built into the floor, allowing for one footstrike measurement per run-by. One big problem with that method is that, because a subject can see the force plate before they step on it, the singular focus of that task typically results in a harder footstrike than usual. Second, Dicharry says, runners in those settings are either accelerating or decelerating, which doesn’t allow for consistent data collection. So, after a patient is dressed up with reflective markers and the system is calibrated, Dicharry will have them warm up for several minutes and then do a series of dynamic tests in front of 12 high-speed infrared cameras that capture 500 images per second. It might include walking, jumping, bounding, squatting, singleleg thrusts or pivot drills; the actual set of movements is based on the issues that have been ailing the runner. From there, Dicharry has each runner ramp up to a sub-threshold pace on the treadmill, usually somewhere just slower than a runner’s tempo pace. So for a 35:30 10K runner, for example, that means running at about 6:45 pace for about 3 minutes before data collection begins.

R UN RUN RU NN NIIN NIN N G TIM T IIM ES TI ES_NO _ O VE _N _NO V EM VEM E M BER BE ER 2 2010

BRIAN METZLER is a senior editor for Running Times.

Joel Wolpert

Dicharry has seen it all. Shin splits, low back pain, anterior knee pain, patellar knee pain, compromised joint mobility, structural misalignments, SI joint problems, various stress fractures and much, much more. But, he’s quick to point out, not everything is what it seems. For example, a woman came in with numbness and tingling in her foot and even though she had some foot trauma, Dicharry determined it wasn’t her foot but her lower back that was the source of her discomfort. “The best emails I get are those five-page race report emails that go into detail about this and that and a new PR and I felt great,” Dicharry says. “That’s success to me.” He’s gotten a bunch of those from Pezzullo. As summer ended, new coach Scott Simmons was gearing her up to peak for the 4.75-mile Manchester Road Race on Nov. 25 in New Haven, Conn., and the 6K USATF National Club Cross Country Championships on Dec. 11 in Charlotte. “I’m so excited to be able to run again pain-free,” she says. “It wasn’t just about my running career or competition … I couldn’t even play pick-up basketball or tennis or just be an active person without leg pain. I felt so debilitated for so long. I thought I’d never Dicharry’s gait feel this good again, and now I’m back on track and analysis is nothing if still young enough to see what I can do. My next not comprehensive. goal is to get faster for the 2012 Olympic trials. But I never would have said that a year ago.”

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a gait lab can so accurately provide the data you need to make a difference. As Steph was running, we showed her specifically what she was doing in a graphic format and then told her how to fi x it. A lot of what we did was focused on cues to encourage postures and gait styles that allow you to recruit the muscles as they should be.” But once the source of the problem is determined and fi xed temporarily in the lab, how do you start to remedy it on a permanent basis? Do you work on the strength and balance limitations and expect a runner to improve in their gait? Or do you only cue correct form and expect it to be maintained even though the runner doesn’t have the strength to control the injury at fault? “It’s important to work on specific control of muscles so that we fi x the original problem that started this mess, and then reinforce these concepts into drills and running form,” Dicharry says. He developed a set of five exercises with various form drills for Pezzullo and she did them religiously with low-mileage running. “I did them five days a week and I did them for 45 minutes every day because I really wanted to be healthy,” she says. “Even if I didn’t have time to run, I’d still do those exercises, and I still do them now.” Dicharry’s instincts and Pezzullo’s determination paid off. She started running again in late January and by March was starting to get fit. She won a 2-mile race during the indoor season in Boston and then dropped her PR in the 3,000m steeplechase to 10:08 and then ran several road 5Ks under 17:00.

INGMiamiMarathon.com

JANUARY 30, 2011

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SPORTS MEDICINE TODAY

Paula Radcliffe’s bothersome bunion.

DON’T FEAR THE KNIFE By Brian Fullem, D.P.M. Foot surgery for runners is no longer the last resort PAULA RADCLIFFE first noticed pain from a bunion after she won the 2005 world championships marathon. Over the next four years, the world record-holder in the marathon suffered a series of injuries, and despite occasional bright spots, such as winning the 2007 and 2008 editions of the New York City Marathon, she was in rehab more often than not. Finally, in May 2009, Radcliffe underwent bunion surgery at the hands of podiatrist Amol Saxena, in Palo Alto, Calif.

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“When we sat down and looked at my Pins hold injury history prior to the surgery in 2009, Radcliffe’s we realized that every injury, bar one, since foot in proper 2004 had been caused directly or indirectly position. by the bunion,” Radcliffe says. “Even the femoral stress fracture was related to my bunion pain, as it came from imbalances caused by modifying my orthotics to enable me to run on the right foot without significant pain.” Could Radcliffe have returned to normal running sooner by taking the counterintuitive step of opting for surgery earlier? While foot surgery should usually be considered a last resort after conservative treatment has failed, there are times when surgery may allow a runner to return to training faster. As in Radcliffe’s case, surgery can often provide a cure, while conservative treatment may only be treating the symptoms. Surgical techniques have improved considerably in the last decade; advances that allow for faster recovery and more predictable results can mean that the runner’s traditional avoidance of surgery is based on outdated thinking. Let’s look at four common running injuries — bunions, neuromas, Achilles tendon problems and injections, custom orthotic devices and various paddings plantar fasciitis — in terms of when to consider surgery and splints can help to treat the symptoms, but surgery is the only option to correct this problem. I don’t recommend surgical correction unless the patient has pain, but as in Radcliffe’s case, some injuries elsewhere may be indirectly related to the lack of proper function of the big toe joint due to HAV. Surgical correction typically involves cutting and repositioning the first metatarsal with the use of screws or pins to hold the bone in the proper position while it heals. Depending on the severity of the deformity, the bone may need to be cut at different spots. The severity of the bunion determines what procedure is required; larger deformities require more extensive correction, leading to a longer recovery time. Expect to miss a minimum of six to eight weeks from running and at least 12 weeks before the foot begins to function normally. The use of newer and better screws has shortened the recovery time considerably. Some screws have a lower profile, which often eliminates any discomfort associated with the head of the screw and allows the screw to remain in over more conservative treatment. First, though, these place permanently. caveats: You should always understand that there aren’t A new procedure known as “the mini-tightrope” uses any guarantees with any surgical procedure. Even the a pulley system and shows great promise. The technique best surgeon in the world has poor outcomes. It’s also involves using suture material attached to the first and important to note that some people take longer than second metatarsals, with the first metatarsal being average to heal while some can return to activity faster. “pulled” toward the second metatarsal. The great thing about this procedure is that, because the bone isn’t cut, recovery time is drastically reduced. However, because Bunions the second metatarsal is much smaller than the first The medical term for a bunion is Hallux Abducto metatarsal it doesn’t always serve as an ideal anchor. Valgus (HAV). The hallux (big toe) deviates towards the This procedure is not for all bunions, as there is a risk of second toe, and the first metatarsal head protrudes in fracture of the second metatarsal. the opposite direction. The most common complaint associated with this deformity is pain at the medial aspect of the joint. Neuromas The deformity is commonly considered an inherited A neuroma is inflammation of the nerve in the ball of trait, and there is no scientific evidence that a bunion can the foot, most commonly involving the area between be prevented with conservative treatment. Conservative the second and third metatarsal heads or the third and treatment starts with making sure your shoes are wide fourth metatarsal heads. Symptoms include pain in the enough. Occasionally treatments such as cortisone area directly before the toes, shooting pain into the toes,

Photo:

Victor Sailer/Photo Run

WHILE FOOT SURGERY SHOULD USUALLY BE CONSIDERED A LAST RESORT AFTER CONSERVATIVE TREATMENT HAS FAILED, THERE ARE TIMES WHEN SURGERY MAY ALLOW A RUNNER TO RETURN TO TRAINING FASTER.

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Keith Dowling had Achilles pain for two years from a bone spur known as a Haglund’s deformity.

numbness in the area and sometimes a feeling of walking on a marble. The majority of the time, conservative treatment, consisting of wider or more cushioned shoes, custom orthotic devices, cortisone injections and padding around the area, can alleviate the pain. One last resort before considering surgical intervention is a series of injections using a 4 percent solution of alcohol mixed with local anesthetic, a procedure known as sclerotherapy. The alcohol causes degeneration of the nerve fibers. The protocol involves a series of three to seven injections performed weekly. One study purported an 89 percent success rate with the procedure. I’ve not found anywhere close to that level of success, but there are no apparent negative side effects to sclerotherapy.

A newer technique called Endoscopic Decompression of Intermetatarsal Neuroma (EDIN) is a much simpler surgery. Neuromas are close to the base of the toes, which have a ligament on the top and bottom. EDIN involves making a very small incision between the toes in the interspace, then inserting a small camera to visualize and cut the top or dorsal ligament. The theory is that this “decompresses” the nerve, thereby relieving the pain. There’s little downside to this procedure. If pain persists after this surgery, then the nerve can be excised in the traditional manner.

Achilles Tendon Problems

Achilles tendinitis is one of the more difficult injuries any athlete can encounter. Within two weeks of Achilles inflammation, the tendon fibers begin to degenerate. One of the best conservative treatments for this injury is eccentric strengthening exercises. I find that eccentric strengthening combined with a core exercise program is the most effective treatment plan for chronic Achilles tendinosis. Shock wave therapy (ESWT) is also an excellent conservative treatment for chronic Achilles issues. ESWT sends sound waves deep into the tissue, promoting neovascularization (that is, the production of new blood vessels to allow the tissue to heal). The treatment can be After expensive and the full effect isn’t seen for up to three or surgery by the four months. There are almost no negative side effects author, Dowling to ESWT, but the treatment isn’t typically covered can run without pain. by insurance and can cost in excess of $1,000. In my practice I use the D-Actor 200 from Storz Medical, and have seen over a 70 percent success rate when used to One runner I treated tried all of the above, treat Achilles tendinosis. including sclerotherapy, to deal with pain in her foot that PRP (Platelet Rich Plasma) is a newer treatment was bad enough to interfere with her training. When involving giving a sample of your own blood, which none of the conservative treatments brought relief, she is then processed to extract the plasma and injected elected to undergo surgical excision of the nerve. Like back into the injured tendon or muscle. The treatment most foot surgery, hers was performed on an outpatient is costly and not covered by insurance, and scientific basis. She was running within four weeks of her surgery. studies haven’t shown it to be much more effective than a Nine years later, she’s still pain-free at her former placebo. In a review of all the medical studies published neuroma location. in the British Medical Bulletin on the use of PRP, the 60 /

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When deciding whether surgery makes sense, here’s an important question to answer: Have you exhausted more conservative treatments that will cure your problem instead of just treating its symptoms? The best person to answer these questions with you is your local sports podiatrist. Ideally you want your podiatrist to be both a fellow of the American Academy of Podiatric Sports Medicine (aapsm.org) and board-certiﬁed in foot surgery by The American Board of Podiatric Surgery (abps.org). For a podcast on how modern foot surgery for runners works, go to runningtimes.com/nov10. authors found just three high-quality studies among all the literature published, and none of these studies showed any statistically significant improvement. Surgery for Achilles pain may involve surgery on the tendon itself or, more commonly, closer to the attachment in the back of the calcaneus (heel bone) where patients may commonly have a bone spur known as a Haglund’s deformity. The use of anchors has further enhanced surgery involving the back of the heel, allowing the tendon to be detached to remove any bone spurring and then reattached with the use of an anchor. Recovery involves being in a short leg cast initially, then a removable cast followed by physical therapy with a return to running in roughly three months. World championships marathoner KEITH DOWLING (pictured, opposite page) had pain for the last two years of his competitive career from a Haglund’s deformity. After failed conservative treatment I operated on Keith using anchors. He doesn’t compete anymore but is able to run with no pain in the back of his heel.

Photo:

Victor Sailer/Photo Run

Plantar Fasciitis This injury typically resolves over 90 percent of the time with conservative treatment. The most important factor in treating this very common injury is early intervention. Calf stretching, icing with a frozen water bottle 20 to 30 minutes two or three times per day, taping and massage are the initial treatments, and work well for up to half of patients with this injury. When those treatments don’t help, then cortisone injections, over-the-counter and custom orthotic devices, Active Release Therapy and physical therapy are the next wave of treatments. One area of treatment that deserves more attention is strengthening the foot. Weakness of the intrinsic musculature accompanies plantar fasciitis. Early introduction of restrictive shoe gear in Westernized cultures may contribute to atrophy of these muscles. As part of the rehabilitation from this injury, it is important to add a strengthening and proprioception protocol to the treatment plan following the reduction of pain. Grabbing a towel with the toes, balancing on one foot and progressing to the use of a balance board can facilitate foot strengthening. After performing these exercises athletes can progress to barefoot running in the grass. Many of the shoe companies are now making minimalist shoes that are a nice adjunct to the treatment plan when used initially in moderation.

Shock wave therapy has been found to resolve plantar fasciitis in up 70 percent of cases that didn’t improve with more conventional treatments. TOPAZ and platelet-rich plasma therapy are two other pertinent treatments, but again, neither has a significant amount of medical literature reviewing its effectiveness. Sedation and local anesthesia in the operating room are necessary to perform TOPAZ. Needle holes are placed in a square pattern on the medial and central bands of the fascia on the bottom of the heel at the area of greatest pain. The TOPAZ unit is inserted into the needle holes, and the fascia is treated with a short burst of electric energy, resulting in microscopic cutting of the fascia, increased blood supply and break-up of the scar tissue. There also seems to be an increase in strength to the fascia with this procedure. The drawbacks are the need for surgery, the cost of surgery and the fact that scar formation from the multiple incisions may be a source of pain. Although scar formation is very rare, there’s a need for additional downtime with this procedure, and recovery is usually slower and more painful. It’s crucial that your physician rule out other causes of heel pain, such as nerve entrapment, before considering surgery; often an MRI should be ordered to confirm the proper diagnosis. Other surgical approaches include endoscopic plantar fasciotomy, in which the fascia is cut at the insertion point; ideally there’s minimal trauma to the tissue due to the use of arthroscopy. A traditional open approach allows the surgeon to examine for nerve entrapment, but it involves a larger incision, creating the possibility of more scar tissue, which can, ironically, cause nerve entrapment. Another approach, known as an instep fasciotomy, involves making the incision right in the arch. This procedure has the advantage of causing less scar tissue. The most worrisome complication involves creating instability of the foot. Most surgeons won’t cut the fascia completely; they often leave the outside portion of the fascia intact. Calcaneal cuboid syndrome is one possible complication that can be extremely difficult to resolve. Of all the surgeries in the foot, this is the one that should absolutely be considered as the last resort. BRIAN FULLEM is a sports podiatrist based in Tampa, Fla., with a 5,000m best of 14:25. His website is docfullem.com. RUNNINGTIMES

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Leg-length compression boots speed recovery.

NEW SOLUTIONS FOR OLD THERAPIES By Richard A. Lovett What the pros use for recovery Several years ago, Alberto Salazar told me about a time he’d had an injury that was affecting his foot, keeping him from running. So, he had a special orthotic made that shifted footstrike forces enough for him to do at least a modicum of training. Every week or two, he replaced the orthotic with a new one, ramping his training back up, orthotic by orthotic. More recently, 2008 Olympic marathoner Dathan Ritzenhein had his own foot injury. While the injury healed, Salazar, now Ritzenhein’s coach, had him train on an AlterG treadmill, a device that uses an inflatable ring, somewhat like a truck-tire inner tube, to lift as much as 80 percent of his body weight off his feet. It’s a bit like pool running, without the chlorine.

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Both are examples of what money-is-no-object injury rehab can get you. (There are two AlterG models, priced at $24,000 and $75,000.) What else is on the cutting edge, trickling down from the training rooms of wellheeled pros to the average Jock and Jill? Here are a few of the space-age gadgets elites are turning to. (As for how effective they are, see “Expensive Fun, or the Real Thing?”)

Game On? The Game Ready cold-therapy unit, made by CoolSystems, Inc., is a simple device in principle: basically an ice chest with a pump that circulates cold water through a cuff shaped to fit your injured body part. But its control unit has some pricey technology ($2,350 online) that sets the pressure in the pad, monitors the water temperature, and times its application. Luckily for those on a budget, there are other brands of cold-therapy machines that dispense with the fancy control unit and cost between $100 and $300. Without timers or temperature monitors, they’re either “on” or “off,” and you pick your desired level of compression by feel, with Velcro straps. Brad Aiken, medical director for rehabilitation at Baptist Hospital in Miami, calls the Game Ready a great example of how many of these “new” devices more build on than revolutionize traditional therapies: In the case of Game Ready, it’s basically a combination of cold and compression, both of which are long-used treatments for acute injuries. “It’s using new technology to get a bit more application of the cold or the pressure in the right area,” he says. “But it’s the cold and pressure that really work.” While the Game Ready and its kin were designed for surgical patients, that’s not their only use. “It makes sense that it would be helpful for a joint that is swollen and inflamed,” says sports-medicine orthopedist Robert Sandmeier of Portland, Ore. CoolSystems’ Web site lists several pro football players among its owners. Runners will be tempted to also use such units for speeding recovery from hard workouts, but that might not be a good idea. “I am not sure it would be helpful for an uninjured body that is [merely] overworked,” Sandmeier says. “For that, I would think things to promote muscle relaxation and improve circulation would be best. Ice generally is used to do the opposite in order to decrease swelling.” The Game Ready is a prescription device, so you can’t just buy it off the shelf. Cheaper cold-therapy units, however, are readily available online. And if you do want to go top-of-the-line, the prescription shouldn’t really be an obstacle if you’ve got a swollen knee or pulled hamstring pleading for attention.

“A lot of guys on the Tour [de France] had it,” says Bob Schwartz, a cyclist and rehabilitation doctor at St. Luke’s Rehabilitation Institute in Spokane, Wash. “There were two with broken wrists, and they kept riding with the tape on. Whether that helped, I don’t know, but they had it on.” “Since the [Beijing] Olympics, it’s gotten a lot of air time,” adds Steve Hanson, a runner and sports medicine chiropractor in Beaverton, Ore., who assisted at the 2008 Olympic track and field trials. Meb Keflezighi won the 2009 New York City Marathon with Kinesio tape around his left knee. Molly Huddle, whose 14:51 5,000m PR makes her the fourth fastest American ever, also uses it. Her chiropractor often applies it to promote circulation after Graston or other treatments. In addition, notes Huddle, “I’ve also worn it during a race or training, for areas that are sort of injured and ‘not firing.’ In college, I wore it on a weak/strained hip flexor during races.” Nobody’s sure how it works. One obvious aspect is its extremely high elasticity. “It doesn’t alter your range of motion too much,” says Hanson. “It just gives you a little extra pull in whatever direction you decide will help out.” In addition, he says, ripples in the tape surface appear to produce a “micro-massage” effect. “That, to an extent, helps pump blood.” The tape may also send signals to the brain via the body’s proprioceptors — the internal

Kinesio tape, selectively applied.

Illustrations:

Alex Riegert-Waters (2)

Strap it On Taping is another old technology, but tape is constantly evolving as manufacturers develop ever-moresophisticated materials. One of these is Kinesio tape, an elasticized material that, depending on how it’s applied, can either help you move, or restrict you. If you watch any kind of professional sports, you’ve seen it in action. It’s that gaily colored stuff athletes put on their calves, quads, knees, elbows, shoulders — whatever’s ailing them — to help them do their thing despite an injury or weakness. A 103-foot roll of Kinesio tape costs around $65. RUNNINGTIMES

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sensors that tell you the position and movement of your limbs even when you’re too busy suffering (or ogling the runner ahead of you) to be consciously thinking about running. “Every time you move, you’re going to get some impulse to the brain,” Hanson says. “You’re going to feel it tugging and pulling. So, a bit of it may be a musclememory thing.” Huddle agrees. “I don’t really notice an effect in healing, but it does make you more aware of the muscle,” she says. The pros often have professional trainers who tape them up whenever they need it. But that’s not required. Many tape jobs can be taught to you by a practitioner, Hanson says. “The tough job is learning how much tension you [need] and the placement of the tape.”

Speed of Recovery Injury rehab isn’t the only thing runners are interested in. It would also be nice to speed up recovery periods between hard workouts. After all, the more often you have to delay a hard tempo run or track workout because you’re not quite recovered from the previous one, the fewer key workouts you can do. “Over the course of a month you [might] miss two or three workouts you could have had,” Canadian triathlete and two-time Olympic medalist Simon Whitfield told the Discovery channel in 2009.

HERE ARE A FEW OF THE SPACE-AGE GADGETS ELITES ARE TURNING TO. Training, nutrition and recovery are the big three determinants of performance, says Gilad Jacobs, vicepresident of athlete technologies at NormaTec Sports, which makes an inflatable recovery “boot” (see below) that Whitfield uses in his quest to minimize his betweenworkout down time. Training and nutrition have long been explored by coaches and athletes. It’s recovery that’s the vast, unexplored country. “Everyone is running in the same gear,” Jacobs says. “Everybody is eating more or less the same thing, putting in the same miles. Recovery is coming up as the number one difference-maker.” Coaches have long had runners jump into ice baths after hard workouts. But despite anecdotal reports that this works, there’s surprisingly little scientific evidence. Opponents argue that icing should be limited to injury treatment. For normal training aches, they say, you have the same problem that Sandmeier sees with higher-tech versions of icing like the Game Ready: There’s no swelling to reduce and icing merely causes arteries to contract, pinching off blood flow. Whichever side of this debate is correct, ice is undoubtedly uncomfortable. It’s also time-consuming and carries some risks. (Mild hypothermia is quite possible if you stay in too long.) An alternative is compression, ideally in the form of athletic clothing. Compression clothes have been around for a long time. 64 /

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Expensive Fun, or the Real Thing? Do these devices work? At the most basic levels, the answer is as old as sports medicine. “A lot of the new stuff is [also] the old stuff,” says Brad Aiken, M.D. “There’s always stuff coming in and out of vogue — something ‘new’ that’s basically a repackaged version of something that’s been around before.” Bob Schwartz, M.D., agrees. “The initial short-term treatment for any injury is rest, ice, compression and elevation — RICE,” he says. “There are a lot of gadgets out there,” Hendrick Ramaala, winner of the 2004 New York City Marathon, notes. “I still use the old-fashioned way of deep sports massage and stretching. I guess I haven’t moved with the times yet.” South African exercise physiologist Timothy Noakes, author of Lore of Running, is another skeptic. “I suspect that a lot of this is hype,” he says. Furthermore he’s cautious in general, about any effort to promote excessively rapid injury recovery. “We know, for example, that muscles probably take two to three months to fully recover,” he says. “If you return to activity before then, you only put yourself at risk of another injury.” Sped-up recovery from training workouts, however, might be a different matter. NormaTec Sports’ Gilad Jacobs says that there is scientific evidence (as yet unpublished) that his company’s boots work. The study used a device called an algometer to measure how hard you can press on a muscle, such as a quad, before a person feels pain. Testing before and after use of the boots, Jacobs says, has shown that the boot reduces muscles’ sensitivity, both immediately and hours later — a sign that they’re recovering. There might be a reason why Hall, Kastor and others are such enthusiastic fans. Other technologies, such as Kinesio tape and compression tights, are inexpensive enough that they might fall into the try-it-and-find-out arena. Just don’t expect miracles. “It helped a little,” Huddle says of her collegiate use of Kinesio tape. She’s equally cautious not to overhype compression clothing. “Any results are too subtle to notice right away,” she says. “But if it helps even a small amount, I figure it is worth wearing them.” Ultimately, what matters might be what you yourself think is best. That sounds trite, but if you don’t believe in a method, it might well not work, even if everyone else says it does. Studies have found, for example, that if you give people sugar pills and tell them they might be harmful, you may indeed see the suggested side effects. (This is called the nocebo effect: the opposite of placebo.) Conversely, if you pick the recovery or rehabilitation method you most believe in, it might give you better results than methods others try to pick for you. Even in surgery, Aiken says, “a lot of the results are often because of the hands-on effect of the [physical] therapist.” Perhaps that, more than anything else, is the secret of the pros. The best often have people — and treatments (high-tech or low-tech) — that they believe in.

A cold-therapy unit working its magic.

from a Sunday marathon, or sitting on the deck with the family after a hard track workout. The product is now on the market: tights and shirts ($75 each) designed not for running, but for vegging out. “From the feet up, [the tights] apply enough pressure to force the [old] blood out,” Corpuz says. Then, with the old blood stopped from pooling in the extremities, “what your body naturally does is to push fresh blood in.” The tights, which I tested for this article, felt like tighter-than-average running or cycling tights, but with a better-than-average range of motion. “[That’s because] we relax the area around the knees and groin so you can sit for long periods of time without feeling that this thing is going to squeeze the life out of you,” Corpuz says. Huddle uses something similar from Saucony. “I have worn them all day after a workout, or to bed,” she says. “They are quite comfortable.”

Illustration:

Alex Riegert-Waters

These Boots Aren’t Made for Walking

“In the 1980s,” says Rey Corpuz, director of marketing for McDavid Sports Medicine in Woodridge, Ill., “there was a story from the days of Thurman Thomas [a running back for the Buffalo Bills]. He was having trouble with his hamstrings, so he bought a woman’s girdle for his thighs. That was the start of compression.” Since then, compression garments have become all the rage in cycling and triathlon, equipment-heavy sports that are often ahead of running on the technology bandwagon. “A big thing in cycling right now [is] formfitting garments with gradients in compression moving up the leg,” says Schwartz. “The theory is that they are tighter distally [farther from the heart] because you don’t want the fluids getting trapped down at your toes. Then, a gradient in pressure moving up the leg helps pump fluid back up. Some [racers] wear them during cycling, and some put them on right after the race.” Elite runners are learning the same thing. Olympic marathon medalist Deena Kastor uses ASICS’ Inner Muscle line of compression tights and capri pants for many of her workouts. “[It] is a combination of fabrics of different elasticity and seam lines, so your hips, glutes, and legs are being assisted with proper running mechanics,” she says. “For me, the difference feels as if the material in the tights is pulling down on my lower back and pushing my hips under me. With this subtle correction, I am getting more power from my hips and less from overworking Achilles and feet. It helps me with a more efficient stride.” Useful as these garments are, however, a few years ago Corpuz thought it might also be beneficial to have ones designed solely for recovery — especially if they were comfortable enough to be worn on the plane, flying home

Higher tech, and a bit less portable, are NormaTec’s “boots,” officially known as the MVP, for Most Valuable Pump. The professional version, used primarily by cyclists, triathletes and basketball teams, costs $4,850 and is the descendent of hospital equipment designed for patients with poor circulation. It’s not something you can run in. Or even walk. Imagine hip-waders, connected to an air pump and a control box about the size of a toaster. The pump cycles air through five chambers that compress in rhythm to move venous blood and lymphatic fluid from the foot to the calf, then to the knee, etc., until it’s squeezed all the way out of the leg. “Think of big blood pressure cuffs,” says Jacobs. The cuffs don’t just force spent blood and lymphatic fluids heartwards. They also relax in the right sequence to allow fresh, arterial blood to rush back. “The machine is your masseuse,” company representative Jacobs says. Nike believes in it enough that Salazar overnighted a NormaTec sleeve to Switzerland in the summer of 2009 after Chris Solinsky rolled his ankle on a training run. And while the price tag is high enough to keep most recreational runners at bay, that may soon change: The company is hoping to have a consumer version on the market by Christmas or early 2011, priced at about $1,500. The primary difference is that the pumping cycle — programmable in the professional version — will be standardized, simplifying the control box. Meanwhile, Olympic marathoner Ryan Hall loves his pro version, particularly after travel. “Some [athletes] have even been known to sleep with them to get through injuries and such,” he says. Kastor is also a fan. “This is the single best recovery device, post-workout,” she says. “I am married to a massage therapist, and still find it challenging to get work done every day. The NormaTec device, or ‘my legs,’ as I call it, is a great way to recover between workouts.” • RICHARD A. LOVETT is a freelance writer, running coach and masters runner based in Portland, Ore.

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A VIP SPOT AT THE FRONT OF THE PACK CAN’T GUARANTEE A GREAT MARATHON, BUT FOR THE SELECT FEW WHO EARN IT, IT SURE HELPS By Justin Nyberg 66 /

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PhotoRun (top) Chip East/Reuters/Corbis Photos:

don’t belong here. Not at the front women since 2006. Only a few other races around masses before the race. I’m something of a highof the field of the 2009 New York the country have similar incentives for top ama- maintenance runner on race day. I’ve figured out City Marathon, with my toes on the teurs, notably the Chicago Marathon’s Elite exactly what my body needs in the hours before starting line. I’m not an elite athlete, Development Program, and it’s arguable that a race — the timing of breakfast, of drinking, of though anyone watching me over the none has as many perks as the one at New York. my morning constitutional. Everything needs “You feel taken care of. It’s very low stress for to go perfectly for me to perform my best. And last few hours might suspect otherwise. I arrived on a private, chartered the athletes. They get to leave a little later, they since this was to be my first marathon, I was all bus in a motorcade escorted by police. I spent get their own warm-up area, they get a closer the more nervous about something screwing the morning lounging in a special heated tent baggage pickup at the finish,” says Grotewold. me up. The last thing I wanted was to have it all with complimentary breakfast and coffee, and “I think it makes the race day operation a little ruined by a cramp or digestive disaster because warmed up for an hour with the likes of Meb smoother, so all they have to do is focus on run- I shivered for three hours in the cold before the Keflezighi and Robert Kipkoech Cheruiyot, ning, and all the rest is taken care for them on starting line, or got the Heisman at that lastdoing orbits of a secluded parking lot with race morning.” call call of nature. plenty of space to run. I had a race bib with a It’s a good thing, because just getting to the There’s a big difference between running a very low number, 202 in a field of 44,177, and starting line of a major marathon can be taxing marathon and racing it. Those who want to finwas paraded in a select group in front of the rest enough. On race morning in New York, a popu- ish a 26.2-mile run can do so by simply building of the field, which began to applaud as we were lation larger than the country of Liechtenstein their mileage slowly and steadily until they can led past. needs to be funneled into cramped staging areas suffer through the distance — a worthwhile goal Now, I’m staring at the vacant, windy slope of on Staten Island. That takes a while. The start is that still takes an immense amount of dedicathe Verrazano-Narrows Bridge on Staten Island, at 9:40 a.m., but most runners must be on their tion. But those who want to race a marathon and I’m ready to run the race of my life. There buses by 5 or 6 a.m., only to spend three or four — to suffer on the cusp of their lactic threshold in will be no one in my way — no slower runners hours corralled near the starting line. The scene the name of shaving a few minutes off the clock to slalom, no inexperienced runners speeding there resembles a refugee camp. Inside chain-link — have a more difficult task. They must put in ahead and messing up the early pacing, no grap- pens and enclosed fields, runners sit or pace in the more time, more miles, more speed work, and, pling for drinks at the early water stations on cold, often damp November air. It can be a rather yes, more suffering. Fourth Avenue. I am warmed up and stress free. miserable place to wait. There are few shelters, I always wanted to race the marathon, but What did I do to earn this VIP pampering? and there’s little room to warm up. Cold, ner- had never before appreciated what marathonSix weeks before the race, I stumbled across an vous runners jockey for choice sitting spots and ers go through until I tried it myself. Six days a interesting note on the NYC Marathon Web site queue up for the long strings of gray and Tiffany- week, with three fast workouts, I spent the better about the race’s Sub-Elite Program. The orga- blue portable toilets. No matter how many johns part of my summer and fall religiously following nizers were offering a select group of runners the New York Road Runners put out (more than my training schedule: a Tuesday track session, a an “enhanced start experience” with VIP trans- 1,500-plus), there will always be a shortage, espe- Thursday medium tempo run, and a long tempo on portation to the start, a special staging area, and cially in the last 45 minutes before the start, when Saturday. Amid those taxing workouts, I struggled a clear position at the front of the field — not it seems almost the entire field decides to try to to keep pace with the rest of my life: my 50-plusto mention a special reception area at the fin- squeeze in one more bathroom visit. Miss your hour-a-week job as a magazine editor, my diet, my ish line, away from the foil-draped masses. The chance, and you might as well plan on stopping personal life. No matter what threatened to get in catch? You had to be among the fastest 50 men somewhere in the middle of the race — not a great the way, I did my workouts. Many Thursday nights, and 50 women to apply for the program with strategy for a PR. sometimes past 11 p.m., I’d be out on the deserted a verifiable time — 2:35 marathon or 1:12 half roads of my hometown, Santa Fe, knocking off marathon or better for men, 3:05 marathon or Before stumbling across the Sub-Elite Program, even splits by the light of my headlamp. More 1:27 half for women — in the past two years. I was dreading the idea of waiting it out with the than once, I found myself on the track after the The program is meant to support elite amateurs: a dedicated but often neglected class of racers. Most train nearly as hard as professionals and show up on race day ready to race just as seriously — they’re just not fast enough to have sponsors or perks. The program gives these subelite runners elite level treatment, setting them up to run the best race they possibly can. “Everyone training for a marathon trains very hard,” says Sam Grotewold, manager of professional athletes for the New York Road Runners. “But these people are very competitive. They are the best athletes in their hometowns, they win the local races and that sort of thing. They’re not professionals — they have families and hold down full-time jobs — but many of them are ready to make that next jump to qualify for the Olympic trials and that sort of thing.” The New York City Marathon has offered special treatment to sub-elite men since 2004, and to The author (#202, in white cap) made the most of his opportunity with a new PR (facing page) . RUNNINGTIMES

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101° West Photography (top) Paul J. Sutton From Top:

marched to a different start, a short distance away. Thousands had already amassed there, a sea of runners that stopped 20 feet short of the starting line. That was the space reserved for us. Those behind it had been standing still for most of the morning, and now were forced to watch as we did long, casual warm-up strides up and down the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. When the starting cannon finally boomed, I strode out a little faster than the field. I couldn’t resist. It was my one chance to peek over my shoulder at essentially the entire New York City marathon field, looking back over the months of training and sacrifice that brought me there, and feeling, for those few seconds, the fleeting privilege and vanity of the lead. A minute or so later, the elites — having started at a line slightly behind ours — began to pass. Jockeying for space for three to four hours at the Fort Wadsworth holding area. For about a minute, I was shoulder to shoulder with the best runners in the world, in the eerie stadium lights had been shut off, suffering through private area with no fences. A large heated tent quiet on the middle of the bridge, and anything 1200-meter intervals, alone except for the moon. I’d was set up, split into two sections — one side seemed possible. • joke that my life became little more than working, for the pros, one for sub-elites. Inside was a bufeating for running, resting for running, and run- fet of bagels and carbs, Gatorade, water, and a JUSTIN NYBERG is an associate edining — and the humor was lost on most of those I carafe of coffee and hot water for tea. There was tor at Outside magazine. He finished 101st in loved: my girlfriend, my family, and certain friends a courtesy tub of Vaseline for smearing on toes. the 2009 New York City Marathon, in 2:35:28. I began to lose touch with. In the end, I logged a lit- Massage and stretching therapists were standtle over 2,000 miles; the sacrifices and effort were ing by. Outside, there was a bank of 10 portable paying dividends. I could tick off 20 6:10-minute toilets, almost all of them empty and available miles like clockwork. I’d think nothing of a 10-mile at any time, that we shared with the pros. I held recovery run at 7:30 minutes per mile. I was in open the door for Hendrik Ramaala. Ryan Hall the fastest shape of my life. I was ready to race. politely greeted a few well-wishers among the Si x weeks before the New York Cit y sub-elites while he stood in a short line nearby, Marathon, I ran a warm-up half marathon, as Paula Radcliffe and Joan Samuelson warmed and finished in 1:11:59, qualifying, if barely, up behind us. Between bouts of celebrity gawkfor sub-elite status. I immediately applied. I ing, most of us sprawled out on the dry pavement didn’t care that the program would give me beneath the tent and rested comfortably. a pampered edge over the rest of the field. I At 8:40 a.m., an official announced we had was ready to take any advantage I could get. an hour to race time; the sub-elites and professional men began to jog together in front of n race morning, I trotted the tent. I ran long, looping circuits of the parkdown the wet streets of New ing lot along with the towering Kenyan Robert York to a queue of gleam- Cheruiyot and his diminutive compatriot, James Y ing silver charter buses Kwambai. Brazilian Marilson Gomes dos Santos, parked next to the Museum the 2006 and 2008 winner, was quietly circling of Modern Art. The sign in with us, along with a number of American and the window of my bus, number 6, said Elite international stars like Abdi Abdirahman, Jorge Athletes, although the first four buses were the Torres and Patrick Makau. We looped in ranones that held many of the world’s best mara- dom patterns, weaving through each other and thoners. At 6:30 a.m., we rolled out — well after a few parked tractor-trailers, quietly sizing each most other runners were already stuck in traffic other up. In my throwaway Fila sweatshirt and on Staten Island. Police escorted our motor- Goodwill-vintage adidas sweats, I didn’t cut a cade down the length of Manhattan with lights very intimidating figure. But for this part of the flashing, blasting through red lights like a dip- day, at least, I kept pace. Finally, it was time to go. At 9 a.m. the elites lomatic entourage. Near the starting line, the caravan swept boarded a bus headed to their starting line. The us past the crowds in their corrals to a quiet, sub-elites were gathered into a tight group and The view over the author’s shoulder.

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THREE WORKOUTS TO LEARN INNER MONITORING By Lorraine Moller

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TUNING IN

he principle of feeling-based running, one of the five principles that define Lydiard training, and its attendant ability to listen to the body, is often overlooked and undervalued as a running skill worthy of developing, especially in a world where runners are becoming increasingly dependent on technology. Three particular workouts help develop that ability. Simon Martin (#0627 above), an experienced and keen masters runner, was looking to celebrate his 55th year with a sub-5:00 mile. But when we met last year he was feeling perplexed and discouraged. The more attention he paid to training detail and the more effort he dedicated to his workouts, the slower he was running and the farther from sight his goal was becoming. By his calculations he should have been yielding better results. Simon was beginning to consider whether “old age” had finally gotten its grip on him. “Any ideas from a Lydiard perspective?” he asked. I told Simon that, whenever athletes found themselves struggling to find form, Lydiard lore prescribed going back to the bottom of the training pyramid — easy running — until they came right. “Run without a watch,” I suggested. “Forget about the time and the distance and just run as you feel. The degree to which it feels strange is the degree to which you really need to do this.” Taking my advice, Simon reported that running without a watch “was a huge wrench.” He was surprised to find himself constantly looking at his bare arm as he ran, realizing how reliant on the external feedback of his Garmin speed/distance monitor he had become. Like many runners he had fallen into the easy trap of overtraining because he had lost the vital skill of listening to his body.

All champion runners can tune in to their bodies’ signals to such a high degree that they have the ability to optimally divvy out their effort over the distance required using precise split-second decisions. They don’t have the time or mind-space during a race to check their monitor data, make a cell phone call to their coach and wait for him to call back with instructions on whether to increase or decrease their pace after downloading it into a computer. Nor would they want such a clumsy system when their inner technology is so much more sophisticated, speedy and accurate. Although such a scenario is laughable, many runners proceed as if this were the case and fall apart when the race requires them to be self-reliant. By contrast, every champion athlete, almost without exception, is an expert body whisperer whose trust in their internal abilities of gauging effort, pacing and timing is unwavering. Every athlete can and should pay attention to becoming their own body whisperer by becoming fluent in the language of their physiology. The program for whispering comes pre-installed in all human beings but is frequently dulled by overriding social and familial programs. Children are natural body whisperers who, left to their own devices, will run around playfully, slowing and speeding as they feel, and performing in a natural and integrated way that doesn’t invite illness, injury and discontent. However, with the information/technology explosion of our modern age, we’re constantly bombarded with data from outside sources and “experts” in every field telling us what to do and how to do it. This is occurring at younger and younger ages, often with the added force of marketing expertise designed to capture young minds. The result is an emerging generation who are in some degree of body/mind/environment disconnect, having been conditioned to the noise of the outside world at the expense of their tailor-made internal signals. As a case in point, I almost cried when my 9-year-old came home with her school report card, which contained grades for the components of physical education, including her ability to “identify and monitor the intensity, frequency, time and type of physical activity with the use of technology (e.g., HR monitors, digital fitness journals/logs).” While I feel that such assessments are irrelevant for a child, I was perplexed that while they were at it the report card designers failed to provide any space for commentary on my child’s overall physical condition, abilities and proclivities. While runners rush to buy the latest monitoring marvels, such devices remain a poor facsimile of what nature has provided us. Our brains are so exceedingly complex that the extent of their functions remains a mystery. What studies on learning do tell us is that the “use it or lose it” adage applies. Just like a muscle, the brain responds by shaping itself to use and similarly atrophying with disuse. Neuroscientists conducting navigational studies, for example, have found that people stop forming and using their own cognitive maps once they regularly use GPS to find their way. Similarly, a runner’s excessive reliance on external feedback regarding pace, rhythm, effort and distance can render their natural abilities redundant. Furthermore, children whose brains are still under construction might well be circumvented from developing the most fundamental of these neural pathways by such devices. The good news from science is that, when it comes to mental tasks, neural networks increase with repetition, implying that any undertaking can be improved by practice. It’s fairly easy for most runners to reconnect with and develop their inner technologies by incorporating feeling-based workouts. To tune in to the soft signals of your body, I suggest three workouts be incorporated into your training: silent long runs, fartlek, and out-and-back runs. RUNNINGTIMES

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SILENT LONG RUNS

MEDITATION Most people would regard the purpose of the base-building period of Lydiard training as purely for the myriad physical benefits of aerobic metabolism. Of equal benefit, though, is that during the longer runs especially, a particular mind-state can be accessed that’s similar to those states found in meditation — inner focused, relaxed and of lower brainwaves. Running gives the added benefit of the rhythmic breath and the alternating continuous right/left action of the arms and legs that allow the runner to easily enter a whole-brain state. To facilitate accessing this heightened state I strongly suggest silent running, preferably in nature, without conversation or headphones. Over the months of the buildup period, the often mismatched will of the mind and capacity of the body learn to work together. As they get to know each other, questions such as, “Is this comfortable?” “How long can I keep this up?” “Can I go faster?” can be answered with quick and accurate assessments. The added advantage of getting into this pleasant state of synchronized mind and body is that the body is flooded with feel-good hormones, further reinforcing this connection. The success of the more intense training phases that follow and ultimately the confidence that the runner takes into a race is dependent on the strength and trustworthiness of this working relationship between body and mind.

FARTLEK

PLAY RUNNING The free flow of fartlek (“speed play” in Swedish) training enables the runner to let go and mix paces just as they feel. Because of this purely experiential quality of the workout, it has been utilized by many of the great coaches as a counterpoint to more structured workouts. Lydiard frequently recommended it in all phases of his training as a free-form workout that offered a variety of paces without the danger of running into an anaerobic state that required a lengthy recovery. SUGGESTION: Incorporate one fartlek run into your weekly running

schedule beginning during the buildup. HOW TO RUN A FARTLEK SESSION: Using an undulating course,

SUGGESTION: If you’ve never done a buildup, do one incorporating

run as a puppy does by varying the pace from a short sprint to a jog to as many silent long runs as you can comfortably handle. Take at least 12 a sustained stride and back to a jog, using landmarks and the natural weeks without racing to build mileage, incorporating at least one long run terrain to guide you. Since you make it up as you go and there’s no meaof over 2 hours per week and two not-so-long runs of an hour and a half. suring of time and distance, you have complete license to dog it or zoom as your body feels. The session should be 30 minutes to an hour depending on your state of fitness. POINTS TO KEEP IN MIND: • Surrender to the run and allow it to take you, rather than trying to control or force an outcome. POINTS TO KEEP IN MIND: • If you find yourself looking at your watch or monitor every 5 minutes • The important thing is to experience the contrast of the different paces or every known mile mark, leave it at home. and match the slower recovery portions with the faster portions of • Leave your iPod at home. Before long your inner voice will be enjoyyour run. • As you focus on the specific feedback from different paces, you’ll learn able and possibly fascinating company. • After several weeks of buildup running, your fitness will rise to a whole to run hard without the stress of forcing yourself to meet the demands new level, as will your mind/body rapport. of a measured track and watch. • The emphasis is on play: If there’s not an inner smile during this run then you’re not doing it correctly.

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RUNNINGTIMES_NOVEMBER 2010

wish, but it’s not necessary at this stage. Your focus should be on developing an efficient rhythm for the entire distance. Using the out-and-back run you can expect to see one or more of the following as you get fitter: • You’ll run farther within the same duration of running time; • You’ll come to the same turnaround point in less time; or, • You’ll reach the turnaround point in the same time with a lower pulse-rate; • You’ll run faster (1 and 2) with the same pulse rate. POINTS TO KEEP IN MIND:

OUT-AND-BACK RUNS

RHYTHM & PACING

• Don’t check your pace during the run; use your watch only to know when to turn around and to compare time for each half of the run. • If you’re unable to maintain your pace you’re starting out too fast. This is a costly racing mistake so repeat this exercise regularly until you get the gist of it. Even pacing is efficient and ideal for distance events. • If it’s windy or there’s a slight elevation change between the start/finish and the halfway point, try to arrange it so that the more difficult direction is negotiated fi rst. Th is will reinforce negative splits and you’ll walk away from the workout in a more positive frame of mind.

In the days before monitors, Lydiard used a system of efforts to get his runners to gauge themselves. Lydiard programs came with instructions for each given workout: quarter-effort, half-effort, three-quarter effort or seven-eighths effort. The quixotic explanation that went with it was that quarter-effort was a quarter of full effort, half-effort was a half of full effort, and so on, and seven-eighths was full-out but without the final sprint thrown in. Olympic marathon bronze medalist in 1960, Barry Magee, a Lydiard protégé and now a successful coach in New Zealand, believes that even today this system of efforts is one of the most important facets of Lydiard’s training. He recalls, “It took me about five years at least to get it right for myself — so not easy or quick for most — but for a few it is a breeze. It all counted in later years, as I knew how hard or how easy to train each day and could gauge my effort and pace. The champions get their efforts pretty right on. That skill alone is often what separates them from the non-champions.” To get a handle on it, Lydiard often used out-and-back courses on even terrain so that one could break the run into halves and compare the time of the outbound journey against the return trip. Using this concept, Dr. Dick Brown, head exercise physiologist of the 1980s Nike Athletics West club, and coach of many American champions, made out-and-back runs a weekly fi xture of his Lydiard online training schedules. The workout was a way of ensuring his runners developed an accurate sense of pacing before they progressed to their track workouts. “Understanding your body,” Brown reiterates, “is the key to racing.”

Silent long runs, fartlek and out-and back runs exclusively engage the inner technology of runners and develop an experience base that they can begin to trust. The more they use and trust it the more reliable it becomes. Self-trust allows athletes to listen to the whispers of their inner promptings before they become discordant screams of injury or breakdown. It also delivers the runner to the race with the self-reliance and confidence needed to fly. Six months after my encounter with Simon I received an excited email. It read: “After I had got over the withdrawal symptoms of being without my monitor I noticed that I was tuning in to my body a lot more. I thought I was already very aware of what was going on, but it became apparent that I had ‘delegated’ oversight to the monitor. Without an external time/ distance read-out I was forced to tune in to my pace, breathing, energy level, how my legs felt — all of that — and adjust things minute by minute to stay comfortable. Some days I found I was running very slowly, but it turned out that useful work was still getting done. Previously I would have been looking at the monitor and have been desperately trying to stay out of the so-called ‘junk miles’ zone.” Simon went on to recount how he managed to make it to the start line of the masters world cross country championships in Kamloops, Canada, in March injury-free. (He had been injured before each of the last two major races he had targeted.) More importantly, though, he discovered that running without a watch takes the pressure off. “The watch was turnSUGGESTION: Include an out-and-back course in one of your steady ing me into a zombie. [Being without it] brought joy back into my running.” weekly runs during base training. The result: Simon won the race. Like all worthwhile journeys, Simon’s path to his goal was convoluted HOW TO RUN AN OUT-AND-BACK SESSION: Th is is a time- but ended even better than he had hoped. Many other runners aren’t so based workout, so simply divide the time appointed by two, run out to fortunate and become lost in a world of too much information. The way a turnaround point, record your split and run back and take your time back is often simply to stop and listen to the whisper of one perennial again at the finish. For this to work well the course should be of similar truth — the magic is within. • difficulty both ways. The goal is to run both halves of the route as evenly as possible or with slightly negative splits (second half faster). You may Arthur Lydiard protégée LORRAINE MOLLER is a stop to take a quick pulse check at the turnaround and the finish if you four-time Olympic marathoner and the bronze medalist at the 1992 Games in Barcelona.

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RACING

TRENDS IN ELITE ROAD R ACING

Circuit BREAKERS YOUNG BLOOD ON THE SUMMER RACING SCENE

BY PETER VIGNERON

IF IT EVER SEEMED INEVITABLE that LINETH CHEPKURUI and GEBRE GEBREMARIAM would so thor-

Photo:

Victor Sailer/PhotoRun

oughly control the American road racing circuit in 2010 — Chepkurui has been winning here for years, and Gebremariam, the 2009 world cross country champion, came to each starting line equipped simply with the best resume — consider this story from manager TOM RATCLIFFE, whose athletes include Chepkurui and top Americans CHRIS SOLINSKY and MATT TEGENKAMP. Earlier in the summer, world 3,000m record-holder DANIEL KOMEN stopped by Ratcliffe’s camp in Iten, Kenya, with a runner named ALAN KIPRONO and another athlete named LONNIE RUTTO. Both men, Komen said, appeared ready for the American circuit. “From all accounts,” Ratcliffe says, “Rutto was better in training.” Ratcliffe arranged to have the pair travel to Nairobi and apply for visas at the American embassy, where Kiprono, who had been to Europe previously as a pacemaker, was granted a visa, and Rutto, who had never left the country, was denied. At August’s Beach to Beacon 10K in Maine, Kiprono proved Komen a sound judge of ability. In his first world-class road race, he finished second, a tick behind Gebremariam and ahead of runners such as London and New York City Marathon champ MARTIN LEL and WILSON CHEBET, a 59:15 half marathoner. Two weeks later he won the inaugural Gloucester 7-Mile Road Race in Massachusetts. Rutto, perhaps the stronger of the two, never found a visa. “You shake your head and say, ‘This is just some guy from Iten,’” Ratcliffe says. “He [Kiprono] has talent, for sure, and he’s been training hard. But he’s one of many.”

HOT FLASHES At the best summer races, a young runner can make good money, enough to live on for years in the right country, and for some time now the circuit has absorbed a certain quality of discovery and impermanence. The 2009 campaigns of TILAHUN REGASSA, a 19-year-old Ethiopian, and SAMMY KITWARA, a 22-year-old Kenyan, are not atypical: After manhandling fields last year at Bay to Breakers, Peachtree, Bolder Boulder and Falmouth, both have struggled in 2010. Regassa, according to his agent, HUSSAIN MAKKE, has dealt w it h injur y and t he consequences of financial windfall, especia l ly a f ter ta k ing home $300,000 at the Zayed Half Marathon in January. “Tilahun is one of the most talented athletes in the world,” Makke says. “Unfortunately, he is a wild man, in every meaning of the word. He is a great guy, a great talent, but he is wild.” Regassa won the Crescent City Classic in New Orleans in early April and was part of an intentional threeway tie with training partners TADESSE TOLA

and LELISA DESISA at Bolder Boulder on Memorial Day. Kitwara defended his title at Bay to Breakers in May. But for these races, Kitwara has been absent and Regassa off-form. In their place, Ethiopians Gebremariam and 20-year-old Desisa, another Makke runner, combined for six wins on the 2010 circuit (or seven, if Desisa’s victory at the Ottawa 10K, two days before Bolder Boulder, is counted alongside wins in Boulder and at the Utica Boilermaker). Desisa was a close second to STEPHEN TUM at April’s Cherry Blossom 10 Mile Run, and third behind Gebremariam and Kenya’s PETER KIRUI at Peachtree on July 4t. “He’s stepped in and covered [Regassa’s] spot, and he’s really in excellent shape,” Makke says. Desisa was scheduled to run Falmouth but withdrew days before the race when Ethiopia’s federation ordered him to run the Ethiopian half marathon championships on August 17 — which he did, and won. Kirui, a Kenyan, strung together a series of near-perfect races in his fi rst tour of the U.S. His fi rst was a win at the Lilac Bloomsday Run on May 2, 24 hours after suffering through a long trip from Nairobi. He took Kitwara and Gebremariam to photo fi nishes at Bay

At the best summer races, a young runner can make good money, enough to live on for years in the right country. to Breakers and Peachtree, and was 2 seconds shy of Desisa at the Utica Boilermaker on July 11. Kirui traveled home to Iten between Bay to Breakers and Peachtree. According to his manager, DEREK FROUDE, Kirui’s training partners in Kenya include EDWARD MUGE, last year’s Beach to Beacon winner, and JOSEPH EBUYA, the reigning world cross country champion. Kirui’s fall plans, after some rest, include a half marathon — in the U.S., or, if he is selected, as a member of the Kenyan team at October’s world half marathon championships in Nanning, China.

ETHIOPIAN EXCELLENCE Gebremariam opened his season with a 27:42 course record at the Healthy Kidney 10K on May 15 in New York City, then took a series of narrow victories at Peachtree, Beach to Beacon and Falmouth. He is no flash in the pan, of course: Including his world cross country title, Continued on page 79 RUNNINGTIMES

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RACING LEADING EDGE

AMERICAN RECORD-HOLDER MOLLY HUDDLE

BY JON GUGALA

MOLLY HUDDLE BREAKS THROUGH TO AN AMERICAN RECORD

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RUNNINGTIMES_NOVEMBER 2010

The signﬁcance of those last few hundredths of a second? They were enough to catapult her past SHALANE FLANAGAN’s 14:44.80 from 2007 and into possession of the American record for 5,000m. After the end of her track season and a short break, Huddle planned to return to the roads in the fall, including the national 5K and 10K championships in Providence and Boston, respectively, followed by another break and a decision on next year’s cross country season. As Huddle looks toward her future at the 2012 Olympics, her mind isn’t made up on which event she plans on competing in. “With U.S. women’s running as deep as it is, I’m going to have to wait and see,” she says. “I would say my better event is the 10,000m.” Whichever event she chooses, and however impassive she remains about competition within the U.S. elite ranks, her eyes are always looking beyond. “Molly’s very similar to me,” Smith says. “She’s a real racer.” Maybe being surrounded by internationals in Providence has been just what Huddle needed to expand her focus. •

Victor Sailer/PhotoRun

Huddle prepped for summer track with winter cross country.

Photo:

ive days after her second-place 5,000m finish at the outdoor national championships — her highest ever — MOLLY HUDDLE was home in Providence, R.I., on the track for her first workout since the race. Without an Olympics or world championship to compete in, she was free to hit the roads for the summer and earn a few paychecks. After all, the 2009 10K, 7-mile, and 10-mile national titlist had to plan her defense, most immediately at the Bix 7 in July, where a freshly graduated LISA KOLL would be making her road-racing debut. Then KIM SMITH stepped in and ruined everything. Smith, New Zealand record-holder in practically every distance from the indoor mile to the marathon, was on the same track as Huddle, and Huddle joined her for an 8-times-a-kilometer workout. “I knew from past workouts what 14:50 [for 5,000m] felt like in my legs, and she had it,” Smith says. “I could just tell she was going to have a good one.” Smith told Huddle after the workout that she was crazy not to capitalize on her fitness, and that she should head to Europe instead of the U.S. roads. “It took me a while,” Smith says. “She needed a lot of convincing. But she’s pretty happy now,” she adds. It meant that before the start of the 2010 Bix 7, the biggest news from Davenport, Iowa, was who wasn’t there: Defending champion MOLLY HUDDLE was home in Providence preparing for a European track campaign. “It was really hard not to go. But when you’re on a streak and you’re feeling good, you’ve got to go for it,” she says. Huddle booked her flight two days after the workout with Smith, and at the Paris Diamond League Meeting on July 16, she ran 14:51:74 for 5,000m, moving (temporarily) to No. 4 on the all-time U.S. list after starting the year with a 15:17 PR. That breakthrough race was another bookmark to both a successful and lonely year for Huddle. On the success side, first and foremost, she’s been injury-free for the last year and a half. With unbroken training, she notched PRs earlier in the year at 1500m and 5,000m. Before track season, she finished second at the national cross country championships, and then contributed to a U.S. bronze medal at the world cross country championships with a 19th-place finish. But Huddle has also seen her long-standing training partners jettisoned from Providence. Training with others isn’t as common as she would like; she says this year she has trained alone for chunks of time, and sometimes for the company she’ll meet up with Smith and Irish steepler ROISIN MCGETTIGAN, even if their workouts aren’t the same. However, this loneliness has focused her, and sharpened her drive for competition on the international stage, and not merely the domestic. “Some of the European meets aren’t far off Olympic meets,” Huddle says. “It will help me get used to how fast they go out in the 5,000m and 10,000m.” Huddle got that experience and more at the Memorial Van Damme meet in Brussels, Belgium, on Aug. 27. In a race in which all the finishers broke 15:00, she again lowered her 5,000m PR, this time to 14:44.76.

RACING TACTICS

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WHEN TO KICK • SUMMER CIRCUIT

Photos:

Victor Sailer/PhotoRun (2)

BREAKERS

Continued from page 75

he owns four medals from those championships, plus track bests of 12:52 and 26:52 that place him among the great distance runners of all time. But the last 18 months of his career have been inconsistent. After his world cross country victory in 2009 he struggled on the track, regained his form for a series of cross country races in late 2009 and early 2010, and then lost his cross country title to Ebuya in March. Gebremariam is in the midst of a mid-career transition that may see him move to the marathon later this year. With no global track championship to focus on, he has been free to experiment on the roads. “Here in Ethiopia there is no national team for 2010,” he told Running Times. “Plus, for me, I don’t think I will run 10K on the track anymore.” Global Athletics and Marketing agent RICH KENAH expects Gebremariam to make his marathon debut this fall. On the women’s side, the dynamic could hardly be more different from the men’s, where three runners — Gebremariam, Desisa and Kirui — traded wins and top fi nishes. With few exceptions, the summer was LINETH CHEPKURUI’S. Chepkurui came into the season with something to prove after a fi fth-place fi nish at world cross country. She wasted little time: Days after returning from Poland, she ran the sixth-fastest road 10K in history, a 30:45 win at the Crescent City Classic, 1:33 ahead of second place. Next came victories at Bloomsday, where she set a course record and world’s best for 12K in 38:10, then Cherry Blossom, Bay to Breakers, where

she improved on her 12K mark by 3 seconds and set another course record; then Peachtree. After Peachtree, she returned home to Kenya for a few weeks, then came back to the U.S. for Beach to Beacon (a course record by 26 seconds), Falmouth, where she suffered her first road loss of 2010 to WUDE AYALEW, and finally Gloucester, where she cleared second place by 2 minutes. Internationally, Ayalew is one of a small handful of runners who could ever challenge Chepkurui on the roads. She has experience in American races, with 2007 wins at Peachtree and the Bix 7, before Bix switched to American-only prize money. Over the past year she has honed her kick brilliantly, leading to her first major track medal, a bronze in the 10,000m at the 2009 Berlin world championships, and May’s 2-second victory at the Sunfeast World 10K in India. Before her Falmouth title, and in Chepkurui’s shadow, she dipped 18 seconds below Beach to Beacon’s old course record in 31:07. Still, Chepkurui’s 2010 campaign must be among the great road seasons, of either gender, ever. Falmouth aside, the races she did not win were the races she did not enter: Bolder Boulder and the Utica Boilermaker, which went to MAMITU DASKA and EDNA KIPLAGAT, respectively. In Kenya, Chepkurui trains alone, or, occasionally, with men. “She’s self-motivated,” Ratcliffe says. “I think she likes that, where she’s pushing herself on her own.” Chepkurui’s training, then, mirrors almost exactly her summer of racing: by herself, out front, running hard. • Wude Ayalew

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RACING FOOTSTEPS BY ROGER ROBINSON

She moved here in 1963 at age 28, working in Carlisle, Pa., and attending college. She married businessman MICHAEL GORMAN, and moved with him to Los Angeles. There she became probably the only person ever to take up running to gain weight, and the only major marathoner to begin by running entirely indoors. “I was embarrassed that I was so small,” she says. “My husband helped me go to the gym where he was a member, and I began to run. I had strange looks. Someone told me In July, the National Distance Running Hall of Fame in Utica, N.Y., inducted I should be home in the kitchen. But I had two historic but contrasting marathoners, DICK BEARDSLEY and MIKI one mentor, and he encouraged me to enter GORMAN. Beardsley is a charismatic speaker with a compelling story, while a 100-mile/24-hour indoors race, in the gym. Gorman is self-effacing and reticent. Yet her story, when I spent time pri- Yes, hundreds of laps. The first year I stopped vately eliciting it, is equally compelling. at 86 miles. I cried.” She ran this annual indoor ultra five times, She was born Michiko Suwa in 1935, to Marathon running has long been revered before she became, she says, “fed up” and Japanese parents in China, where her in Japan, and in 1951, as the nation began to tried cross country, where for the fi rst time father was serving in the imperial army of emerge from defeat, it sent a team to Boston, she encountered other women. occupation. During World War II, she and including the winner, SHIGEKI TANAKA. “The fi rst race, I saw a tall girl, and thought, “But no women ever ran in Japan in those ‘I will try to stay with her.’ I did, and then beat her younger twin brothers were evacuated from Tokyo just before horrific fi rebombing years. Women could not do anything so her,” she says. “I loved cross country.” razed the city. At age 8 she helped her little public,” Gorman says. There is thus a case Advised by LASZLO TABORI, the great brothers survive. After the surrender in 1945, for seeing her as precursor of Japan’s famed athlete-coach from Hungary, Gorman tried she started school, walking six miles there line of women marathoners, as well as being track, and fi nally found the marathon. All because there was no bus. a pioneering American. those indoor laps paid off. In Culver City,

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80 /

RUNNINGTIMES_NOVEMBER 2010

WOMEN’S RUNNING PIONEER MIKI GORMAN

Photo:

Wayne Baker

No women ever ran in Japan in those years. society was now a winner and role model in a worldwide movement for opportunity. She became a world-record breaker, with 1:15:58 for the half marathon in 1978. There were difficult times, for such a modest person. In 1976, pressured to gate-crash the Montreal Olympics in protest against the lack of a women’s marathon, she declined. She lost contact with the sport, moving with her daughter to Vancouver. Last year, when the New York Road Runners honored her as Runner of the 1970s, she didn’t attend. She Gorman (center) along with other running legends. How many can you identify? needed persuasion even to travel to the Hall Calif., in December 1973, she ran 2:46:36, Avon Women’s Running Circuit sent her and of Fame. missing the world record by 6 seconds. She her baby to Japan, as a role model Japanese “I do not deserve it,” she said, before agreewas 38. women could identify with. What she saw ing to attend. She won Boston in 1974 and 1977 and New made her happy to be an American. After the ceremony, hearing L ARRY York in 1976, in 2:39:11, again the second“People were still very restricted there,” RAWSON’S stirring tribute, and embraced fastest time ever. She retained the New York she says. by her fellow pioneers of women’s running, title in 1977, now 42 and a new mother. The So a child of that defeated and restricted she didn’t say that again. •

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ART OF THE RUN

KEVIN CLARY, who ﬁnished 40th out of 141 runners in the race, just ahead of Reindl (43rd) and Stenbeck (47th). 84 /

RUNNINGTIMES_NOVEMBER 2010

Photo:

“That’s cross country — the challenge of the terrain and the weather. The course started off pretty ﬁrm and fast that morning, but by the time the open race rolled around it was a bit sloppy and slow, built for a strength-type runner. I remember there were some pretty tight corners where you really had to sink your spikes in the ground or your feet would slide out. I was wearing 1-inch spikes that day and was hoping I didn’t get stabbed by another runner.”

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Greg Reindl (410), Kevin Clary (81) and Mark Stenbeck (488) get dirty at the U.S. cross country championships on Feb. 10, 2007, in Boulder, Colo., where a light snowfall the day before, mild raceday temperatures and more than 400 runners in ﬁ ve races earlier in the day turned the men’s open 12K race into muddy mayhem.

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