Slow’s the Way to Go Joe – Part 1

Predicting someone’s ability to run anything from 800m to a half marathon is really easy. A little more difficult is determining what someone may ultimately be capable of – if they are young enough to still have their best years ahead of them, is a little more challenging. However predicting what they are capable of in a marathon or the run in an IM, now that’s a whole different ball of wax! Add to this that the majority of athletes just do NOT have the patience or time to train to their actual capabilities, but still expect their potential to show up on race day, rather than their training status only. Add to this in the longer events, the tight tolerances allowed in the weather, nutritional, hydration and pacing departments and it’s no wonder so many people “fail” to achieve to their expectations. In triathlon, especially IM another huge challenge is the discipline required to ride easily enough to have an optimal run.
This brings one to the blog’s case in point – training “slowly” enough, or within the ranges that ultimately give you the greatest shot at achieving your potential. Joe Friel’s brilliant work has brought us a model that has helped thousands of athletes to train as close to correctly as modern research suggests we should. One problem thought: many athletes, especially here at altitude, are unable to run slowly enough to stay in these 1st 2 zones! It’s a different matter on the bike where riding on a flat road with 110PSI in your tubular is akin to the efficiency of a seagull in flight. In the pool also the fact that you are in a low gravity-impacted environment and you are using less musculature makes it so much easier to train in the lower zones.
The 2nd conundrum to the part-time athlete – WE DON’T HAVE THE SHEER MASS OF TIME REQUIRED TO BUILD OUR EFFICIENCY THAT SLOWLY TO GAIN THIS BROAD BASED FITNESS WHICH CREATES THE CAPACITY TO BE ABLE TO TRAIN AT THE HIGHER MORE SPECIFIC LEVELS THAT GIVES US A GREATER SHOT AT ACHIEVING OUR FULL POTENTIAL.
Compare this to an elite sprinter who can do 2 x 200m in a workout and access so much of her power that she is exhausted and the workout’s effectively done! An elite marathon runner would run 2 maximum effort 200’s and with a short recovery be able to run 8 more! Trouble is the distance runner will have run those 200’s in 29-30 seconds (which is fast – 3:53mile pace), but a sprinter of equal sprinting ability may have run those 200’s in around 24 sec and that’s 3:13 mile pace!!
3rdly, the challenge of the amateur becomes detraining while training! The runner must go so slowly that other components actually start to atrophy. Peripherally there IS such a thing as running too slowly; stride rate may decrease and subsequently loading increases with all its attendant negative consequences. You know how you feel after a long run with a friend who is much slower than you! Also, proper recovery in terms of time is tough for the average athlete – what a pro can do in a week, the average person of the same age needs at least 10 days to complete with sufficient recovery. A good pro microcycle is about 10 days, while a good age grouper would do well on a 14 day microcycle and the older athlete something like 17 – 21 days!

Be a Kid

Don’t let a GPS, compass, HRM, street sign, grade, surface or distance, (esp. a track) tell you how you are faring – let you tell you!
Coaches strive to quantify every detail, but there is no software or collection tool – including RPE, that can measure what you feel.
It’s not like we haven’t got the most intricate, hyper-sensitive tools already built in – another 100 years will not bring modern equipment anywhere close to giving us the kind of feedback we are capable of gleaning if we stay tuned in.
The danger is that the externally generated numbers may limit us. The emotional connection to stats derived off these impressive micro-computers when we approach what previous data has told us are our limits, may cause us to back off. We may have our best foot forward at this stage – all of us may have showed up and we miss a golden opportunity for a break through & an experience that tells us we have far greater abilities than we ever dreamed possible.
I am not saying we should totally eschew the benefits of using these devices by meting out our resources in the most economical fashion; use them for sure! But, the bottom line is that racing is all about pushing our limits however we may have derived them, perceived or otherwise. True performance is a very complex, never fully understood set of constantly changing parameters.
Getting the best out of the individual human body whose every instinct is to keep us safe and in the middle of our homeostatic ranges, requires a very technical concept (facetious here) – GUTS.
I strongly suggest runs (and swims and rides) that are both easy and very, very hard (and everything in between) without gizmos and gadgets. Assess the workouts experientially, qualitatively – with your heart and soul.
Ultimately, when we race, this is the true satisfaction meter. When we assess a result as something that leaves us feeling self –actualized it is much more about an emotional knowing and warrior sensation, than it is about the numbers.
Allow the running to come naturally, progress through feel & knowing & let the numbers confirm & support that…
Bobby McGee
http://www.bobbymcgee.com/I recently reviewed Matt Fitzgerald’s latest book (out on June 1st) RUN: The Mind-Body Method Of Running By Feel. It’s a great read & I believe it is his best yet & it explores in depth this week’s blog concept

HEAD to HEAD – The Mental Side of Being the Best You, You Can Be

A coaching friend of mine recently asked me what one could do with the very frustrating situation of athletes not achieving what they are physically capable of on race day. Now the coach happens to be one of the VERY best coaches that the sport of triathlon has & the athlete is a professional, so it is not like this coach has no idea how to motivate an athlete or has no experience with getting top results at the highest level!
After what I thought was a drug-riddled showing in the distance events in the 2000 Olympics I made a fundamental shift in my thinking as a coach—forget trying to find individuals with the physiological characteristics to be world beaters; work instead towards helping those athletes that choose you as a coach to become the best they can be. If one of those athletes turns out to be a world beater then so be it.
I am happy to say that I have since also been involved with athletes who make it to the very top – the answer lies in the acknowledgement that NO SINGLE FACTOR IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN ALL THE REST. Holism is an easy word to toss around in a lecture or conversation with coaches & athletes, but a far harder principle to apply consistently with every athlete & yourself.
Most of us master of one or some of the facets that make up peak performance in endurance events & I know some coaches who have systems & people in place that manage close to all of them. However of all these facets that constitute success mental skills training is the most challenging to master.
Which athlete wants to own up to being a “head case”? Very, very few of us have the vulnerability & ego-checking capabilities of setting aside our desires of not being exposed & the guts to fully take on the very real risks of falling flat on our faces in the full on attempt required to be the very best we can be.
This process is like meditation or prayer – the minute one gets competitive with it one loses! The dialogue that leaves one’s mouth as an “explanation” of a subpar performance is ego driven & a futile exercise in avoidance of being exposed to oneself & others. Even the seemingly honest, “that’s all I had on the day” is pregnant with denial if there is information that indicates the performance failed to meet the standards set in training. The worst one for all involved of course is the “I tried my best” answer. Facing & fully experiencing failure honestly is at the very root of the learning process that makes champions of us all.
Add to this, the coach’s conundrum – they know the athlete failed mentally, the athlete knows they failed mentally & the athlete knows the coach knows! Yet, because of the many precipitating factors like avoidance of confrontation, the relationship (in terms of social environment), trust, frail egos & money, the partnership continues & the size of the elephant in the room continues to increase.
With every day a coach fails to address the obvious fact that the athlete needs to take on their mental & emotional limiters he/she is selling their athletes more & more short. Granted, if the cause of the failure is sufficiently severe & sourced in the athlete’s childhood, then the coach cannot become a psychiatrist. But can the coach become a parent of sorts? YES, if the athlete is willing.
The whole idea of consciously allowing kids to fail in a safe environment within a loving, empathic environment is so that they learn how to read situations & make smart choices when the chips are down & the consequences of failure are far more dire. (Can you tell I have a 3-year-old & I am using Love & Logic© principles!). Without an open honest relationship & a clear commitment to excellence, athletes & coaches CANNOT access the means by which the athlete may rise to a level commensurate with the athlete’s ability… Quite simply can not
Whether you are self-coached, coached or coach, if you want to experience the elation of crossing the finish line with a deep sense of knowing that you displayed full access to your talent, skills & fitness, then you must take on addressing your limiters. These may include mental & emotional hurdles that are largely unknown & unseen by you as the protagonist.
In every endurance event, 1st race to your ability & fitness levels & then, when you have gone as far & as fast as your physiology & pacing have allowed, then race & beat everyone around you, knowing that these athletes will include many with greater capabilities. In this way precious few with less talent will finish ahead of you. And many with more ability will end behind you – those who have less fortitude than that which you forged in the fire of ownership & hard graft.
Bobby McGee
www.BobbyMcGee.com

Bare Foot Running Panel & Hill Running

Up that Hill & do it Again!

Before this week’s post, there’s a panel discussion on, yup you guessed it, BFR tomorrow, Wednesday (April 28th) at 6:30PM at Alta Physical Therapy in Boulder, (2955 Baseline Road, Boulder CO 80303). The panelists will be one time junior phenom runner & now coach Melody Fairchild, Olympic 10 000m & Marathon runner Alan Culpepper, Danny Abshire, designer of the Newton running shoe, top running physical therapist, Charlie Merrill, Aaron Anderson, pedorthist extraordinaire & myself. As has seemed to be the case with BFR in its latest Born to Run incarnation, enthusiasm (to put a euphemistic bent on it), is running high. Moderator Barry Siff would seem to have his work cut out for him.
Any way, if you live in the Boulder/Denver area & you are interested, we’d love to see you. Perhaps I’ll need your support as the battle may be bloody as the enthusiasts on either extreme edge of the spectrum vie to get their point across! Just kidding – it ought to be a blast.
HILL RUNNING
Hill running seems to be somewhat under-utilized by runners & triathletes in the USA in my experience, I am not sure if it’s a seasonal thing – in Africa we can run hard outdoors all year around, here it seems conditions limit what you can do quality-wise in the winter months & I don’t hear of a lot of people doing formal hill repeats on a treadmill. I have found runners get really close to their peak form after a series of hill repeats & that repeat work on the track adds some further benefit, but the risks of injury are far greater.
Hills don’t help you gain concentration skills much, (steady state runs on the flat do that!), as they allow you to run only as hard as you can, but boy do they help your functional strength & VO2 max if applied correctly. Hills are the ultimate tool when it comes to self-determining intensity; no matter what set of repeats you planned your form will soon tell you when the best laid plans are to be reviewed. Allow form to be your guide – if you figured on 75sec repeats & bits start flying off at 50sec, then 50sec is what was required at that effort. Use time rather than distance on hill repeats.
Hills are a great way to build specific speed without hurting yourself, because you are fighting gravity you are not running as fast & putting yourself down more softly. A pace on the flat that delivers the physiological stress you require may be challenging your joints & connective tissue/fascia more because of heightened centrifugal force from greater velocity. But on the hill, the same effort physiologically produces less damaging forces, but the same bang for your training buck. Conversely of course what goes up must come down & here you need to either take short soft quick running steps or walk, or Lydiard-style, pick a long hill with side streets that run with the contour (i.e. flat) upon which you recover.
Build to hill repeats as follows: Do a few runs on particularly hilly, rolling courses. Then progress to running those same routes, but accelerating the climbs & recovering on the downs & flats & then progress to formal hill repeats.
A word of caution to the over-zealous – don’t do hills without your ego in check! One of the US greats & definitely a humble individual with no ego issues at all is Dathan Ritzenhein – he gave me good insight on how to do hills. Dathan, the current US 5000m record holder discovered that he might have been doing his hill repeats too hard & too steeply, even perhaps too often, as he was getting injured in the ankle. He switched to shallower, longer & therefore less intense hills, stayed injury free & went sub 13min for 5km.
Have fun in them thar hills – your improved performances will be ample reward for slogging up the same flippin hill multiple times!
Bobby McGee
www.BobbyMcGee.com

Last night I gave a talk to a running group at the side of a windswept track on the merits of using the run/walk method of training & racing. A point I make about the benefits of the method is the profoundly positive impact it has on cardiac drift. At the end, a runner, who is doing an Ironman® later in the season was very interested in this concept
Cardiac drift is a characteristic of heart rate in all endurance events in which the heart rate increases progressively as the workout or race progresses even if the output is the same. Then in the later stages, no matter how hard you push yourself, it begins to drop. There are a number of reasons for this, foremost of which is most likely fatigue, followed by hydration aspects. There is some evidence that heat may be a factor also – or heat accelerates fatigue & hydration imbalance, but the net result is the same.
As far as the heart rate dropping it would seem that as our peripherals start to fail/grow weak & we are unable to return blood to the chest cavity (heart & lungs) for re-oxygenation, decreasing the need for the cardio-vascular system to operate at higher levels.
Bottom line, the run/walk method helps to slow heart rate increase, making it possible for us to operate more efficiently for longer. The overall heart rate average is lower, thus improving our chances of being metabolically more efficient, (burn more fat for longer, sparing our carbohydrates). Finally, the vascular pumping action of walking & the relative reduction in fatigue because of the intermittent, rather than continuous running ensures that we can keep the heart rate up deeper into these long events & thus be able to perform better.
The walk run method helps in SO MANY ways – this just an illustration of how it can help in respect of cardiac drift.
As always, have fun & if you feel you need Leg Speed, contact us at http://www.bobbymcgee.com/ & see if we have something for you.
Bobby McGee

Check out the trailer of my new DVD on the home page of my website: www.BobbyMcGee.com

TRAINING TO FOCUS - RACING FOCUSSED

A Psychological Model to Empower the Triathlete
“Losing focus” is a term often used by triathletes and coaches when an athlete makes a silly mistake, misses a break or makes a technical error. Fact is, focus does not disappear, it either goes to a place where it is effective and good decisions are made by the athlete, or it drifts to an area where it does not promote performance and may even derail the athlete’s chance at success.

Endurance events are lengthy by their very nature—an ITU-style race takes over 100 minutes, an Ironman race over 8 hours. This means that intense task oriented focus is not possible for the entire period of the race. Athletes succeed when they plan their focus periods and regulate concentration intensity. Triathlon, being a sport of 3 different repetitive movements, also contains the need for habituation, i.e. performing swimming, cycling and running without thinking about the action itself. The same holds true for transition activities. Where then does the mind go? The athlete better know! Recognizing internal dialogue and altering it if needs be, is a prerequisite for great performance.

It is important to also know that “being in the zone” is a state of mind more predicated on rhythm which as an objective observation may be mistaken for “checking out”. However, rather than checking out, this is the preferred state for optimal performance & shows up as an unconscious driving at optimal intensity & highest efficiency. This tapping into the “beat” of whatever you are doing & not involving any cognitive intervention is a product of clever training & highly habituated movement skills with their associated fitness levels. Effective focus on the other hand is the ability to objectively observe performance & external & internal situations & act proactively so as to ensure peak performance. This focus will not disrupt flow & govern the management of choices that best impact occurrences within a race that may not fall within the scope of the flow state to handle.

A number of studies of endurance events have shown that pace is slowest or slows somewhere between 75 and 90% into an event, whether that be an 800m running race or an Ironman event. I believe that the mechanism at work here is more mental than physical. See Diagram.

Studies (with weight lifters) have shown rather conclusively that output decreases when focus is drawn away from the process of performing the activity. This was confirmed when a further study illustrated that athletes who watched TV, read or listened to music while running on treadmills or riding stationary bikes recruited less muscle and used lower levels of their aerobic capacity, than athletes who were able to focus only on the activity without distractions.

Clearly focus is being lost in this area that can be defined as the “focus zone”. The triathlete begins to consider the effort that has been expended and how this might have affected him/her up to this point and how these past stresses might affect his/her ability to finish strongly. The finish is still too far off to have the athlete begin the drive for home. This clearly shows a crucial shift of focus – a focus removed from the task at hand. Concentration is placed on factors that are not relevant to the present situation. Not being in the moment “switches the body off”, as the mind dwells on past and future events, where the athlete cannot physically “do” anything. Power is lost & muscle recruitment diminishes.

The athlete can replace this ineffectual period of concentration, by being aware of this zone and training not to loose focus. Divide swim, bike and run workouts up into these phases—the first 75% (1.), 75 to 90% (2.), and 90% to the finish (3.) See Diagram.

Triathletes should be encouraged to really do what it takes to stay present and focused in this area. Develop a habit of knowing when the mind drifts to the past or future and learn to drag it back to the “now” – a place where the athlete can bring all the ability that he/she does have, to bear on the next stroke, pedal stroke and stride, moment by moment until the finish.

Good luck - see 1st how you do use focus, assess whether it could be better & then habituate a focus pattern that becomes automatic & allows to to be the most efficient athlete you can be.

Bobby McGee

www.BobbyMcGee.com

PS: My new running mechanics & drills DVD has been released - check it out on my website

Nope, not off somewhere, just staying in good old Boulder!

Does one humbly apologize for an April Fool's joke that was mostly gobbled up gullibly? That's what I love about this community - honest, open, vulnerable, striving to be better.

I don't even wish it was true - but a slightly better Colorado winter would have been nice. I have a rule though - I NEVER complain about the heat, ANYWHERE, because that allows some whining about the cold from this here Southern Hemisphere boy.

So as the days warm up here in the US don't be caught not being able to strip off a layer, drinking a little more & keeping the electrolytes levels appropriate.

Pic of me draining a crucial turn for a practice triathlon mini race!

Bobby

www.BobbyMcGee.com