Progression runs seem to have become a fad in the running community. Or at least their popularity has suddenly greatly increased. Type "progression run" into the Google search box and you'll see what I mean. I must admit that I am more of a follower than a leader with respect to this trend. Like most runners, I've always practiced de facto progression runs, which is to say, I've always tended to run faster toward the end of my regular "base" runs and long runs. But progression runs have only had a formal place in my training since I started working with Brad Hudson on the manuscript of Run Faster from the 5K to the Marathon a couple of years ago. Thus, while there are many specific ways to practice progression runs, and I practice them the Brad Hudson way, more or less.

A progression run is a run in which the first (and usually the longer) part is completed at a steady, moderate intensity and the second (and usually the shorter) part is completed at a faster pace, usually in the range of lactate threshold pace. Hudson's rationale for progression runs is that they simply add a little bit of a challenge to workouts that would otherwise be relatively easy, and in a way that does not hamper recovery from one's most recent hard workout or sabotage performance in the next planned hard workout. Hudson likes to have his runners do them in their Sunday long runs and on Wednesdays or Thursdays. (Tuesdays and Fridays are the high-intensity days in his system). Hudson does not believe, as some coaches do, that every run should be either hard or easy. He believes that runners will absorb a higher total training load without becoming overtrained if they do one or two moderately challenging workouts per week in addition to two hard workouts (or three hard workouts if you count hard long runs) and however many easy workouts. And progresion runs represent an effective way to experience a moderate challenge.

I have my own, brain-based rationale for progression runs that does not contradict Hudson's. It goes like this: The whole reason we tend to do de facto progression runs is that our brains make us feel good and strong and eager to pick up the pace toward the end of an otherwise easy run, because speeding up will complete the task faster and because the brain's teleoanticipation mechanism is able to calculate that doing so will not be unduly stressful. By the same token, the reason we often feel sluggish from the very beginning of some runs is because the brain concludes from afferent feedback received from the body that the body is still recovering from recent hard training, so the brain makes us feel miserable to prevent us from overtaxing our bodies by running hard again before the body is ready. But with a mile or two left, our brains often lift this "artificial" limitation, knowing that a moderate acceleration to the finish will do no harm at this point. Feelings of sluggishness and peppiness during running are intelligent messages from the subconscious brain to our consciousness. It is good to heed them. Progression runs are just a way of formalizing and taking full advantage of the brain's capacity to reveal opportunities to squeeze a little extra fast running into your schedule and thereby squeeze a little more fitness out of your body.

Contrary to what many women have been led to believe, the nutritional needs of female athletes are not significantly different from those of male athletes. Research has shown that male and female athletes and non-athletes need the same 13 vitamins and 22 minerals in approximately the same amounts. Most gender-based differences in recommended daily intakes of specific vitamins and minerals can be accounted for by differences in body size, such that they are really size-based differences. The lone exception is iron, which premenopausal women need more than twice as much of due to menstrual-related iron losses. Those vitamin and mineral supplements that are "formulated especially for women/men" are nothing more than marketing gimmicks.

The same is true for the macronutrients: carbohydrate, protein, and fat. Men and women need the same eight essential amino acids and the same essential fats. The optimal balance of macronutrients is also the same for male and female athletes: 40-70 percent carbohydrate, 15-40 percent fat, and 10-25 percent protein. The only diference is that the average man, being larger, needs more total calories each day than the average woman.

There are gender differences in the use of nutrients in the body. For example, women burn more fat and less carbohydrate than women at moderate exercise intensities, while men burn more fat and less carbohydrate than women in the first hour or two after exercise. But these differences do not suggest the need for the two genders to eat differently.

However, female athletes often do eat differently from male athletes in ways that prevent them from meeting some of their nutritional needs. For example, many women believe that females require more calcium than males. They do not. The reason some women believe their calcium needs are higher is that women are more likely than men to develop osteoporosis (dangerously low bone density), which is often caused in part by low bone density, and calcium is the main mineral ingredient of bone tissue. The problem of osteoporosis is so widespread that doctors and nutrition experts are constantly urging women to consume more calcium. But the calcium deficiency that sometimes contributes to osteoporosis is not due to higher calcium needs; rather, it is due to lower average calcium consumption in women.

A lot of women avoid calcium-rich dairy foods in an effort to avoid fat. This point leads us to the core nutritional challenge that female athletes (and women in general) face as a group: social pressure to be thin. As we all know, there is in our culture a double standard that makes fuller body shapes less acceptable in women than in men. This standard motivates millions of women - and girls - to undernourish themselves in a misguided effort to look the way they think they're supposed to look.

Athletes are as likely to be affected as non-athletes. In fact, compulsive exercise is another unhealthy way that some females attempt to achieve a warped ideal of thinness. While a great number of female athletes do develop serious eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa, much greater numbers undernourish themselves to a milder (but still unhealthy) degree. This broader phenomenon is often referred to as disordered eating. (Eating disorders are specific and severe forms of disordered eating.)

You may have heard of a condition called the female athlete triad. The three health conditions comprising this triad are disordered eating, amenorrhea (cessation of menses), and osteoporosis. Often, but not always, these conditions are present simultaneously in female athletes who are undernourishing their bodies due to negative body image. (Two-thirds of American women report being dissatisfied with their body weight).

Disordered eating is typically the trigger of the triad. Inadequate energy intake combined with intense training can cause a woman's body fat level to fall so low that the ovaries no longer produce adequate estrogen. This hormone is critical for normal menses and also for bone formation. Calcium deficiency, when combined with low estrogen, makes the bones even thinner and more brittle, thereby increasing the risk of stress fractures. Here are some tips to avoid undernourishing yourself as a female athlete:

• Don't eat by your own rules. Eat by the established rules as explained in this book and other credible resources. And don't make up your own ideal body weight. Your ideal body weight is whatever body weight you end up with after consistently eating right and training well for several months. Focus on the process, not arbitrary goals that may or may not be realistic.
• Ask yourself whether you are satisfied with your body weight. If you are not satisfied, and yet your body composition is in the healthy range, consider the possibility that the real problem is not your body weight but your body image, and talk to your doctor about it.
• Beware of restricting certain types of foods. Many female athletes eliminate dairy from their diet or become vegetarians in order to facilitate weight loss. What they really end up doing is undernourishing themselves - eating too few calories, or not getting enough of specific nutrients that are most abundant in animal foods (e.g. protein, calcium, and iron). There is really no legitimate health reason to avoid dairy foods or meat. So unless you have an ethical or religious reason for doing so, I don't recommend it.
• See a doctor if you miss three menses not due to pregnancy or if you suffer frequent stress fractures.

I've never run a good marathon. My first two were completed disasters. At the 1999 California International Marathon I made the classic rookie mistake of overestimating my abilities, running the first 14 miles at 2:43 pace when I was probably in 2:50 shape and then imploding. After tearing off my race number and leaving the course in a state of extreme self-disgust to make a pay phone call to my support crew (my brothers), I eventually resumed running (because my road crew did not answer) and crossed the finish line in 3:23.

My second marathon did not go much better. I ran the first half a little slower than I had in my maiden marathon and consequently bonked a little later, at around 18 miles, but still managed only a 3:11 when I was probably again in 2:50 shape. If bad pacing was the main cause of my first marathon collapse, failure to take in enough carbohydrate was probably the main cause of this second marathon collapse.

My best marathon to date was the 2001 Rock n' Roll San Diego Marathon, where I ran 2:46:42. But even in this race I came somewhat unravelled in the final few miles. I probably lost a full minute in the last mile.

Injuries kept me out of marathons for the next several years, but when I lined up for the 2007 California International Marathon I was nearly in the best shape of my life and fully capable of running sub-2:40--or so I thought. I wound up running a very disappointing 2:47:45. A fierce headwind and lack of preparation for the course's rolling hills accounted for perhaps half the gap between my expectations and reality, but only half. What accounted for the other half? Indeed, what accounted for the unexplained half of my unravelling in every marathon I had ever raced?

I have flirted with the hypothesis that the marathon just isn't my distance. Perhaps, for whatever reason, my body just wasn't designed to go that far at an aggressive pace. But I've run a couple of good half marathons, and I believe that anybody who can run a good half marathon ought to be able to run a good marathon.

I know that I have fueled myself properly in my last few marathons, so I can eliminate nutrition errors from the list of possible explanations. Which leaves only one possibility: I'm just not training right. Some vital ingredient is missing from my recipe for marathon preparation. Specifically, I need to modify my past training patterns in one or more specific ays that enable me to hold speed in those painful last miles. But how?

There are a few ideas I'm currently playing with. One is to do some overdistance runs--as much as 50K--to make the marathon distance seem shorter. Perhaps my body needs a surplus of raw endurance that it's never had. Another idea is to make my hardest marathon-pace run harder than it has been in the past--perhaps 16 miles instead of 13 or 14. A third idea is to incorporate into my peak training a workout that's just a little shorter than a marathon and just a little slower than my goal marathon pace: maybe 24 miles at 6:20 pace (supposing my goal pace is 6:00). A lot of elite marathon runners do this type of workout, but I never have.

Aside from trying new types of peak workouts, I might also try a couple of other things. In the past I have really marginalized speed training in the peak phase of my marathon training. Next time I might maintain more balance in my training straight through the taper. Already I've started to experiment with doubles (two runs a day). Perhaps that alone could take me over the marathon wall. Finally, in past marathon ramp-ups I may have overeached a bit too much at times by trying to pack too many miles into my "easy" days. Next time I might maintain a bigger gap between my hard runs and my easy runs so that I don't wear myself down.

The marathon is a riddle, but that's half the fun of it. I'm excited to test some of these ideas and see what sorts of results they produce.

The EZ Run Belt is the curious invention of Joe Sparks, a student and teacher of Nicholas Romanov's Pose method of running. This device is designed to aid runners in learning Pose running by preventing them from overstriding. Its design is very simple. It consists of little more than a belt and ankle cuffs. A pair of bungee chords is hooked to the back of these parts so that the chords run behind the hamstrings and calves, applying tension that tends to bend the knees unless the tension is resisted.

Joe Sparks recently sent me an EZ Run Belt to try, and try it I did. Now, it must be noted that I taught myself not to overstride a few years back by switching to minimalist running shoes (which discourage the heel-first footstrike that is characteristic of overstriding) and by using the proprioceptive cues I describe in my book Brain Training for Runners. So when I first began running with the EZ Run Belt I did not notice any change in my stride, although I felt the resistance, for sure.

But then I tried reverting to my old heel-first stride, and I was delighted to find that the bungee chords' tension forced me to begin retracting my swing leg in the moment preceding footstrike, as every runner should do but as only the fastest runners actually do. Most runners just passively allow their foot to drop to the ground and then they initiate backward thrust. Better runners activate their glutes and hamstrings and begin to open up their hips just before the foot lands, effectively beginning the thrust phase of the stride prior to impact. This not only prevents overstriding but it also reduces ground contact time and boosts efficiency.

It is possible to correct overstriding without learning to begin retracting the swing leg before footstrike, and I did just that when I changed my form a few years back. I made my switch from a heel-first to a midfoot landing by angling my whole body forward from the ankles, as Romanov also teaches. I've been lazier about forcing myself to begin the backward thrust before footstrike, however. So I was intrigued that the EZ Run Belt seemed to encourage this correction.

After testing the EZ Run Belt I still feel that switching to minimalist running shoes and using proprioception (that is, body awareness) are the two best means to correct overstriding. The use of proprioception is utterly indispensible. But I believe that the EZ Run Belt could complement proprioceptive efforts to correct overstriding by teaching the runner what it feels like to begin retracting the swing leg before footstrike. For this reason I would recommend using the EZ Run Belt in a slightly different way than Joe Sparks does.

Sparks recommends wearing the belt for one to five minutes at a time. I would instead encourage the runner to run for 30 seconds with the belt and then unhook the bungee chords from the ankle cuffs and immediately run 30 seconds normally, during which time the runner should concentrate on recreating the feel of running with the belt as fullyl as possible. This process would be repeated several times to encourage a translation of the EZ Run Belt's corrective effect to free running. Because, ultimately, if you can make yourself run right without technical aids, you cannot change your stride.

There is an ancient expression used in endurance sports: "It's better to be 10 percent undertrained than 5 percent overtrained." I've never been too sure what to make of this expression. I mean, isn't it best to be 100 percent perfecly trained? But of late my attitude toward this unattributed piece of wisdom has changed, largely due to the frequency with which I see athletes--paticularly American distance runners--perform surprisingly well in early-season tune-up races and other races preceded by relatively moderate training, and perform poorly in peak races preceded by very high training loads.

It happened again at the U.S. National Cross-Country Championships in San Diego, which I had the pleasure of watching live. Dathan Ritzenhein blew away the field, winning by 26 seconds, despite the fact that an IT band injury had forced him to train exclusively on an antigravity treadmill until just 10 days before the event. Ritz's coach, Brad Hudson, told me after the race that he had been unsure whether Ritz should even compete, fearing that the young runner might have his confidence crushed by losing badly. He needn't have worried. Apparently his greater "freshness" more than made up for his limited fitness.

I'm starting to believe that there's no such thing as being 100 percent perfectly trained for a race--or at least that there's no way to know whether you're 100 percent perfectly trained. What the maxim that I cited at the beginning of this post now means to me is simply that one should always train somewhat conservatively in order to minimize the risk of overtraining. It's not that one should try to show up to races undertrained. It's that training is a blind process, in the sense that you cannot discern a clear line marking the threshold between undertrained and overtrained ahead of you. If you try to feel your way right up to this limit in training, you put yourself at great risk of crossing it, and I do believe that every step beyond the limit is equivalent to two steps behind it.

I think I overtrained myself slightly for my last marathon in December. This year I'm going to take a lesson from Dathan Ritzenhein and others and train with a bit more restraint. I still plan to do some workouts that are just as hard as the toughest workouts I did in my recent marathon ramp-up; I just won't do as many of them, and I will train more lightly betwen them as well. It's worth a try.

Not everyone agrees about grains. Some nutrition experts (and would-be experts) believe that grains should be a major part of everyone’s diet. Others believe that grains should be marginalized in the diet. Whom should you believe? Let’s take a look at what science and common sense say about the place of grains in a healthy diet.

The Anti-Grain Arguments

There are two distinct camps that stand against grains: the low-carb advocates and the ancient diet advocates. The Low-carb advocates argue that grains should have a small place in the diet because they are high in carbohydrates, and carbohydrates should be limited in the diet because they cause weight gain, diabetes and other horrors.

The problem with this argument is that there is no solid evidence that a high-carbohydrate diet causes weight gain or metabolic disorders. In a recent review of the scientific literature, University of Virginia nutritionist Glenn Gaesser, Ph.D., found no association between carbohydrate consumption and overweight or metabolic diseases. In fact, he found that the balance of research indicated that those who consume high-carbohydrate diets tend to be slimmer than those who eat fewer carbs.

The ancient diet advocates have a more credible argument against grains. Their position is based on the fact that grains did not become a significant part of the human diet until the agricultural revolution occurred in approximately 10,000 B.C. Since humans were more or less fully evolved by this time, according to this argument, grains are not ideally suited to the human genotype, which represents an adaptation to the vegetables and other foods that humans ate for tens of thousands of years preceding the incorporation of grains.

The nutritional profile of grains is certainly very different from that of the vegetables, which contain a greater density and variety of vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients and a lower density of calories than grains do. Research has clearly shown that fruits and vegetables are the most indispensable foods in the human diet. Men and women who eat the most fruits and vegetables have fewer chronic diseases and live longer than others. By contrast, grains can be completely eliminated from the diet without consequence as long as the level of fruit and vegetable consumption remains high. No vital nutrient is underrepresented in the diet of those who follow “Neanderthal” or “Paleolithic” diets.

That which is unnecessary is not necessarily harmful, however. The scientific literature contains no evidence that high levels of grain consumption are harmful. In fact, studies have found that higher levels of whole grain consumption are associated with lower risk of overweight, heart disease, diabetes, and various types of cancer. Notice I wrote “whole grains,” though, and not simply “grains”. I’ll say more about this distinction below.

The bodies of many men and women do not react well to grains. Some are allergic to the gluten contained in wheat and other grains while others experience sluggishness, slow thinking and other such symptoms due to the high carbohydrate load that comes with grain consumption. These problems have a genetic basis and provide a solid indication that grains are not the human genome’s preferred source of nourishment. Life is better for gluten-allergic and carbohydrate-sensitive individuals when they minimize grain consumption. Everyone else can maintain a fairly high level of grain consumption without consequences as long as the overall diet is balanced and the activity level is high.

What The Establishment Says

Mainstream nutrition experts have long recommended that people eat more grains than any other type of food. The nutritional establishment is most fully represented in the MyPyramid nutrition guidelines created by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which advise men of my age, height, weight, and activity level to consume nine servings of grains per day and only five and a half servings of fruits and vegetables combined.

The problem with these guidelines is that they suggest that high levels of grain consumption are necessary for good health, when they are not. You can be perfectly healthy with a diet that includes no grains whatsoever. One must understand, however, that the MyPyramid guidelines are based not only on nutrition science but also on cultural dietary norms. Grains are the most abundant food in the typical American diet, and most of us would be loathe to eliminate them.

The MyPyramid guidelines also include a recommendation that half of one’s daily servings of grain be whole grains. If I could, I would tweak this recommendation to read: “Get as many of your grains as possible in the form of whole grains.” As you know, refined grains such as processed wheat flour have been stripped of most of their fiber and vitamins and minerals, leaving only the calories. Consequently, replacing most of the refined grains in your diet with whole grains will have a significant, positive long-term impact on your health.

For example, a new study from Penn State University provides new evidence that a diet rich in whole grains may promote weight loss and reduce the risk of chronic diseases such as diabetes. Participants in the study were 25 men and 25 women with metabolic syndrome. All 50 subjects were placed on the same weight-loss diet for 12 weeks, except that half of them were counseled to get all of their grains in the form of whole grains. Members of both groups lost weight--8 to 11 pounds--but those in the whole grain group lost more abdominal fat. In addition, members of the whole grain group exhibited a 38 percent decrease in C-reactive protein, a marker of whole-body inflammation, which underlies various chronic diseases, whereas C-reactive protein levels remained unchanged in members of the control group.

The straight dope on grains can be summarized as follows: Eat as many or as few grains as you like, as long as your overall diet is well balanced and your body seems to tolerate grains well. Regardless of how much grain you eat, make sure most of it is whole grain.

Endurance athletes are accustomed to thinking of metabolic stress
(the high rate of energy use associated with endurance exercise) and
exercise fatigue (the involuntary loss of work capacity) as
inextricably linked. In other words, we tend to think of energy
depletion as the cause of declining performance during exhaustive
exercise. However, it is possible to fatigue the muscles without
significant metabolic stress, for example by repeatedly jumping to the
ground off a platform. So, how would local muscle fatigue induced
without metabolic stress affect endurance exercise performance? If
metabolic stress were truly THE cause of exercise fatigue, then it
would have little or no effect.

Muscle fatigue during endurance exercise is typically associated
with an elevated cardiovascular response. The heart rate increases at
any given level of sustained work output. It is commonly assumed that
metabolic stress is the link between muscle fatigue and the elevated
cardiovascular response associated with it. But in light of the fact
that it is possible to induce muscle fatigue without significant
metabolic stress, researchers from Bangor University in Wales recently
investigated the effects of muscle fatigue induced by drop jumps on
cycling performance and heart and breathing rate.

In this study, subjects rode stationary bikes to exhaustion at a
high intensity level. The ride was later repeated after the subjects
completed 100 drop jumps from a height of 18 inches. This resulted in
an average 18% decline in the maximum amount of force they were able to
generate with their quadriceps. Despite the fact that the drop jumps
had cost the subjects little energy, their time to exhaustion following
them was significantly reduced compared to the control trial and their
heart rate and breathing rate were significantly elevated.

So, what caused these effects if the subjects' muscles still had
plenty of energy available even after the drop jumps? The study's
authors concluded, "These effects seem to be mediated by the increased
central motor command and perception of effort required to exercise
with weaker locomotor muscles." In other words, the muscle fatigue
induced by the drop jumps impaired the brain's capacity to drive the
same level of cycling work output compared to the rested state.

So, what does this mean for you? Aside from the obvious
lesson--don't do 100 drop jumps before an endurance workout if you want
to perform at your best in the latter--there's nothing practical to be
gleaned from this particular study. I just find it interesting as
further evidence that the brain is truly the governing organ in
relation to exercise performance.

While I'm back to somewhat serious training, as the memory of my early December marathon fades and I look ahead to the Carlsbad 5000 in April, I'm not exactly back to high mileage. In October and November I was running 60-80 miles a week. This week I'll run about 30 miles. And I'm loving it. I feel good every day. I mean, I have that hold-me-back, I'm-ready-to-race feeling every time I lace up my shoes and start. I had forgotten that such a thing was possible. While I was certainly fitter last fall, I was lucky then to feel so good even once a week due to all the fatigue I was carrying from one workout to the next.

I'm also enjoying running fast. Today I did a seven-mile run that included 10 all-out uphill sprints of 10 seconds apiece. Let me tell you, 100 seconds of uphill sprinting is a good, solid training stimulus, but it's a total blast, and over with so quickly. Somewhat experimentally, I'm trying to do some hard running in almost every workout. I want to see how my body responds to a low-mileage, very-high-intensity approach to training for this 5K.

The backbone of my training will be a series of workouts focused on my goal race pace of 5:05 per mile. I will start this week with a session consisting of 10-12 x 400 meters in 76 seconds. Over the next several weeks I will gradually increase the distance of the intervals I run at this pace, to 600 meters, then 800 meters, then 1K, and eventually a full mile. My hardest workouts will be a session consisting of 5 x 1K @ 3:10 with only a 200-meter jog recovery between intervals and another consisting of 3 x 1 mile @ 5:00 with a 90-second recovery between intervals.

I can hardly wait until I'm actually fit enough to do these workouts!