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4 Posts tagged with the swimming tag

In the Ultra-Taper - It's not that scary...

 

Ultra-training is easier than training for a Boston qualifier.

 

 

I'm not an official bib-number carrying ultra-runner yet, but after Sunday's 36 mile training run I think it's in the bag. Training for this ultra-trail-marathon - The VT 50 Miler - has been one of the easiest training programs I've done when compared to your average Boston qualifying campaign.

 

 

I know it's a paradox, but ultra training is easy. Let me try to explain.

 

 

Like many of you mid-packers I started running again late in life to get healthier and caught the bug. The key difference being that I ran X-country in high school - so I knew how to run, I knew I could do it. I had no expectations beyond building up to 5 miles or so 3-4 time a week to keep my weight under control.

 

 

My big eye-opener was when some ‘friend' said "hey, let's run the marathon!" (In Massachusetts you don't have to say "which marathon") Qualifying for Boston was an amazing learning experience and quite difficult. It involved tempo and speed and hills and long runs at pace - plenty of late, painful nights at the track doing mile repeats at the edge of my ability.

 

 

Even after 10 Bostons, qualifying is work for me. That's why it came as such a surprise that stepping up to the ultra would be so easy, both psychologically and physically. All the painful speed and tempo work is replaced with long-long-long slow run-hikes in the woods. After you break the barrier - you can run forever - it doesn't get worse.

 

 

Of course I'm coming off a base of training for Boston and Mt. Washington. That's quite different from starting from scratch, but if you're a solid marathoner, stepping up to an ultra distance is a piece of cake. The hardest thing is scheduling the 5-6 hour long runs, but it's no more difficult than trying to schedule two high-quality midweek speed workouts.

 

 

Here are my 2009 predictions:

 

 

  • - Ultra-marathon distance events will explode in popularity and participation as mid-packers graduate from the marathon.

  • - Runner's World will run a saccharin piece on the explosion of ultras and some troubled person's quest to finish.

  • - Main stream media and some dopey celebrities will get ultra-involved for some dopey ego charity.

  • - 10-20 books will be published on "Zen and the art of the Ultra" and "The beginner's guide to Ultras", one of them will make Oprah.

  • - Related endurance events in swimming, biking, relays and adventure racing will also see double digit growth.

  • - Some old idiot like me will keel over spectacularly in one of the events and the national pundits will bash these events as ‘bad for you'.

  • - I'll smile at the dog, pick up my feet and put them down, ignoring all the hoopla.

 

That's my story and I'm sticking to it - I'll see you out there (for 9+ hours).

 

C-,

 

 

Chris Russell lives and trains in suburban Massachusetts with his family and Border collie Buddy. Chris is the author of , short stories on running, racing, and the human comedy of the mid-pack. Chris writes the Runnerati Blog at http://www.runnerati.com/. Chris' Podcast, RunRunLive is available on iTunes and at http://www.runrunlive.com/. Chris also writes for CoolRunning.com (Active.com) and is a member of the Squannacook River Runners. ChrisRunner@runrunlive.com

 

 

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Rainy ramble on the rail trail - Dateline: Cape Cod

 

How often do you find yourself saying "It's an easy week I only have to run for 3.5 hours." Welcome to Ultra training. So far I'm digging it. Lots of slow easy miles. Plenty of eating. All the good things in life.

 

Buddy the Wonder Dog and I ventured out for an easy 90 minute out and back on the Mid-Cape Rail Trail. It was as close to raining without actually raining as it can get. Nice and cool for July 5th, but still very humid and the dog wasn't digging it.

 

 

There were many random tourists on poorly fitted bicycles. Some looking as if this may be their once-a-year ride. There were a couple of girls on those pseudo-cross-country-ski things with the poles and everything. There were a half dozen runners and joggers.

 

 

Buddy and I parked at Thompson's conservation land on Rte. 39 in Harwich. This is a great little park to take your dog to. On any given day there will be 10-20 dogs being walked (off leash). It is a regular love boat for dogs.

 

 

Today we parked there because it has access to the rail trail spur. The Mid-Cape Rail Trail goes all the way from Dennis up to Providence Town - over 60 miles. The surface is of the parking-lot-asphalt variety. Not too hard. There is usually a strip of unpaved grass to one side for the dog to trot in.

 

 

The Trail itself skirts beaches, ponds, highways, state forests, state parks and cranberry bogs as it makes its way Up-Cape. The section I run from Harwich up to Brewster and Orleans is quite heavily traveled. Lots of families on bike outings. It crosses Rte 6 for the only major elevation gain. It also passes through the large fresh water ponds in Harwich.

 

 

Buddy had to stay on leash today because of the traffic. He doesn't like it. If I give him too much leash he'll inevitably make his way to the center of the path and end up running directly into oncoming traffic. I think it's because his breed originated in Scotland - where they run on the wrong side of the trail.

 

 

We do just fine on the rail trail. Most of the bikers are faster than us and we are faster than most of the runners. We don't get caught in traffic. We mind our own business.

 

 

Today we passed two women on the way out. Buddy doesn't like following. If we are close enough to another runner - Buddy will insist we throw in a fartlek to take them. One of the women was evidently a sophomore like my daughter. She had a shirt that said "Class of 2010" on the back. I thought "Huh - Class of ‘80" when I passed her.

 

 

It got warm enough that I ended up shucking my shirt and running in my "racing sweater". I'm old enough now to not care if I scare the locals with my Elephant Man good looking naked torso.

 

 

There are at least 5 porta-potties in the 5 or so miles I went out. That's outstanding port-potty density. There is also an ice cream stand and a general store.

 

 

On the way back I let Fur-Boy go for a swim in one of the ponds. It reenergized him. He came out of the water wanting to run some tempo. The dog has no pacing skills. We got tangled up racing a family of four on bicycles. I think Dad could have taken us and Mom would have been a tester, but we had the two little kids hands down and lost them on the up-hill over the highway with a little burst.

 

 

And so it goes. Another place, another run. Back to the burgers and chips. Tomorrow morning we'll see if we can get up early enough to sneak Buddy onto the real beach.

 

 

See you out there...

 

 

C-,

 

 

Chris Russell lives and trains in suburban Massachusetts with his family and Border collie Buddy. Chris is the author of , short stories on running, racing, and the human comedy of the mid-pack. Chris writes the Runnerati Blog at http://www.runnerati.com/. Chris' Podcast, RunRunLive is available on iTunes and at http://www.runrunlive.com/. Chris also writes for CoolRunning.com (Active.com) and is a member of the Squannacook River Runners. ChrisRunner@runrunlive.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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7 Hot weather running tips from the midpack

 

Where we sweat a lot...

 

 

According to the Smithsonian Magazine I just read we all originated in Africa.  The weather there a couple hundred thousand years ago was hot and humid.  Somewhere our common ancestor slogged through a daily run in the hot and humid jungle.  So you'd think we'd be used to it.

 

 

Unfortunately I think my more recent ancestors were digging in peat bogs somewhere in Northern Europe.  I don't perform well athletically in the heat.  Neither does my Border Collie Buddy. Give us a couple inches of crusty snow and a driving sideways freezing rain and we're right at home.  Drop us into your standard Fourth of July race with full sun and 85 degrees and we wilt. 

 

 

What can you do to mitigate the effects of the sun and the heat?  First of all there's no real reason we can't have a good run on a hot day.  Humans are designed to cope with the hot.  Understanding the changes that your body goes through in response to the stress of heat will help you to come up with strategies to co-exist.

 

 

Failing a course of heat preconditioning I would recommend the following tactics to stay cooler.

 

  • 1. Avoid the sun and heat as much as possible pre-race. Keep your core temp down. Stay in the shade until race time.

  • 2. Don't eat anything for a couple hours before the race. I've seen some gruesome finish lines from people who ‘fueled up' before the hot race.

  • 3. Manually rub/spray/squirt water on your large patches of exposed skin while you're racing. I carry a water bottle and I'll squirt water on my exposed arms and thighs in a race to maximize the evaporation potential over these large surface areas.

  • 4. Get a good hat. Something light, light colored and vented. Lots of heat escapes through the top of your head - don't trap it in.

  • 5. Less clothing is better - maximize the surface area of skin exposed to the wind.

  • 6. Lube up to prevent chaffing. When your clothing gets soaked with sweat it will rub more. Sweat becomes a whetting agent.

  • 7. Help your body by visualizing. Picture the heat flowing from inside your core and out to the skin to be whisked away by evaporating water. Sounds hokey, but it helps.

 

What happens in your body when it's hot out?  Your body has a core operating temperature range that it likes to stay within.  When you rev up the engine on a hot day through exercise your core temperature starts to rise and your body initiates response mechanisms to deal with it. 

 

 

You start to sweat.  Your body coats the available surface with a glistening sheen of water. Why?  Because water has some amazing chemical properties (you may remember this from 8th grade science).  Water evaporates.  When it evaporates it changes chemical state from a liquid to a gas.  This process requires a whole bunch of energy.  It sucks this energy from the environment in the form of heat. 

 

 

When you round that corner and feel that welcoming breeze in your local 5K you are feeling thousand of water molecules changing state and absorbing heat. Feels good doesn't it?  It's the same concept as the radiator in your car. 

 

 

Why is the radiator in your car so big?  It is trying to present a large surface area to the wind to maximize the cooling.  Your skin is your radiator.  The more of it that you can expose to the wind the more efficient it is going to be at removing heat through evaporation. 

 

 

As you continue to exercise your body starts to move more blood towards the radiator - your skin.  The small capillaries in your skin will dilate to handle more fluid exchange - moving more blood away from your core and into your radiator.  Your heart (the pump) will have to work harder to push this blood out to a larger surface area. 

 

 

Ever feel nauseous in a hot race?  That may be because your body has decided to reprioritize blood away from your non-essential core systems to get more out to the radiator.  Our body thinks we must be being chased by a hungry lion and reprioritizes blood away from the GI tract and head to the muscles and skin.  You become dizzy and sick to your stomach.

 

 

At some point systems start shutting down and if you tough it out long enough you can trigger a cascade of system failure that will end your racing career by putting you six-feet-under in a pine box.

 

 

So - What can a simple midpacker do about it?  It really depends on how long you intend to be running.  In longer races you're going to need to focus on staying hydrated and getting the proper electrolyte balance, but the only real answer is to back off.

 

 

You can condition yourself to run in the heat by training in it.  One of the hottest Boston Marathons on record was won by a furnace tender from Nashua N.H. who spent his working days shoveling coal into a blazing fire.  All the other runners collapsed, but for him it was just another day at the office.

 

 

You may not have the option of shoveling coal every day, but you can take in some training runs in the heat and practice your water rubbing and heat exchange visualization.  You may find that you enjoy working up a good sweat. 

 

 

Be safe.  Be careful.  Unfortunately in our despoiled modern world many of the hot days also have bad air quality.  Check the weather and use your head to stay cool.

 

 

See you out there,

 

 

C-,

 

 

Chris Russell lives and trains in suburban Littleton Massachusetts with his family and Border collie Buddy.  Chris is the author of , short stories on running, racing, and the human comedy of the mid-pack.  Chris writes the Runnerati Blog at http://www.runnerati.com/.  Chris' Podcast, RunRunLive is available on iTunes and at http://www.runrunlive.com/. Chris also writes for CoolRunning.com (Active.com) and is a member of the Squannacook River Runners.  ChrisRunner@runrunlive.com

 

 

 

 

 

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Web 2.0 Running

Posted by Chris Russell Jul 2, 2008

Does anyone really care what you think?

 

Running is such an intimate act that I'm surprised we haven't seen Hollywood find a way to wrap an awful C-list celebrity reality show around it. Maybe they have and I just don't watch enough TV to know.

 

The logistical problem for the aspiring Spielberg's is that all you would see from the outside is some sweaty old guy plodding down the road for hours on end with a spacey look in his eyes.

 

 

Where's the turmoil? The angst? Where's all this striving and falling short of the man in the arena that you runners are always on about? Apart from the occasional collapse, regurgitation or ungainly dash behind a bush it's all going on inside the head (and bodies) of us - the participants.

 

 

That's what makes it so hard to capture visually. That's why the raw emotive power of a run lends itself much better to the written form. It's an inner world with its own funky architecture of towering spires and murky bogs. It's a fantastical Suessical of our own making. It's that undiscovered country beyond the doors of perception that we get to glimpse into every time those happy running chemicals start to seep into our meninges. Think Naked Lunch or Don Juan.

 

 

We used to write books and articles, but now we blog. That is the bite sized chunk of hyperlinked text that more and more runners are using to adequately describe the emotional journey of "my first marathon" etc. I think that's great - it makes the sport even more inclusive.

 

 

Getting under the covers; letting the participants use the paint brush of a wordscape to share the powerful emotional impact of that "first marathon" is a further democratization of our sport. Of course it creates a chaos of mediocrity tempered by the glow of authenticity. Out of this chaos, perchance a sparkling gem of a thought or phrase or story will arise through the genetic selection that is the internet.

 

 

We get to ride along and tap that unfiltered emotion of a hard run in the pouring rain with Joe Runner.

 

 

It's hard to make a movie about such things imagined or real as played across the inner screens of our minds, but how about an audio recording? I've been sampling the running podcasts recently and some of this ‘raw feed' of running is out there to be listened to on your commute to work.

 

 

Like any new medium it's got good and bad. Let me start with the top 5 reasons running podcasts are good.

 

 

  • 1. Entertainment. Podcasts can be entertaining as well as informative (think Car Talk).

  • 2. Multi-task. You can dual task and listen while you're working out or driving.

  • 3. Direct and immediate. They allow us to tap directly into the emotions of that runner at the point of the activity - no waiting - no filter.

  • 4. Communication of mode specific info. There are certain things that are just easier to describe by speaking, like trying to describe what a tempo pace should feel like to a new runner.

  • 5. Intimacy. It feels many degrees more intimate and emotional content is easier to convey.

 

Now for the bad news. Here are some bits that didn't work for me from some of the Podcasts.

 

  • 1. Listening to you run is a bit creepy. One of the most common things was that the podcasters would just carry a recorder with them when they went out for a run. It sounds good in theory but I found all that heavy breathing and rhythmic footfall a bit *****-soundtrack weird.

  • 2. Stop being preachy. Hand people a microphone and all of a sudden they step into the pulpit. This is one area where the written word works much better. I know it's harder but find a way to tell me how good it is without telling me how good it is.

  • 3. It's not about you. You know, at the end of the day, we really only care about you in the context of what it means to us. I only care about your race or training run if you can build a bridge to me. Try to answer the question, "Why do I care?"

  • 4. I don't have all day. Maybe I'm just lucky but I only have a 40 minute commute to work. Who can listen to a Podcast that is 1:20 long? Come on folks! That means I'm going to more than likely only listen to 40 minutes of it and then just worry that I missed something good.

  • 5. Infomercials. This is a problem with podcasts in general that at some point they turn into an infomercial. Refreshingly enough none of the running podcasts I've sampled so far have this problem.

  • 6. Give me content! That's what I want! Valuable advice, entertaining stories, interesting people wonderful ideas - give me content!

 

Look what you've made me do! I'm 300 words over my self-imposed blog limit and still going. Go on out and sample the available sound imbroglio at iTunes or RunningPodcasts.org. Tell me what you think.

 

See you out there,

 

 

C-,

 

 

Chris Russell lives and trains in suburban Massachusetts with his family and Border collie Buddy. Chris is the author of , short stories on running, racing, and the human comedy of the mid-pack. Chris writes the Runnerati Blog at http://www.runnerati.com/. Chris' Podcast, RunRunLive is available on iTunes and at http://www.runrunlive.com/. Chris also writes for CoolRunning.com (Active.com) and is a member of the Squannacook River Runners.

 

 

 

 

 

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Chris Russell

Chris Russell

 Member since: Oct 4, 2007

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