Holiday running

With all the travelling, shopping, Christmas tree decorating, cooking and partying over the holidays, it may not be quite as easy to get out for those training runs. Unfortunately, it is just this time of year that we need those runs to work off the inevitable excesses of the holiday season. So here are a few tips to get those runs in:

1. Do it early. This is always good advice, if you can get your run in as soon as you get out of bed, any events happening during the day are not going to interrupt it - it's done! Also, over the holidays people tend to sleep later, so you might be able to get most of the run in before everyone wakes up.

2. Just get out there. Whatever time of day or night you have avaialble, just go out and run. Don't worry if you can't fit in the whole 10 miler you have planned - six miles is better than none. Also, I find that inertia is the biggest problem, and once I am out the door, I often run further than I expected.

3. Be flexible. Just because you always run at a certain time, doesn't mean you have to stick to that when you are off work. If you are cooking a Christmas brunch, fit in your run after the brunch but before the main dinner preparations get started.

4. Schedule a run with a friend. Scheduled runs make you more inclined to get out there. Take advantage of the holidays to schedule a run with a friend you haven't been able to run with for a while because of different routines.

5. Finally if all else fails - cross train. Cross country skiing is great cross training if you are stuck in the country. Skating and shinny hockey should keep the calories from mounting up too quickly.

6. Start a supplemental training routine. If running is difficult, core strength work and dynamic stretching are two things you can do anywhere and don't need to take too much time. If you get into the habit of doing these regularly over the holidays, you can continue when you get back to running regularly and your running will certainly be all the better for it.

Hopefully you will be able to make it through the holidays without too much downtime and be ready to get back to training for those races in the New Year.

Dear Diary

I realized on Sunday that I have run 3,718 kilometres this year. My immediate thought was can I make 4,000 before year end. Four thousand is such a nice round number. Perhaps not as round as 5,000, but satisfying none the less. My second thought was, “how far does this take me if I started in Toronto and say ran towards Vancouver?” Well, if I stayed in Canada and ran along the Trans-Canada, it would get me to the entrance of Glacier National Park West of Banff. If I make it to 4,000km before the end of the year – hey,wait a minute, that’s only 3 weeks today! Well, 4000km would take me to Kelowna, so it looks like I’ll be stuck in the Rockies.

I didn’t stop thinking there. I wondered how long it took me to run that far. If I assume I put in three good weeks and make it to 4,000km and further assume that my average pace was 5min/km that would translate into 333 hours. Now, if Outliers author Malcolm Gladwell is correct, at this rate it would take me 30 years to become a great runner at which point I would be 76. So, if I’m still healthy and running, I’ll be so going after Ed Whitlock’s records!

This all came about when I entered the details of my Sunday Long run in my log book. I have kept a log of my running since I started in 2003. What’s the point you might ask. Well, I believe that the success I have achieved with my running is due, at least in part, to keeping track of my workouts in a logbook.

A well kept log can be a source of motivation, silently urging you out the door so that you have something to enter at the end of the day. It always bothers me if I have to write 0 in the mileage column, even if I can say “sick with H1N1” under comments. I’d just rather go for a run.

A log is also a useful tool in figuring out why you are injured. If you look in your log and compare this month’s mileage to last month’s mileage and see a big increase, it could be that you are adding miles too quickly. And what about your shoes? When did you buy those shoes? Could it be that the tired feeling in your legs, even after a day or two’s rest, is due to the cushioning in your shoes being worn out? If you noted in your log when you bought a new pair you could quickly calculate how many miles are on them and decide whether or not a new pair are in order.

Finally, in the week before a major race, if you are anything like me, you are a bundle of nerves, with a very annoying little voice telling you that there is no way you can run as fast as you plan to. One of the best things to do at that point is to look over your log, remind yourself of all the training you have done, and give the little voice the finger.

So, what should you write in your log? Well, there are the obvious entries - mileage and time taken, the route, time of day and if you are running alone or with someone else. If you have the necessary gadgets you can record pace and heart rate. Weather conditions are useful to record, because a slower than normal run may be caused by 50km/hour winds, icy sidewalks or even very hot and humid conditions.

Other information you may want to include is resting pulse (best taken before getting out of bed in the morning) which is useful for tracking the effects of training, and how you feel on the run, which is important for monitoring recovery and catching early signs of overtraining. For example, if you are still feeling the effects of a hard workout two or three days later, then you need more recovery or the workout was too hard. You could simply write that the run was awful, or hard or great, or use a perceived effort scale from 1 to 10 with one being awful and 10 being the best run ever.

Whether you use an online log, or the old fashioned paper version, I believe you will get a lot more out of it than just a record of your running, although that, in itself is worth the effort.

Cross Country Racing

This is the first of what I hope to be a regular Coaching Blog called “Running Tangents.” I named it Running Tangents, for two reasons: one, I might well get off on tangents while writing this thing, and two, as you may know, running tangents across the corners in a race is the shortest way to the finish line and we all want the shortest route. This came to mind while running the Canadian Cross Country Championships in Guelph last weekend.

A team of four Longboat Roadrunners members Rob Campbell, Lynn Bourque, Maureen Mancuso and I made up a team that we entered as Longboat Men 40-50 (I know we aren’t all men – more on this later). For those of you who don’t know the Guelph course, it consists of four loops of two kilometres mostly over trail and grassy fields. (In fact, those of you that do know the course may not have recognized it this year without the snow and ice that covered it the last few years). There is one significant hill on the course, which means that it has to be climbed four times, including a final push to the finish. Midway through the first loop I realized that running tangents in a cross country race is very different from running tangents in a road race, because of the narrow nature of cross country courses. So, even if you did manage to find a tangent to run, it wouldn’t make a whole lot of difference to your time.

One of the things I have learned about cross country running is that there are no short cuts. It is a tough slog from beginning to end, over unfamiliar (some would say unforgiving) terrain, with more/steeper hills than we like, sometimes so muddy that we lose our shoes and yes, the trails are narrow. I have never before been elbowed in a race, but, like the futility of running tangents, I put it down to those narrow trails. So, given all this, why would anyone choose to run cross country?

Well, I have to admit, that I never really look forward to a cross country race. Partly because I know it will be hard, but also because I know I am not specifically trained for it. So, when the going gets tough, as it inevitably does, I can’t get through it by telling myself that I have put in many hours of preparation just for this race. I get through it because I am part of a team, and the thought of letting the team down is more painful than running up that hill to the finish. After all, as Lance Armstrong famously said, “pain is temporary but quitting is forever.” Cross country is one of the few running events where you can be part of a team, running individually, but contributing to the overall score of the team. It is this team aspect of cross country that I think needs to be promoted especially among the new members, so that we have teams competing at all the different races during the cross country season. There is also something refreshing about running on trails through the woods away from the honking drivers mad about being held up for a bunch of runners – again.

As the Canadian cross country season draws to a close, I would like to congratulate the Longboat M60 team that placed first in four out of four races they entered and the Longboat W60 team that placed first in the three races that they entered. Both of these teams won their age groups at the Ontario Championships.

Finally, congratulations to my three teammates who had great races in Guelph all exceeding their own expectations. Lynn Bourque 35:04, Rob Campbell 29:57, Maureen Mancuso 37:49, who came second in her age group. It seems that the National championships will be held in Guelph again next year, and I hope that Longboat will send a much larger contingent of runners to compete on the national stage.