By: Magi Scallion

It’s always difficult to get back into training after a busy few weeks of work, a relaxing vacation, or other such excuse for not training with regularity. In particular, I find the first few intensity sessions to be really difficult.

I spent most of August in the office for 10-14 hours a day, or out on the streets working an event. No matter which way you slice it, walking is not running intensity and nor is sitting at a desk. I’m finally taking a bit of time “off” (catching up on other contracts and school work) to get in some more exercise. I started with a bang this morning by doing some running intervals with one of the national cross country ski team training centres.

Although 4 x 6 minutes (on 4 minutes rest) does not seem terribly daunting, I certainly felt like a bag of poo! The intervals were 95% uphill, some of which was very steep uphill. This, to be honest, is not my cup of tea. Cross country skiers love to run hills: I think it’s because their running efficiency is not very good so it’s the only way for them to exert their superior fitness in a foot race.

So there I was, sucking wind close to the back of 8 of the top male cross country skiers (of their age) in Canada. That may not sound so bad, but I really wanted to be duking it out with the front group… and if all goes well, I will be in short order! Here’s to a September of training like I mean it!

Photo: My training buddies in their best terrain. (Photo by Chris Manhard)

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Born in Nova Scotia and emigrating to British Columbia via Ontario and Alberta, Magi has been running the entire way. Primarily defined as a cross country ski racer, Magi has competed nationally and internationally in that sport. The highlight of her career was competing in the World University Games and the World Cup races in Canada in 2007. Cross country skiers rely heavily on running for cross training and Magi has become an accomplished trail and mountain runner, representing Canada at the World Mountain Running Championships in 2005 and the winning numerous national championships medals.

Today Magi runs for fun… and it’s a lot of fun! Epic mountain runs, city cruises with friends, and more keep her happy and occupied outside of work and school.

With the fall racing season now upon us, I thought I would re-send this article as a refresher for all to make sure to get in a good warm-up before your races and hard training sessions.

Have you ever wondered why people warm-up before a race? Why waste the energy? Why not save it for the race?

Quite simply, the warm-up gets the mind and body ready for the hard work ahead of it. Most bodies need to be gently coaxed out of their protective shell in order to push hard—blood flow to the various muscles needs to be increased so the muscle warms up and becomes a bit more flexible, which allows for easier movement and reduced chance of injury.

As for the mind, most people need some time to get psyched up for the discomfort level in the near future.   The warm-routine helps with this aspect as well.

I’ve been running for a loonngg time, and morning runs are my favourite, but also my nemesis—without 20-30min of walking around and a cup of coffee, I start my runs like a 70 year old who’s never run before, and that’s not right. When I start my morning runs, I’m stiff and sore and slow for 20min and then, gradually, the blood starts to get through to deeper and deeper muscle tissue, and I loosen up. And speed up.

One of those muscles is, of course, the heart. Have you ever noticed you breathe really heavily at the start of your run and after a little while, things settle down? You’ve just warmed up.

I suggest every run you do start off at a gentle pace, then build to the pace you want to maintain. Using your breathing as a guide works very well for this. If you are breathing hard, you started too hard. Later in the run, it’s a different story. I’m talking about the first 10-15min.

The importance of a warm-up when racing has never been scientifically proven to be beneficial, but the mountain of anecdotal evidence is rather impressive, so I believe in it a great deal.

Further, I’ve always believed that to be good at whatever it is you want to be good at, you do what the other people who are good at it do, and when it comes to running, they all warm-up before workouts and races. Therefore, so do I.

Again, the idea of the warm-up is to get your body ready for race effort. Ideally, you want to get your body ready so it’s good to go on the start line, not a kilometer or two after the gun goes off.

With that in mind, I suggest the following as a good routine to follow for a 5 or 10k race. It should take 30min or so.

• Run for 10-15min building your intensity from ultra easy to just under threshold (race pace) for the final 2 minutes or so.
• Gently stretch, do running drills, some dynamic stretching and hydrate
• Washroom
• Change clothes into your racing attire
• Move out to the start line
• Continue with the dynamic stretching and running drills interspersed with 4-5 easy accelerations of between 80-100m. Start by running easily and gently get yourself up to race pace within the acceleration, hold for 5-10 sec. Run easily back to where you started from and repeat 4-5 times. These are not designed to get you tired, so take more rest if necessary, but be sure to keep moving.
• You should be ready to go.

At the beginning of this article, I asked two questions: Why waste the energy? Why not save it for the race?

Well, if you actually want to race the event, your energy supply to cover the distance should be the least of your worries. If it is, you will be surviving the event, not racing it.

One final note is that the importance of a warm-up is directly proportional to a few things:

• how hard you intend to push yourself—if you’re out for a social run, it’s not that important. If you’re out for a fast time, it is very important to be ready to go when the gun goes off.
• how long the race is—the longer the race, the shorter the warm-up because the intensity of the effort is not as high, and you can build into it in the early stages of the race. In a short race, you don’t have time to find your rhythm. You gotta have it from the start.
• the weather—considering the above, if it’s really hot, a warm-up is less necessary (but still necessary). If it’s really cold, it’s very necessary.

I hope this helps.

No, this is not a reference to the Material Girl.

The inspiration for this article came from more than a few conversations that I have had recently with people expecting everything in a race to go smoothly and were surprised that it did not.

We all know the phrase “practice makes perfect” so it stands to reason this also applies to racing.  No matter how many race pace runs or time trials you do, there is nothing quite like race day to change things around and throw curve balls your way.  The more races you do, the better you get at dealing with fast balls, curve balls, knuckle balls and screw balls.

The perfect race is very rare, and this applies especially to long races where the longer you out there, the more things can go wrong, and the consequences of not addressing them are amplified.

What is not so rare is an okay first race where you might feel you underperformed a little, a poor second race where you tried to over-correct your underperformance of the first one, a pretty good third race, and finally, a great fourth one.

Naturally, the learning curve for each of us is different.  Not coincidentally, I make the same mistakes 3-4 times before I learn my lesson (just making sure it’s not a fluke, one way or the other—yeah, yeah, that’s it that’s why I do it).  These learning experiences start with your first races, but they also re-start with your first race of every season.  The more seasons you go through, the shorter the curve so it takes fewer and fewer tries to get things right each new year.

In my opinion, a reasonably good range of race experience would constitute 30 races of varying distances and courses.  This will give you very good range of experience with course profiles, logistics, and quality.  Honestly, less than that and as another saying goes, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet!”  Certainly, those that have less than 15 races under their belt still have a lot of experiences ahead of them.  Those with less than 10 are still newbies as far as I’m concerned.

The 5k repeats at race pace I have assigned the group will help to limit the costly mistakes but race day nerves almost always add a new element of uncertainty.

My main point of this article is that you should not expect great races all the time.  Do things right and try for them, but don’t expect them and definitely do not be disappointed when you do not have one.  Learn from them and don’t make the same mistake the next time.

The following is a post guest post from Carolyn Pleasance, originally posted to her blog.

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Owie….or running just to hear myself whine.

They say love hurts…I’m not sure why running has to, since sometimes I don’t think I love it…however I’m developing a relationship with my physioterrorist that rivals that which I have with my husband. She’s spent hours rubbing oils and potions and lotions on my body, she’s asked me to lie down, roll over, stick this body part here and that one there.

All this in the quest to fix the arthritis in both my knees. Every time she pulls the Graston rods out I try to slither backwards off the table. I’ve never known a strange creepy pain like that one. If you’ve never been Grastoned before, picture this: first they apply lotion to whatever part of you is going to be tortured. Then they take this metal rod, sort of like a banana clip hair thing in shape, but solid metal, and they pull it along your skin like they’re trying to roll the area flat, or squeeze the last of the toothpaste out of the tube. This causes every bit of skin, muscle, tendon, whatever else lurks there to be compressed and pulled at the same time. Yep, it hurts, nope you don’t get used to it, and yep (again) it’s worth it. Then to add insult to injury, you get these electrodes attached to the owie bits and they run this freaky currently through it that feels like a zillion electric bugs crawling under your skin. And I pay for the honour of having this done to me too.

So the knees are happier than they’ve ever been. I don’t look at the stairs in my house and consider just living in the kitchen and showering in the sink.

The bummer is that my new shoes (which apparently have tons of motion control and stability) have caused me to become newly unstable and do damage to a tendon in my left foot. Just when god slams the door he also locks the window. Back to physio where I now have my left foot bashed against a wooden block (I don’t understand it either) and to the Running Room to buy me some new kicks.  Three pairs and a half hour on the treadmill testing them later, and I’m back on the road.  The knees only protest meekly and the foot wonders why I have forsaken it, but I’m on a mission to increase my speed and therefore can mostly ignore the twinges.

The secret to increasing your speed is to run faster. I know, who’da thunk? The secret to running faster is to run shorter distances faster than you normally run longer ones. The secret to doing this is not to smash into something or run off the trail while staring at your Garmin to see how fast you’re going.

ouch, thunk, ouch, thunk…..