Hey all – hope everyone had a good winter!  It’s amazing when we sign up for spring races they always seem so far away but they do certainly creep up on us.

Working in a pedorthic clinic which deals with quite a few runners, we are definitely getting quite a few questions about ‘minimalist’  running these days.  Although this is certainly a topic that could fill a book (and has filled many books!), I’d like to answer a few questions here that we’ve recieved lately. 

(1) Is ‘minimalist/barefoot’ running all about the shoes? 

 No.  It seems that all the current research is pointing towards heavily cushioned running shoes as being the cause of many of our running woes.  Because our bodies have so many inherent tools to to be able to absorb shock, we definitely have lost some of those properties by putting a high, soft barrier between our foot and the ground.  We can see this often immediately with most people when we have them remove their shoes and run a few seconds barefoot.  In most cases, within a few seconds the body will adjust naturally by leaning forward, taking more steps (increasing cadence) and landing more on the midfoot because it hurts to land on our heels when we don’t have shoes on.  So, there seems to be little doubt at this point that running without shoes allows our bodies to absorb shock in a much more efficient manner (the way that it was supposed to).  With that being said though, most of us don’t have the flexibity, strength or technique to carry this style of running for for very long before getting injured.  Even though it’s a good change, it’s still quite a change.   And this is where we find people run into problems.   

The ‘minimalist’ shoe push is much more than just a shoe change.  It’s about learning to run better and more efficiently.  Whether someone just does some running drills (which often includes barefoot or ‘racing flat’ drills/running), works on increasing their cadence, works more on flexibility or works on strengthening, they will likely have decreased their risk of injury and also likely become a faster runner.  As someone slowly transitions to better running technique (which involves all the above principles),  they will naturally be able to cover more distance with a lower heeled shoe.

A couple questions I’ll look at next time are, “How slowly is it recommended to transition to barefoot/minimalist shoes?” and “What are running drills and how do I do them?”. 

Ryan

My day of reckoning has come.  The dreaded nutritional analysis that I also get as part of winning this contest.  Its important to understand that I wanted to have this analysis done, but its equally important to understand that I also wanted to be told what I wanted to hear, which went something like this:

You eat really well, Chrystal, and we are not sure why you are not loosing weight.  Don’t change a thing really, and every thing is fine.”

I don’t eat a lot of meals out, I cook my own soups and do weekly meal planning so I am not tempted by processed foods, I take a lunch to work, I eat low fat products and also try and eat local based on the season.  I felt like I was on the right track for the most part.

Unfortunately, I heard something more along the lines that my diet is very sugar heavy and I pretty much need a complete overhaul.   The main issues were:

• I eat too much sugar
• I eat too often
• I don’t drink enough water
• I don’t eat enough vegetables
• I need to eat more protein

Well, it came as quite a shock that I eat a lot of sugar but I guess I eat it in ways I didn’t realize.  I am not exactly sure where the sugar is coming from.  Its easy to identify the ice cream, the brown sugar on my oatmeal, maple syrup on my pancakes  and ketchup sources but its less clear to me why my Shreddies and oatmeal are sugary (well except for the sugar I put on them).

I have to confess that a meal does not feel complete unless there is is a little something sweet at the end.  So now, for the next 10 days, I am off sugar.  which is someone problematic as

1. I love it

2. I am not sure what is meant by sugar.

However, I am sure this will get corrected as I also have to continue to fill out a food diary, and it will be reviewed by Lauren, the nutritionist on the team.  So, please excuse me if my posts are grumpy but remember all I want is a cookie or some honey on my yogurt.  I am going to give this a try.  Unfortunately, I am only suppose to eat every 3 hours and its only been two, and I am already hungry so I better go do something.  Perhaps I will get even more fit from running to the bathroom all the time as I am drinking all this water.  I am feeling more grumpy by the second.

I am hopeful that this new eat regime will assist me in my speed in running and allow me to get under 1 hour for the 10K.  Hauling around this extra 30 pound does make me slower and so what does it hurt to try it.  I must admit I am not terribly convinced but the proof is in the pudding (another one of my favourite daily snacks).  Oh did I mention I also have to give up aspartame too (  I want my daily diet cola fix.)

Well, we have a seed cake hanging outside our kitchen window for the birds  I wonder what that taste like.

I’m not sure if it’s been the time change or what this week, but not a morning has come ’round that I haven’t passionately wished for more sleep.

Yesterday was no exception. I got the kids dressed and shipped off to daycare, came home and got dressed in my running gear. 26k: I can do this. What I really wanted was to go back to bed. I was exhausted.

I did a shorter 5k loop around my neighbourhood with my dog then dropped her at home and headed out on the road. I knew by the time I was 4k into the run that it wasn’t going to be a good one. My legs were tired, I was getting a headache, my stomach was starting to feel queasy (normal for me on a long run, not normal 5k into a long run). At 8k, I made up my mind and turned around and ran home. I put in 12k all together, got into the tub and then fell asleep in my bed.

Last night I was dizzy and nauseas and exhausted. This morning I’m feeling better.

Maybe I would have been able to pull of the whole 26k yesterday, though I’m inclined to think that I wouldn’t have. But I’m 100% sure that I made the right choice to turn around and cut it short.

I know that last week I wrote about ignoring what your head is telling you to do for the sake of running, but this week, I’m preaching to listen to your body, because it really knows what you need.

It is critical to take time before you start a training program to assess the status of your life and to figure out how the running, racing, recovery, and therapy will fit into your weeks. Once Chrystal understood the parameters of the first stage of the program, she ruthlessly organized her life to make it work. Take a look at Chrystal’s blog to learn how to do it right.

Chrystal and I also had to work on two other important areas before we got to the running part: (1) Goal alignment and (2) Building faith in the program.

1. Goal setting – defining what ‘fast’ means

Fast can be defined in many different way. Does it look like the girls doing wind sprints on the soccer field, women running smoothly ahead of you in a 10k race, or sprinters powering over 100m distances? Chrystal gave this some thought and concluded that she could call herself fast once she had executed a sub-60 minute 10k result. This definition gave both the athlete and the coach clear direction to build a program to deliver this specific result.

2. Faith in the program

From the beginning, Chrystal called me ‘one of the fast people’. I wasn’t sure if she was going to let me in and engage with me as her coach. We talked a lot, I shared with Chrystal my belief that the challenges she faces are similar to the challenges I have faced and continue to face in life and as a runner. I understand the battle and I ferociously believe that she can win it. One key element to her success is her coach…I know what it takes to win this one.

Sustained, consistent running over a 10-12 week period will deliver results. Transforming into a strong, smooth runner does not happen with only 2 runs per week and it does not happen with sporadic training patterns. Each of Chrystal’s weeks must be structured with the right amount of mileage (total miles and # runs), a longer run, and a challenging workout day at a level which will push her but not to the point of breakdown.  As we move forward, I will try to provide context and direction which should help Chrystal understand the rationale for the training and what the training results mean.

What is working:

Measurement: Using the miCoach system, Chrystal can see for the first time just how far and how fast she is running. As the data accumulates, she will see how she is improving and how different elements of her life may or may not impact her daily running performance.

Foundation of easy running: Over the past four weeks, Chrystal has built back up to four runs per week (most are 7 km in length) including a longer 11-12 km run on the weekend. Her weekly mileage has been 30-35 km. Based on our discussions at the start, I understood that Chrystal was historically more flexible with her running in January and February to accommodate the poor weather and footing. In past years, during these weeks she focused on indoor soccer and bootcamp rather than running. This year, she was asked to start building her running base earlier so that she would have the strength to add the challenge of speedwork in March when the spring weather arrived.

Watch-outs:

We need to keep alert for physical and mental signs that the stressload and workload are too much. Chrystal has awesome drive. I think she could plow through any obstacle, but working harder isn’t the correct way to run fast.

Frustration management is important. Emotional reactions to slow days and lonely workouts need to be captured, beaten with data, and put in a box. Chrystal’s Makeover journey all started because of her reaction to a solid 66 minutes result at the Bluenose 10k in 2010. She was annoyed with this result. @#!*#! – she wanted to break 60 min…apparently everyone else was running faster. But hold on a minute – where they all faster? A search of the 2010 Bluenose 10k results tells a very different story:

Chrystal placed 1515 overall in the race out of 2321 finishers.
Chrystal was the 819th women across line out of 1460 female finishers.
Chrystal was 178 in her age group consisting of 346 women.

Do the math. The results actually indicate that Chrystal was ‘average’, not slow!

To help Chrystal and all runners keep perspective on our running performance we should consider many factors when assess our daily performance including recovery from the run the day before, sleep patterns, and overall stress load, in addition to data such as pace, speed, and distance. I don’t see this as looking for excuses but rather a reality check. Including these details in our training logs will help us all get a realistic sense of how things are going at that particular point in the training program when take a moment to review. 

What comes next:

Weekly speedwork session. This interval workout will push her fitness and get Chrystal comfortable running at 6 min/km (and faster!) pace by the time the 2011 Bluenose 10k arrives.

Injury prevention / recovery strategies. With Chrystal’s jam-packed life, we may need to take runs out of the schedule to give her time to recover or to simply breathe. She could start planning massage and recovery time into her schedule. So far, she has taken care to maintain boot camp and soccer to stay connected with her support network.

We’re all familiar with the house analogy, aren’t we? You work on your basic endurance, then you work on strength (enter: hill training), then, as your “roof” you work on speed.

I’m starting construction on my roof. And it’s just as hard as it ever was.

Yesterday was my second Monday of intervals. Last week I ran 3k to warm up, four 600m sprints and then about 1k to cool down. Yesterday I ran 2.5k to warm up, 2x700m, 2x600m and 1x500m, then 2.5k to cool down.

The amazing thing about speed training is that is works. You teach your body to run fast under fatiguing situations and guess what? You start running faster. The absolutely horrendous things about speed training is that it’s haaaaaaarrrrrddd!

First sprint yesterday and I was all, hey this isn’t so bad! Second sprint, my legs were starting to feel rubbery. Third sprint and I was in the place where pain makes you so angry and whose stupid idea was this?!? Also, I tasted blood. And almost puked.

I happily ran 29k last Friday. I love hill training in a weird sort of way. But for the love of all that is holy I despise speed training with the heat of a thousand fiery suns.

There’s something to be said for learning to push yourself into a place that is painful in order to reach your goals, I know that. And I’m not someone who finds that easy to do (AKA all the self-preservation areas of my brain are working correctly), and yes there are all these life lessons I can learn from pushing myself and speed training and comparing marathon training to traveling down a lonely wooded trail. I cherish all of those lessons and try my best to embrace what I’ve learned and hold on tight. But during those sprints? All I think about is how much I hate it. All of it.

What about you? Do you have the same (admittedly extreme) reaction to speed training (or some other form of self-torture) and despite your better judgement just keep doing it again and again? (Did I say my brain was fully functional? Hmmm…) How do you push yourself when the going gets really, really hard?

Training this week, for me, was a frustrating experience.  I am getting up quite early to do my runs but some days its just hard to get up at 5.00 am.  However, I am ready to be fast and I want it now.  The problem is, it does not happen like this.

In my quest for a less than 60 minute 10 k, Tania started built one run aimed at beginning the process of increasing my speed.  What usually happens when I run is that my body naturally settles into a pace that is comfortable and fairly contained.  I worry that I won’t be able to do the distance, even its a short distance, so I always want to leave something in reserve and not go hard.  My mind starts to wander and I enter that lovely zen like place where I am not thinking about anything.

With the speedwork this week, which in my case is just pushing myself over shorter distance to run a bit faster than my normal pace, I have to be present when I run.  My mind has to be engaged and forcing my body to run faster.  When that happens I think about how hard it is to run, how slow I run, the uncomfortable feeling my body has when I run a bit faster etc.  So by the time I got back from my Wednesday morning run, which was my training run aimed at helping me increase my speed, I was a bear to be around.  My husband astutely assessed my level of frustration and went to his office for a while, and I muttered about the fruitlessness of my sub 60 minute goal and how old women should just accept their limitations and stop trying to do something that is clearly impossible.   I am a slow runner and as much as I hate it, that is just the way I was made.

I have since gained some perspective, with the support of a bowl of ice cream to calm myself, and have decided to continue to pursue this goal, which for so many is something they can do so easily.  However, training this week has been more difficult, not physically but mentally,  and I am lacking motivation.  I am having a frustration hangover.   My frustration is waning, but the ill effects of being that frustrated are still hanging around.

My frustration hangover is compounded by dreary, fogging, rainy east coast weather.  We have a heavy rainfall warning tomorrow, and tomorrow I am suppose to run 12 k, as I ramp up a it more mileage.  For me, that will take about an 90 minutes, and I have never run in a downpour. Tomorrow will be a day where I will need my motivation to just get dressed and go out the door.

Anyone have a cure for a frustration hangover.  I hear ice cream really helps