Three Good Ones

The October issue of Trail Runner magazine had three articles that caught my eye. Although the magazine focuses on ultra-trail running racing (distances 50K plus), often the articles are germane to all endurance sports.

Ibuprofen (aka Nurofen, Advil, Motrin)
The first is called "Pill Popping" by Elinor Fish. It tells the cautionary tale of a 27 year old man who won the 100K National Trail Championship in Eugene, Oregon, then almost died of kidney failure a few days. Doctors suspect the cause was ibuprofen, a class of over the counter drugs called NSAID, an acronym for non-steroidal, anti-inflammatory drug. Ibuprofen is frequently used for symptomatic relief of fevers and minor muscle aches due to colds and flu.

It is so commonly used in the running community that it's called Vitamin I, and taken both before and during races to relieve the muscle pain that occur in tiring muscles during races. The idea is that if you can put off the pain, you can run faster. However, some recent research has shown that actually ibuprofen does nothing at all to relieve the inflammation which occurs during exercise.  In the case of this ultra-runner, it actually clogged the kidneys.

The moral of the story? Don't use it to reduce the normal pain that happens during exercise.

Barefoot Running
There's a good article on the advantages of barefoot running by Michael Sandler, a guy who used it to recover from a serious accident after which he was told he'd never run again. He's definitely got the religion, i.e., wrote a book about it and runs a company to teach it. He says it's easier on the hips and knees than running shoes (he cites research to prove it) and will also help you run faster on trails -- your stride length shortens but your stride is faster.

I haven't bought a pair, so I can't speak much about this. As I've said in earlier blogs, I can't imagine them providing adequate protection on the rocks where I run. My hunch is they are a fad fueled by the popularity of Born to Run. But I could easily be wrong. I thought Crocs would flop. Now I own two pair.

Pre-Race Eating
The last page of the issue is a light-hearted piece by Bernie Boettcher, a very accomplished 49 year old ultra-distance runner. He faithfully follows a healthy food regimen of stuff like oatmeal, raisins, walnuts, chicken, spinach, black berries - you get the picture - the day before a race to optimize his performance, Recently he came in fourth to a guy he saw stuffing his face with pizza the day before the race.

He's a smart guy and obviously knows that what you eat the day before any kind of physical challenge will not have a big impact on your performance. However, it does have a big influence on your ability to train hard day-in-day out and stay healthy. Hard exercise has an inflammatory effect on your body. A good diet provides plenty of phytonutrients and anti-oxidants to help the body heal quickly and support your immune system.

The more likely reason Boettcher lost to the pizza eater was that the winner was younger. A TOJ understands why he might blame his loss on food. It's a lot easier to find a Domino's Pizza than the Fountain of Youth.

Breaking the Time Barrier

A wonderful thing happened -- the wristband on my Timex Ironman watch broke. So my watch stayed behind when I headed out the door with my dog just before dusk to run my favorite local trail.

I was primed to get outside and run because I had just returned from a several days of travelling in a car and sitting around a conference table discussing contentious stuff like health care reform. Before I started up the trail, I reflexively pulled back the sleeve of my windbreaker to reset the stop watch function, having forgotten it wasn't there.

I time runs out of an old habit. I keep a notebook log where I record the place, distance, time elapsed, time of day, temperature, and other noteworthy events, like animals sighted. But I didn't need the watch. I have run that trail so many times that I know the approximate times, plus or minus 30 seconds or so, that I will arrive at a certain tree, rock, or turn.

And I hadn't run too far before I realized how nice it was to not have it. It was great to just be out there running. The sun was setting, throwing dark shadows on the mountainside and chilling the air. My feet crunched rhythmically over a thin crust of metamorphosed snow from a storm a week earlier. I passed one trail marker after another oblivious to the time.

Athletes in general, and runners in particular, tend to suffer a little obsessive-compulsive disorder when it comes to time. You pick up a Runner's World and the pages are riddled with references to race times, splits, interval targets, and records. People are introduced by name, age, and his or her PR in the 10K or marathon. Much of the information, whether on training or nutrition, is mainly intended to shave minutes and seconds off a race time. Many of the interviewees are happy or sad based on time or eagerly looking to the future to see if they can beat a time.

On the cover of Trail Runner magazine, you always find a runner passing trough a spectacular landscape, like the Dolomites in Italy or vast aspen stands in Colorado. It conjures visions of stories about beauty and adventure waiting inside, but most of the pages are devoted to recaps of ultramarathons and finish times. Pain, injury, and disorientation from sleep deprivation or dehydration are frequent topics. It is the only magazine where you'll find the exact time it took a guy to run all the way around Grand Teton National Park or through Death Valley. In its pages, ultrarunners bag distances like hunters bag trophy elk heads.

It dawned on me as I trudged along the trail that a focus on time can be a barrier to the sheer fun of just running. Time can put unnecessary pressure and expectations that lead to disappointment. I recalled that I have found myself pushing harder up a hill to reach a marker because the watch indicates I'm off a certain self-expected pace. Running can lose its stress-busting magic if you create additional stress by focusing too much on time. Looking at a watch distracts from enjoying the beauty of a place, its contours and attractions.

And no doubt many injuries and illnesses (including mine on occasion) are caused people pushing too hard, day in, day out, to cover a certain distance at a pace that is too fast for them. Healthier runners are probably slower runners. Obviously competitive athletes need to train hard for events that are measured in seconds, minutes, and hours to win scholarships, money, and endorsements. But most of us are better off keeping the time obsession in check, especially TOJs, who should know better because any high stakes are purely imaginary.

Running without a watch let's you tune into your body, detached from the monotony of measured time, and find a pace that ebbs and flows naturally with the terrain, distance, and your biorhythms. Your body is rich with sensory information that goes far beyond numbers blinking on a screen. You can feel when to run hard and when to back off. It doesn't take a watch to know how you feel.

Back home, after my dog and I finished the run, I opened my log. In the column where a time is usually entered, I put a quick slash. I'll get a new band for my watch sometime soon -- don't want to late for a meeting! But nearing a new year, I resolve to run more without it. Each slash will indicate runs that were fun and timeless.

New Mantra: Faster, Harder, Shorter

The "faster, harder, shorter" mantra, aimed at people of all ages who wish to achieve quick results on the road to fitness, is spreading like the H1N1 virus.

My last blog was about some anti-runners who recommended a grueling, once per week, 12 minute routine in which you do extreme resistance (weights or machine) exercise to the point your muscles fail. Half their book was a dire warning that running will debilitate or kill you.

Then I got an email from Al Sears, MD, who promotes a copyrighted program called PACEBOOK (I bought a copy and found some good stuff) that recommends short, intense, progressive interval training, which can be sprinting, biking, swimming, lifting, jump roping, etc. Like his book, his email had more dire warnings about jogging/running. Check out: http://www.alsearsmd.com/jogging-injuries.html

So I cringed when I picked up the the August issue of Trail Runner magazine (in which you'll find a snatch of poetry about running in mud they printed from my April 2009 blog) to see an article entitled "The Fabulous 4 (Minutes) - The Short - Intense - Workout That Delivers." It is about a system developed Izumi Tabata, at a Japanese sports institute in the early 90s, that involves sprinting as hard as you can for 20 seconds, then resting 10 seconds, then sprinting again. You do this eight times. Tabata discovered that this painful regimen can confer tremendous improvements in aerobic and anaerobic capacity. (I'd be wary of any regimen developed in Japan because, even today, it will be influenced by medieval samurai culture, which places a high value on suffering.)

I think there are great benefits to be gained from interval training. I do sprints once or twice a week. But it should be noted that the only injury I've had this year was a pull in the lower left Achilles tendon that occurred when -- sprinting! The anti-runners always offer scientific studies to support their attacks on jogging/running, however, often these studies are flawed or incomplete. If you want to read a good blog, with solid scientific thinking, that questions these broad claims for interval training over running, go to http://frayedlaces.blogspot.com/2009_06_01_archive.html.

If you haven't done intervals in a long time, start very slowly and build up. There is no hurry to get to "fitness." The journey itself is the goal. Start with the slow gentle approach to interval training recommended by Covert Bailey.

A TOJ knows that all physical activities come with some risk of injury. So what? To a TOJ, the real problem with the 4 minute this and 12 minute that is he or she enjoys exercising too much to be subject to time limits. Life's too short as it is.