The Luxury of Hindsight

“Attacking the organism with a variety of aerobic stimuli” – paraphrase of famed coach Renato Canova in regards to his fundamental phase of training

I love racing. Umm, well, maybe I don’t love the excruciating pain during the second half of races, but everything else is a gift to enjoy and savor: the nervous anticipation and excitement on the starting line, the rush of running in a pack or closing gaps,  the relief of crossing the finish line, glancing at the time on the digital clock with sweat stinging your eyes, the satisfaction of running a personal best, the testing of your limits, proving to yourself that you still have what it takes to progress, the camaraderie of fellow runners, meeting new people, post-race parties, traveling to different locations =Pure bliss. This is how I like to live and feel alive.

On a side note: I also like to do some new shoe reviews: 

At Hansons I didn’t get to race as often as I would’ve liked. Sometimes I had to go 3 months or longer without getting my racing fix.  For me that was way too long, and while I see some benefits in doing a solid training segment of a quarter or a third of a year in duration without racing, such a strict training regime was just not for me. Often, I’ve gone long periods of training that lead to overtraining and/or and anemia. Without the essential feedback from a recent race performance it was sometimes hard to gauge how my fitness level was progressing (or digressing) during such training segments.  In retrospect perhaps I left some of my best performances out on the roads hammering workouts and trying too hard to hit impressive splits – such demands that slowly lead me down the path of overtraining instead of super-compensation. The irony is that runners usually associate over-racing with burnout and staleness in fitness, while now I’m starting to see how racing more often at different distances might actually help avoid over-training (and be more fun in the process!) In races you have to show all your cards, and that kind of hand just isn’t dealt from hard workouts.

I was always thirsty...to race more while training in Michigan: (l to r: Robert Scribner, Me, Chad "Nails" Johnson...Asst. Hansons Coach Don Jackson holds the water)

 So since variety is the spice of life (and running) I’m hoping to have the opportunity to show my cards more often at more races. After slowly coming back from my incident at Chuckanut I’m itching to test my fitness for the first time at this weekend’s Portland Rock n’ Roll Half Marathon. I guess Kara Goucher and Ryan Bak are going to be running there as mentioned in this press release by Mario Fraioli of Competitor.com. They will probably be wearing some slick Nike singlets; I’ll probably go shirtless and will be wearing some 6 year-old racing flats that I just found under my bed. Should be fun.

Adding to my racing schedule listed below, I’m now looking at doing a half marathon that goes from 8,000 to 10,000 feet before Mt. Washington next month, then perhaps Pike’s Peak or something later this summer (if I don't have chronic altitude sickness by then). I’d like to throw in a couple 50k trail races as well. I want to get into Sky Racing and I want to compete against the best trail/ultra runners. Any race suggestions?

In closing, I wanted to share this video from fellow Oregonian trail runner Timothy Olson. It highlights his race at Western States and I think it captures the essence of trail running. I never thought I’d say this, but it makes me want to try a 100-miler some day. The background music is from Michael Franti, and it has been stuck in my head for the last two weeks. Great song.

Hope your spring season is off to a great start. 

See you at the races!

-Sage

Committed To Going The Distance

I thought the exact same thing when I crossed the finish line after my first marathon (Houston 2007), and at the finish of my first ultra/trail race (Chuckanut 2012): “Whoa, I’m dizzy” and, more importantly, “I want to do that again!”

 (Long way to go at the Chuckanut 2012. Credit: Glenn Tachiyama, http://www.pbase.com/gtach)

Sometimes our mind tries to suppress the painful memories of racing hard on low blood sugar, dehydrated and depleted. It warns the body to stop trying such feats of endurance, such torture. This is usually the case after I run a “disastrous” marathon (NYC 2008, Boston 2010, Olympic Trials 2012, etc). At other times though, it is our body that rebels against the mind’s stubborn will - the will that forces us to always push the envelope, train with reckless abandon, and to sign up for that next race.

Well, as eager as I was to start training hard for my next ultra after Chuckanut, I had to take a forced break due to my knee injury.  I ended up taking almost 3 weeks totally off (something I hadn’t done for about 5 years since I got mono in college). The break was hard mentally, but I knew I couldn’t start up running with a limp. Here is a picture of my leg 4 weeks later after my fall:

As you can see I’m still only about 95% healed, but I am planning on running about 90 miles this week. Scar tissue will continue to form, and I will be marked for life. Cool!

More importantly, I’ve signed up for some future races:

5/20: Portland Rock n’ Roll half marathon (not sure how my speed will be)

6/16: Mt. Washington Road Race (all uphill, it’s going to be a blast!)

7/28: White River 50 (my first 50-miler = will be interesting)

9/29: UROC 100k (Ultra Race of Champions, it should be a loaded field).

The idea here is to slowly build back my fitness, focusing on speed first before adding specific endurance. Of course with uphill sessions and regular 20+ mile long runs in the works I am always trying to add strength. I’m going to race more than what is listed above and I’ll be looking to add events as I go along during the rest of the year.

In closing, I’m going to re-post an excerpt of something I wrote for the LetsRun.com message boards a month before the Olympic Marathon trials this year. I think it helps define why I am still running competitively and chasing after these crazy dreams:

“The plight of the 2:14 to 2:18 US Marathoner: Why do you do it? You don’t do it for the money. You don’t do it for the fame or glory.  You don’t even do it because you think you can make the Olympic team or beat the Kenyans/Ethiopians. So why? Why do you keep sacrificing your time and energy towards something that most of society would consider a selfish and frivolous endeavor? Why do you go to bed early on Friday and Saturday nights in the prime of your mid-twenties? Why do you run 120 miles a week in the cold wind, rain and snow? Why?

Because you can. Because through years of racing and hard training in high school and college you discovered that you had a knack for something. You achieved high enough in one aspect of your life enough to be considered as belonging to the top 1%.  You decided to set the impossible goal of seeing how close you could get to your full potential in something quantifiable.  And in the process you realized that you are a part of something bigger than yourself…you are a part of the depth of American distance running,

It isn’t the path that the “practical” person would take. It is a road full of risk and a high rate of failure. But in the end it doesn’t matter if you meet your ultimate performance goals because at least you tried. You took the bull by the horns and sought out on a journey that most wouldn’t dare to embark on.  You believed strongly in something and decided to act upon that belief.”

So yeah, there it is in a nutshell: my answer to the question “Why do you run?” Over the course of the next couple months I plan to post here more often about my training and add content. Thanks for reading and stay tuned!

-Sage

Running and Diet

I’ve recently changed a major part of my life for the sake of trying to run fast. No, I haven’t started training at altitude and I haven’t started running 180 miles a week. I didn’t get into barefoot running (I’ll keep wearing the Brooks Ghost), and I haven’t started running on an anti-gravity treadmill. Instead, I remembered something that John Kellogg (a college running mentor and regular assistant at Cornell) questioned us on a couple years ago: “What is the one thing besides running that will directly have an influence on your racing performance?” Answer: Diet. With variables like sleep and types of training held constant, WHAT you EAT and WHEN you EAT is obviously a huge determinant of how your body is going to run. And by “diet” I mean the types of foods you consume and the variety of the macro and micronutrients that your body has to absorb on a regular basis. So recently I made a rather radical change to my diet: I went from being a strict vegetarian for 24 years to becoming a meat-eater overnight.

Now I’ve taken Chem, Bio, and Nutrition classes at Cornell University so I have some background in the science behind healthy eating, the physical demands involved with highly aerobic performances, and the implications of possible dietary deficiencies within the body. Yes, I’ve read the typical spiel in Runners World every month about how chocolate milk is a great recovery drink (why people are still coming up and telling me that like its some magical secret is beyond me). Yes, beets are good for your blood and aid in weight-loss. I know the differences between heme and non-heme iron. Yes, kale makes the “miracle” salad, and Brazil nuts are full of a magical dose of Selenium, etc. I know about the “15min post-workout window,” and the ergogenic effects of caffeine. I’ve read Born to Run, and I know about Scott Jurek’s vegan lifestyle. My home doctor back in Oregon predicted long ago that runners would find that they are low on vitamin D. So over the years I’ve been taking magnesium, vitamin B-12, a little kids chewable multivitamin, vitamin D, C and a little E…and a little zinc…sometimes. I love chocolate milk after a workout. Problem is, I seem to drink a half-gallon of chocolate milk at a time- Then I like to feast at Taco Bell. A frozen pizza for dinner after a Taco Bell lunch used to be a typical (and delicious!) day. Heck, throw in a stack of chocolate-chip peanut butter pancakes and I’m loving life. Like Brian Sell I would occasionally even snack on McDonalds before a day of work at the running store.

I’ve been extremely lucky. I’ve piled on 100 + mile weeks and have never been injured enough to have to take time off from running. I thought I had the quality that Mark Wetmore described in Running With The Buffaloes as “durability.” In college my ability to not get injured was my main strength. I don’t have the talent of raw speed, I don’t have a high Vo2max…but I’ve put in 30 mile days easily. Well, as durable as my tree-trunk-like-legs and sturdy bones are, my weakness in durability lies elsewhere. I have allergies to tree and grass pollen (so far in Oregon, New York and Michigan); I have asthma; and most related to this blog post: I have trouble absorbing enough iron and boosting my red blood cell count. Now I don’t care if you can run 180 miles a week- if you can’t get your hematocrit (percentage of blood volume occupied by red blood cells) much over 40 you just aren’t going to run very fast! I’ve had my blood drawn so many times in the last 6 years that I have permanent scars over the veins on the inside of my elbows. My ferritin seems to jump up and down. My red blood cell count is typically low. If I didn’t have a scientific mind I wouldn’t even bother getting the tests done….I’d just shut up and run (and maybe now I will?). But then, if you have a “break though” performance wouldn’t you like to attribute it to some data? Wouldn’t you like to know that it wasn’t just a “fluke performance”?

The same goes for bad races. I’m coming off of a disastrous last marathon. Whether or not my poor performances can be attributed to a poor diet is debatable. However, I suspect that there is a connection. Anyway, you don’t want to make the same mistake twice…that is one definition of stupidity!

So now, it’s going to be an “experiment” of one- a method of testing myself. I’ve been an ovo-lacto vegetarian the last 24 years of my life and I just quit cold turkey (bad pun intended). This summer I’ll be out on the Bloomer House patio deck, firing up the grill 2-3 times a week. I’m not going to worry about taking my liquid iron as much anymore…it just doesn’t seem as healthy or as natural as real food sources of iron-and plus, it doesn’t taste nearly as good as a bison burger!