Run to Win

How old do you think that you will be before your race times start to go up significantly? Within a few years of graduating college? In your early to mid-30s? Do you think that you can still be competitive into your 40s? How about your 50s?

Tom Ryan is now in his 50s, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at his times. His 5k times are only a minute slower than when he was in his 20s, and he frequently finds himself on the podium in the senior division at races. He is one of the best cross country runners in the country.

How has he stayed so competitive as he has gotten older? More importantly, what can you do to stay competitive as you age, or to become more competitive now that you already are a little older than you used to be?

I had those same questions that you are probably asking yourself right now. Rather than wonder about it, though, I decided to go straight to the source. On Saturday, September 6^th, I will be interviewing Tom on a live conference call. If you would like to listen to the call, you can sign up now at: http://www.runtowin.com/ask/Tom-Ryan.html

The list of questions that I plan on asking Tom all come from the perspective of a young man in his late 20s with out any children yet. When you sign up for the call in details, you have the opportunity to ask your own questions that I might not think to ask.

Click here to go to the page where you can ask your own questions and sign up for the call in details, and both Tom and I look forward to speaking with you on Saturday.

The 2^nd annual Maine Coach and Athlete Cross Country Clinic was on August 18th, 2008 at the University of Southern Maine. This is the third part of my reporting on the clinic; the first part was about injury prevention and treatment, the second part was about nutrition basics and fueling, and the third part was about selecting proper footwear.

The fourth part of this series introduced you to the 3 athletes on the panel, and this final part will summarize their thoughts on training, teamwork, and racing as they answer the questions posed to them by the people in attendance.

What do you wish you knew in high school that you know now?

Lauren Fleshman only had 2 paces in high school, workout and racee. In college, she had 3 paces, workout, maintenance, and racing. She had a much better idea going into each workout what the goal was, and sometimes that was just to prepare for the next workout. She also would like to have known in high school how much better she could recover from two-a-days than doing 1 longer run throughout the day. In college she would run double 3 or 4 times per week.

Matt Lane would like to have known how important consistency in training was, especially having grown up in Maine where consistent running can be more difficult than elsewhere.

Matt did not run on the indoor track team, and instead competed for the ski team. Unless you are Ben True, skiing is not a complete substitute for running. It gives you great cardiovascular fitness, but it just doesn’t translate onto the track.

Matt would basically not run a single step between November and March, and his high school track times suffered as a result. He considers himself by far the slowest guy in the top 10 at Foot Lockers for his track times.

Matt wishes that he knew that running even once or twice a week would have been good enough to allow him to maintain his running fitness between the cross country and track seasons. Going for 5 or 6 weeks at a time without a run just didn’t allow him to do that no matter how well he was cross training. In the Summer, he did not have that same problem, which is why he did so much better in cross country.

Louie Luchini wishes that he had known what a difference a high volume workload can make, and wishes that he had done some harder workouts in high school.

His biggest problem with the extra volume, though, is that he sleeps too much and morning runs are out of the question for him. (Much to the chagrin of his coaching staff.)
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The 2^nd annual Maine Coach and Athlete Cross Country Clinic was on August 18th, 2008 at the University of Southern Maine. This is the third part of my reporting on the clinic; the first part was about injury prevention and treatment and the second part was about nutrition basics and fueling. This part covers foot and biomechanical structure and the selection of proper footwear.

Selecting Proper Footwear

The third presentation of the night was from the owner of the Maine Running Company, John Rogers. John’s career in the running business started in product development for Nike and Mizuno, but he retired from doing that to start a specialty running store here in Southern Maine about 4 years ago.

“We try to find the right shoe for people.”

John and his employees use a 6 step fitting process to make sure that they are getting fitted with the proper shoes when they come into the store.

The 6 steps consist of determining information about the runner and his or her running habits, as well as some specific tests to help them determine what each athlete needs.

This 6 step process includes:
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The 2^nd annual Maine Coach and Athlete Cross Country Clinic was on August 18th, 2008 at the University of Southern Maine. This is the second part of my reporting on the clinic; the first part was about injury prevention and treatment. This part covers the presentation on nutrition and fueling.

Nutrition Basics & Fueling for Performance

The second presentation of the night was presented by Karen Hodge Knapton from Whole Health Consulting, who covered what a basic and healthy diet should consist of for an athlete.

“You cannot expect to start the season without a healthy diet.”

It takes months to prepare the body through healthy eating, and you can not concentrate solely on race day. To that effect, you need to be aware of the 6 basic nutrients that make up your diet.

1. Water
2. Vitamins
3. Minerals
4. Carbohydrates
5. Protein
6. Fats

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The 2^nd annual Maine Coach and Athlete Cross Country Clinic was on August 18th, 2008 at the University of Southern Maine. The clinic lasted for about 2 hours, although most of the speakers and coaches were available before and after the clinic for questions.

The clinic was sponsored by John Rogers of the Maine Running Company. The panel brought together some of the best local experts and some native-Mainer professional runners and their teammates to talk on various topics relating to a high school cross country athlete. This year’s clinic did not touch on the coaching aspect nearly as much as it did last year, and just about the entire clinic is relevant not only to high school cross country runners but also to anybody that enjoys getting out to train and race.

I took a lot of notes, so I am going to be splitting up them up into functional parts which will be published throughout the week.

Injury Prevention and Treatment

Starting the night off was Greg Knapton, the director and owner of Riverview Physical Therapy. His talk focused on 2 key areas, training consistency and common traits amongst injured runners. Greg only sees the injured athletes, so his advice is geared towards making sure that he never has to meet you.

The most important thing to training is that you have a consistent schedule year round and that you don’t take significant stretches of time off from getting at least some sort of exercise, preferably sport-specific such as running. Cross country is a short season that is only 8 to 10 weeks long, so if you take the Summer off from running then you aren’t going to have the conditioning that you need in order to get into shape to race during the season.
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Back on August 5^th, Karl Meltzer began his attempt to run the 2,147 mile Appalachian Trail in a record 47 days. The run may not be over, but his attempt at the record is:

“My Anterior Tibialas is tweaking. It’s swollen and unrunnable right now. Needless to say, the record will remain in AT’s (Andrew Thompson) hands.”

Apparently, he got a bad case of poison ivy on his left foot, which caused him to change his running gait enough to cause unnatural stresses on his body that led to tweaking his muscle. He still plans to continue running after taking a little rest and drugging himself up, but he is no longer to make an attempt (this year at least) at breaking the trail record.

While I applaud what he has done so far, 538 miles in 14 days for an average of over 38 miles per day, I have to disagree with his self-medication regimen that he is embarking on. I would avoid Prednisone unless I was in dire circumstances as a general rule, and taking it just to reduce inflammation so you can continue a feat like this doesn’t strike me as the best of ideas. At least he has conceded the attempt at the record and won’t try to push himself too far beyond his limits in continuing the record attempt.

I hope that Karl gets another opportunity to make the record attempt in a year or two, and I’m sorry that he had to take time off after 2 weeks of running. If you’d like to track Karl’s latest updates, he is keeping all of his relevant info at his website, Where’s Karl.com.

(More Info: KarlMeltzer.com - Photo Credit: Matt Hart)

I have been tagged by the Run Faster blog with a running meme, so I thought that I would take the opportunity to answer a few questions about myself that you will hopefully find interesting and useful to your own running. Hopefully you will be able to either relate with these anecdotes or learn something new, and if not then I at least hope that you find some small amount of amusement.
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Thanks for the emails over the weekend; my neck is doing much better tonight than it was a couple days ago. On Friday afternoon, I tweaked or pulled something when I began my run that led to my spending the rest of the afternoon on the couching and requiring assistance to get up. Saturday morning wasn’t quite as painful but wasn’t really much better. Things stretched out throughout the day to the point where I could play with my 3 and 5 year old cousins without being in too much pain, and by Sunday morning when I woke up I could turn my head without anything hurting. I couldn’t turn my head too far, so my wife had to drive home, but it was a definite improvement.

That meant that it was time to try running again this afternoon. I ran a few miles easy with my wife, then picked up the pace when we got to a place in the road where we couldn’t run next to one another safely anyway. I wound up adding 4 loops to the normal route that we were on, which turned an 8 miler into a 12.5 miler. My neck actually felt much better after the run than it did beforehand, which is a definite relief.

I didn’t make my weekly distance quota (95.5km ran of a minimum 100km in store and a preferred 110km penciled in,) but I came close enough and I was so exhausted all weekend that I’m sure the multiple naps helped me heal. This evening’s run leads me to believe that I can get back to my normal running routine tomorrow, although I am going to take a week off from any weight training.

I don’t feel that my training plan has been impacted at all by this minor injury, and I am looking forward to moving closer to my sub-16:00 5k goal for this Summer. I have also made some plans for my next goal race after the 5k races throughout the Summer and Autumn, a 50 miler on January 3^rd.