How To Be A Better Runner

How do you become a better runner?

Stay injury-free and improve on your weaknesses, is the simplified answer.

How do you stay injury-free?

By training within your limits (we have more physical limitations as compared to our mental ones), you can keep serious injuries at bay. Mild injuries may be unavoidable when you step up on intensity, prior to a race. Thus, my promotion of 'Run Less, Run Faster' is pertinent, if you are already plagued by persistent niggles and soreness. 

Your build-up to the race needs to be sensible and realistic. Give yourself SMART Goals, and be mindful of how well you can prepare. Thus, in your off-season you would do better to focus on lower-intensity, fat-utilising, pace. I recommend lower-heartrate running, swimming and cycling to enhance your 'aerobic engine'. Drink Bullet Coffee (or coconut-oil infused beverages before training on an empty-stomach) to engage your body's ability to tap into your endurance system.

Get quality sleep to recover fully and reduce stress. Eat 'clean' to assist your body to assimilate new body tissues. Eat all major food groups, and eliminate food that cause you allergies. Consume more antioxidants, protect and nurture your gut flora (bacteria), and be well-hydrated. Go 80:20 with your nutrition/meals, and treat yourself,occasionally, to some 'comfort food'. I am a fan of craft-beers after hard training, and appreciate indulging in my sweet tooth. Your fitness will assist you in your day-to-day activities; not just for racing and earning PBs. Focus on building an organic machinery that enhances your life, and promotes your sporting lifestyle.

Training-wise, be smart and enlist assistance in ensuring you optimise your efforts and structural abilities: running-gait, footwear, core-strength, muscular-strength, balance and proprioception, joint-health, and muscular weakness (critical point of incidence). Diagnose your abilities and do a SWOT analysis, and tap on your collective potential and work on reducing your weaknesses. Race occasionally, so as to familiarise with your race-pace (5km, 10km, 21km and marathon).

More of these will be covered in my new Ebook.

A Week’s Rundown To Ironman

The tapering week leading to the Ironman triathlon is often mistaken as the time to either do more training, or to rest completely. Neither option is the best. In fact, a blended approach would make more scientific, bodily and intuitive sense.

A proper tapering process, when adhered to closely, is not a cessation of activity but rather a reduction of overall physical workload. You will still swim, ride and run however you will do a fraction of the usual workload. Your overall mileage is reduced gradually, so that your body does not go ‘cold turkey and be shocked into inactivity. You want to rehearse your three disciplines so that your body is primed for the race. The delicate balance is to not do too much as to exhaust and deplete the body before race-day, and not too little as to lead to a loss of fitness. Up to three weeks before the race, get a weekly sports massage to work out the kinks in your muscles. Muscle spasms (knots or cramps) reduce the muscles ability to exert the most power and strength when you need it most. Over-stretch tight muscles during racing and, you may incur the wrath of a painful cramp as retribution.

The mysterious aspects of tapering is that you may experience soreness, potential niggles (injuries), and a sense of frustration that you may be doing too little. This is a risky proposition: to want to do a little more, when you should be repairing your body, nourishing it, and allowing it to fully recuperate from weeks of intense training. My electrolyte intake will be at its highest as I want to infuse water within my muscles (intramuscular fluid).

For my tapering week, my swims are limited to a total of 1.5-2.0K (mostly practising drafting, sighting and some speed work), rides to 2 hours of intervals (short fast bursts with longer recovery sets), and running to 5-10K at race-pace. The day before the race, I will rehearse a short ‘triathlon’ just to keep my muscles attuned, and then I will check my bike in. I will do nothing at all two days before, and get most of my restful sleep. It is hard to get quality sleep the night before, if you spend the night going to the bathroom as you rehydrate on your return. Pre-race nerves also upset your restfulness.

Go over your race gear, and ensure that you carry enough nutrition for your ride and run. If inclement weather prevails, prepare extra attire and warm clothing. Check and test for quality of race-gear. Whenever you can, raise your feet and rest. Keep shopping to after your race, especially when you need to up early to purchase the finisher’s merchandise.

The Structure of Sleep

‘To die: to sleep;

No more; and by a sleep to say we end

The heartache and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;

To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause’

~ Hamlet.

My Coach advises me to sleep at least 8 hours a day. This being a new work-year, it is certainly going to be challenging to catch on so much 'shut-eye'. Yet, with eight weeks to go before my next Ironman, sleep is an essential component of my potential success. Sleep equals recovery equals tissue and cellular repair equals healing. Healing leads to adaptation: stronger muscular development and, thus, performance. Sleep also encourages healthy brain functioning, so we ward off debilitating mental conditions like depression, lethargy and malaise.

Our brain works in amazing ways! It has been, incorrectly, described as right-brained or left-brained. Technically, we have two hemispheres or halves of the brain joined by a bridge called the corpus callosum. Thus, we are whole brain with a preference or dominant side that expresses us differently as thinkers. There are numerous crossover activities that traverse across this conduit to enhance mutual collaboration. That explains why Leonardo Da Vinci was a scientist, inventor and artist.

If you are short of sleep, you can still ‘cheat’ for a short while and stay alert while training or functioning normally. Since the sleep cycle takes place every 90 minutes, with alternating periods (30 minutes) of light sleep with deep sleep/REM (Rapid Eye Moment) – sleep in pockets of 90 minutes or 1.5 hours. That is 1.5, 3, 4.5, 6, 7.5 or 9 hours. 8 hours is just within light sleep (nap) whereas exceeding the 8-hour threshold will lead to a disorientating awakening. That is why we tend to sleep through the screaming ‘alarm clock’.

You cannot cheat on sleep, nor pay it back. Induce sleep normally and naturally. Avoid medication that causes drowsiness. Instead you can use melatonin to stimulate sleep neurotransmitters in your brain, especially if you are traveling for business or a race, across significant time-zones. Sleep well, for it spells great dividends when we train hard.

Updates and Up-enders

It has been a physically challenging second week of Ironman preparation in my second meso-cycle. A meso-cycle, in my case, is a month’s load of triathlon-specific training. Each week, I have three sessions each for swimming, cycling and running. I have a heavier workload over my weekends, as this reserved for long rides and runs. It has been three weeks since my flu-troubled Singapore Marathon; I only registered a dismal 3:41, nowhere near the revised Boston Qualifier time of 3:24:59.

It is supposed to be an off-season, and in my personal design I am thick in my racing season. 3 March, in Taupo, New Zealand will be my 12^th assault for an Ironman finish. This will be my third time in Auckland to attempt a personal record for an Ironman course. After my PB plan was up-ended with last year’s pre-Ironman road accident, I had to refocus. I have the numbers to improve on. Numbers do not lie, and plans can be tweaked. Because my weaknesses lie in climbing (and rolling courses) and headwinds, I have dedicated my training towards strength development: time-trials, intervals, and sprints. I am aiming for fresher legs at T2, holding steady for 180K, before the marathon in nine weeks’ time.

Disease and acute fatigue can up-end a well-designed, comprehensive race program. Rest is something I factored in deliberately in recent weeks. I aim for 6-8 hours each night of quality sleep. I am also flexible (with my coach, Fox) with how I attend to my training sessions. For a time-crunched triathlete, you need to be able to shift sessions around without bogging yourself down. You have to be decisive in changing plans and altering your goals. The monsoon season is predictable for its abundant and ubiquitous rainfall. Sometimes, you may miss a session or two, and you move on. It may be useless to recover it like lost sleep. Instead, you could focus your efforts on the next workout/s, or do something else like focus on building your core stability and strength, run on a treadmill, or ride a stationary-bike. Never allow your body to be too clever in adapting to routine. After all, triathletes love routine and structure to their madness.

My nutritional changes include: higher antioxidant-laden foods (mainly unprocessed nuts, tart cherry juice and pomegranate juice); more vegetables, water, vitamin C (with zinc) and protein (including two Muscle Milk whey protein drinks daily).

I am reading ‘Ironstruck’ (2006) by Ray Fauteux, which I bought online as an e-book. He describes his fascination with marathons, ultra-marathons and his 14 Ironman triathlon finishes. John Cooke wrote about his reflection and perspective on preparing for Ironman races. How do you restore balance when this sport is skewed towards a 10-15 hour training week? How can we reduce its impact as an indulgent sport? How do we position it as a sane sport when many perceive it as extreme from the insanely long hours we spend training? When this bolt of lightning strikes you from out of the blue, you can bet your last cup of Kona coffee that life will never be the same again.

Have a very good Christmas weekend!

The Power of Purposeful Rest

Hui Koon reported on how he found naps before training benefitted him immeasurably. I tend to agree with this approach, since I sleep less before my training workshops. David Greenfield, Master Bike Fitter of Elite Bicycles agrees with me that sleep makes a great deal of difference in training performance. I function adequately with six hours of shut-eye, and best with nine hours. Albert Einstein used to subsist best on at least 11 hours of sleep – it must be because of prime numbers and the massive amount of thinking he did whilst awake.

Training is a destructive (catabolic) activity; we damage muscles fibres and other soft tissues in the process of exercising. It is during rest that our body recovers and recuperates – this is the anabolic (build) stage. Training prepares us to meet race day conditions, and sleep allows our body to recover completely so that we can repeat the process of the grind. Fail to meet our recovery requirements, and we flirt with fatigue and exhaustion; this can stall your training efforts significantly.

This morning, a group of 13 swimmers gathered at Tanjung Beach. Led by Matt, we did 4-5 sets of swim-run bricks. A brick is a back-to-back, combination of two activities done with little rest between. We swam a lap of about 350m followed by a short shoreline jog. This session was to prime the group for the Singapore Biathlon that occurs on 12 February. Bricks can be demanding on the body despite it mild, short appearance. Time for my Big Nap (one nap followed by another) now! My Duathlon beckons me. I start at 11.15am. Since it is the weekend, get some well-earned rest, too!

To the riders at Desaru tomorrow, ride safely!

Another 42K – Sounds Like An Eddie Murphy Sequel!

How long should you rest for your next long race?

It has been tossed around for a while that a 42.195K marathon can tax your body for a whole month. Can you imagine how long an Ironman triathlon can sap your physical resources? Anecdotal evidence suggests three months before another similar race. Be that as it may, we need to rest and recover in order to resume our training regime after our A-race.

The 48-72 hours after a race can be the most physically crippling. Termed ‘Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness’ (DOMS), finishers of this killer-of-a-run (ask legendary Greek messenger Pheidippides in the Battle of Marathon) can be seen walking sideways down stairs, or walking with straight knees. Every eccentric (meaning muscles stretching under tension) action jolts bolts of pain up one’s legs, and incapacitates us. It may look funny but it is not, I assure you. Thankfully, after last weekend’s Ironman triathlon I walked reasonably well on the first and second – it used to be a whole lot worst!

To ensure full recovery (accelerated recovery is still inconclusive), we can:

1)    Do active recovery a day after the vent: cycle on a bicycle for about 30-45 minutes.

2)    Walk or stand in cold water (less than 20 degrees Celcius, or as in water mixed with ice-cube). The cold reduces inflammation of the damaged muscles; known affectionately as cold baths, in the physiotherapeutic sense.

3)    Use compression attire to enhance lactic acid removal: wear full, or half-tights (example: Skins, 2XU) especially when you sleep.

4)    Avoid running for at least three days after a major event. When you do any ride or swim, keep the distance short and intensity light. The main idea is to flush waste products out of those sore muscles.

5)    Load up on food and nutrients: water, carbohydrates, and natural foods (for protein, fats and carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals).

6)    Stretch, assisted massage and self-massage are useful. Trigger Point Therapy, deep tissue massage and lymphatic draining help - in heaps.

7)    Lean your feet against a wall to allow waste products to drain back to your heart/liver for metabolism. This approach was popular with Lance Armstrong and Greg Lemonde as a post-race recuperative method.

8)    Sleep is the ultimate anabolic steroid: sleep at least 7-8 hours a night to allow your tissues to fully restore and repair itself.
*****
I walked a fair bit over the last few days; some of which was on the beach. My calves took a workout. This evening, I did 30 minutes of running in a small pool, and 15 minutes of swimming (combination of front crawl and breast stroke). After a hearty dinner, my legs feel better now.