Coach Adolfo Salgueiro, Author at foultips.run

American Runners are Slower than Ever

by Coach Adolfo Salgueiro | Nov 15, 2022 | Reflection, Science

By Coach Adolfo Salgueiro

A couple of weeks ago I came across a statistical mega study that confirmed what the title of this blog post states. Using over 34.6 million results from over 28 thousand races, researchers Jakob Andersen and Vania Andreeva Nikolova, sliced and analyzed the data in multiple ways to reach their conclusion.

The statistical analysis concludes slowing down in males and females in all distances (Photo: Pexels)

As I glanced through the research, I realized I started reading with preconceived notions on what they would find. More runners, unhealthier athletes, aging, gender gaps. The usual. Back in my youth, when I ran marathons in the 3:30s in the mid-1980s, I finished around the 50 percentile of finishers. A stat I just read from the Chicago Marathon stated that 18% of runners finished sub-3:30 this year. An obvious shift. I must say all my biases were addressed in the study and the conclusion still holds.

If after reading my take on this study you want to delve into the minutiae and the data, you can find the research paper in its entirety by clicking here.

This thorough study includes racing in the four most popular distances (5K, 10K, half and marathon), and races with more than 2000 finishers between 1996 and 2016. The reasons why this data was selected, the terminology and methodology of its handling, is detailed in the study, if you are interested. One more thing, researchers state this study took place because the deteriorating health of the American population is an important topic to be studied, and they wanted to find if this reality is reflected in the finishing times of races.

The study could have been a great episode of Discovery Channel’s Mythbusters TV show, as it takes time to disprove many of our preconceived notions about these numbers. These are:

1 – The proportion of women participants is increasing, and women are slower in general: Men speed is decreasing at a faster rate than the women increment in participation. If this trend continues, by 2045 both sexes will be at an equal average pace.

2 – People with inappropriate fitness level just walk the races: The study found the proportion of participants finishing races on every distance, at a slower than the average brisk walking pace is rather consistent throughout the years, so there is no statistical difference.

3 – Just the slow are getting slower: An easy idea to assume but the study measured the average final time for the 100th, 1000th, 2000th and 5000th finisher on each race throughout the years of the study, on both sexes, and concluded the fastest females have slowed down 9.87% while males have done so at a 9.94% clip.

4 – The average age of the participants is increasing and older equals slower: The average participant age has increased from 37 to 41, so the study analyzed not just the finishing times for these 4-year gap, but for every 4-year gap on all ages as well as every single age and concluded this could not be the sole reason of the slow down.

The study found a direct correlation between the slowing down and Americans getting heavier and unhealthier (Photo Andres Ayrton, Pexels)

So, if these are myths, what are is slowing down American runners?

The study considered the parameters of adult obesity, teenage obesity, diabetes and hypertension, and average annual medical expenditure. It found an across-the-board direct correlation with the slowdown. The authors make sure to emphasize that these are just correlations and by no means they can infer the condition of each runner, yet the numbers are very clear on what is happening as the population is getting heavier and unhealthier.

The study concludes the following:

1 – The average American runner has never been slower (across gender and distance).

2 – This effect is not due to the increase in female participants or people who run slowly or walk the race.

3 – Signs of poor health are highly correlated to the decrease in speed, though they cannot with certainty say that these are the causes for the slowdown. And if they have causal nature that they show the full picture.

The study was led by Jens Jakob Andersen and assisted by Vania Andreeva Nikolova. Andersen is a former competitive runner and statistician from Copenhagen Business School. Nikolova holds a Ph.D. in Mathematical Analysis.

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Rebounding From a Bad Race

by Coach Adolfo Salgueiro | Nov 1, 2022 | Article, Reflection

By Coach Adolfo Salgueiro

Wouldn’t be impressive if we could PR in every race, of every distance, in every season? Sure, it would be remarkable. But it is not possible, so let’s accept it cannot be done and move on, focus on what we can actually achieve and go for it next time, hopefully when conditions are optimal.

A bad race is part of our running life. An inferior performance is inevitable even if in the best of circumstances. There will always be parameters we can’t control, such as weather, wardrobe malfunctions or health setbacks, among many others. So, what to do when we don’t have an ideal performance despite the arduous work, effort, sweat, money and emotion we have invested into a race? We evaluate and we move on.

Frustration after a bad race is normal and healthy (Photo Gideon Tanki, Pexels)

Imagine if Eliud Kipchoge had given up after finishing 26 seconds late on the Breaking2 Project back in May 2017? After all the hoopla and the money invested by Nike, he failed in completing the task. He would have missed out on the success of the INEOS 1:59 Challenge, where he ran 1:59:40 in Vienna in October 2019. Had he not moved on, he wouldn’t have set up marathon world records in Berlin in 2018 and 2022, cementing his position as the greatest marathon runner of all time.

As the fall racing season gets into gear, be prepared. So, when it is our turn to fail, either miserably or just by running short of our time goal, you’ll know what to do. Invest in finding the courage, the drive and the motivation to continue pursuing your physical limits. You do so by:

Accepting it is normal to be frustrated: You worked hard for a goal, and you did not get it. That is infuriating. So, be frustrated, sure, but don’t bottle up your emotions. Not setting up a PR, having to walk part of the course or not getting onto the podium are all valid reasons to be upset, but not to feel like a miserable loser. Most likely this race was not the payday you needed to keep your family afloat. So, keep the perspective. Let the misery through your system and move on.

Debrief the race: Just after finishing a bad race, when you are hanging out with your friends at the finish line, may not be the best time to recreate the race and figure out what went wrong. Give it some time for all the memories to settle in and your body to recover. Then, do some introspection, talking it over with you coach or running buddies to see if you can pinpoint the issues that lead to the failure.

This is not your last race: There are 5K races every weekend, half marathons throughout the year and there are not many towns and cities these days that don’t have a marathon. So, fortified with what you learned in your debacle, set your sight on a race to redeem yourself, train hard and apply the lessons learned. Sounds promising already.

No need to think this is the end of your running career. You can redeem yourself on the next race (Photo: Cottonbro, Pexels)

Ask yourself the tough questions: Figure out what the main reason why you did not perform as expected. Asking the right questions should lead you to the answer you need. Did you bonk because you did not consume enough calories? Did you get dehydrated? Did you start too fast? Did you start too slow? Did you start too far back and had to weave around slower runners? Were you overdressed or underdressed for the weather? Did your experience stomach issues? Did you party last night? Did you eat and/or sleep properly the night before?

Learn a lesson: What you get when you did not obtain what you were looking for originally, is experience. Success doesn’t come just from achieving your goal every single time. It come from showing up, working hard, doing your best and failing. Sometimes, learning from a failure may be more beneficial to your future running self than completing one goal, one race.

Register for your redemption race, ASAP: Identify the race where you are planning to redeem yourself. Register for it and start working on it right away. The sooner you register, the faster you’ll apply everything you just learned.

Bad races are inevitable. Rebounding from them is mandatory.

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On Heel Striking

by Coach Adolfo Salgueiro | Oct 18, 2022 | Article, Science

By Coach Adolfo Salgueiro

While we would love to run with the grace of an Eliud Kipchoge, or the flawless form of a Shalane Flanagan, or the speed of a Priscah Jeptoo despite her unorthodox mechanics, our individual body structure allows us just a limited and highly individualized path of movement. While there are wrong ways to run, the consensus is that there’s not a uniform right form that everyone should adopt. Our running form is as individual as ourselves.

This includes the way your foot strikes the ground. Just because Kipchoge sets world records running on his forefoot, it doesn’t mean we all should imitate him. It is not like the way his foot strikes the ground is what makes him run a marathon in 2:01:09. That said, you should always work on perfecting your individual running mechanics. The one that is unique to you and your structure. It always starts with you.

This is Kenenisa Bekele on his way to winning the 2019 Berlin Marathon in the 2nd best time ever at the time. Take a look at his left foot.

I am a heel striker. In my decades of running, I’ve tried to “correct that deficiency” multiple times. But the more I try, the weirder I run, the more other body parts suffer and the less fun I have. My eureka moment came when I realized that heel striking has never injured me. I do wear out the heel of my running shoes in 250 miles rather than their usual 300-350 lifespan, but that is an economic consideration, not an orthopedic one.

In a post published this January in the Up and Running Physical Therapy blog, Dr. AJ Cohen, founder of the Up and Running Physical Therapy Clinic in Fort Collins, Colorado, stated that “the vast majority of recreational runners, close to 90% are heel-strikers and around 75% of elite runners. Non-heel strikers are kind of like left-handed people… they do it because it works for them and it’s what their body has determined it does the best with… but it’s not “better” or “more efficient” for the rest of humanity.”

If you haven’t made peace with your heel striking yet, hopefully this statement will put you at ease.

In his book “Your Best Stride” (highly recommended), author Jonathan Beverly emphasizes that “rather than the place on the foot where you land, it seems what is happening on your leg motion and body mass at the moment you touch down is more important.”

The idea is to create a stride that touches lightly without breaking. One that flows smoothly. Landing with your foot far in front of your body, usually with your heel, is what causes trouble. Your foot hits the ground with such force and in such an angle that your entire body breaks, increasing the force up your kinetic chain and multiplying the normal pounding that is intrinsic with the sport. This is where heel striking becomes a problem.

Jay Dicharry, a physical therapist, teacher, biomechanics researcher and author based in Bend, Oregon, says that “it is not rearfoot, or midfoot or forefoot that matters. It is where the foot contacts in relation to the body’s center of mass.” The closer you strike under your center of mass, the smoother your stride will be. It is that simple.

Based on these experts’ testimonies you can see the problem is not the heel but where it hits the ground in relation to your body. If you are overstriding, and here is where injuries may happen, the first thing to do is fix that particular issue, not the heel striking per se. Start by shortening your stride so you can increase your turnover (cadence).

This is the author, heel striking on his way to finishing the 2022 Houston Marathon

“Research shows that when runners increase their turnover, they reduce the impact in the knees and hips and often improve their stride mechanics,” said Dr. Brian Heiderscheit, PhD, Physical Therapist, Professor in the Departments of Orthopedics & Rehabilitation and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Increasing the turnover will help your chances of your foot landing underneath your pelvis, reducing overstriding tendencies, and increase your lower extremity stiffness, with less bounce and breaking in your step.”

This blog post is meant to reduce the stigma of heel striking. For runners not to feel they’re doing something wrong, or that they must change their form to become more efficient, more economic or less prone to injury. Of course, if you are overstriding and landing with your heel, you should be working on it right now. Cut your stride, increase your cadence (turnover) and work on landing as close as possible to under your pelvis. Other than that, have fun running and go for that PR. You have better things to worry about than suffering because you hold the heel striker label.

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My Running Pet Peeves

by Coach Adolfo Salgueiro | Oct 4, 2022 | List, Opinion, Personal, Reflection

By Coach Adolfo Salgueiro

When I started thinking about my running pet peeves, my first though was: “what tin the world is a pet peeve?” Well, according to the Oxford Dictionary, it is “something that a particular person finds especially annoying.” Merriam Webster defines it as “a frequent subject of complaint.” While the term it is rooted in the XIV Century word “Peevish,” the term as we know it today originated around 1919. I haven’t finished the first paragraph and I already went on a tangent.

We all have pet peeves in our lives and running in no exception. We are all annoyed by certain behaviors by certain runners at certain times in certain situations that we happen to find particularly irritating. And, since pet peeves are by definition, individual, here are mine. Maybe we share some of them.

I am not trying to be mean or condescending here. But, since I am talking about what annoys me, please forgive my tone.

There is a reason why this is listed #1 in my list (Photo: Matheus Bertelli, Pexels)

1. Runners with loudspeakers: I don’t understand why in the age of light weight headphones, Bluetooth air pods and bone conduction headphones we must put up with runners carrying loudspeakers. How can anyone assume I want to listen to his/her music while I run? This is regardless of my liking or not of their choice of music. Do you like to run with music? Great! Keep it to yourself.

2. 5K Marathons: Marathon is a fixed distance, not a multitudinous foot race. A marathon is 42,195 meters as measured in the metric system or 26.2 miles if you prefer the imperial system. If referring to things by fractions of a unit (half marathon, quarter pounder) is appealing to you, I suggest expressing the distance as a tad above 1/9th marathon, 5/42nds of a marathon or 11.85% of a marathon. Other than that, it is just a plain and simple 5K.

3. The Full Marathon: Because of the booming popularity of the half marathon distance, talking about “the full marathon” has become a thing now. The entirety of a unit should not be preceded by the qualifying full, as it is implicit unless stated otherwise. A full marathon is just a marathon. Yes, petty, I know, but it does bug me.

4. Finish line shoppers: With your race entry you get to take part on the post-race spread as well as access to whatever the race sponsors have to offer. This doesn’t mean supermarket day. All runners that also paid and should have access to what’s offered. We’ve all seen runners with cases of hydration products, boxes of cookies and entire pizzas. Come on!!!

5. Oversharing on social media: Sure, you’re proud of your race result, or you want to receive accolades for your PR, or long run while preparing for your marathon. Yet, we don’t need to know about your half mile on the treadmill, or the two-mile brisk dog walk around your neighborhood. Unless these are true personal accomplishments, of course.

6. Running fast on recovery days: Our body doesn’t get stronger when we complete a long run, or when we nail a hard speed workout. Quite the contrary, it weakens. It is when the body repairs from that effort that it gets fitter and stronger. You won’t see the benefits of today’s hard workout for at least 14-21 days. So, make sure you recover on recovery days. Hence the name.

Is this really appropriate when you have over 40,000 runners around you?

7. Racing in bulky costumes: I dislike the clowning of the bulky costumes. As if running a marathon wasn\’t tough enough, certain runners make a mockery of it by doing this stuff. Sure, you can have fun dressed as Superman, a caveman or Pheidippides. The problem is with the bulky ones that restrict movement or view. Organizations like the London Marathon unfortunately encourage this behavior. When someone gets seriously hurt, it will stop being funny and by then, it will be too late.

8. Skipping runs because your watch ran out of battery: The watch is not the director of your running life; it is only the record keeper. The fact you missed recording one session is not going to diminish your health, your fitness returns or your ego. Hit the road and make sure you don’t run out of battery the next time.

9. Ruining other runner’s race photos: We all love race pictures, and they are ubiquitous these days. You want to look good for the photographers, and that is great. But must you go out of your way, cross the racecourse cutting runners, or jumping in between a runner and a photographer so you can have an extra pic?

10. Rude Runners: Do I need to explain?

What are your running pet peeves?

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9 Marathon Training Mistakes (Repost)

by Coach Adolfo Salgueiro | Sep 27, 2022 | Article, Coaching, List, Science

As the fall and winter marathon season starts heating up, and as the preparation for the spring marathons approaches, I feel appropriate to repost an article I wrote last year, that it is still relevant at this time of the running season. Enjoy!

By Coach Adolfo Salgueiro

Tapering time approaches for those about to run the Abbott World Marathon Majors this year. Training time approaches for those eyeing their marathon towards the end of 2021 or start of 2022. So, seems like a good time to review some basic mistakes that runners, from beginners to experts, should avoid. This way they can reap the most benefits out of their efforts.

Training for a marathon is a process that involves multiple moving parts that need to work in sync. It needs to reach a point where the body can be stressed enough to compensate its deficiencies and adjust to the workload-thus improving- but not to a point where it becomes too much, and it can’t recover to do it again. This means overtraining and, most likely, an injury if intend to tough it out and train through it.

No need to overstress yourself if you avoid these basic mistakes in your training (Photo by Pexels.com)

The following are nine of the most common mistakes runners incur into during a marathon training cycle:

1 Running the long runs too fast: There is a time to go fast and there is a time to go slow. The long run has that name because it is designed for you to go long. It is not called the “fast run” for a reason. They are intended to build up your aerobic system, which, for a marathon, it is used 99% of the time, even if you are the world-record holder.

2 Focusing too much on the long run: The long run is an important part of your training, sure, but it is just one element, not the bulk of it. The success in your race will depend on the accumulated effect of all the elements in your training, not just one.

3 Doing the same workouts all the time: Because about 80% of the training needs to be done at a slower speed, there is a small number of hard sessions available, usually no more than two per week, so distance, speed, intensity, and other parameters, need to be worked so the body can benefit and adapt.

4 Poor fueling and hydration plans: if you don’t test strategies during training, you won’t know what works for you. The time to find that out is during training, long runs, especially. The time to realize a certain gel upsets your stomach, is not during the race. Same applies to hydration. What to drink and when needs to be part of race plan, shouldn’t be improvised on race day.

5 Skipping rest days: Not running on a specific day is part of your training. These days should be written into your schedule and followed to the tee. No amount of ice baths, compression socks or protein shakes will do you any good if you don’t give your body a break to recover so it can run again.

Rest is as part of your training as your work. Don’t skip it!

6 Not scheduling cutback weeks: During training you build up endurance, aerobic capacity, Vo2Max, and multiple additional parameters. But you can’t build up forever. Your body has a limit and needs time to actively rest so it can adapt to the benefits provided by your workouts. Programming a week to cut back on your training provides your body with time to adjust and recover, is key.

7 Cutting sleep: Remember you don’t improve when you work out, you improve while you sleep. The long run the tempo, the weightlifting, or the speed session damage your body. It is when you sleep that your body gets repaired. If you skip on sleep, you won’t realize all the benefits of the training, but you will keep the muscle damage.

8 Screwing up the tapering: Physiological adaptations after exercise, take between two and three weeks to adapt. So, there is no benefit on one last long run in the last couple of weeks. You need to actively rest and recover your body so it will be in its best shape for race day. During tapering there is nothing to gain, yet a lot to lose.

9 Following someone else’s training plan: There is nothing wrong with talking to your buddies about what they are doing, but they may not have the same goals as you and you do not have the same physiology as them. Set up YOUR PLAN, adjust as needed, and stick to it. Trust your coach. Trust your plan. Trust yourself.

Of course, there are more than nine mistakes you can incur during a marathon training cycle. These are just some of the most common and they mostly apply to any distance. As you finish your training for your Abbott Marathon Major or get ready for your upcoming goal race, make sure you are on the lookout for the aforementioned mistakes, so you won’t screw up your hard work.

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