May 2024 bring you countless injury-free miles and PRs in all your distances.
As a brand new year appears into our calendars, with 52 weekends primed for long runs with friends, six Abbott Marathon Majors to be completed by some of the runners we know, if not ourselves, and countless races in all distances anticipating for us to register; it comes that time to figure out what we want to paint on that virgin canvas so 10 or 12 months from now, we are not regretting a wasted running year.
Improving your sleep will help you in more ways than a PR or a BQ (Photo: Ketut Subiyanto, Pexels)
Your 2024 running goals should be set in an individual and feasible fashion. It is about what Is realistic for you and what you alone are willing and able to do. Running a sub-3 marathon if you’ve never gone sub-4 is not impossible but it may be a recipe for disappointment or injury for most runners. Improving 10 minutes in your half marathon or 5K PR may be achievable but depending on where you stand. Going from a 2:40 half to a 2:30 one is one thing. Improving the same 10 minutes in 5K if your PR is 22 would make you a world-record holder. So, let’s be realistic about our goals.
If you haven’t thought about it yet, here are eight quick ideas for you to consider before we get too deep into the year. This way you can hit the ground running:
1. 1000 Miles: A feasible distance for any consistent runner. It only requires 4.8 miles a day, four times a week during 50 of the 52 weeks of the year. If you already run 1000 every year, then set your sights on 1500, or 2000.
2. Choose your goal race, now: Not just select it, register for it, and let everybody know. Set up a road map so you’ll know how to get from where you are to where you want to be and to be there in time. It doesn’t guarantee you’ll succeed, but it will put success within your reach.
3. Pick up one PR to set: Sure, we want them all, but a 5K and a marathon are two different animals and requires separate training plans. So, pick one distance where to focus and make sure everything you do is in service of that specific goal.
4. Upgrade your sleep: Sleep is better for restoration than your entire recovery toolkit multiplied by three. Be initiative-taking and intentional about it. Make sleeping a priority in your everyday life. Its benefits will go beyond a PR or a BQ.
Don’t let streght training be the neglected aspect of your running (Photo Andrea Piaquadio, Pexels)
5. Strength training: For every mile you run, you’re pounding your musculoskeletal system with 3-5 times your weight, about 800-900 times per leg. If you don’t prepare your bones, muscles, tendons, and ligaments for such a vicious workload, they will inevitably break down. Translation: You will get injured.
6. Don’t just run: The constant percussion this sport places on our bodies requires us scheduling time to repair and restore, more of it as we age. Incorporating one or two days a week of yoga, swimming, Pilates, biking, elliptical or any other non-impact exercise will make you a more resilient runner.
7. Keep a running log: Beyond Garmin, Runkeeper or Strava and the slew worthless or irrelevant parameters they measure for us, writing down your daily activity either by hand or on a spreadsheet will noticeably improve your understanding of what you are doing. Give it a shot.
8. Learn about running: Knowledge is always an advantage. You can delve into the history of the sport, the science of what happens to your body when you run, or biographies of its greatest icons. Pick up one book or two and make sure you finish them before December 31st.
I hope these ideas assist you in shaping the running year to be. This way, come December, you can brag about your victories, PRs and improvements, instead of setting up for a 2025 in which to redeem yourself.
If you ran a marathon or know of someone who has, most likely you’ve heard about “hitting the wall”. And if you ever wondered why they call it a wall, imagine yourself running and hitting one. Head-on. Yes. No exaggeration. You may hit it because you ran too fast and burned out, because you’ve consumed your body’s main fuel source, carbs, because you got dehydrated or a combination of those.
What is left after such an encounter is yourself trying to finish your race or run in a depleted state. A failure after a hard cycle of hard training.
Just like this, but without the benefit of the padding
Meeting with the wall is not always a physical process. Sometimes you may be mentally fatigued, or unprepared for the task at hand. In his book The Runner’s Brain, Dr. Jeff Brown states that “your brain is a pretty awesome organ, but it\’s no magician. If you didn\’t train properly or if you starved yourself for a week, you\’re asking to hit the wall no matter how great and powerful a mental organ you possess.”
But if you have trained with diligence, most likely hitting the wall will be a physical rather than a mental event. In general terms, your body doesn’t have the resources needed to run a marathon. Yet, thousands upon thousands of runners complete one or more every year. How do they do it? They fuel and hydrate their bodies during the race, and they’re mentally prepared for the challenge they’ll face.
If you are not intentional about your fueling strategy and plan to depend on whatever they’ll serve at the race, you can’t be surprised when you start having issues. We’ve all seen someone jet-puking fluorescent green liquid, not unlike the girl from The Exorcist, because they overdid it with the Gatorade.
Of course, there is always the possibility you started too fast and exhausted yourself beyond recovery. That would be an error in strategy which will also lead you to the wall. But that is another issue for another day. Not the one discussed in this post.
In a recent interview, legendary ultrarunner Scott Jurek was talking about the importance of fueling your body for a marathon and stated: “Rather than how do you deal with the wall at mile 20, don’t let the wall happen at Mile 20. Yes, I know it is easier said than done. But when you are out there tomorrow [in your race], if it is the muscular fatigue thing, you probably went too hard, but it is usually the lack of carbohydrates.”
HOW TO PROCEED ONCE YOU HIT THE WALL
Yet sometimes you’ve prepared yourself physically, mentally, and fueled properly but still hit the wall. What to do? In “The Runner’s Brain”, Dr. Brown talks about choosing between four wall-busting mental strategies so you can deal with the issue at hand. Read again: Deal, not overcome.
INTERNAL ASSOCIATION: A total focus on how the body feels while running. Tuning into the contraction and relaxation of your muscles, the mechanics of your arm movement, your breathing, your heart rate, and so on. Internal association\’s boundary is your skin, and your focus stays inside of it.
INTERNAL DISSOCIATION: Doing just the opposite yet staying inside of yourself. This strategy distracts you by hitting the mental replay button on a great song, thinking of upcoming projects, or counting your steps. Runners around you may be surprised to learn that you weren\’t thinking about running.
EXTERNAL ASSOCIATION: Your focus is outside your body and outside the act of running itself, yet you keep track of important aspects of your run. You may pay attention to jockeying for position in the race, negotiating water stops, split times, etc.
EXTERNAL DISSOCIATION: means focusing outward but on events or stimuli unimportant to the race itself. You may focus on the scenery, cheering crowds, flowers, counting the number of times someone along the route yells the name written on your bib or someone dressed in a weird running outfit.
It would be easy to finish this blog post stating that I wish you never have to figure out if it really feels like hitting a wall, but if you keep training long distances, you will eventually figure it out yourself. It is inevitable. The key is to learn from such an experience, so it doesn’t happen again. It is only then that hitting the wall won’t be a checkmark in your loss column.
What is your experience hitting the wall? Let me know in the comments.
I originally published this blog post about three years ago under the title “The Trap of Information Overload”. I have coached many new runners since and one of the constants I’ve observed is how they get sucked into the need to track irrelevant parameters just because their watches display them. This is regardless of whether they understand what such parameters are actually measuring. Thus, I have decided to rerun this post, with a few updates. I hope you find it useful.
Is this you while checking your watch during or after every run?
Let’s start by stating that I see nothing wrong with being on Strava, having an Instagram account to share your runs, or checking Facebook every so often to see what your running buddies are up to. It is great to live in an era where we can be in contact with people we haven’t seen in decades, stay connected with that cousin who moved to another country, or your buddies from elementary school you rarely have the chance to see anymore.
It is great to make social media acquaintances with people you\’ve never met in person. I follow a Dutch runner named @mistermarathon on Instagram, who follows me back. When I visited Amsterdam a few years back, he took me for a running tour of the city; we had coffee at the Rijksmuseum and had a great talk. A few years later, he visited Florida, and even though I was injured and couldn’t run, we met for coffee and had another enjoyable conversation. It was great!
But there must be a limit. The data overload from social media, from our watches, from WhatsApp groups, and from measuring up to every stranger who follows our social channels is stealing the joy from many a runner. We should run because we like it. So, if something is stealing our bliss, it must go; or at least, its presence must be adjusted.
Yes, a pre-run picture with your buddies is cool, but if you missed it, you could still run. Skipping the recording of one run because your watch has no battery is not an excuse to miss a scheduled training. Checking your favorite elite runner on Strava and matching their training is a recipe for injury. Thinking that an ultrarunner in Germany, Australia, or Argentina is your buddy because he likes your posts on a regular basis is the prelude for a letdown. Wanting to run from New York to Los Angeles because so-and-so did it, is insanity.
Unless you know what a parameter is measuring, let it go!
It all starts with regulating the consumption of information we get from our GPS watches. It is wonderful to have all the information we could possibly need at a wrist flip. But, with certain exceptions dictated by a specific segment of your training program, the usefulness of such information is relatively innocuous. It is just a reflection of what you are doing, not what you are doing. It is not your worth as an athlete or as a human being. You don’t have to pause the watch because you hit a red light, or because you stopped at the water fountain. You don’t have to check your cadence or vertical oscillation every mile unless you are specifically working on it. And don’t get me started on VO2Max: If you don’t know what it measures, don’t dwell on it. You get the point.
I am amazed by the data that the watch keeps track of. NASA didn’t have such access to astronauts on the Moon. Most of it is great for the analysis of my training, for measuring my progress, or for keeping historical data. But your watch should just serve as a recorder of your performance, not direct it.
The more I use Strava or Garmin Connect, the more I’m impressed by what they can do, but I don’t follow or stalk people I don’t know. If I want to know what a friend is doing, I call him or text her. I don’t need to know what Kelvin Kiptum is doing every day, let alone compare his progress to mine. I don’t need kudos from 50 strangers to validate my run.
Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States, once said: “Comparison is the thief of joy”, and I agree 100% with him. Equaling it is part of human nature, and the right dosage of it may be healthy. But if we want to enjoy OUR running, we need to concentrate on what WE are doing and what WE can control. WE must center OUR running life on OUR progress, OUR failures, OUR injuries, and OUR parameters.
Most of the data is useless at the time we are running, anyway. It is afterward that we can learn something from it and make the necessary adjustments. If you list the top 100 reasons why you run, I bet that “to show up Alex in Strava”, “to have more Instagram followers than Maria,” or “to improve my likes on Facebook” won’t make the list. So, get back to basics and take advantage of the exciting tech tools available to you, but don’t become a slave to them.
A year ago, Grace P. had never run before. I am sure she tried to catch a bus or get refuge from the rain at some point, but never what we picture when we think of a runner.
She is friends with my wife and on a fateful October day of last year, we were invited to a small gathering at her house. I wasn’t too keen on spending a Saturday afternoon with people I don’t know but there are certain sacrifices a husband must make. Grace’s husband was wearing Brooks shoes, so to make small chitchat I asked if he was a runner. “I only run when Grace wants to hit me”, he joked back.
Still looking strong and happy at mile 18 of the Marine Corps Marathon.
Then my wife stated that I was a running coach and Grace jumped in saying something along the lines of: “I’ve always wanted to run, but I can’t get very far without getting tired. I see my neighbor running all the time, but I can’t run like her”. So, I told her I was the head coach for the City of Tamarac Run Club. “If you are at X park at X time on X day, I will get you running”. And she showed up. And kept on showing up. Last October 29th, she became a marathoner.
Three or 4 weeks into the training, on a cold and rainy night, everyone bowed out of the run through our chat. Except Grace. So, I showed up. She was scheduled to run three miles and at two, in the midst of a downpour, I told her it was OK to cut it short. With a huge smile, she told me she was completing her workout. And she did.
That was the specific moment when I realized that she caught the running bug and that she had the talent and drive necessary to achieve great things in this sport. Her training improved so fast that in less than two months of running, she skipped the 5K and went straight to a 10K race, in which she ran 1:00:13. A month later she ran her first 10 miler and another month later her first half marathon in 2:18. Within another month she set two more PRs in the distance, finishing the season with 2:05. That is a minute per mile faster than six weeks earlier. Now she wanted a marathon.
The story escalated quickly from there. As her coach, I wanted to make sure she recovered properly. That she took the necessary time off, that she began a strengthening program, that she learned about nutrition, hydration, recovery, etc. She even took to learn about the story of women in running by reading Marathon Woman, by Kathrine Switzer, who she learned to admire.
While in DC, Grace had the chance to meet and mingle with the one and only Kathrine Switzer
Then, as the hottest month of July in recorded history dawned in South Florida, Grace and her training partner Luis D. started their marathon preparation. It was brutal. More than once they had to take to the streets at 5 AM under 85-degree temperature and 100% humidity. Yet, they persevered. They kept going until one day… Voila!!! It all kicked in and new distances beyond 13.1 became not only possible but she thrived on them. I can recall her finishing her first 15-miler hooting and jumping with a big smile. Yes, I know. Totally crazy!
Sure, there were setbacks. And those were important, too. There was one time she hit the wall and had to finish walking. In the midst of her disappointment, I taught her to learn from it. To take it as an opportunity. She had progressed so fast she hadn’t experienced much failure. Another time she tried a new gel and it backfired badly. She had to use one of her lifelines and phone a friend to pick her up. She was upset but I told her it was important to learn that this brand doesn’t work for her, now, instead of at mile 22 on race day. And she persevered.
Marathon day arrived on October 29. Grace was ready and excited. But the weather wasn’t as cool as expected. Her training partner was dealing with a leg issue and dropped off the pace from the very beginning. There was a ton of traffic at the start and her first 5k was off by over a minute-per-mile slower than planned. So, she adjusted to her circumstances, picked up the pace to what she trained for and maintained it until Km35 (Mile 22), where she slowed down a little bit. The last mile was very tough, yet she persevered and did not walk at all, finishing in a solid 4:39:07. This, I remind you again, was someone who told me a year ago she wanted to run without tiring, like her neighbor.
Coach Adolfo, Grace and Norvin (Grace’s husband), on our way to the startng line of the MCM races
If this wasn’t enough of a story, her husband caught the running bug, too. He started walking, then run/walking, and then pursued loftier goals as he felt better and stronger. He lost over 20 Lbs. and started fitting into clothes he hadn’t worn in years. And if that wasn’t enough, he ran the Marine Corps 10K without stopping in a time of 1:16. Now he is eyeing his first half.
From the coaching side, not only it has been a treat to coach a runner as talented and dedicated as Grace P., but she has also become an integral part of our Saturday running group. Moreover, she and her husband have become close friends with my wife and I, which has been a great addition to our lives. Running is the gift that keeps on giving.
Not everyone possesses the hidden talent and drive that Grace demonstrated. Not everyone aspires to become a marathoner. However, everyone has the potential to make the most of their physical capabilities. Just like Grace, it begins with showing up at the park on the appointed date and time, embarking on a personal journey whose destination remains unknown. Who knows where it may lead you?
A few days ago, I received a phone call from one of my athletes. She’s training for her second marathon, which is fast approaching. My concerns exploded right away, as the first words out of her mouth were: “I have a problem!”. Possibilities such as injury, illness, unexplained pains, job loss, etc., started rushing through my mind. In this blog post, we\’ll explore the art of balancing running and life, especially when facing unexpected life dilemmas.
“What’s happening?”, I asked as I tried to contain my uneasiness so I could keep her calm.
“My husband bought tickets to a comedy show on Friday night, and I won’t be able to do my Saturday long run?”. She explained.
Multiple aspects of your life must be juggled around so your running doesn’t become the ruler of your schedule (Photo Michael Judkins, Pexels)
As the color returned to my face, I told her with the best sarcastic tone I could muster: “What an inconsiderate man! Wanting to go out on a Friday night, with his wife, to have fun? That is awful. If you could only move that long run to Sunday.”
Then I explained that as important as her marathon is, and as much as she is invested in her running, keeping a balanced life between family, work, and running is essential. This was not the night before her marathon, and it doesn’t happen every Friday night. If she doesn’t allow the necessary flexibility to move some workouts around, then her husband, her kids, and eventually her, will resent her running. That would be disastrous for all the parties involved.
“Thank you for the perspective”, she said. And hung up two seconds later”.
I guarantee this incident is not an isolated one. I bet every single reader of this blog post has a personal version of this story. I certainly do. More than one. At one time or another, we had to confront this reality. “I want to train. But my—insert relationship here—wants to—insert activity here— What should I do?”
Most likely you are not qualifying for the Olympics, lining up side-by-side with Eliud Kipchoge at the Berlin Marathon start, or even considered the favorite to win your local 5K. So, moving things around in your training schedule, or God forbid, skipping a workout, are feasible arrangements to fit in running around your life.
What to do if you score World Series tickets for the night before your marathon?
In my experience, both personally and as a coach, the newer you are in the sport, the tougher it becomes to keep running in perspective. As you get started on your journey, the improvement curve is so steep that you want to keep the progress for as long as possible. You may not understand the benefits of a day off, or that not one particular session is going to make or break your race or your running career. This is the time when you must check in with your coach or your more experienced running buddies to help you put it into perspective.
Just like the runner at the start of this post, you may be taken aback by tickets to an event at an inconvenient time. It happens. Hopefully, you shared your goal race with your significant other and he/she will time well the invitations. But it could also happen that you get your hands on tickets to something like the World Series when your team is playing but is happening the night before your New York City Marathon. Then it is time to choose between a once-in-a-lifetime event and what you’ve trained for but may certainly do again, later.
My son got married on a Friday night in November. That’s high training season for local racing where I live. Asking my son to get married another day because I run long on Saturdays was not right. Missing his wedding was out of the question. So, what do you do? You attend your son’s wedding, you have fun and you forget about running on behalf of a momentous occasion in the life of an important person in your life. That’s what you do.
Sure, sacrifices must be made. But it is never about having to choose between your running and your spouse, your significant other, your kids, your family, friends, or work. It is about understanding that in life, there are more important things than a rack full of medals.
Have you ever had a dilemma between running and life? Please share your experience in the comment box, below.
In my last blog post, I wrote about learning the hard way. Within the same theme, today I bring you the story of Javier Mota, a journalist and friend who despite going out of his way to not consider himself a runner, put together a 1000+ day running streak. Given his accepted stubbornness, he is currently paying the consequences of not listening to his body. With his permission, I am publishing an article he wrote about his experience.
Good and bad consequences after running every day for 3 years and 21 days.
The diagnosis by Dr. Luis Valenzuela from the Meds Clinic in Santiago de Chile, which stopped my 3 years and 21 days of running every day, was forceful:
“You obviously have internal femorotibial osteoarthritis, with a degenerative tear of the internal meniscus. Also, chondral lesions in the patella. There is bone edema of the medial femoral condyle and medial tibial plateau due to joint wear and overload.”
Javier Mota is a renowned automotive journalist and a friend. (Photo: courtesy of Javier Mota)
In simple words, the MRI results showed how badly I messed up my left knee, mainly due to a clear case of the fine line between stubbornness and stupidity.
In hindsight, I should have stopped running when the pain and discomfort began on March 15, 2023, but out of my stubbornness, rather than determination or discipline, I ran 5 additional months in pain, first trying to reach the 1,000-day mark and then, 3 years.
The additional 21 days only confirmed my lack of good sense and probably made things worse.
“Pain is not normal”, another orthopedic doctor once told me during a casual conversation in a bar in St. George, Utah, after I insisted on running for a couple of months despite the discomfort.
Long before that, when I reached the 2-year mark, in August 2022, Dr. Scott Lang, University of Central Florida´s Professor of Family Medicine, warned me: “Never run in pain. If you have muscle pain or joint pain when you run, ice it and rest. If the pain persists for more than a week, see your doctor”.
Obviously, I did not pay attention and on August 21, 2023, at the end of my annual ski trip to Chile, I finally decided to have my left knee checked by Dr. Valenzuela, who after a quick visual and tactile examination, immediately determined that an MRI was necessary.
Of course, between the time that passed from the end of the MRI and the time I received the diagnosis, I went out for the last run (2.75 miles in 30:36) because I sensed the end of the streak was approaching, under medical prescription.
The truth is that the discomfort never reached the point of paralyzing me, although, between March 15 and August 21, 2023, I reduced the distance and speed of each run, thinking that the pain would be reduced. That didn’t happen, but it didn’t get worse either.
This is Javier’s messed up left knee (Foto: Courtesy of Javier Mota)
Dr. Valenzuela attributed this to the fact that through constant exercise for 1,115 days in a row, I was able to build enough muscle mass to absorb most of the impact on my knee.
Now, the next challenge is to dedicate myself with the same intensity to a rehabilitation program and incorporate other athletic activities, without impacting the knees to maintain the physical condition and weight (165 pounds).
Those last two were undoubtedly the biggest benefits of the running streak, which began on August 1, 2020, during the Covid pandemic, thanks to a private Facebook group, to get out of lockdown.
In all, I ran 3,257.3 miles, an average of almost 90 miles per month. The equivalent of driving from Miami to Seattle.
All this, despite the fact that I have never felt like a “real runner”. If I was, I would have followed the 3R advice of the experts to replenish, rest, and recover, and not become a “slave to the streak”, as Running Coach Adolfo Salgueiro warned me. But that’s exactly what I did.
I never warmed up before a run, nor did I stretch at the end. I have never undergone a serious training program to achieve a specific goal. Nor did I pay much attention to the advice not to wear old and worn-out shoes or to buy ones specially molded for my feet. As a consequence, I never improved my time or distance in these 3 years.
And as I said before and I repeat now, I don’t like to run. I think it’s boring, so much so that for the last few months of the streak I tried to entertain myself by picking up trash on the road, sometimes at an astonishing rate of 10+ pieces per mile. Thanks to that, and in a very unscientific way, I verified that the Modelo Especial has indeed become the most popular beer in the United States, given the number of empty cans I have found in recent months during my runs.
I also started stopping to say hello to all the dogs I saw on the trail, perhaps to justify my slower pace and to give my knee a rest, until one of them bit me on the left thigh, something unrelated to the injury, which eventually ended the streak.
Now the benefits
I always appreciated what happens when you run every day. You feel better physically and mentally, you sleep and work better, and you can eat and drink more. And you always feel good after every run, unless you get bitten by a dog.
Also, it was great to receive encouragement from other runners, non-runners and even from companies like New Balance and Apple who sent me products as an incentive to keep the streak alive; and from car brands that celebrated some of the streak’s milestones when they coincided with some of their test driving programs around the world.
One of the 1,021 consecutive runs that lead to the devastating injury (Foto: Courtesy of Javier Mota)
It was also a pleasure to run in 16 countries and over 100 cities.
But what I enjoyed the most was the daily challenge of finding the time and place to run every day, despite the complications of constant travel as part of my job as an automotive journalist.
The longest run (almost 9 miles) was in Munich, Germany, on September 2021, not because I wanted to run that distance, but because I got lost. The fastest run was a 10K at a pace of 7:58 minutes per mile, at home.
On December 31, 2022, I checked out at 11:30 p.m. to complete the daily 5k and then did another one starting right at midnight and ending on January 1st. 2023 to start the New Year.
Several times, I landed at an airport and got out of the car on the way to the hotel so I could run before the end of the day. I also ran inside various airports, before and after flights.
So, in the end, it was a good run while it lasted, but I have a few points to consider now that this is all over:
First, I do not recommend it to anyone! It’s easy to become addicted, even a slave to personal achievement like this one.
And most importantly, as I’ve learned the hard way, it’s essential to recognize that running every day for an extended period, not only can, but surely will cause injury sooner or later.
In conclusion, listen to the experts and to your body; take adequate rest when necessary to prevent exhaustion and possible long-term health problems.
Without a doubt, this streak of three years and 21 days was an extraordinary journey, which some have called “an example of determination, discipline and the pursuit of personal goals”, but it is also important to remember that the physical conditioning process of each individual is unique and must be approached with care and respect for one’s own body.
Maybe I will run again someday, but I will never run every day for 3 years and 21 days.
Javier Mota is a renowned automotive journalist and a friend. You can follow him on Instagram @javiermota, or at his website: https://autos0to60.com/. He made a YouTube video with his original post. If you want to check it out, you can do so by clicking here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8sdfsl0c9w
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INTERNAL ASSOCIATION:
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