6 Areas to Focus on During Rest and Recovery

6 Areas to Focus on During Rest and Recovery

By Coach Adolfo Salgueiro

In the last post I dissected the phases of the racing off-season. Through these you can properly prepare for next season and be ready in time to achieve your goals. If you haven’t read the post yet, you can do so by clicking here.

The nature of the post didn’t allow me to go in depth, so this week I want to dig deeper into the first phase: Rest and Recovery. I firmly believe this phase is the key for whatever goals you may set forth the next racing season. It is what will allow you to reset and restart working towards them. It is what will make them achievable.

Rest and Recovery

A great time to hit the gym and start working on your strength training. Not having enough time is no longer an excuse (Photo: Andrea Piacquardio, Pexels)

I have identified six areas in which to focus during your Rest and Recovery phase. These will allow you to decompress, rest, recover, prevent burnout and make you tougher against injuries. It is not a complete list, just a handful of suggestions on which you may want to focus for a month or two (or three) so you can reset all the systems.

1 – Focus on life balance: We all love running. We chose this sport. There’s no PT teacher timing us on the mile. We run because we want to. Even if you are doing it on doctor’s orders, you have other exercise options. For most of us, running is an essential part of our lives. Our therapy, our steam relief valve, our social time outside home/work. Yet, unless we are professionals or we are planning to qualify for the Olympics Trials, it is not what brings home the bacon. Our families, jobs, other hobbies and home responsibilities require our attention and presence. An elite Kenyan runner may not be able to take two weeks off if a child gets sick, because winning his marathon is not just payday but “pay-year”. I am sure 99.9% of my readership are not in the same boat. So, keep life balanced.

2 – Work on your running form: There is not one way of doing it right. Your form is unique to you and you alone. Changing form is not needed unless it’s getting you injured but it doesn’t mean there’s no room for improvement. There is always an adjustment or two that may get you more efficient, less injury-prone, improve your breathing, avoid aches and pains or make your joints stronger. Figure out the tweaks you need and take advantage of this time to work on them. Four weeks prior to your goal marathon is not the time to work on your overstriding.

Rest and Recovery

I can’t stress enough how important it is to catch up on your sleep as a recovery tool (Photo: Ketuf Subiyanto, Pexels)

3 – Catch up on your sleep: If you are one of my recurrent readers, you read this advice plenty of times. But if you can grasp the concept that humans have been on this earth for 200-300 thousand years and have not yet evolved to stop sleeping, then you will understand that sleep is a non-negotiable activity to keep yourself healthy. If that wasn’t enough, there is no number of massages, compression socks, percussion guns or cold plunges that match sleep as recovery tool. And I don’t mean one individually. I mean all combined. This is science. It is not open to debate.

4 – Partake in other physical activities: Since you may (and should) be running less than during training season, you could take a yoga class, go for a swim, a bike ride, a hike, or whatever else will complement your physical activity requirements. Running is a highly repetitive, high-impact activity. A 10K alone will have each leg hitting the surface about 5000 times at 2.5-4 times your weight load. Getting your movement benefits from other sources will not only help you heal and get stronger but will facilitate your brain to vary from the same moving patterns, which also provides neurological benefits.

5 – Run at a low heart rate: Running slow so you can run fast is one of the toughest concepts for a runner to comprehend. Hopefully, now that you don’t need to run fast for some months, you may take time to apply this concept and verify its benefits. When you run at a slow heart rate, and thus pace, your body will learn to burn more fat as fuel, will increase your aerobic capacity, increase your mitochondrial density and your fuel consumption economy. None of this is possible when running fast, because your body requires so much energy, and it needs it right now, that all these benefits are negated. Sure, you can run faster, but there’s a cost to that. Your body will be invoicing you for it later, during race training.

6 – Of course, strength training: Yes, I know. It is boring, challenging and takes time. I don’t like it either, it is one of the weakest points of my training. But I do it anyway. You don’t need to spend 3 hours in the gym 5 times a week. Start easily and increase from there. Thirty minutes sessions, 3 times a week during the off-season will make you stronger, more resistant to injury, increase your power and your speed. As you increase your running mileage, once you are strong, you can decrease it to two times a week. I can’t stress enough the importance and the benefits of a strengths training program. The the time to implement it is now.

Any thoughts? Please let me know in the comment box, below.

 
Planning Your Running Off-Season

Planning Your Running Off-Season

By Coach Adolfo Salgueiro

As the 2022-23 racing season move towards its end, with just a handful of goal competitions left in the calendar, the time to start planning for the 2023-24 season rapidly approaches. The running season usually goes from November-March, with adjustments depending on your latitude and location. This is time to reflect on what happened, what did not happen and why did or did not happen.

The first question that comes to mind after this intro is: Do runners really need time off?

Off-Season

Rediscover the pleasures of sleeping in on a weekend morning instead of going for a long run (Photo Pexels)

It has been discussed for decades, but based on my years of experience, my answer on the matter is a blunt and unequivocal YES!!!. In all caps and with three exclamation points.

Regardless of your age, level of fitness and commitment to the sport, your body cannot keep its peak level of fitness forever. There is such a thing as an upper limit which cannot be surpassed regardless of how much you run, lift or cross train. So, it is imperative that you provide your body with enough time to rest and relax. This will inevitably decrease your fitness, sure, but you must see it as an investment, a process to go through to continue your path of long-term progress.

The key concept is that once you have recovered and you are ready to restart, given that you haven’t overdone the junk food, alcohol and time off, you will be doing so at a higher level of fitness than where you started last season. This may allow you to achieve an even higher level for the upcoming season.

I will define the off-season as the period between your last race of one season and the first race of the following one. Within that period, I have identified four phases to devote individual attention so you can prepare properly for success.

1 – Rest and recovery – This doesn’t mean you stop all sports activities until next race. Some runners may need a week to a month off just to reset the body and have fun catching up on the pleasures of life that they’ve deprived themselves of during hard training, such as pizza, beer, binging on TV until late or sleeping in. Other runners will want to drastically cut their mileage, or their running days so their bodies can recover and prepare for what is coming up. You must enjoy the process and running’s gotta be fun. Otherwise, a burn out may be on its way and you will no longer run.

2 – Planning – This phase may overlap the previous one, or even with the previous racing season. The time has come to figure out what are your goals for next season. I am a firm believer that having multiple races in your schedule is what will allow you to remain focused so you don’t slack off until you realize the race you were shooting for is around the corner, or it is sold out. You don’t want to plan every workout for the next 6-8 months, but you just need to know when you need to be ready and for what goal.

Off-Season

This is the time to enjoy the pizza and the beer, but obviously, don’t overdo it (Photo Pexels)

3 – Build up – After your recovery time is taken care of, it is time to rebuild your endurance and your speed. This takes time, method and requires patience. Accept you will not start at the same point where you left off. The silver lining is that you will be able to get back there sooner and safer the longer you have been running. Getting back to 50-mile weeks is a quicker process for someone who has been doing it for 10 years than for a runner who just did it last year for the very first time. Put you plan on paper. Block and label the weeks and/months you will need to go through this process. Then, execute.

4 – Training – Everything you did between your last race of the season and the start of this phase is what will determine the success of your next season. A 16-week training plan, especially for a marathon, doesn’t mean you’ll start running again 16 weeks prior to race day. It means that 16 weeks before race day you must be ready to hit the ground running. By then, your aerobic capacity, your core, your strength program and your speed training should be a work in progress. So, in these 16 weeks you just dial in the variables to achieve your goal at the set date.

Other components such as nutrition, sleep, hydration and recovery are year around elements than need to be addressed continuously and are part of all four phases.

If you take the time to plan ahead, even small injuries, periods of sickness, vacation or any other unexpected surprises life will inevitably throw at you, may be fit into the off-season. Prepare yourself with plenty of time and enjoy reaping the benefits of a well-executed plan.

Getting Rid of Old School Thinking

Getting Rid of Old School Thinking

By Coach Adolfo Salgueiro

Last week I was talking to a friend who is helping his brother train for his first half marathon. He told me the toughest part of the process is making him understand that the “no pain, no gain” old-school mentality no longer applies to running. The days of alchemy are over. The collective thought has evolved and adjusted to new science studies or discoveries, thus, we understand matters in a new way, one that 5, 10 or 50 years ago was unheard of.

In 1968 Kathrine Switzer had to finagle her way into the Boston Marathon because back then women were thought to be so fragile, they could not endure such physical punishment. The carb depletion pre-marathon protocol was the rage in the mid-1980s, today we know it makes no sense. The “I run through pain” approach that showed bravado 20 years ago, displays recklessness, today. And like that, many more running ideas that once we thought gospel, today are barely gimmicks.

Old School Thinking

A good book worth the time and the money. Highly recommended.

In his book “Do Hard Things” author Steve Magness, one of my coaching role models, talks in depth about getting over of this old-school thinking. He explains how toughness is navigating through your training, not bulldozing through it. This how we avoid overtraining, and even worse, injuries. It is about being smart.

He goes through eight strategies to develop real toughness as a runner. I am not going to go through all of them, of course. If you want to go in depth into them, that’s what the book is for. But I will briefly touch on three that caught my attention and that I now teach my coached athletes.

A – Our alarms are adjustable: “Being tough gets easier the fitter you are.”

What an avant-garde concept! Think about it this way: If you spent the last 10 years on the couch watching TV and eating Doritos but decide to go for a 5K run, most likely you will suffer through it, regardless of your commitment or toughness. But, if you got the running bug, you trained smartly, diligently, and two years later you complete a marathon, it is not because you have multiplied your toughness. You reaped the benefits of your work and got better at it. Just like the first time Bruce Springsteen picked up a guitar, which these days is an extension of his body.

B – We need hope and control: “The key to improve mental toughness doesn’t lie in constraining and controlling individuals. It doesn’t lie in developing harsh punishments to teach a lesson. It doesn’t lie in screaming at the person to complete the task in front of them.”

The era of “I am not done when we are tired, I am done when I am done”, is done (pun intended). If you are training for a marathon, you need to run 18 miles but you are feeling unwell, stressed at work, just had a fight with your spouse last night, didn’t sleep well, it is a hot/humid summer morning and you are beat up at mile 15… what’s best? Calling it a day and be happy you completed 80% of your workout despite the circumstances, or pushing through while destroying yourself, to prove your machismo and then having to take 7-10 days to recover from the effort? … Exactly!

Old School Thinking

Finishing exhausted after a training session could lead to injury. Be smart and always live to run another day. (Photo: Pexels)

C – Feelings and Understanding need interpretation: “The power through mantra only makes sense if you take stock in what you are powering through.”

I want to make sure my readers understand I am not saying you need to be complacent when training gets difficult. We need to learn how to power through difficult trainings, races, cross training and life. The key is to understand why we are doing what we are doing. If we are trying to run at race pace, then race pace sessions will be difficult. But we need to push through them if we want to understand and teach our bodies how to run at that pace. When we start strength training, or add yoga to our plan, everything will hurt, but there’s a good reason to keep going despite the aches and pains. It is not about suffering for fun; it is about reaping benefits in the near future.

These is my take on three of these principles, I fully recommend the book. “Do Hard Things” is a good investment of time and money for any runner out there. And it is not just for runners, but for every person wanting to get better at leaving their comfort zone behind and actually going for what they want, for their life goals, not just the athletic ones.

Please leave me your thoughts nn this blogpost, in the box below.

 
40th Anniversary of My First Marathon

40th Anniversary of My First Marathon

By Coach Adolfo Salgueiro

I still can’t believe that it has been 40 years since my first marathon. Four decades since that unforgettable January 22nd of 1983 inside the old Orange Bowl Stadium in Miami. 14,610 days have passed since that unprepared 17-year-old higschooler crossed a finish line that became the gift that kept on giving.

Since I can remember, I wanted to run a marathon. Not sure why. Maybe because I read about the athletics exploits of Abebe Bikila, Emil Zatopek or contemporaries like Frank Shorter and Bill Rogers. Who knows? Somehow, I always loved the extremes. I started running when I was 12 or 13 while living in Caracas, Venezuela, and at 15, ran my first 10K race. Then, a couple of months after turning 17, my dad told me he was running the Orange Bowl Marathon in January 1983, and if I trained, he would take me to Miami. Maybe I just wanted the trip and a few days off school, or it could have been a legitimate attraction for the physical challenge. Regardless, what I know is that 6 weeks later I was lining up at the foot of the iconic home of the Miami Dolphins, who eight days later were taking on the Washington Redskins in the Super Bowl.

First Marathon

The Miami Orange Bowl stadium (1937-2008) seated 72,319, hosted 5 Super Bowls and was home of the Miami Dolphins from (1966-1986)

I’ve written before about that race. So, on this anniversary I don’t want to reminisce about that particular day, but on what the race has meant to me throughout my life. Last year, on the 39th anniversary of the marathon, I wrote a memoir about that day because I didn’t want details to be forgotten. If you would like to read more about it, please click here.  I also wrote a post about getting my finisher’s medal 37 years later, back in 2020. If you want to read about it, please click here.

After that magical morning, 40 years ago, even if I never ran another step in my life, I was a marathoner. It is a label that sticks forever. It doesn’t fade away with time, or by forgetting the exact date and finishing time, or by never wearing a pair of running shorts again.

I kept running for a handful of years after my first marathon. By the time I turned 21 I had four under my belt, with a couple of them in the 3:30 range. I ran through my first three years of college and even had escalated disagreemtns with my girlfriend, who at times was fed up with not going out with our friends on Saturday nights because I had a Sunday morning long run. Many a time I had to put my foot down and state that I would drop her before my training. Today I would have handled it in a different way, but that was then.

As I have mentioned in other writings, as I was training to go sub-3 in 1986, I had a devastating non-running injury on my left knee that left me on the sidelines. It was such a demoralizing blow that I stopped running for decades. While not running I discovered the pleasures of sleeping in on weekends. I didn’t want to have the same issues with new girlfriends, so I went out partying on Saturday nights, and on Friday nights, too. I focused on getting my career in sports journalism started, graduating from college and all the stuff “normal” people do when they don’t need to wake up early to run long next day. The day I turned 18, I went to bed at 8PM because I was running 30Km (19 miles) next day as part of my training for the NYC Marathon. What a weirdo!

First Marathon

There is not much to be found online about the 1983 Orange Bowl Marathon. Surprisingly I found this cotton race shirt in eBay for “just” $149,99. Thanks, I’ll pass.

Yet, somewhere deep inside, I always knew I had one more marathon in me. Just one, to remind myself I could still do it, or to fool myself into thinking I was still as good as when I was a teenager, or to revisit old glories, or to show my young son what you can accomplish when you work hard towards a difficult goal. Whatever it was, I still wanted to hit the asphalt and take that 26.2 trip once more. Just once.

But sometimes you cross paths with the wrong people and they clip your wings. At 39, after a 2nd knee surgery in July 2004, I told the doctor I still had one more marathon in me and asked if he thought my knee could take it. He told me in no uncertain terms that I shouldn’t and couldn’t. I was stupid enough to take his word for it.

But one day, out of the blue I started walking for hours at a time, feeling good about it and experiencing the runner’s high once again. I found racewalking and then racewalked four half marathons, transitioning to the 26.2 at the 2012 Philadelphia Marathon. Three years and two more marathons later I realized that I just took the doctor’s word and did not run because he said so, not because I tried and failed. So, I got my running restarted and ran my first marathon since 1985, in 2017. Five years, four marathons and an open-heart surgery later, I am still running and looking towards my next 26.2-mile adventure.

The Marathon Training Academy podcast runs a great tag line: “You have what it takes to run a marathon and change your life”. I certainly had what it took to run it again, and my life hasn’t been the same since I completed that 2017 NYC Marathon after I became a runner for the 2nd time; nor since I racewalked the Philadelphia Marathon in 2012 after a 26 year hiatus, nor after that magical morning at the Orange Bowl Stadium, 40 years ago, this week, when my lifetime love affair with the mythical 26.2 monster got started.

 
Diary of a Former Naked Runner

Diary of a Former Naked Runner

By Ruben Urieta*

As a “naked runner” (1), for many years I enjoyed the freedom of not being attached to tech gadgets. Gadgets that most runners use to measure mileage, pace, heart rate and what not. They come in different forms of watches, headphones or wearables. These days most smart phones can track you, just as your significant other does (just joking).

Naked runner

Despite a difficult race in Panama, the hard work paid off (Photo courtesy of Ruben Urieta)

What is it that a naked runner enjoys? This is a good question for a podcast, as it may need a long answer. I can only tell you about my experience. I enjoy the conversational running, the sound of the waves by the beach, the flapping of bird wings and even the occasional “get out of the f*$%ng bike lane!” reminder. With this mindset I’ve ran 5K, 10K, plenty of half marathons and even one marathon without proper training, where my buttocks hit the ground (literally). In some smaller races I even placed in my age group, including a 2nd place in the birthplace of Ricky Martin (San Juan, PR).

However, events involving my close family happened this year and made me reconsider my comfort zone. What I mean by that is that I felt like I got into a comfortable running routine that my body just got used to. It took a doctor’s advice to snap me out of it. He said: “sometimes you have to endure physical pain to obtain unique benefits”.

So, I registered for a half marathon in Panama, where the humidity would likely be 100% and my goal was to smash my PR on the distance by almost 10 minutes. To accomplish this, I decided to get a coach with enough experience to turn a “naked runner” into a “dressed runner”.

Naked runnerI needed guidance, arduous work and some luck to transition into this new chapter of my running life.

Fast forwarding to race day, luck ran out. I started to cramp up at mile 7. But suddenly, I recalled on the sacrifices I’ve made to get here. Waking up early, watching and timing my food, pushing my body to a certain pace, trying new goals, sometimes with uncomfortable results. And then, the lessons learned as a “dressed runner” started to pay off.

I looked at my Garmin and I adjusted my pace. I also timed my intake of salt and fluids the way I trained for. At the end, I was able to shave off six minutes from the same race back in 2019. Not what I wanted but I was satisfied with the result.

Was I disappointed at missing my PR? Of course! God willing, I still have 2023 to accomplish it. Now as a “dressed runner”.

I want to thank Coach Adolfo, my running partners Dmitriy, Wayne, Luis and Luis “Chamo”, as well as the rest of my running group for their support during my quest.

*Ruben Urieta is an experienced runner based in Pembroke Pines, Florida. He has completed multiple half marathons and one marathon. He runs with No-Club Runners on Saturday mornings, and he is also a good friend.

(1) – A naked runner is one who runs exclusively by feel, with no assistance from any type of tech gadget or wearable gear. It has nothing to do with running in the nude.

 
Running Resolutions for 2023

Running Resolutions for 2023

By Coach Adolfo Salgueiro

Happy New Year!!! May 2023 bring you countless, injury-free miles and PRs in all your distances.

As we turn the page onto a brand-new notebook, one where all the pages are still to be written, we set up our running hopes and goals for this new trip around de sun and we must start dialing in and focusing on what we want to accomplish when it comes to our physical activity. This way we can have a roadmap and not improvise along the way. So, come December, we are not regretting a lost opportunity to accomplish something big.

Running resolutions

A brand new year to fill in with hopes and goals so, come December, we don’t realize we have wasted 12 good months (Photo: Bich Tran, Pexels)

As we analyze our goals for 2023 and we ponder our fears about coming short, we start by making sure we are well prepared and focused by setting goals that require effort and challenge you to be active for 12 months. Below find six guidelines to set up realistic running goals.

1 – Set up a bold yet attainable goal: Easy goals that can be achieved with little effort don’t mean much. Unfeasible goals that will not be realized, will leave you in frustration. So, be reasonable. Goals can be accumulative, like running 1000 miles in the year, or 200 kilometers per month, or five times a week. You can also strive towards running a particular distance or have a goal time for a distance. The key is to make it a real challenge, one that will leave you elated when you achieve it.

2 – Choose your goal race or races for the year, now: Set up a road map so you know how to get from where you are to where you want to go. Select the races where you want to excel and/or set up your PRs and then work toward is with plenty of time. If you want to set up a marathon PR, you must set up enough time aside so to include all the elements of a training plan. If your goal is a 5K or 10K PR, then you need to plan enough speed work, which also requires time. Make sure you are not surprised when your goal race is 4 weeks away and you are not ready.

3 – Set up a reasonable training schedule that will fit your life: Once you have figured out what you want to accomplish for the year, it is time to get it all into your schedule. Don’t wait until you have time to fit in your training. If you do, you will never train. Write in your running and your cross-training activities into your schedule (actually, write it in, yes!) so, when something comes up, you’ll know you are not available, since there’s a previous appointment in your agenda. This simple technique has worked very well for me, so I highly recommend it.

Running resolutions

Block off your exercise time in your daily planner, so you won’t double book it (Photo: Bich Tran, Pexels)

4 – Don’t just run: Sure, running is what we want to do. Yet, the constant percussion this sport places on our bodies requires us scheduling time for repair and restoration. Incorporating one or two days a week of yoga, swimming, Pilates, elliptical or any other non-impact exercise will go a long way to make you a more resilient runner. And if you don’t have time to ad that to your schedule, then trade in a run for one of them. In the long run, your body will thank you and your racing times will reflect the benefits.

5 – Include strength training: I procrastinated about this one the entire 2022. Weight work specifically designed for runners and core exercises to help your body withstand the pounding of the long miles are no longer optional. If we don’t prepare our bodies and make them stronger, it is a matter of time before we will have to stop and recover from an injury. My #1 goal for this year is to restart my strength training.

6 – Upgrade your sleeping habits: If you put all the recovery tools together; the massage guns, the protein shakes, the compression gear, the amino acids and the write-in-your-favorite-here, the sum of them won’t be as restorative to your body as a good, full night of sleep. Skipping sleep is not a badge of honor, it is a mistake that will not allow your body to recover and with luck, you will end up underperforming. Without luck, you will end up injured.

If you liked this blog post, please give it a like, below; or leave a comment if you want to contribute to the discussion.

 
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