As we gear up for our goal races for the 2024-25 season, we set up objectives, benchmarks, training plans and invest countless hours, sacrifices, money, and emotions into what we want it to be. So, this may be an appropriate time to remind ourselves that we do this because we like challenges, because we are a little bit crazy, and because we like running. Nobody runs (or shouldn’t) because of a desire to be miserable.
Unfortunately, the ubiquitousness of the GPS watch in our sport has made us a bit miserable by turning our attention to countless measurements, mostly of parameters we don’t understand or should even care for. This, combined with social media oversharing, has turned training into competition. It has led to many a runner burnout, injury, and the withdrawal of the fun element of running.
I am writing this blog post because I recently saw the meme below (Credit to the appropriately named website www.dumbrunner.com). Is this you?
From www.dumbrunner.com
Unfortunately, this is not meant to be a funny meme. It is a sad reflection on what many of us have become thanks to a combination of what our GPS watch can measure and what we can share in social media. If this is not you, someone close to you certainly is.
We all know that person who:
• stops the watch at a traffic light or water break because it will mess their averages.
• equates their personal or athletic self-worth to their racing PRs.
• complained that a World Marathon Major was mismeasured because their GPS watch said so.
• ended up on the verge of death on a day it just wasn’t meant to be rather than show their unknown Strava friends that they had a difficult day.
• lives by his/her VO2Max fluctuation without even understanding what that VO2Max measures.
• refuses to take a day off because they’ve been predicating they are in a streak and nothing can stop them.
I once heard Coach Jonathan Marcus state that “the watch is a record, not a director”. What a deep thought! And sure, we all want to know what’s happening with our running, especially now that instant feedback is a wrist flip away. But most of what is being measured is product our running, it is not our running per se.
We must understand that:
• A 9.94 vs. a 10.00 run is not going to make a difference in your training.
• Not all intervals are supposed to measure how far or fast we can run on a predetermined amount of time or distance.
• Not everyone is interested in the splits of each one of your 20, 200-meter repeats.
• It still counts towards your fitness even if you did not post it on Facebook.
• Sure, courses may be mismeasured sometimes, but this is not determined by your GPS watch, regardless of how advanced it is.
• A day off, or two, is not a sign of weakness.
Not looking at your watch from time to time is a liberating experience. Try it. And the coolest thing of all is that your run still counts towards your fitness, your yearly milage and your training log even if your friends don’t know about it.
I am not advocating against GPS watches. It is a useful tool, with mass appeal, affordable and has revolutionized training in almost every sport. I can only imagine what Emil Zatopek, Paavo Nurmi or Frank Shorter could have done with one of those on their wrist. What I am promoting is the return of having fun on our runs. Making sure we are putting ourselves through a 20-mile run on a muggy summer day for the right reasons. In my book, showing strangers on Instagram how tough you are is not a valid reason.
Have you experienced and unhealthy relationship with your GPS watch? If so, share how you were able to overcome it, in the comment box below.
As adults with a full life, alcohol is a ubiquitous part of most of our lives. Some of us enjoy the occasional drink in a social setting, some have one every day, some can’t stop consuming it, and some finally overcame alcoholism.
As far as I have read, there’s no proof that the occasional post-run beer will wreck your recovery, nor that it will help it either. Yet, alcohol has undeniable social benefits associated with consuming responsibly it with your buddies, like after a run. I am not a scientist or a wine drinker, but I’ve read about the benefits of a glass of wine when it comes to HDL cholesterol and antioxidants. I’ve also read how more is not necessarily better. You should not be having 3 or 4 glasses because it the positive effects don’t necessarily compound.
A post-run beer has many social benefits and won’t ruin your recovery. The operating word here is “A”, meaning “one”.
I am not here to proselytize on alcohol consumption, which is a personal choice. But as athletes wanting to improve on our fitness and/or racing times, we need to be aware what are the negative effects that too much alcohol can have on our recovery, which is half of our training (Work + Recovery = Training).
For starters, alcohol is a diuretic. A diuretic is a substance that promotes the increased production of urine. This means that it produces dehydration, a big problem for runners. The consequences of moderate dehydration are, among others, cramps and fatigue. Severe dehydration, which can occur after combining drinking and running, include urinary and kidney complications, low blood volume, heat-related injuries and even seizures. As if that weren’t enough, I am sure that running with a hungover must suck all the joy we could get of the sport.
As I was researching this topic, I googled “alcohol and running” and, among the 812 million results I got, the very first one was this paragraph, which resumes most of what I wanted to say: Alcohol is a powerful diuretic, and dehydration is never a runner\’s friend. The risk for muscle cramps, muscle pulls, muscle strains and general fatigue increases when dehydrated, so drinking extra water after a night of hitting the bars is more than necessary to regulate your body for your next run.”
As we have mentioned in this blog, many times before, the number one recovery tool in your arsenal is sleep, which is the time your body uses to repair itself from the pounding of your training and the stress of your day. Alcohol consumption affects and impairs your sleep. Don’t let anyone fool you by telling you that drinking makes them sleepy like a baby, so it doesn’t affect them. Even if you are asleep, drinking in excess will affect your REM sleep, which restores your brain and is good for your memory and learning. Sounds kind of important to me.
Wine has plenty of documented benefits, but they do not compound the more your drink.
Consuming alcohol in excess, also affects your fitness, which is the capacity of your body to recover so you can do it again. If your liver is too busy processing the excess alcohol you consumed, it would not be able to assist repairing of your body, which is needed after every training session, regardless of how easy it was.
The definition of “excess” is personal and individual. What is suitable for a fit, 200-pound male, may not be suitable for a 115-pound female recovering from Covid. Each runner must understand what is good for their lifestyle and make sure they can live with their decisions.
In a podcast I recently listened, Coach Jonathan Marcus made a comparison between two separate issues. One of those fits perfectly in what the last paragraph was explaining: “You can down a whole bottle of wine in 45 minutes. You can do it. You can, physically, get the liquid into your stomach. But what is going to happen afterwards is not going to be pretty. Or, you can have half a glass of wine in an-hour period, sipping on it though dinner, multiple nights in a row and enjoy it as part of a meal. Your body can extract the nutrients, flavors, etc. from that, versus being overly consumed by the poison of the alcohol that then forces a harsh and severe, nasty metabolic response”.
This post is not for pointing fingers, preaching on lifestyle or proselytizing on the virtuosity of abstention. Just make sure you understand what the consequences of mixing running with alcohol are for both your body and your training, so you can make the right choices when the time comes.
As runners who always want to perform at our best, it is normal to have more fun running at race pace than going through all the peripheral stuff that gets us there. Stretching, cooldown, mobility drills, reps, days off and very often, warming up properly. Unfortunately, many runners see the warmup not as an element that to enhance your workout, but a waste your time or something to screw your average pace.
Reasons to skip your warmup abound. You may want to keep up with the buddy that runs faster than you, or you may be afraid of what your friends will say when they see you in Strava. Maybe you’re on a rush to get to that runner’s high. Whatever your reason is, you are not helping yourself in becoming neither a better athlete nor a healthier runner.
Ethiopian runners go out of their way to force themselves to run super slow while warming up.
In the book “Out of Thin Air”, anthropologist Michael Crawley, went to Ethiopia to learn about its running culture. He explains how locals start running painfully slow. They go to the forest to warm up zigzagging around trees, assuring that pace can’t be picked up; and in a single file, to guarantee that nobody will be surging ahead of time.
You don’t have to be an Ethiopian, Kenyan, or Ugandan to apply the slow warmup concept. Western elite runners apply it all the time. In his book “Run for Your Life”, Dr. Mark Cucuzzella, tells how he sometimes runs 13, or 14-minute miles and still feel happy to be out there running. This is a guy who has won marathons, and into his 50s, can still run sub-3.
The Purpose and Value of Warming Up
Steve Magness, former coach at the University of Houston (in my opinion one of the most knowledgeable coaches on the scientific side of our sport), reassures that the warmup sets up your run. It helps you get the body revved up and prepared for whatever we want it to accomplish with it.
“Physiologically -he explains- we get our core temperature, body temperature and muscle temperature up a little bit. We get our metabolism going, we get our VO2 up, and we are priming the body’s systems. If I didn’t do a warmup and just went out the door and start running as hard as I can, my energetic system wouldn’t be ramped up and ready to go. Then, my body will try to cover all the energetic demands with the anaerobic system before the aerobic system is ready.”
Coach Steve Magness explains the physiological and psychological benefits of warming up properly.
“From a physiological side, you are priming your motor system so when it comes time to flip the switch to work hard, your body can recruit the muscle fibers to do the job”, assures Magness.
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist or a doctor to understand the multiple benefits of what was said in the last two paragraphs. The more you work on your warmup and the more you make it part of your daily routine, the more you will realize its benefits during the hard part of your workouts. And soon enough, without noticing, it will become part of your ritual.
“The warmup also gets you in the best psychological state -continues Magness- so you can see your training or your race as a challenge instead of a threat. Something you can take on instead of confronting. It can give you a semblance of control in a situation where you often lack it.”
Keys to the Warmup
The warmup is a personal aspect of your training. You need to find out what it works for you, not what works for your friend or for Eliud Kipchoge.
When we talk about warming up it is not exclusively about running. Dynamic stretching and mobility drills should be part of it, too. This includes easy lunges, hip and ankles rotations, etc. Remember that arms are a key element of your running, so include range of motion of arms, and arm swings as part of your ritual.
The key to the warmup, I insist, is to go slow. Very slow. You can’t be worried on what that it will do to your Strava averages. But, if you can’t control yourself and you must brag to your friends, stop the watch after warmup and then start another session with the work portion of your workout. This should suit your ego just fine.
How long should you warm up? You don’t want to be burning more glycogen than necessary. For a long-distance runner (5k and over), 10 to 15 minutes is usually sufficient.
“Glycogen is a limited resource in the muscle tissue and organs – explains Jonathan Marcus, Head Coach at High Performance West- so, if you start warming up too fast, the body has to cover the gap burning a high-efficient energy source that you should be using during your hard workout, or race, before you even get started. This is why the warmup needs to be taken super slow.”
If you are not warming up properly, today is the perfect time to adjust, make it part of your ritual and start reaping its benefits.
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I once heard Coach Jonathan Marcus state that “the watch is a record, not a director”. What a deep thought! And sure, we all want to know what’s happening with our running, especially now that instant feedback is a wrist flip away. But most of what is being measured is product our running, it is not our running per se.
