Just Dodged a Bullet

Hi, Friends & Fellow Runners:

Three weeks ago I slipped on ice while running and came within a hair's breadth of breaking my hip - an injury that would have ended my chances of becoming, in 2014, the oldest person to qualify for and complete both the Boston and New York marathons in the same calendar year. The injury, at my age, might have even ended my running career, such as it's been. Fortunately, the hip was badly bruised, not broken, and I was able to spend up to two hours a day cross training in my local gym.  Now I'm back running and have logged 50 kilometers in the five days since last Thursday. My training is back on track, my depression has lifted and I am once again counting down the days to Boston.

Coach Stephen

Toughness: Hardly a Gender Issue

Hi, Friends & Fellow Runners:

Literally overnight, it became conventional wisdom that the tougher team won Super Bowl XLVIII, not necessarily the more fit, the more talented, or the better coached.  It reminds me of the one good thing about the worst streak of bad weather that I've seen in six years of coaching running clinics during the winter -- and that is,  Mother Nature’s meanness provides an unmistakable barometer of toughness.  Just keep running when you’re scheduled to run, regardless of cold, ice, snow and wind, and you know how tough you are.  It’s beyond discussion or dispute.  And interestingly, the members who keep showing up for the group runs at my Running Room clinics these days are mostly women – often petite to the point of seeming frailness and sometimes young enough to be my grandchildren.  Why am I not surprised that the next mayor of Toronto and the next president of the US will probably be women?

Coach Stephen

Blisters & Black Toes

Hi, Friends & Fellow Runners:

Here’s the latest question that I’ve fielded from a National Post reader, along with my answer published in the newspaper’s EachCoach running column:

Q.  Ran the hypothermic in Ottawa this morning and banged up my toes, couple evil looking blisters, and I seem to have a recurring problem of bruising my right big toe, and both my second toes are perpetually black (for the past two years).  I’m a mid-foot striker; I don’t plant my toes first when I run.  I tried smaller and larger shoes, different brands, no difference.  Tried lacing my shoes differently, same result.  As I increase my distances, there is no let up for the toes.  Help?

A. It seems you may have a hammertoe problem.  And the primary solution lies with proper footwear, as you surmised.  But that doesn’t mean it’s limited necessarily to running shoes.  It could be rooted in your street shoes; work or snow boots; or the width and material of your socks (thick cotton is definitely a no-no).  And female runners with the problem could be experiencing the adverse affects of wearing high heels in the office or on social occasions.  In addition to checking out all your footwear, you could try inserting a soft pad cut to fit the affected area and reduce pressure on the toes.

Coach Stephen

Never Too Old to Run

Hi, Friends & Fellow Runners:

Happily, I seem to have emerged as a “go to” guy for Canada’s National Post when it comes to questions submitted by older readers to the paper’s weekly Each Coach running column – probably because there are relatively few marathon runners older than yours truly. Here are a couple of questions that were forwarded to me from 50+ athletes in the last few weeks (paired with my answers):

Q.  I’m 62 years old and I like to run four to five times weekly.  I cover approximately 30K in those runs.  I run with a heart monitor and I’m worried at my age that my heart rate is too high.  Average H/R 142, with a peak at 165.  I don’t feel winded or sore after my runs.  Am I spending too much time worrying about my heart beat?

A.  The short answer is yes – for two reasons.  First, monitors tend to spike erratically in the early stages of a hard run as the heart responds to the abrupt stress of a start that’s too fast.  Avoid that by warming up sufficiently before settling into your pace.  And secondly, all standard formulas used to estimate Maximum Heart Rate (MHR) rely primarily on age and become notoriously inaccurate when applied to older, physically-fit runners.  Thus, a measured Average Heart Rate that is perfectly appropriate can seem too high because it is compared with a formula-based maximum rate that, for 60+ runners, is invariably too low.  (Case in point: the formula used by most monitor and treadmill makers is 220, minus one’s age – which would put your MHR at 158, a totally absurd figure since your actual heart rate regularly exceeds that level.)

Q.  I finished my first 5k running clinic in June 2009, followed by my first 10k running clinic in the fall 2009. I ran my first half marathon in the spring 2010. Then deterioration. Knee surgery Jan 2011. Started over again in August 2011. I am 56 years old. I am not fast. I have arthritis. My goal in 2013 was to run one race / month, which I did. Smile. I participated in track in the summer months and achieved personal best times in all my races (5k, 8k, 10k, 15k and half marathon). So, before I get any older, any slower, or (heaven forbid) ill, I want to run a marathon. I am thinking I need six months of training so looking at fall of this year, considering Niagara Falls International Marathon. Masters program for beginners?

A.  Here are some hopefully helpful thoughts from a twice-a-year marathon runner who’s old enough to be your father.  Your challenge is not so much to complete your first marathon as it is to follow a training program that will get you to Race Day without injury.  Group clinics or pre-packaged programs are out.  Forget running 5 or 6X a week for as many as 60 or 70K, and trying to do that on a steady basis for as long as six months.  Instead, think 3 or 4X/week, a 50K maximum, and 18 weeks at most.  Take up the slack with cross-training (cardio- and strength-based).  It’s the salvation for older runners like us.

Coach Stephen

Carbs on the Run = Performance Gains

Hi, Friends & Fellow Runners:

Let’s first address the elephant in the room as far as nutrition and running are concerned.  No one talks or writes about it, but the fact of the matter is that a runner’s diet doesn’t quite fit a professional nutritionist’s definition of healthy eating.  Some purists might say it doesn’t even come close.  That’s because runners and other endurance athletes need carbohydrates and plenty of them.

Most nutritionists tell us that carbohydrates should represent no more than 35 or 40% of the macronutrients we consume (with protein and fats making up the balance).  But a serious runner needs to increase that percentage to about 50% during most of a training cycle and then, in the last two weeks before a race, to 55 or 60%.

Carbs enter our body’s bloodstream as glucose and are stored in our liver and muscles as glycogen.  Their major reason for existence is to serve as an energy source.  And unlike our body fat, the only other fuel for running, they are always in short supply during long training sessions and distance races. 

Despite their obvious benefits, however, carbohydrates are often given short shrift in treatises on weight control and proper nutrition.  Sugar is a carbohydrate, for one thing, and sport-engineered products such as energy drinks and gels depend on sugar for their effectiveness.  As well, carb-rich foods like the three P’s of pancakes, potatoes and pasta rarely head anyone’s list of healthy food choices.  But at the end of the day you can take the following statement to the bank:

Carbohydrates are, without a doubt, the most important fuel for an endurance athlete.  To deny that is to deny science.  They are the single most powerful nutrient for replenishing glycogen stores, extending time to exhaustion, increasing immunity during and after exercise, and improving performance.  Period.  End of story.

That’s why, if you want to perform well in any distance race from a half-marathon to an ultra-marathon, you must get into the habit of consuming carbohydrates on the run.  At least 40 to 60 grams of the nutrient are what you need per hour to maintain a strong and consistent pace while engaged in a race or training run of more than 75 minutes in duration.

Here’s how the cause-and-effect link between carbohydrate intake and enhanced performance was described in a recent issue of 220 Triathlon, a British magazine:

“The reason for the benefits of carbohydrate use during exercise is straightforward; muscle carbohydrate (more commonly called glycogen) is your body’s ‘premium grade’ fuel, especially when those muscles are working hard, such as during a race.

“However, your muscles can only store around two hours’ worth of glycogen.  And because even mild glycogen depletion is known to impair performance, using carbohydrate drinks or gels to replenish your carbs on the move....helps to delay the onset of fatigue and thus improves performance.”

The magazine gets very specific on the nature of that improvement.  It states, by way of example, that runners able to complete a half marathon in two hours (120 minutes) while consuming only water or nothing at all could better their finishing times to the following extent by ingesting carbohydrates:

Grams per Hour          % Improvement          Performance Gain

20                                2.0%                            2.40 minutes

40                                3.5%                            4.20      “

60                                4.3%                            5.16      “

After 60 grams, further carbohydrate consumption leads to little additional improvement, and after 80 grams the percentage improvement actually declines (apparently because too many carbs in too short a time tends to cause stomach distress.)

Reaching the recommended allotment of 40 to 60 grams of carbohydrates per hour while running could be as simple as combining 8-ounce Fuel Belt bottles of a sports drink (about 10 grams per bottle) and packets of energy gel or beans (27 grams each).   Or you could include in the mix everyday food items like a medium-sized banana, granola bar, quarter-cup of dates, small box of raisins or four Fig Newton’s – each of which provides about 30 grams of carbs. 

Determining an effective nutrition strategy for an endurance race is a matter of testing and practice.  The objective is to consume the needed carbs conveniently, quickly, and with no accompanying stomach distress.  Test yourself and find out what works for you in terms of food, gels, sports drink, etc. (as well as water).  Practice with different combinations on your weekly long-distance runs until you’re satisfied that you’ve found the one that suits you best.  And remember, a successful approach to carbohydrate consumption during a race of two hours or more is an absolute necessity if you hope to do your best.

Coach Stephen

Runner, Protect Thyself!

Hi, Friends & Fellow Runners:

Did you know that the annual injury rate among runners is an astounding 80% or thereabouts, more than in any other sport?  That means you could pick 100 runners completely at random and feel reasonably certain that over the course of a year they would suffer roughly 80 mishaps of greater or lesser severity. 

Perhaps as disturbing is the fact that the prevalence of injuries in our sport has remained a relative constant over at least the past decade.  This has been true despite significant advances in the design and construction of running’s most important piece of equipment – the running shoe – and despite comparable improvements in other products such as orthotic inserts, knee straps and braces, self-massage tools, and sports tape.  Conclusion #1, therefore, is that the “right” shoes and equipment are simply not enough to keep us out of harm’s way.

As well, an increasing percentage of injuries occur or get worse after medical intervention.  The reason is that doctors, chiropractors and therapists frequently focus on the symptoms of an injury rather than the cause -- or they misdiagnose the problem in the first place.  Conclusion #2, therefore, is that the specialist we visit can potentially do more harm than good.  

Underlying this depressing scenario is what I’d call the “law of unintended consequences.”  The shoe manufacturers spend millions to incorporate motion control, stability or additional cushioning features into their products.  They do it all with the best of motives.  But in the end what they seem to accomplish, more than anything else, is to shield us from our own shortcomings.

If our basic problem is poor biomechanics, for instance, and that problem is not addressed, it will sooner or later manifest itself in an injury.  The progression over time can often take on a certain inevitability if and as we become increasingly serious about our running and demand more from our bodies.  We start with the best shoes we can find for our feet, then later we add orthotics, then we resort to physical therapy, and, finally, in a worst case, we undergo surgery.   And the progression is speeded up along the way if a well-meaning medical professional masks the root of the problem by prescribing an anti-inflammatory and rest – or by telling us we have a pulled muscle when in fact we have a stress fracture.

In the interests of full disclosure, I should point out that I’ve had two serious injuries over the past several years, both of which were originally misdiagnosed by medical professionals.  I  was told in the first instance that I had a groin strain and, as a result, underwent physical therapy and exercise in the weeks leading up to the 2007 Niagara Falls International Marathon.  As it turned out, I actually had a hernia condition and wound up crossing the finish line of that race in excruciating pain, while holding my swollen stomach in my right hand.  I underwent surgery two weeks later.

In the second instance, I went to a doctor with pain in my left foot.  The diagnosis was a stretched tendon in the foot and, once again, physical therapy and exercise were prescribed. Unfortunately, the tendon was not stretched; it was ruptured – which meant that the therapy and exercise were only worsening the condition.  Here again I required surgery and, as a consequence, missed an opportunity to participate in the 2009 World Masters Games in Sydney, Australia and to run in the Boston Marathon the following year.    

Timothy Noakes, author of the seminal book on our sport, called “Lore of Running,” states simply and succinctly that we should never seek treatment for a running-related injury from a medical professional who himself is not a runner.  And Runner’s World magazine has offered a “runner’s checklist” for determining whether a particular specialist is the best person to solve our running problem.  Here are some of the questions that the magazine suggests we ask him or her:  Do you have a specialty in Sports Medicine?  Do you run?  What should we bring to the appointment?  (The “correct” answer would include our training log and running shoes.)  And, finally, how much time will you spend with me?  (Expect it to be at least 30 minutes.)

Let’s cut to the quick here.  We must recognize, first and foremost, that we and no one else are the first line of defence against injury.  And this means, among other things, that we should appreciate that stress and recovery are the yin and yang principles of effective training, ensure that our running form is as good as it can be, engage in strength training on a regular basis, and respond promptly to any unusual aches or pain that might signal the onset of injury. If, despite such precautions, we still wind up a part of an 80% injury statistic, then at least we won’t have to second-guess ourselves.

Coach Stephen

Goal Setting Done Right

Hi, Friends & Fellow Runners:

In running as in life, success is often nothing more or less than an ongoing process of setting and achieving ever more challenging goals.  And the key to making that process as effective as it can be lies in how we structure in our mind’s eye the aims and aspirations that are important to us.  We should think of the acronym SMART and thereby increase significantly our chances of achieving objectives by making them Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-based.

How about this as an example of a Specific goal:  I will qualify for Boston 2015 when I run the Goodlife Toronto Marathon on May 4^, 2014.  We should appreciate that a goal like that is more powerful and will provide more motivation and direction than something as amorphous as merely telling ourself that someday, God willing, we will make it to Boston.  Count on it, whenever we refer to a goal with one or another variation of the words, “One of these days, I’m going to....” we can be pretty sure that it will remain permanently out of reach.  The fact is, unless a goal comes packaged in a plan and a heavy layer of commitment, it remains just an unrealized dream.

Measurable – After we’ve set a specific goal with a precise end date, we must begin tracking our progress toward achieving it.  John L. Parker Jr., who wrote a 30-year-old book called Once a Runner – a book that’s become a cult classic and sold recently on eBay for $300 --has made the following observation:  “When you‘re a runner in training – and you’re doing it right --you are constantly in the process of ascending; you are better today than you were yesterday, and you will be better still tomorrow, next week and the weeks after that.”   Recording that progress on our computer or Day-Timer means that we can actually see how our body is improving in endurance and speed over time.  That knowledge and the satisfaction it brings are supreme motivators, and when there’s enough motivation to run, there will always be enough time to run.  Equally significant, measuring our progress gives us the confidence we need to succeed.  Once we begin closing in on whatever goal we’ve set for ourself, a hope will gradually transform itself into an expectation.  Then our race will become simply a celebration of our training.

Achievable -- We must believe in our ability to reach the summit of whatever mountain we’re trying to climb -- which is just another way of saying we must believe in ourself.  Here it’s important to note that becoming a steadily better runner is rarely, if ever, a matter of DNA, natural talent or innate ability.   Rather, it’s simply a case of how much time we’re willing to devote to a form of training called “deliberate practice.”  This is a term coined by psychologists to describe a goal-oriented, results-driven approach that involves a constant monitoring of progress over weeks, months and years, coupled with appropriate adjustments.  So perhaps for one of the few times in our life, we should focus on our potential rather than our limitations.  Then the only questions we have to ask ourself are: How badly do I want this, and how long and hard am I prepared to work to achieve it?  And if an 82-year-old runner named Ed Whitlock, from Milton, Ontario, is still able to run a 3:41 marathon, who’s to say what our limitations are?     

Relevant -- Now we come to the matter of establishing priorities, of putting first things first.  How important is running to us?  Is it important enough to cut seriously into our couch-sitting time, or get us up a half-hour earlier than usual on some mornings, or otherwise persuade us to consistently carve out the time necessary to log the weekly mileage that our training demands?  If the answers to such questions are yes, yes and yes, then nothing’s impossible and the impossible’s nothing as far as we and running are concerned.  Always when we’re running on a regular basis, and especially when we’re preparing for a specific race, we find ourself making choices.  At one extreme, we may simply opt to put running on the back shelf of our mind – at least temporarily -- and allow our target race to stand as a symbol for another of the countless objectives we’ve set over the years and failed to achieve.  At the other extreme, we’ll run that race, finish it in a time that makes us proud, and experience one of the most memorable days of our sporting life.  And if those special moments in time aren’t enough to convince you to stick with running as a permanent part of an active lifestyle, consider the growing body of research establishing that runners live longer than non-runners, enjoy a better quality of life, and do a more effective job of fending off Alzheimer’s.  Now there’s a triple-win that’s hard to beat.  Appreciate that and you’ll understand why it’s been said that we don’t stop running because we get old; rather, we get old because we stop running.

Time-based – We should always put a deadline on the achievement of whatever significant goal we may have set for ourself.  If we make that date sacrosanct in our mind, it will keep us moving in the right direction at a speed that spells progress and avoids injury.

That’s all for now, people.  Stay well and, above all, keep moving. 

Coach Stephen