Optimal Training

Welcome new readers!

Welcome to all new readers!  This is a blog on the mental side of running.  My hope is to help every runner develop the mindset of a champion.  To that end, I write original material, cover recent running news, and highlight interviews and commentary from elite athletes that provides insight into how they think about their training.

You won't find any training programs here.  Not for your body, at least!  I believe, like Sebastian Coe, that the most important nine-inches to train is right above your neck.  So I hope you can find some useful tips to incorporate into your training from this blog!

If you're already a fan, how about joining the Optimal Training Facebook group?

If you're new, here are some quick links to some of my more popular posts:

It's about time - Meb's NYC Victory

I can't tell you how excited I was to hear that Meb Keflezighi won the NYC Marathon on Sunday.  Meb was a big reason why I chose to attend UCLA, and his amazing success throughout high school, college, and the professional ranks is a testament to his amazing work ethic and his unflappable personality.  I can honestly say I've never met a person in any field who is more dedicated, more consistent, or more disciplined than Meb is to his running. 

I think it's fitting that Meb was the first American to break the 27 year losing streak at New York.  Not because Ryan Hall wouldn't be deserving but because Meb has done a lot to bring back US distance running.  With that in mind, I wrote up a little article about Meb the Marathoner for Runner's Tribe where I try to add a little context to Meb's marathon successes.  Here's the start:

It's about time.  It's about time an American man won a marathon major again.  It's about time a group of Americans represented in force on our home turf.  And it's about time that Meb Keflezighi won himself a laurel wreath, winning yesterday's ING New York City Marathon. (Results) 

Five years ago, Meb made the complete transition to the marathon, and promptly went out and won a silver medal at the Athens Olympics.  He had previously finished 2nd at the Olympic Trials, and shortly after Athens he went on to finish 2nd in New York.  He followed that with a couple third place finishes in New York and then Boston, giving him five top three finishes in his first seven marathons.  But no victories.

The ironic thing is, he never ran particularly fast times during this period either.  His best was his 2:09:53 in New York in '04.  I'm sure he figured faster times would come, but during the three years when he was far and away the top marathoner in the country, he didn't chase times.  Instead, he opted to race big US marathons with slower, tougher courses.  I spoke with Meb's coach, Bob Larsen, at the UCLA-USC dual meet this year and he talked about Meb during that period between '04 and '05.

Click here to read more about Meb in 2004, about how Meb is a Competitor (as opposed to a Racer), and why Meb should stick to courses like Boston and New York.

Runner's Tribe's new website up and "running"

Oh, I love a good pun.  But I love a bad one even better.

Big news for all of us at Runner's Tribe, as the new website is officially up and running as of today.  My mom realized it went live before I did, as I left old links in my last post.  Way to go, Mom!  Runner's Tribe fan of the day!

The back end is built by Flocasts, the founders of Flotrack, and anyone who follows track and field knows that the folks over there certainly know what they are doing!  There are a lot of new features built in, including an automatically generated "15 Most Popular" articles list, in which a few of my articles showed up.  Nice!

One unfortunate circumstance is that a lot of old links were broken in the creation of the new site.  As such, many of the links to my old articles on this blog won't be valid anymore.  I'll try to update those, but in the meantime, here's the new link to my archive of feature articles:

One Small Step

I hope you'll all drop by to take a look and let us know what you think!

Relating to Greatness (+ Pre-Nats thoughts)

Update: Runner's Tribe rolled out its new site, but it broke my links!  The links have now been updated, and I encourage you all to go check out the new look at Runner's Tribe!

The NCAA Pre-Nationals weekend marks the first weekend where the best start to separate themselves from the rest.  Pre-Nats saw most of the top teams compete, but there were others, including men's favorite Oklahoma State, who opted for the Chile Pepper Invitational instead.  The big star of the Pre-Nats meet was Jenny Barringer, who dominated some of the best runners in the country en route to a huge victory.

Her coach, Mark Wetmore, had some interesting stuff to say about Jenny coming back, and it inspired my latest column at Runner's Tribe.  Here's a snippet:

Wetmore was asked in a Flotrack interview what it means to his team to have her return for this cross country season.  He said:  "First of all it takes a couple of hundred points off our score immediately. Secondly, they've gone from the point of being awed by her to just respecting and emulating her. Their training in the last year has come up a notch. They don't aspire to beat her right now, but a year ago they didn't even aspire to be like her and now they do." 

Sometimes the hardest thing to do to a great athlete isn't beat them, it's relate to them. 

How often have you talked about a great athlete and heard people use words like "freak", "machine", "out-of-this-world", "bionic", "superhero", "robotic", "cheat code" or "Kenyan"?  These words don't just serve to differentiate a person, though.  They emphasize that what makes them different is something we don't have and we can't match.  Be they mutant, alien, programmed for destruction, or simply from the Kalenjin tribe, the sport, we are told, is just different for them.

We have a natural bias toward talent in this country, and maybe throughout the world.  We love talent, we love the idea of talent, and we love to identify and worship talent.  And when we've found a talent to love and worship, we do so by ascribing all of their success to their amazing talent.  It's the highest honor to be described in words like the above, words that serve to separate you from the world of mere humans...

I also consider five cross country thoughts from NCAA Pre-Nationals weekend:

• The Big Three Represent: Chris Derrick, Luke Puskedra, and ... Colby Lowe?
• How good are the Stanford men?
• Can Colorado compete with Washington's women?
• How good is Jordan Hasay?
• Who was missing The Fifth Element?

Continue reading here.

Half the Distance

The World Half Marathon Championships are coming up this weekend (as are the Chicago and Melbourne Marathons), and it got me thinking about the half marathon.  My recent article at Runner's Tribe takes a look at a race that has been historically underappreciated, but that has grown into a major event over the past few years.  I pulled some interesting stats as well, so if you'd like to see how the half marathon has progressed at an elite level, there's some good stuff in there for you.  Here's a snippet:

If there's one race that's been historically underappreciated, it's the half marathon.  With its Phidippidian roots, the full marathon has long been the cool guy at the road race party.  And with their track equivalents, shorter time requirements, and easier logistics, 5k and 10k have ruled the road race circuit for years.  This has meant the half-marathon has, until fairly recently, been the Steve Erkel in the family of road races.  Always there, never popular.  But not anymore.  I'd say it's now at least the Theo Huxtable to the marathon's Fresh Prince of Bel Air.  (Oh, where did the '80s go?)

It's always been hurt by its lack of inclusion in the Olympics or World Championships.  I can see why they opted not to include it in the Olympics, but I don't see why it isn't included in the World Championships.  I'd like to see it there.  Of course, I'd like to see cross country in the global championships, too.  Who needs the 1500m, really?  (Kidding!)

The half was never legit.  It was basically run as a tune-up race, rarely for its own sake.  Batting practice before the official game, so to speak.  Now, it's become legit.  There are a couple things driving this, I think.

Click here to read the full article.

Usain Bolt to ESPN: Let's Race

I know someone at ESPN who forwarded me this email, received over the weekend in her work email:

From:    Usain Bolt 

Sent:   Saturday, September 26, 2009 6:54 PM

To:   [Bristol & New York Mailing Lists]

Subject:        Can you spare 9.58 seconds?

Importance:     High

 

The Challenge: You vs. me in one big 100M race

 

The Place: Ronzo Road outside the Digital Center on the Bristol Campus

The Time: 11:15 AM

 

If you're up for the challenge, reply to this email and I'll do a random drawing to see who will race me Monday morning. If you don't make the cut, you should still come check it out. It'll be quick.

 

Bring your running gear. I'll see you Monday.

 

Usain

How cool is that?  Apparently he raced 8-10 people, giving them a small head start, and "passed them all, running the last 15-20 yards with his arms spread like an airplane, weaving to the right and left.  Then he straightened up and ran across the finish line pumping his chest."  Sounds like an awesome experience.

[Update: Thanks Josh for sending the link to the video.  I've embedded it below!]

The Mahoroba Marathon

I just came back from a trip to Japan with my wife.  We stayed with her family on a milk farm in northern Japan.  One of the highlights was running in the Takahata Road Race, also known as the Mahoroba Marathon.  In my latest article at Runner's Tribe, I give a brief overview of my trip with special emphasis on running in a small town Japanese road race. 

A snippet:

And of course, we ran the Takahata Road Race, also known as the Mahoroba Marathon, or "An exceedingly great marathon surrounded by mountains and hills."  Seven years ago, soon after coming to Japan fresh out of college, I ran the 5k race and set a course record of 16:13.  For my efforts I received four trophies and a hand-written certificate in beautiful script.  (Photo of me next to the trophy with my name on the ribbon.  I wrote about the experience briefly here.)  What I didn't know at the time was that serious adults only run the 10k and up, leaving the 5k to the high schoolers.  So I basically broke protocol and crushed some aspiring high school champion's dreams.  (Sidenote: they've since changed the awards to include both high schoolers and adults, so maybe my time in Japan did make a difference.)

Every town in Japan has a road race, but Japanese road races aren't like road races in the States.  Japanese people don't subscribe to the notion of a "fun run".  Whereas local road races in the US often have hundreds (if not thousands) of people jogging them, people in Japan either race it or cheer from the side. Since I imagine most people have never run a Japanese road race, here's a brief overview of how it goes.

Click here to read the full details!

And for those of you who are interested, you can see a small photo album I created!

Should Ritz run 40 mpw? (and Amby's real message)

A boldly controversial blog post by Amby Burfoot at Runner's World has riled up a few readers and even spawned a satirical response from Justin Young at The Cassidy Feed.  Basically, Amby argues that Ritz's major issue is staying healthy, and prescribes for him a diet of 40 mpw running in his training.  That's what most readers got out of it, not least in part because Amby really does suggest this in all seriousness.  As he says (to Alberto):

So here's my proposal: Be courageous, and make Dathan a guinea pig in the Great Training Experiment. Put him on a 40-mile-a-week training program.

We can only assume that Dathan has a say in this.  He then states that there's little evidence against it, lists some athletes who were successful without running high mileage (specifically Bannister and Henry Marsh, but leaving out Matt Giusto, who was the best example I could think of), and outlines what a workout week would look like. Then come the paragraphs that most readers apparently skipped or didn't really think about (emphasis mine):

Of course, Dathan should do a lot of other stuff. All that Nike can afford, in fact. He should sleep 10 hours a day in a altitude chamber, do tons of cross-training on non-impact machines, work out occasionally on low-gravity and under-water treadmills, and find the best physical therapist-trainer out there to be his personal strength/flexibility coach.

The only thing he shouldn't do is run more than 40 miles a week, or whatever low ceiling he and Alberto agree on.

Perhaps by actually suggesting workouts, Amby made people focus too much on the 40 mpw and not enough on the main point of the post: Ritz has enormous resources to utilize and might be better served by decreasing the pounding he puts on his legs in favor of a higher percentage of cross-training workouts.  Yes he suggests 40 mpw, but no, he's not beholden to that number.  He chose it no doubt because it is extremely low, borderline realistic, and most importantly, can shock a reader into paying attention.  Unfortunately, it seems he shocked people out of paying attention.

A lot of people criticize Runner's World for catering to hobby joggers.  I have a lot of friends who refer to it as Jogger's World.  There's some truth to that.  But there's also some truth to the notion that mileage doesn't need to be run for mileage sake.  You're not going to be great if you aren't working out as hard as the best in the world.  That is a given.  But could that work be done on an Alter-G at 75% body weight instead of 100%?  Could it be done in a swimming pool or on an elliptical?  Are these not fair questions?

Personally, I wouldn't recommend this approach to Dathan for two reasons:

1) it's too soon after his switch to Alberto.  We don't know if he can stay healthy under Alberto's program, because he hasn't had enough time to prove that he can (or can't). 

2) I don't know if he can handle it mentally.  I think Amby's probably right that of all people, Dathan is the guy who could handle it...physically.  But could Dathan toe the line knowing that he'd worked as hard as everyone else (even assuming he had)?  Could he go into every cross training workout completely healthy, yet believing he'll get as good a workout as if he were running?  I have no idea, but it's such a paradigm shift that he very well may lose his edge mentally.

Someday, someone will come along and take up Amby on this challenge.  Hopefully they'll do amazing things and make us rethink our views about how to obtain success in distance running.  In the meantime, I'd settle for Amby's other request, completely overshadowed by that crazy 40 mpw suggestion: Alberto, would you mind sharing with us how you improved Rupp's, Begley's and Ritz's kicks so much?  There are a lot of US runners and coaches who could benefit from that knowledge.

New: Men's American Records lens

After Dathan Ritzenhein's AR at 5000m last week, I got to wondering a few things: 

• What are the oldest ARs on the books? 
• Where does Ritz's performance rank compared to other ARs on the all-time lists? 
• How does it compare based on the IAAF Scoring Tables?
• Is there any place I can go to watch videos of AR performances?

Well, there didn't seem to be one place that provided those answers very conveniently, so I thought it was time to create another Squidoo lens.  My newest lens, Men's American Records (you can find it at http://www.squidoo.com/men-ARs) lists all of the track ARs, as well as answers the above questions.  In fact, I even threw in the US all-time top ten lists for each event.

You won't find any field events on there yet, since I haven't decided if I should make a separate lens for them or add them in.  Also, the relays aren't represented, but they will be.  So it's kind of a work-in-progress (as all good lenses are). 

I hope you'll check it out and tell me what you think.  Don't be shy about answering the poll or providing comments!  I'd like to make this a fan-friendly resource, so I'll take all the help I can get!

As for the women's ARs, maybe I'll tackle those next week!

The Class of US Distance Running

It was so good to see Ritz run the way he did last week.  I was a senior in college when Ritz was a freshman at Colorado, and since that time I've hoped he'd be the one to reset our expectations at 5k and 10k.  Recently however, it seemed it wasn't to be.  His classmates Alan Webb and  Ryan Hall, though not always consistent, had made their marks on US distance running, while Ritz had been very good but never great.

In my latest article at Runner's Tribe, I take another look at that Class of 2001, and what those three runners have been able to accomplish.  Did you know that, even though they don't hold the ARs in every distance, they are the fastest American-born athletes at 1500m, mile, 5000m, half marathon and marathon.  And if Ritz could somehow get into a well-paced 10k right now, he might be able to take that one down as well.  Truly amazing.

A snippet:

Nine years ago, in the fall of 2000, Dathan Ritzenhein entered his senior year of high school as the defending Footlocker Nationals Cross Country Champion.  He was the favorite to win again, and the talk was about whether he would be  able to break Jeff Nelson's then two-mile record or Gerry Lindgren's 30-plus year-old 5000m record in the upcoming track season.  He wasn't the only big high school star, however, as a runner from Virginia by name of Alan Webb was returning and looked to be a threat to break the 4-minute mile on the track, if not challenge for the Footlocker crown that fall.

Early that fall, as Ritz and Webb won their races and expectations heightened, a third athlete started making headlines.  Ryan Hall, of Big Bear Lake, CA, broke some well-regarded California course records, and looked to be a potential challenger for the Footlocker title.  The race saw almost unprecedented hype with three potential challengers from three different regions.  Of course, Ritz showed he was the class of the field, just missing his own course record from the year before.  From that race on, the class of 2001 became the great hope for US distance running.

Since 2007, Hall and Webb have gone on to solidify their positions in the pantheon of great American distance runners (though you could argue Webb did it in 2001 with his 3:53 high school mile).  In their respective events, they developed into the class of US distance running.  But it has taken Ritz a little longer.  Which is surprising, really, because back in 2001--and really all the way up until 2005--it looked like he'd have the record books crying mercy in no time.

Continue reading here.

Berlin: The Final Third

Sorry for the delay in posting this, but my recap of The Final Third of the Berlin World Championships is now up at Runner's Tribe (First Third, Second Third).  I not only summarized the last three days, but I also took a look at how the last three days affected some of the major questions in Berlin: 

• Was Ethiopia able to gain any ground on Kenya in the distances medal count?  
• Could the USA regain its mojo against the Caribbean in the sprints? 
• Did the rest of the world mount a challenge to Europe in the field events? 
• And was this championships indeed a success for the US distance squad? 

And I even include graphs!  So here's a snippet of what you'll find, and be warned, it's a long one!

In the men's 4 x 100m relay, the US were disqualified for passing the baton outside of the zone.  They didn't make it out of their semifinals.  Jamaica won uncontested in the second fastest time ever, 37.31 seconds.  Interestingly, it was strangely anti-climactic seeing Bolt not break a world record.  Talk about high expectations!  The US women didn't make it out of the semifinals either.  During a bad exchange between Alexandria Andreson and Muna Lee, Lee injured her leg and went down.  Jamaica again went on to win gold, with the Bahamas taking silver.  It would be an exaggeration to say that the short relays were a microcosm of the World Championships for the US sprinters, but they certainly made one thing abundantly clear: the short sprints were not the US strong point in Berlin.

As you can see from the graph (click to see larger graph), the US won eight medals in the long sprints--those consisting of 400 meters--and just six in the short sprints, despite there being five short sprints and just three long sprints.  On the other hand, the Caribbean islands scored 15 medals in the short sprints and just six in the long.  The US still has a firm grip on the 400 meter distance.  It's the short sprints where we have either lost ground or continue to fail to execute.  In some cases, like with Usain Bolt in the men's short sprints, all anyone can do is grin and bear it.  There was no beating Bolt in Berlin.  The same goes for the US 4 x 400 meter teams, however.  The US is simply too deep at that distance. 

Interestingly, of the eight sprint medals won by non-Caribbean or US athletes, five of them came in the relays.  It should be noted, however, that if the US could find four athletes who can pass a baton around the track in the 4 x 100 meters, and if Bahamas hadn't been DQ'd in the 4 x 400 meters, the number of medals would likely have been just two.  As for the individual medallists, they consisted of Priscilla Lopes-Schliep of Canada (silver in the 100 hurdles), Alonso Edward of Panama (silver in the 200 meters), and Antonina Krivoshapka of Russia (bronze in the 400 meters).  

In terms of depth, there are a number of countries with many very good runners.  But sprinting at the highest level has really become the game of one country and a few small neighboring islands.

Read the entire article here.

I should also point out that Runner's Tribe put up an amazing amount of interviews, recaps and op-ed pieces about the world championships, so there is plenty to see and read.  I particularly recommend the articles by Len Johnson, a former journalist who has covered numerous Olympics and World Championships.  His wealth of knowledge and perspective on the sport is always interesting.  Find his articles here.