Month: August 2020

A week that has been notable for how normal it has felt in relation to most of my other weeks since mid-March. I actually hung out with friends after work on Monday and went to the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo’s Asian Lantern Festival on Monday. Quite the change from my normal routine of working, strength training, and sleeping.

As I continue my running rebuild I have stumbled on a problem that I need to solve in the next month or so or seek therapy for. I have been strengthening my mid and low back to improve my running posture and it led me to notice how much more solid and aligned I have felt but that it is a feeling I am not able to maintain consistently. When things fall apart it results in right shoulder pain that seems to pull my upper body toward the left, leaving me with the out of whack feeling that has plagued my running for the last few years. The good news is I have stumbled onto the solution with the question being whether or not I will be able to consistently get myself aligned so I can resume running with confidence. 

Running

‘Fat Talks,’ an Investigation, and a Reckoning: How Collegiate Runners Forced Reform

Wesleyan University track and cross-country alumni blew the whistle on former coach John Crooke for engaging in the same sort of coaching behavior that Mary Cain levied at Alberto Salazar. Crooke, who abruptly retired two weeks ago, held fat talks with his runners, asking them to log their eating habits for review, but to keep those meetings secret from other runners. Just as Cain’s performance began to suffer when Salazar shifted her focus to eating, Crooke’s teams struggled as well, suffering performance declines and struggling to retain runners on the team. 

How “normal people” can train like the worlds best endurance athletes

This TED talk from Dr. Stephen Seiler goes into detail to reveal how exercise physiologists have been able to better understand the impact that variable training intensities have on elite endurance athletes and how that understanding can benefit non-elite performers. Though the thesis of his talk, that training too often at hard intensity is counterproductive, was not a new concept to me, I did find the details around how that conclusion came about interesting. Seiler details the laboratory experimentation that altered researchers’ understanding about endurance training and how that laboratory work led to studies being undertaken in the field with elite athletes where laboratory theories met the real-world demands and experimentation of high-level professional training.

Behind the Scenes at London Marathon’s Kipchoge/Bekele Showdown

I enjoyed this interview with Jos Hermans, the founder and CEO of Global Sports Communications, who shares his thoughts on the upcoming duel between Eliud Kiphcoge and Kenenisa Bekele in London. Hermans lays out the challenges that COVID have posed to professional runners, who have had to train without the support of training groups and professional support staff, a challenge that could impact the race in October. I also thought Hermans had an interesting take on the two runners, feeling that Bekele is actually the more talented of the two while it is Kipchoge’s consistency that has made him the king of the roads. Given the dearth of live competition in 2020 coupled with the challenges of training in uncertain times, the race in London should be exciting and may provide a twist or two.

Performance

Fitter & Faster Podcast: Jay Dicharry On How To Stay Injury-Free

As I’ve cast around for strength training plans in the wake of COVID and my avoidance of the gym since March I nevertheless find myself gravitating back to Jay Dicharry whose Running Rewired served as the basis for my strength training last year. This podcast interview focuses on triathletes, so some of what he discusses will sound foreign to runners, but his main message remains an important one for runners to heed: maintaining endurance and power requires a body capable of long-term postural stabilization.  

Overtaxed by all the unfinished tasks hanging over you? There is a solution…

This article looks at the concept of open loops, your brain’s way of storing any unfinished business left on your plate. The problem with these loops is that when left untouched the brain, eager to close those loops, begins to obsess over them, creating anxiety, which can effect your daily life or your training. Author Oliver Burkeman posits an easy solution, one that should free your brain from that pesky anxiety and keep those unfinished tasks organized and accessible.

Perspective

Never press “pause” on your health and fitness again. This free tool is your secret weapon.

This infographic seeks to end the “all or nothing” approach to improvement. The strategy, from Precision Nutrition, asks you to scale improvements in various areas of your life, creating a graduated list daily actions, starting with the smallest form of action you could take toward an improvement (lace up your running shoes and head out the door for a jog to the end of the street) and progress up to the biggest action you could take (commit to 18 weeks of following the Hansons marathon training plan). If you hesitate to take action because you do not have the perfect plan thought out (one of my biggest weaknesses) then this concept is one you should take the time to explore and grapple with. I know I will.

This Week’s Quote

Success is never final. Failure never fatal. It’s courage that counts.

       -John Wooden

A Small Request

This newsletter is a labor of love and I would write it even if no one read it (as it is few people right now do). I do not write because I have all the answers but rather because the topics interest me and because writing about them allows me to further explore them, internally debate them, and work through them. I share these links because reading them and thinking about them helps me to be better in my running, in my coaching, in my relationships, and in life. If you read this newsletter and think it would benefit someone you know, I ask that you take the time to share it with them. If you have a question for me or a comment on how I can be better in this space, please take the time to reach out. Thanks.

This week’s edition is a day late and I apologize for that. My brother was in town for the first time in almost ten months, which was the last time I saw him and I spent three days enjoying the simple pleasure of having most of my family together. That meant I had to spend the early week playing catch up and it was only yesterday that I had the time to sit down with the different links I had set aside to check out and forward along to you.

Unfortunately in that time we have seen the cancellation of Ohio State’s fall football season. I am an OSU grad and I bleed scarlet and gray. The thought of a fall without the Buckeyes to watch leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, even moreso when you consider that imperfect as any response to COVID was going to be, the examples set in many other corners show that sports and indeed more normalcy in general were possible with a more focused response than what we have experienced inside the US. And of course the cancellation of the football season is but one disappointment that is going to be felt throughout the country this fall. I do not expect my friends coaching high school sports will have seasons when all is said and done and the loss of college sports does not stop at football either. Volleyball, soccer, and cross country teams, just to name an additional few, are all coming to terms with cancelled seasons. My heart goes out to them.

That said there are some interesting reads and listens in this week’s newsletter with several running topics related to the changes and opportunities COVID has provided runners. The Cal Ripken interview I link to is lengthy but chock full of pearls of wisdom for any competitor. Finally, Ramzy Nasrallah captures far better than I the sorrow and anger over the cancelled college football season. Let’s dig in.

Running

London Marathon mass event canceled; Kipchoge, Bekele still to race

Finally some good news in the world of running where the norm since March has been one race cancellation after another. The London Marathon, which usually runs in April, had been pushed back to this October with its fate hanging in the balance. The decision was finally made to go ahead with the race, though with elites only much as the Tokyo Marathon did in March. That gives us the tantalizing matchup between Eliud Kipchoge, almost a year off his sub-2 endeavor, and Kenenisa Bekele whose time in last year’s Berlin Marathon was just two seconds slower than Kipchoge’s world record time (remember that Kipchoge’s sub-2 performance due to its engineered parameters does not qualify for world record status). Assuming both are healthy and fit it provides the potential for a spellbinding race between the two. 

Also of note from London is their decision to push back next year’s mass event to October, which presents an interesting window into what organizers may be feeling is and is not possible in the world of racing next spring.

Sara Hall Runs Impressive Half Marathon PR—Without the Hoopla

In the sort of race that unfortunately has to be run in the current conditions, Sara Hall crushed her half marathon PR as she prepares for an as of yet unnamed fall marathon (many suspect it is the London Marathon). The race was dubbed the Row River Half Marathon and staged by organizers of the Eugene Marathon and it offers insight into what races, until a vaccine is found, are likely to look like for professionals. The few participants, Hall, her pacers, and two of her daughters, had negative COVID tests and everyone else involved wore masks. When Hall finished, everyone simply disbanded and went home. A far cry from the large, socially-driven events we are used to.

The Enduring Appeal of the Fastest Known Time

The local running store I frequent has been posting weekly challenges on routes and loops in the area for local runners to run and then post their times for. Such is the idea for those endurance junkies pursuing Fastest Known Times (FKT’s) in which they run notable routes and then post GPS data and even pictures to prove their having truly run them. Such excursions have become commonplace this summer with race cancellations, though, as the article notes, the requirements to register an FKT go against the grain of the typical ultraendurance endeavor where private, solo accomplishment has often trumped public acknowledgement.

Performance

Cal Ripken Jr. On Why You Control Your Life’s Narrative

I was a 90’s kid who loved baseball which meant I had a front row seat to Cal Ripken’s pursuit of Lou Gehrig’s consecutive game’s played record. His talent and consistency made him someone whose insights I relished. Because I rotate through a number of audiobooks and podcasts it had been awhile since I listened to Michael Gervais’ Finding Mastery podcast but when I saw he was going to have Ripken on I could not wait to sit down and listen to the conversation. I was reminded why I enjoy Gervais so much. This is a lengthy discussion, almost two hours, but Gervais is exceptional at honing in on the performance secrets that Ripken hints at with his stories. Given Ripken is best known for longevity it will not be surprising that much of the conversation revolves not around getting to the top performance-wise but rather staying there. Most notable is Ripken’s approach to constantly reinforcing his focus on his strengths at a time when he was considered oversized and more limited in range compared to other shortstops, a practice that allowed him to keep himself centered on his own improvement rather than worrying about his limitations.

Perspective

The Big Chill

Ohio State Football blogger Ramzy Nasrallah far better articulates than I could the despair over the cancellation of the college football season. Whether or not you are a college football fan, more cancellations and suspensions of things you hold dear are likely coming in the coming months and Nasrallah points to the reasons why this is the case. Leadership across the board has left us flailing in the United States as we struggle to contain COVID. Worrisome is that schools that restarted in-person learning have already seen outbreaks and there’s no reason to believe college campuses will be spared the same fate. It is frustrating because it did not have to be this way; Europe shows us how it could have been done. Life this year was always going to be different, the question was always how different. Powering our way through the pandemic as if it is truly not there has simply kicked the can down the road and closed things now that could have been spared with the forward thinking Nasrallah notes has been absent all summer. It’s so damn frustrating.

This Week’s Quote

“This is a time to be selfless. This is when we have to sit back and understand this is not about one person specifically. It’s about everybody. You have to go out there and understand that it’s about your neighbor and your neighbor’s neighbors.”

       – Francisco Lindor

A Small Request

This newsletter is a labor of love and I would write it even if no one read it (as it is few people right now do). I do not write because I have all the answers but rather because the topics interest me and because writing about them allows me to further explore them, internally debate them, and work through them. I share these links because reading them and thinking about them helps me to be better in my running, in my coaching, in my relationships, and in life. If you read this newsletter and think it would benefit someone you know, I ask that you take the time to share it with them. If you have a question for me or a comment on how I can be better in this space, please take the time to reach out. Thanks.

 

My brother is visiting this weekend which led me to pause and try to remember when I last saw him in person. The tally came to almost a year; we were in the Outer Banks together for a weekend last August. The arrival of my niece on Christmas meant the family could not all be together for the holidays, a trip to meet my niece was interrupted in January when one of my parents’ dogs tragically ran away, and two trips have had to be put on hold due to COVID. Too many of these moments have been taken from people and as well as I think I’ve adjusted to the need to be constantly adjusting god do I miss normalcy sometimes.

The oppressive heat and humidity of this northeast Ohio summer have receded in recent weeks and left behind a beach at low tide strewn with bits and pieces of an urge to lace up and go run. I’m not sure the will to sustain any sort of training exists yet but here and there is a jagged four-miler or a smooth and colorful eight-miler through the woods. For a little longer I’m resisting the urge to run. Having decided my running house needs a rebuild I want to further solidify the foundation, plastering up cracks, squaring up walls, and replacing ill-fitting stones. But I am interpreting the desire to return to the road as a good tiding.

Running

World Athletics Council makes key decisions on Olympic cross country, Russian Federation and future competition dates

A mixed gender cross country relay could possibly be coming to the Paris 2024 Olympics? Hell. Yes.

The Real-Life Diet of Kilian Jornet, Who Dominates 100-Mile Ultramarathons and Runs Up the World’s Highest Mountains

Kilian Jornet’s idea of fun is ultrarunning up the faces of mountains, and I am talking about the big ones: Denali and Everest to name a few. In this interview with GQ (when did GQ become a running outlet by the way?) Jornet offers refreshingly practical advice on recovery and dieting. If you read this piece and come away thinking, “There’s no way it can be that easy,” just know that at Precision Nutrition, one of the world’s foremost nutrition coaching services (and whose coaching course I have certifying in during the pandemic) the bulk of the programming focuses on exactly what Jornet lays out, mainly knowing your hunger cues, eating less processed food, and having a consistent recovery routine. A consistent focus on the basics can literally help you scale mountains.

Performance

Meditation Science: How Doing Nothing Makes You A Better Runner

In the early days of the pandemic I made my case for mindfulness amidst troubling times. Here Molly Hanson provides a handy tutorial on mindfulness for runners, defining mindfulness and meditation, explaining how a mindfulness practice can improve performance and resilience, and providing examples from professional runners to show how it can benefit your training and racing. If you read this and are inspired to give mindfulness a try, let me recommend the MyLife app and specifically the Relax, Ground, and Clear and Lion Mind meditations.

Want to ditch a bad habit? Then just take it one day at a time

If you have been reading this newsletter the last few months you know that I have been working on building better habits to develop a more focused life following the rapid detox of sorts that was Ohio’s stay-at-home order in the early days of the pandemic. Despite my familiarity with several excellent books on habits and habit formation, specifically Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit and James Clear’s Atomic Habits, I have found, as writer Oliver Burkeman has, that knowing the theory and applying it to real life are two different things. Burkeman’s advice on overriding old, bad habits is simple and forgiving: move forward with doing what is right one day at a time. The results will eventually build from there.

Perspective

Type A Blood and Covid: Danger! …Wait, Never Mind

I wrote in last week’s newsletter that I try to approach COVID skeptics with compassion given that we have not lived through something like this in our lifetimes and that scientific information in the pandemic is ever evolving as more is understood about the novel virus. This article from David Epstein is an excellent tutorial of how scientific hypotheses are published, gain traction, and then are revised as more information comes to light. The focus of Epstein’s article is on an early link between people with type A blood appearing to suffer more severe cases of COVID, however his advice could be applied to any number of areas related to the virus, including the much-hyped benefits of hydroxychloroquine and the belief that contaminated surfaces are a major vector of COVID transmission. Epstein ends with important advice on how to handle the shifting understanding further research provides us, something that will be critical as we get closer to what will hopefully be a safe and effective vaccine.

Why We’re All Gardening and Baking So Much

Apologies to Brad Stulberg for always linking to his stuff. I swear I am not trying to build a small following off your work, Brad. This article, though, spoke to me because in the absence of racing the care and attention I would have devoted to training has been applied instead to growing zucchini, tomatoes, and peppers. Stulberg explains why this is true across the country as people turn to various activities such as gardening and baking to fill both their time and psychological need for self-determination. He also suggests, in a theme keeping with my own quest to make some of my pandemic habits stick, that we look at what a new hobby like gardening does for our psyches and then find ways to keep those hobbies in our lives as the world slowly builds back toward normalcy.

This Week’s Quote

“Ordinary people with extraordinary vision can redeem the soul of America by getting in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble. Voting and participating in the democratic process are key. The vote is the most powerful nonviolent change agent you have in a democratic society. You must use it because it is not guaranteed. You can lose it.

“You must also study and learn the lessons of history because humanity has been involved in this soul-wrenching, existential struggle for a very long time. People on every continent have stood in your shoes, through decades and centuries before you. The truth does not change, and that is why the answers worked out long ago can help you find solutions to the challenges of our time.”

       – the late Representative John Lewis

My Podcast

Andrew and I took a week away from discussing how we are rebuilding our running to interview Katie Biro about her experience donating a kidney to her father. The experience leaves Katie, at least as a runner, back at square one and she details her goals moving forward as she starts to consider what her running will look like in the coming months. Visit Rust Belt Running to find out where you can listen to all episodes of our show.

A Small Request

This newsletter is a labor of love and I would write it even if no one read it (as it is few people right now do). I do not write because I have all the answers but rather because the topics interest me and because writing about them allows me to further explore them, internally debate them, and work through them. I share these links because reading them and thinking about them helps me to be better in my running, in my coaching, in my relationships, and in life. If you read this newsletter and think it would benefit someone you know, I ask that you take the time to share it with them. If you have a question for me or a comment on how I can be better in this space, please take the time to reach out. Thanks.