Peak performance: Get the most from your hard days
When you’ve got a hard day coming up on your training schedule, which probably means some intervals at 5K pace or faster, it’s reasonable to think you should go easy the day before. That way you’ll be more likely to crush the hard-day workout, right?
Not necessarily, says coach Matt Fitzgerald. There’s another approach that could be even more effective. Run moderately hard the day before. This will “prime” your body for the following hard day, and also allow you to log a bit more solid training in your week.
What makes for a moderately hard run? Good question. Fitzgerald suggests several specific workouts. The simplest is 30 to 50 minutes of easy running, followed by 10 minutes moderately hard to finish up. This is like a short tempo run at the end of your easy day.
Fitzgerald offers a cautionary rule of thumb. The “priming” approach only succeeds with those who are relatively fit to begin with. He suggests if you’re training 7 hours a week, you’re ready.
If you train less than 7 hours per week, don’t try “priming.” You’re probably better off training lightly or resting the day before a big workout. More at Training Peaks.
Training tips from the world’s best marathon runners
Other runners ran faster than Jeannie Rice, 75, and Jenny Hitchings, 59, in spring’s biggest and best marathons. But no one else scored as high as the two “J” women on the widely respected Age/Sex Calculator.
Both were in the vicinity of 103%, where 100% is equivalent to a world-record performance. In April, Rice ran 3:33:15 at Boston, and Hitchings ran 2:45:27 at London. For Hitchings, this was a personal best marathon at just two months short of her 60th birthday.
How did they achieve such impressive times? Well, if you guessed that they are highly motivated, disciplined, and do a goodly number of 20-milers, you’d be right.
But they are also different in interesting ways. Rice has never had a coach, preferring to do training runs on the basis of how she feels each day. Hitchings believes a runner who is self-coached is like a doctor who treats him/her self. She gets her workouts from former U.S. Marathon Trials winner Jenny Spangler.
Rice often runs super early in the morning. Hitchings needs more a.m. relaxation time before she’s ready to start cranking miles. Rice has never been injured, and doesn’t bother with much cross training; she prefers golf. Hitchings has had a few setbacks, and cross trains on a bicycle and with Pilates.
Both eat a varied, healthy diet. Rice doesn’t like sweets, so she doesn’t have to worry about too-much sugar. She considers cheese and nuts her “big downfall.” Hitchings drinks protein shakes and snacks on homemade muffins and cookies when training hard, since she finds the extra calories protects her from losing weight.
Both hope to keep running strong and fast, for themselves and for others. As Hitchings says, "It's important to show others that we can defy the way aging has been defined for us for so long.” More at Outside Online. [Truth in advertising: I wrote his article.]
How Courtney Dauwalter tackles--and succeeds at--ultra distances
In last weekend’s famous Western States 100-mile, Courtney Dauwalter placed sixth overall, only 5.6 % behind the winning male runner. The usual male-female gap is 10 to 12%. This makes her WS performance clearly one of the greatest ever by a female runner.
Two months earlier, she spoke at length with CNN about her training and overall philosophy of ultra running. It’s a great piece, with wonderful insights, so don’t miss it.
You’ll learn why her best training plan right now is “no coach, no plan” and how she visualizes a “pain cave” to help her get through tough patches. Dauwalter doesn’t seem to be one of those guru-types, but it’s hard not to feel a little chill when she says: “In general, I think everyone’s bars are just a little bit too low, and that we should raise the bar for ourselves.”
“We should go after the thing that sounds a little bit crazy or sounds a little bit too difficult and just see, because, why not?” More at CNN.
Painful truths: When to stop running, when to keep on
Here, a running injury physician explains what you should know about running in pain. Every runner has experienced some at one time or another, and we’ve all wondered what to do about it.
The big, lingering question is generally the same: Can I continue running, perhaps a little less and slower, until the pain goes away? Or should I stop entirely to prevent more serious injury?
The answer, of course, is “It depends.” Sometimes you can “run through” your injury, though you should also be prepared to take time off when that’s the smart reaction.
Worth knowing: A “dully, achy” pain probably means you have a minor injury. A “sharp, stabbing” pain may require more serious appraisal.
Also, if your pain decreases or disappears during your run, as your body warms up, that’s a good sign. If it gets worse, you need some rest and recovery.
Does your pain persist all day and extend into your other activities? That’s another indication that you need time off, and perhaps some strength training. More at Believe in the Run.
In other pain-related news, here’s an unexpected twist. According to new research at Plos One, regular exercise reduces “chronic pain,” which is now “more prevalent in the U.S. than either depression or diabetes.” Additionally, “even though exercise may be the last thing a person living with pain wants to do, it could be a critical element to recovery.” More at Time.
Yes! Exercise scores big-time against depression. And coffee does, too
A major new “umbrella review” of studies on exercise and mental health has concluded that “physical activity is highly beneficial for improving symptoms of depression, anxiety, and distress across a wide range of adult populations.” An umbrella review is a review of all existing systematic reviews and meta analyses.
This one looked into 97 systematic reviews with 128,000 subjects, and it represents the first report to combine all the evidence on exercise and mental health. Worldwide, almost one in 8 people experienced a mental health disorder in 2019, with the global cost reaching $250 trillion.
Conclusion: “Physical activity should be a mainstay approach in the management of depression, anxiety and psychological distress.” Indeed, the benefits from this approach are “comparable to, and slightly larger than, the benefits of medications and psychotherapy.” Last: “Higher intensity physical activity was associated with greater improvements in symptoms.”
So keep moving. And go a little harder if you can. Your emotional health is just as important as your heart-bone-muscle health, and just as malleable. More at British J of Sports Medicine with free full text.
Here’s a new wrinkle: Coffee helps too. In a prospective study with almost 150,000 participants, those who drank 2 to 3 cups of coffee a day had the lowest rates of depression and anxiety. Less and more coffee-drinking were not so effective. Results were similar for participants who drank 2-3 cups of ground coffee, milk-coffee, or unsweetened coffee. Conclusion: “Our findings highlight that 2-3 cups of coffee consumption could be recommended as part of a healthy lifestyle to improve mental health.” More at Psychiatry Research.
Some mental-health practitioners are more assertive about prescribing exercise than others. They believe there are multiple benefits from this approach. “While medications may take a few weeks to work, you see benefits right away with exercise,” says one. “It’s not only going to help with anxiety, depression, and many other mental health conditions, but also with patients’ overall health and other chronic conditions.” More at Outside Online.
Road to recovery: How to come back from an Achilles injury
Achilles injuries are quite common among runners, and demand serious attention. You can’t run without a healthy Achilles tendon, so you’ve got to rehab and recover just right.
Also, when you’re ready to start running again, you’ve got to go gently and very progressively. A new study reports that running on a treadmill with a “body weight support suspension system” can assist this return-to-running process.
Over the last several decades, the space-age Alter-G Treadmill has grabbed the lion’s share of attention in this field. The Alter-G is impressive, super-effective, variable, and expensive. But it’s also becoming more available in various medical and therapy locations.
In recent years, alternative low-tech, lower-cost body-weight support systems have also reached the runner market. I have friends who are quite happy with their Lever Running systems. This new study tested an unnamed harness based system with 4 elastic cords attached to a metal frame.
It found that the system reduced lower leg impact forces by 9% to 15%. Conclusion: A treadmill body-weight support system “may reduce Achilles tendon loading and impulse variables during running. This may be important in the rehabilitation efforts.” More at International J of Sports Medicine.
Oh, my: What happens when you PUT runners on a low energy diet?
The topic of Low Energy Availability--the frequency, and impact of eating too little--is one of the hottest in endurance sports. It’s known to affect many athletes (male but primarily female, in weight-bearing sports like running, dance, gymnastics, and cross-country skiing), and it can have devastating effects on both performance and lifelong health.
Now a Danish group has gone where no research has gone before. They somehow got ethical approval to impose a LEA condition on 15 subjects in a 10-day randomized controlled trial. (They presumably convinced the review committee that 10 days would not be long enough to affect their participants’ health.)
The subjects were 30 healthy, menstruating, exercising females in their mid-20s. During a 5-day “run in” period, all consumed a weight-maintaining diet of about 2400 calories/day.
During the next 10 days, half of the group continued on the same diet. They ended up consuming 2403 calories/day on average. The other half saw their food intake cut almost in half. They consumed an average of 1349 calories/day. All food was provided by a research kitchen.
Despite the calorie differential, all subjects received the same (substantial) amount of protein each day. The researchers were primarily interested in “protein synthesis” rates among their subjects, and wanted to make sure both groups had plenty of protein on board throughout. All subjects followed a vigorous cardiovascular and strength-training regimen during the 10-day trial--again, to make sure that a cessation of their training did not influence results.
Key outcomes: The LEA subjects lost 3.7 pounds over 10 days, including 0.9 pounds of muscle. The full-calorie group maintained body weight, and gained 0.9 pounds of muscle.
Also, the major finding of the study: The LEA subjects “suffered marked reductions in myofibrillar and sarcoplasmic muscle protein synthesis.” They also saw drops in “urinary nitrogen balance, free androgen index, thyroid hormone, and resting metabolic rate.” The latter declined by 65 calories/day.
Conclusion: “These findings suggest that LEA may negatively affect skeletal muscle adaptation in females performing exercise training.” The project did not include a performance test. In other words, there was no pre- and post-diet time trial or other fitness test. More at The J of Physiology with free full text.
Pheidippides be damned. No, exercise won’t kill you
In this edition of Brady Holmer’s excellent “Physiologically Speaking” newsletter, he goes deep to review all the evidence linking vigorous exercise and sudden death. Yes, there’s the Pheidippides legend. And, yes, your risk of sudden death rises during hard exercise. And yet, somewhat paradoxically, hard exercise lowers your mortality risk on a 24/7 basis. In other words, the benefit outweighs the risk.
Conclusion: While there are down sides--like injuries, and atrial fibrillation--”Exercise appears to have profound beneficial effects in nearly everyone who takes part. Some is better than none, and more is better than some.” Is there an upper limit, ie, can you exercise too much? Possibly, but the limiting line has not yet been well defined. More at Substack/Brady Holmer.
In other mortality news: 1--Black athletes suffer higher sudden death rates than white athletes.
2--Yogurt consumption lowers all-cause and heart-related deaths, but not cancer deaths. 3--Big study with long followup supports low-fat diet for lower mortality risk, with evidence also that “healthy” low-carb diets are better than unhealthy ones. 4--Among 116,000 subjects, mortality risk was lower among those consuming olive oil, a high-fiber breakfast, tea, and vegetables.
SHORT STUFF you don’t want to miss
>>> Race your best: 5 steps to a perfect taper for your next big race
>>> Who’s got the right answer: How many extra calories/day do you burn if you add 1 lb of muscle?
GREAT QUOTES make great training partners
"Putting miles in your training log is like putting money in the bank. You begin to draw interest on it immediately."
--Hal Higdon
That’s all for now. Thanks for reading. RLRH is taking a week off for the July 4th holiday. You’ll receive your next mailing on Thursday, July 13. Stay well. Amby