MAY 23
You’re Already Fit--Here’s How To Get Even Faster
How can you keep improving, even after you are already in very good shape? It’s not easy. After all, the “law of diminishing returns” sets in at some point.
Some believe you need to apply a little “shock therapy” at this juncture. A dash of sprint training could be just what you need.
That proved to be an excellent decision in this experiment with 19 college runners. As varsity athletes, they were already in top shape.
Researchers put roughly half of them in a “sprint training” group. They did sprint sessions twice a week for six weeks. The control group continued their normal training.
Result: The control-group runners didn’t improve during the 6week period. But the sprint-trained runners got faster at distances from 100 meters to 3000 meters.
Conclusion: “A 6-week sprint training improved both sprint and long-distance running performance.” How? “The enhancement of long-distance running performance could be attributable to improved anaerobic capacity.” More at International J of Sports Physiology & Performance.
What’s The Best Marathon Training Plan? (From 92 Possibilities!)
I often tell would-be marathon runners not to obsess about what training plan to follow. In my view, they’re all basically the same--at least the good ones are.
Here’s what I mean: They all follow the same framework. This includes: mostly easy runs; a gradually increasing miles/week; an emphasis on long runs; and occasional “cutback” weeks.
The program you choose isn’t nearly as important as being honest with yourself, and selecting one that’s right for your current fitness. If you’re running 16 miles a week, don’t select a plan that begins with a 24-mile week.
Step 1: Pick an appropriate plan. Step 2: Focus on yourself, not on any slight differences between plans. They’ll all get you where you want to be as long as you do the work.
Repeat: Focus on yourself. Organize your life as necessary to get the training done. Set aside the days and training time you’ll need.
Step 3: Don’t worry about missing runs here and there. That happens to everyone. If you do 90% of the runs, you get 99% of the results.
A new report supplies evidence for much of the above. The researchers hunted down 92 different marathon training plans.
They searched magazines, books, and the Internet. They found plans from all the big names: Daniels, Pfitzinger, Higdon, the Boston Marathon, Runner’s World, Marathon Handbook, and more
Then they divided the plans into 3 categories: High mileage (more than 56 miles/week), Medium (40-56 mi/wk), and Low (under 40 mi/wk). The 3 categories included longest “long runs” of about 21 miles/18 miles/16 miles.
Lastly, the authors analyzed the final 8 weeks of each plan (the most important weeks), and placed all specific runs into one of 5 Training Zones. I prefer to look at 3 Training Zones--roughly Easy Runs, Tempo Runs, Speed Work--because it’s simpler, and reflects the effort levels that most runners follow. Analyzing a training plan this way is called Training Intensity Distribution, or TID.
Here’s the 3-Zone TID of High/Medium/Low mileage plans: High (82-10-8), Medium (77-18-5), Low (78-17-5). In the case of the High mileage plans, this means the runners did 82% of their training at an easy pace, 10% at a medium-tempo pace, and 8% at a hard pace.
There’s a simple reason why the Medium and Low plans are slightly different from the High plan. The more you run each week--as in the High plan--the greater the percentage of your training that must be easy.
Nonetheless, the TIDs in these 3 plans are much more similar than different. I rest my case: Good marathon training plans follow the same basic pattern.
It doesn’t matter what plan you choose. It only matters that you stick to the plan as closely as possible. More at Sports Medicine--Open with free full text.
How Old Is Too Old To Keep Running?
That’s a good question. Even an important one. Particularly for those who have long included running as part of their lifestyle and self-definition.
If they have to stop running at some point, for some reason … well, that sounds like a significant life change, with unhappy repercussions.
Adam Tenforde is an excellent person to address this question. He was a champion 10,000 meter runner at Stanford two decades ago (and teammate with marathon great Ryan Hall), and now works as a sports medicine physician at the Spaulding National Running Center in Cambridge, MA.
This means his view may be a bit biased. He admits that he “continues to enjoy running as my primary form of exercise.”
Okay, it’s good to come clean about your biases. Now, how about that big question--when to stop running?
“In general, running can be done safely over the course of a lifetime,” says Tenforde. “Which doesn’t mean it won’t sometimes hurt.”
Tenforde brings up several useful strategies. First, if you experience pain while running, does it get better or worse as your workout continues? The former is probably a good sign that you’re not doing major damage. The second is a warning flag.
Also, pay attention to biomechanical changes. If the pain forces you to alter your stride, you might simply move the injury from one area or joint to another. That’s no solution.
Another key point: “There’s a common myth that running is bad for joints, but that idea has not played out in the research.”
What amount of running is too much, increasing injury risk? “From the literature on bone stress injury, it’s been proposed that more than 20 miles a week might put you at an elevated risk for injury.”
However Tenforde doesn’t draw a line in the sand at 20 miles/week. “A lot of people enjoy running more than 20 miles a week,” he notes. “If someone loves to run, you really have to give me a good reason why that would be a bad thing for them to continue. It comes down to risk-benefit ratio.”
In each stage of life, there is an appropriate opportunity to maintain physical activity. You need to consider your options, and find physicians and other medical providers who will support you. More at The Harvard Gazette.
Fuel Your Performance: A New Carbo-Loading Formula
Meghann Featherstone’s marathon reports--especially the precise steps she follows to carbo load sufficiently--are always detailed, informative, and just a little bit funny. It’s a good combination.
In April, she flew to London to complete her 6-Star journey of the Abbott World Marathon Majors. London worried her. How was she going to carbo load for 3 days (her preferred time frame) in a city not known for its bagels?
The long flight from her West Coast home to England didn’t help. She snacked on pretzels, granola bars, and peanut butter M&Ms.
The next morning she tried to run a couple of miles, but felt so awful she turned around after a mile, and walked back. She began eating more granola bars, crumpets and jam, and sourdough pizza. Featherstone always keeps graham crackers close at hand pre-marathon, and she also snacked on these.
On marathon morning, she “set an alarm for 6 am, ordered coffee, and started eating my graham crackers in bed.” I love this twist from the typical vision of “breakfast in bed.”
It turns out she’s got a simple formula for carbs on marathon morning--at least if the marathon starts mid morning or later, as London does. She advises consuming enough grams of carbs to equal one-half your body weight (in pounds). If you weigh 150 lbs, you should aim for 75 grams of carbs (300 calories).
During the 2024 London Marathon, Featherstone consumed: “70 gm carbs/hour + 325 mg sodium/hour + 10 oz fluid/hour.” She also took a caffeine gel 10 minutes before the start, and after 50 minutes of running.
She finished in a strong 2:53:43--her 4th fastest marathon. That time was 65 minutes faster than her first marathon in 2009. She must be eating something right. More at Featherstone Nutrition.
Why The U.S. Air Force Loves Topo Running Shoes
Here’s one of six papers recently cited by the American College of Sports Medicine--the world’s biggest and most influential exercise science group--as “Best Of 2023 Articles.”
This paper appeared in the Translational Journal of the American College of Sports Medicine. Its title: “The Effect of Lightweight Shoes on Air Force Basic Training Injuries: A Randomized, Controlled Trial.”
There’s quite a saga behind this article. Hang on, here’s a short backgrounder.
In 2017, the U.S. National Defense Act decreed that the Secretary of Defense should do more to limit injuries during the military’s basic training camps. The Secretary was instructed to test more shoes from more U.S. manufacturers to determine which worked best for trainees. The goal: fewer injuries, and more satisfaction with the shoes.
This was an excellent goal, because many trainees were developing bone stress injuries and other problems. The lost training time--and sometimes lost trainees--cost the military significant time and money.
The new shoes were introduced in 2019. Trainees in the Air Force basic training program at San Antonio/Lackland,Texas (35,000 recruits per year) were offered a neutral cushioned shoe, a stability shoe, or a motion control shoe. They didn’t like any of the three.
As a result, military sports medicine experts opted to try a different kind of shoe: a lightweight, neutral shoe. They wanted one manufactured in the U.S., but none were available. The best option was the modestly-priced Topo Fli-Lyte 4. The company was based in the U.S., but the shoes were constructed abroad.
Air Force researchers conducted a randomized, controlled, double-blinded trial of the Topos vs a traditional neutral, cushioned shoe. All shoes were designed to look exactly alike, and male and female trainee subjects (roughly 370 in each of the two shoes) wore them during their 7.5-week stint in basic training.
Result: Bone stress injuries dropped by 43% among those who wore the Topo shoes vs the traditional lightweight, neutral shoe.
While both shoes were considered “neutral shoes,” the Topos had “lighter weight, more flexibility, smaller heel-to-toe drop, a more pliable heel counter, and a wider toe box.”
Conclusion: “This information might be reasonably generalized for footwear recommendations to broader populations of 17- to 39-year-old novice runners engaging in similar training (including running, calisthenics, and bodyweight strength training).”
Sub-4-Minute Milers Outrun The Grim Reaper
In case you missed it, a group of researchers took advantage of the recent 70th anniversary of Roger Bannister’s first sub-4 mile (May 6, 1954). They had fun with the title of their article: “Outrunning The Grim Reaper.”
But after that, they were deadly serious (pun intended). They published a study looking into the average lifespan of the first 200 runners to break 4 minutes in the mile.
This is significant because you don’t break 4 minutes in the mile by jogging 150 minutes a week to meet your federal exercise guidelines. You’ve got to subject yourself to really hard interval training.
These intense efforts are exactly what exercise critics often advise us to avoid. They’d like us to do only moderate exercise, and not too much.
But running 10 x 400 meters in 60 seconds, a somewhat typical workout for sub-4:00 milers? Nope, that’s way too extreme.
The data obtained from this study indicate the critics are missing something. Result: “Sub-4 min mile runners lived an average of 4.7 years beyond their predicted life expectancy.”
An interesting sub-result: This figure was even larger--9.2 years--during the 1950s when advanced medical technologies did not contribute as much to enhanced longevity as they do today.
Yes, medicine is making progress, and that’s mostly a good thing. But it’s always best to remember that “Exercise is Medicine,” and the risks and side effects of exercise are much lower than those associated with advanced medical treatments (drugs and surgeries).
Conclusion: “Sub-4 min mile runners have increased longevity compared with the general population, thereby challenging the notion that extreme endurance exercise may be detrimental to longevity.” More at British J of Sports Medicine.
Run Your Best … Without Trying So Hard
Everyone advises us to seek balance in our days and years. After all, the Good Life can’t be just the weight on your bathroom scale, your total step count last week, or your time in a recent half marathon. There’s got to be more.
Yet balance can be harder to achieve than it sounds. We live in an age of optimizing, biohacking, and AI-ing everything. We want shortcuts and “10 easy steps.” We have FOMO--fear of missing out.
Many of us are highly motivated, self-actualizing individuals who believe we succeed in life when we are focused, intent, and working hard for that success. Fortunately, we have philosopher-runners like Sabrina Little in our midst to remind us to avoid the all-or-nothing approach.
She writes: “Sometimes I wonder whether paying outsized attention to optimizing our bodies misses the mark. For example, I can’t track joy on a fitness tracker, but joy plays a considerable role in my racing.”
Sure, we want a little optimization. We want to explore our limits at times. “If you want to run a personal best,” says Little. “Then paying attention to sleep and nutrition, with greater precision, is beneficial.”
But trying to biohack every corner of your life has limits. Little, a philosopher-professor and champion ultrarunner, identifies 3 key problem areas. I was struck by her observations about adopting a “controlling stance.” This means that you’re trying to control, overcome, or improve everything.
Whew, that’s exhausting. The alternative: To accept and appreciate.
That sounds like a better way to train and live. And maybe even run faster. More at I Run Far.
There’s Magic In Those Bright Red (And Blue) Juice Drinks
You’ve probably noticed a few articles about beet juice and other red-colored fruit juices like cranberry and tart cherry. They all seem to have potential to improve performance and enhance recovery, as noted in this article at Run Outside.
A recent and much-deeper systematic review focused specifically on endurance effects, which distinguished it from previous reports covering all sports. It concluded that “Polyphenol supplementation boosts aerobic endurance.”
It looked into a few juices, particularly black currant juice, but also investigated dark chocolate, green tea extract, and Haskap berries (blue honeysuckle that produces a blueberry-type fruit but with an oblong shape).
Result: A systematic review of 11 studies using polyphenol drinks and supplements demonstrated “discernible enhancements” of several endurance measures. These included time to complete a given test, and time to fatigue from exercise.
Conclusion: This review suggests that 6 weeks of “supplementation with polyphenols or polyphenol complexes may improve aerobic endurance performance and promote fat oxidation in the human body.” The effect seems to extend to both professional athletes and recreational enthusiasts. More at Frontiers in Physiology with free full text.
SHORT STUFF You Don’t Want To Miss
>>> Take a stroll: How to deal with those painful, nighttime leg cramps
>>> Return from injury: Dry needling beats immobilization for calf injuries
>>> Worth a sip? “Functional sodas” gaining in popularity with low sugar plus fiber and probiotics
GREAT QUOTES Make Great Training Partners
“Mental will is a muscle that needs exercise, just like the muscles of the body.”
--Lynn Jennings, 9-time U.S. cross country champ