S.T.F.D

by John Schrup

I know whatcher thinking.  You’re thinking, how rude!

Maybe not.  More likely, you’re thinking, this guy again?  Wordy sumbitch.

Some time ago, yesterday, I had a conversation with someone in the group.  Nothing specific, but we were talking about the heat and humidity, and how hot the heat is, particularly when you add in some really humid heatness.  That was pretty much the gist of it.

And so yesterday I got to thinking, which is in and of itself not good, and what I was thinking was that we—endurance junkies, that is—need to slow the fuck down.  Whoa!Whoa!Whoa!  Hode up!  I’m trying to get my GDBQ and you’re telling me to STFD?  Dude, that’s a lot of capital letters!

Yeah, we need to slow down.  I’m not talking about in our daily lives.  I’m not gonna get all enlightenment on you, that’s for another day.  What I’m talking about is when you run.  You need to STFD when you run.  And here’s why:

One, it’s hotter than Hades and you’re going to slow down anyway.  In the summer, we practice running on feel, so you’re going to have to get used to running slower and being ok with it.  Your body is going to be working harder anyway to regulate your body temperature, so you’ll be working against it if you try to keep your pace consistent with your pace when the temperatures are cooler.  You will be able to handle the heat much easier if you are in the mindset that you’re just going to go from A to B, and not worry about how fast you got there.  Put down the GPS.

B, most of us run too fast on our easy days anyway.  If you aren’t recovering from the last workout or run, you’re not going to be prepared for the next one.   In large groups, the etiquette is to run as slow as the slowest in that group.  That’s how you do it, not the other way around.  On easy days—and in the summer almost all days are easy days—it is wise to run with people slower than you anyway, to keep yourself in check.  The longer you run easy—and most importantly, relaxed—the better you can program your body to run properly, rewiring your motor patterns, relearning how to run with some fluidity.

Third, if you really want to know what it is like to run easy, you’d do well to imitate the Kenyans.  It is well known that the Kenyans are, generally speaking, real, real fast.  But what isn’t discussed as often is how easy they run on easy days.  I talked to one guy who spent some time in Kenya training with the old FILA camp.   He told me that when the schedule called for a recovery day, he was surprised that the group would cruise along at seven minutes pace or slower.  And this is with a group that raced marathons at faster than five minutes per mile.  I’m no math whiz, but that’s almost 30% slower than race pace.  Are you running 30% slower than race pace on your recovery days?  Probably not.  So if you’re shooting for a 4 hour marathon and you are running 9:30’s on your easy days, chances are you aren’t recovering properly.

What was even more interesting was that every single day, easy or otherwise, the Kenyans will warmup at an effort that would be slower than most of our warmups.  Several years ago I ran with a group of Kenyans in Albuquerque.   And when I say ran with, what I mean is that I ran with them on their warmup.  From where we began to the track was two miles.  It took us nearly 20 minutes to get there.  The whole time I was thinking, Oh, yeah, maybe I’ll just do part of the workout with them, just a few quarters.  That lasted all of about 50 meters.

STFD!  You’re not going to be able to get in the volumes you need to get in to run really fast if you are injured.  And you’re not going to remain healthy if your body isn’t recovering from the previous run or workout.  Get out of that grey area.  Modulate your efforts.  Be easy so you can be fast.

Easy Summer Lovin’

by John Schrup

It’s about to get real hot up in here.  I don’t think we’ve hit the three digits yet, but it’s coming.  You know it is.  And around here, around the ATX, summer means building the foundation for race season.  Ok, ok, it means other things too, like vacation with the kids, backyard bbq’s, and all that shit. But for the dedicated marathoner, those things are, like, so way less important.  Summer is the de facto base building phase for the marathoner in the know.  It’s really too hot to do anything other than put in absurdly high volumes of relaxed, easy running.

Experience has shown that those who can endure the summer and put in the time will almost invariably have a good training block once the weather changes to something less prohibitive.  It is unknown why, exactly.  Whether we build a mental toughness in having to survive the heat and put in the miles, or whether the temperature essentially forces us to run easier than we would if the weather permitted, I don’t know.  Likely, it is a bit of both.  Whatever the reason, we know if you get through the summer with consistency, you are primed for a good fall training block.

One of the things that I like to suggest to the group is to remove some of the familiar variables of their training.  Over the summer, the goal to run a vast majority of our miles as relaxed and easy as possible.  True, we do some light fartlek here and there, and there is the extemporaneous progression run on mornings when the humidity is just this side of suffocating, but most of our running is easy.  Our focus is internal, so we leave the watch at home.  Maybe not literally, but we certainly don’t pay attention to it.  The tendency for the endurance athlete’s mindset is to require a regular monitor:  Heartrate, GPS, chrono or a ridiculous combination of all three.  But in the summer, our monitor is our own internal gauge.  We learn (or re-learn) to run by feel.

The easiest way to do this is to remove all but one of your external monitors.  Either go by distance, or go by time.  But do your best to resist combining the two.  If you go by distance, leave the watch at home.  Or if you feel too naked without it, don’t start the chrono.  If you go by time, don’t check your watch at every geographic marker you are familiar with.  Instead, if you have an hour run on the schedule, set your watch for 31 or 32 minutes and run very easy until the beep signals time to head back home.  (IF you do it right, you’ll come back a couple minutes faster without an increase in effort.) Once you learn to run by feel, you’ll open the door to becoming a more complete runner.

If you are really serious about reaching your goals, the summer is also the best time to introduce doubles to your training.  Doubles are the real deal.  And the summer is the right time because you are doing mostly easy runs, and the added stimulus is appropriate before the intensities climb as well.  The science geeks will argue whether longer single runs have more merit than doubles, but if they were better, then all the best runners in the world would be running singles.  Doubles don’t need to be anything more than two or three miles, and the benefits will be huge.  Yes, you will get tired.  I promise.  But I can also promise that you will adapt.  And when you do, the benefits will be most obvious.    Do it.  Doubles aren’t for just the elite.  They are for anyone who wants to take their training to a new level.

Enjoy your summer!  Please pass the water.

Yes, your shoes DO smell.

Hot weather means sweat, and sweat means wet and smelly shoes. Really, really wet and smelly. That are often left in the oven that is your car.

We all know (or should know) that throwing your running shoes into the washing machine is a bad idea, and while the newspaper trick does soak up moisture, it doesn’t do much for smell. It also wastes a lot of newspaper when you consider a whole summer’s worth!

STUFFITTS were created with these things in mind and Rogue Equipment now has them, when you need them most!

Check out what Nedra has to say about her Stuffitts:

I love my new stuffitts! I’m a heavy sweater which leads to wet stinky shoes especially in the summer. Since I’ve started using Stuffitts, my shoes dry out faster and smell a lot better. I also love the fact that Stuffitts are a more sustainable solution than stuffing your shoes with newspaper since. I can reuse them day after day after day and when needed, slip the covers off and wash them out and it’s like a new pair!

Stop by Rogue Equipment and check them out – we all know we need them.