running times - april 2010 (true pdf)
TRANSCRIPT
APRIL 2010 // ISSUE 375
RUN YOUR FASTEST 5K: SIX ESSENTIAL TRAINING ELEMENTS
SHOULD YOU GO BARE?
WHO, WHEN AND WHY WW
+ 4 STEPS TO MORE MINIMAL SHOES + 16 LIGHT AND FAST TRAINERS REVIEWED
++ 4 STEPS TO MORE MIININ MAL SHOES
TRUTHS & MYTHS
HOW MUCH
SHOEDO YOU NEED?
DON’TSTRETCH (THE SAME OLD WAY BEFORE YOUR RUN) ((TTHHEE SSAAMMEE OOLLDD WWAAYY BBEEFFOOR+ 7 DYNAMIC STRETCHES
FOR A BETTER WARM-UP
SOLD OUT! HOW RACES & RUNNERS ARE DEALING WITH OVERCROWDING
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ON THE COVER54 Run Your Fastest 5K // 46, 61 How Much Shoe Do You Need?48 4 Steps to More Minimal Shoes // 61 18 Light and Fast Trainers // 25 Don’t Stretch // 73 Sold Out 46 Why Go Bare?
FEATURES_
46 MUCH ADO ABOUT MINIMALISMThe science and practice of wearing less shoe by Richard A. Lovett
42 MARATHONERS OF THE YEAR Data and Analysis by Ken YoungRepeat winners, but a lot of new faces in our rankings
54 SOLVE THE 5K PUZZLEAn effort-based route to success by Pete Magill
61 SPRING TRAINING SHOE GUIDE16 light and fast training shoes reviewed by Brian Metzler and David Spetnagel
COLUMNS_
20 THE RUNNER’S WITNESS by Tamara Rice LaveBeing in the Moment: Shut down your brain and just believe
22 PERFORMANCE PAGE by Greg McMillan, M.S.The Five Habits of Highly Effective Runners: The keys to success
84 ART OF THE RUN by 101° West PhotographyAn impromptu race from a schoolyard in Iten, Kenya
DEPARTMENTS_
06 EDITOR’S NOTE
08 LETTERS
11 SHORTS
25 OWNER’S MANUAL
34 HIGH SCHOOL
36 COLLEGE
38 MASTERS
73 RACING
82 TRAILS
CONTENTSAPRIL 2010 // issue 375
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COVER ART University of Nebraska at Kearney middle-distance runner
Erica Pirog does barefoot strides to build dynamic foot strength.design by Alan Luu / photo by 101° West Photography
SUBSCRIBER INFORMATION(ISSN 0147-2986; USPS 376-150), Issue 375. Running Times is published 10X a year, monthly except bimonthly in January/February and July/August by Rodale Inc, 33 East Minor Street, Emmaus, PA 18098 (610–967–5171). Periodicals Postage Paid at Emmaus, PA and at additional mailing offi ces. Subscribers: If the postal authorities alert us that your magazine is undeliverable, we have no further obligation unless we receive a corrected address within 18 months.
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EDITORIAL & DESIGN
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Running Times MagazineApril 2010, Issue 375 • RunningTimes.com
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EDITOR’S NOTE
Runners aren’t alone in this belief that a pur-chase will make them better: middle-aged men think a Porsche will keep them younger and sexier, managers are convinced that the latest tech tool or software will fi nally get them organized. Advertising thrives on these beliefs and constantly feeds them. And, in truth, the right things can improve your looks, your management skills and more
— and the right shoes can make running more comfortable and help you run faster. But shoes, like things in other spheres of life, can only enable what you already have the
capacity to do; they cannot, by magic, make you what you are not.
Not only is there no magic, but increas-ingly we’re learning that shoes have what EDWARD TENNER in Why Th ings Bite Back calls “revenge eff ects,” defi ned as “the ironic unintended consequences of mechanical, chemical, biological, and medical ingenuity.” Th e revenge eff ect of shoes is that, in wearing models that are designed to alleviate stride and strength weaknesses, we encourage those weaknesses and have lost the ability to run with our most eff ective stride, which
in turn leads to slower running and more injuries. That is the argument of the min-imalist movement, which we examine in this issue. Th e extremists say that shoes are a conspiracy foisted on us by shoe companies and we should toss them out and go bare-foot today. Th e reactionaries say that shoes are what allow the ungifted masses to run at all. As in most of life, a middle path seems to be the wisest.
In full disclosure, I will admit that I’m a minimalist, although not a raving bare-footer. I’ve long been a fan of lighter shoes and intrigued by tales of barefoot kids in Africa, but my minimalist moment came when I interviewed Australian BENITA
JOHNSON after her victory at the world cross country championships in 2004 and she told me that she rarely wore shoes up until she was 13 years old. It struck me as more than a coincidence that one of the few Westerners to triumph in the age of Africans also devel-oped her stride barefoot. Two years later, I visited Kenya and saw fi rst-hand the relaxed barefoot stride of kids running to school and at play, and was even more convinced that this is the form we are all meant to run with
— if we can develop the strength and fi nd the proper conditions to do so. I believe those proper conditions often include shoes, but shoes that, like any good technology, dis-appear and help you do what you do best
— the type of shoes highlighted in our spring shoe guide. Once we stop expecting shoes to do magic, we can stop blaming them for evils as well, and get on with becoming better runners. •
JONATHAN BEVERLY
Editor-in-Chief
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CONTRIBUTORS
PETE MAGILL is the oldest American to break 15:00 for 5K, with a 1 4:49 at age 47,
and author of the popular blog Younger Legs for Older Runners. He coaches the Compex Racing club, which boasts 11 masters runners who’ve broken 16:00 for 5K. A resident of South Pasadena, Calif., Magill was a track coach at local high schools in his 20s, where he first devel-oped the 5K training program that he details for us starting on p. 54. “I was an avid reader of every running book I could get my hands on — Coe, Costill, Lydiard, Horwill, you name it,” says Magill. “I experimented on my high school ath-letes, not always with great success — sorry guys and gals! Finally, I decided to throw out everything except those workouts that I under-stood 100 percent. That narrowed it down to just a few — but a few that work.” Besides coach-ing and running, Magill has owned a Caribbean nightclub, sold screenplays in Hollywood, run a candy company, and worked for a legal fi rm.
S enior writer CATHY FIESELER is the director of sports medicine for Trinity
Mother Frances Health System in Tyler, Texas, team physician for the University of Texas in Tyler, serves on the board of directors of the American Medical Athletic Association and the Cancer Foundation for Life and is an instructor for Team in Training coaches. A lifelong runner and experienced ultramarathoner, Fieseler says,
“Shin pain in runners is commonly attributed to ‘shin splints’ and runners are advised to tough it out. Pain develops for a reason; determining the cause of the problem is the most important factor in recovery. I have seen too many run-ners try to tough it out with stress fractures and other injuries that require an accurate diagnosis and appropriate treatment to avoid potentially severe consequences.” Fieseler presents a thor-ough analysis of what causes the variety of shin pains and how to deal with them in this month’s Owner’s Manual.
IN THE CLIMACTIC SCENE of the 1993 movie “The Sandlot,” just before the athletic hero decides to take on the dog by simply outsprinting him, he reveals his “secret weapon: shoes guaranteed to make a kid run faster and jump higher.” The shoes in question turn out to be PF Flyers. In an identical scene in the 2005 sequel, the shoes are Nikes. Whatever the shoes, the scene highlights the belief that a pair of shoes can make you run faster and jump higher. It’s a belief nearly all runners have held on to since they were kids. How often have you pored over the shoe guide, lusting for the pair that would transform you into the runner you know you can be?
Kids en route to school outside Iten, Kenya.
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NO JOKING MATTERI could hardly believe my eyes when I read the “Quoteworthy” state-ment by ADRIENNE WALD (Jan/Feb 2010). I am sure that Ms. Wald is an excellent coach, but as an ambassador for the sport of running, she leaves a lot to be desired. As a rather pedestrian 3:44 multi-mar-athon fi nisher, and medical director of a mid-size marathon, I have seen all sorts of runners fi nish marathons. While we can all appre-ciate those who “look” like runners gliding along almost eff ortlessly, many of us also understand that people run (or walk) marathons for many diff erent reasons: someone may be a cancer survivor (or running in the memory of a cancer victim), have lost a signifi cant amount of weight, have overcome signifi cant adversity in life, or simply want to be more active and a part of a special event — a marathon. In reality, the percentage of Americans participating in marathons in 2008 was just over 0.1 percent, up slightly from 0.06 percent in 1980 — both very small numbers. Shouldn’t we celebrate the fact that more and more people are becoming involved? Let’s get rid of exclusionary lingo and invite more into our sport — there is still pride saying that you ran a marathon!
— ED KORNOELJE / GRAND RAPIDS, MI
In a country where obesity and its accompanying diseases like diabe-tes, heart disease and cancer are running rampant, those who train for and fi nish a marathon by walking part of it and in any amount of time should feel proud of themselves. Ms. Wald wants to know how low the bar is? Th e “bar” will be trampled under the feet of the mar-athon walkers and joggers and Adrienne Wald can suck it!
— NEALE ORINICK / LONE TREE, CO
Th e quote by A. Wald was not “quoteworthy.” It was rude and stuck up. I fi nished my fi rst marathon in 6 hours and although I was laugh-ing with the joy of my accomplishment, I do not believe my eff ort was a joke. How about this for a quote? “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” Yeah, I know it it’s a hokey quote that will not likely impress snobbish elitists, but I think it is the classics that should endure.
— MARK BULLOCK / VICENZA, ITALY
I was disappointed but not surprised to see the quote on page 9 of the Jan/Feb 2010 edition of your magazine from Adrienne Wald, bemoaning running times in marathons. Perhaps Ms. Wald should join a sport that has much higher barriers to entry such as cycling, swimming, or even football. She, and others who continually call for higher standards for BQs should worry about their times and their races, not anybody else’s. One thing that separates runners from other endurance athletes is that most of them don’t enter races to win but to participate. Regardless of those naysayers, there is evi-dence that with the rising tide of runners, we are getting a bunch of better runners. Th e article in the same issue of your magazine by ROGER ROBINSON, “Th e Surge Below the Surface,” shows that the 2009 vs. 2008 fi nishing times are much higher: many more people breaking time barriers such as 3:30 and 4:00.
— TROY BOLLINGER / MADISON, WI
I was disturbed and deeply saddened to read the quote from Adrienne Wald regarding slower runners and walkers making a joke of the mar-athon distance. As a veteran of over 30 ultramarathons, including two 100 mile races, I am by no means a speed demon (perhaps some-what ironically I have never run a road marathon), but I would call myself as a reasonably “serious” runner. I am personally delighted that so many people are taking up the challenge of completing a marathon. One of the reasons I left road running to focus on ultras was the remarkably supportive, positive environment. At ultras, world class runners like SCOTT JUREK make a practice of sticking around at the finish line to cheer on slower runners as they fin-ish…often 10–15 hours later! I really wish this trend would catch on among the elite of road running as I think it sends a powerful, posi-tive message. By contrast, the message that Coach Wald is sending, as a collegiate coach and mentor to young runners, is troubling to say the least. Perhaps she can take “pride” in her marathons by sten-ciling her time onto her fi nishers shirts.
— ETHAN VENEKLASEN / DANVILLE, CA
After reading Adrienne’s comment about marathon running times I agree with her wholeheartedly. Like her, I felt running a mara-thon was a special accomplishment. And I once told myself that when the day came that I couldn’t break 4:30, I would quit running marathons. My fi rst was a 3:42 in 1974; my last was 4:34 in Albany in 2006. My PR is 3:07. I am now 75 years old and I can’t understand walking 26.2 miles and saying I ran a marathon. After 25 marathons I have decided to give back to the sport that has done so much for me, both physically and joyfully. I have helped a few runners here in California accomplish that sub-4:30 goal.
— LEONARD R. GUERE / CALIFORNIA CITY, CA
KEEP THE CONVERSATION GOING.Join us on our new blogs. Go to runningtimes.com/blogs/member.
08 / RUNNINGTIMES_APRIL 2010
LETTERS
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I can’t understand how an apparent lifelong runner like Adrienne Wald can be so callous and elitist about the way that others choose to run a marathon. It’s fair to say that the 6-hour marathoner doesn’t deserve nearly the respect that a sub-3:00 marathoner might get, but the 6-hour marathoner is hardly a joke. In the big picture, unless a runner is a truly elite marathoner vying for big prize money, big sponsorships and championship medals, then he or she is just another also-ran who laced them up for some personally defi ned measure of satisfaction Th e 2:40 marathoner should just be happy that he or she can probably get back to the hotel and shower with-out asking for the late checkout that the 6-hour marathoner needs.I think Adrienne’s right; the bar has been lowered, but not in the way she meant. Th e marathon has been demystifi ed. Running a mara-thon is not the ultimate running accomplishment after all. Racing a marathon, on the other hand, is a diff erent animal, and many aver-age runners don’t know the diff erence; I think this may be what she was aiming to say. I’d agree but that still doesn’t demean the basic accomplishment of becoming a marathoner.
— BOBBY LOCKHART / NEW TAZEWELL, TN
Editor’s response: We published Ms. Wald’s quote to refl ect the feel-ing of competitive runners who have seen the marathon change from a daunting, long-term goal that one worked up to over several years to something people complete within their fi rst year of running with minimal training. Th at said, we were surprised by the num-ber of readers who took off ense at the quote, and agreed with many of the points made. In hindsight, we should not have run the quote
without a larger context, and should not have run a quote that refer-enced fi nishing times. While Running Times is aimed at competitive runners of all ages, that group is delineated by attitude, not time.
ONE–STEPPERSIn Scott Douglas’ January/February article on BOAZ CHEBOIYWO, some terminology was used that I am not familiar with. Might you explain “one – stepping?”
— ERIC BOLES / DEXTER, MO
Scott Douglas responds: You’re lucky, as it sounds like you’ve never experienced the joys of running with a one-stepper. One-stepping is when you’re running with someone and, even though you’re sup-posed to be going down the road side by side, he or she is always one step ahead of you pushing the pace ever so slightly, perhaps with-out even knowing it. (As a reformed one-stepper, I can vouch for the last part, as I was unaware of my tendency to one-step until it was pointed out to me, and I certainly didn’t mean to.)
Jonathan Beverly adds: I can vouch that Scott is only a semi-reformed one-stepper, no matter what he says.
WRITE TO US.Send your emails to [email protected] with your address included. Letters may be edited for clarity and brevity.
RUNNINGTIMES / 09
MARATHON FINISHING TIMES • ONE-STEPPERS
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IT’S THE FINAL MILE of the 2009 Bank of America Chicago Marathon and 23-year-old DREW SHACKLETON surges on his identical twin brother, KYLE.
After matching strides for 25 miles and clicking off a steady streak of splits between 5:14 and 5:16, Kyle, a veteran of one marathon, responds to within striking distance of his brother. Drew, making his debut at the distance, surges again, this time out-stretching his twin to the fi nish line by 3 mere ticks, 2:17:56 to 2:17:59.
Th e brothers, who ran track and cross country for UCLA, fi nished as the fourth and fi fth Americans (13t and 14t overall), and as one of history’s fastest set of twins racing in the same marathon. (SHIGERU
and TAKESHI SOH of Japan hold the unoffi cial record with their 1983 Fukuoka performances of 2:09:11 and 2:09:17, respectively, while the fastest Americans are CASEY and PATRICK MOULTON with their 2006 Austin Marathon performances of 2:15:26 and 2:15:35, respectively.)
Th e Shackleton brothers have had the luxury of having a built-in training partner all of their lives, but they each also have a robust competitive streak because of it.
“I was telling people that the 3 seconds was the result of me just wanting to get the race over with more than Kyle,” Drew says, add-ing that he was in desperate need of a pit stop at a porta-potty.
With his fi nal track season at UCLA around the bend, but no eli-gibility left in his fi fth year for cross country like his brother, Kyle debuted at the 2008 New York City Marathon, fi nishing 17t in 2:20:38.
“My experience in New York hurt me there because I was so afraid of pushing too hard and breaking down. I ended up holding back,” he says. “Drew was sort of naïve in a way and he didn’t know what
the last half mile was going to feel like, so he pushed it like you normally do at the end of a track race. He was braver than I was.”
Drew jokes that Kyle should have warned him about the fi nal half mile, but both brothers emphasize that, sibling rivalry aside, they worked as a team and that their primary goals were to help each other run sub-2:19 and qualify for the 2012 Olympic trials, and also to raise awareness and funds for the MICHAEL J. FOX
FOUNDATION, a foundation dedicated to curing Parkinson’s dis-ease. (Th e Shackletons’ grandfather, whom they cite as their biggest fan, has lived with Parkinson’s for more than 10 years. Wearing blue
“Team Fox” jerseys on race day, Kyle and Drew raised over $20,000 and donated their combined $5,000 time bonuses.)
While many elite-level college athletes typically hone their leg speed on the track after capping off their college careers, the Shackletons transitioned directly into the marathon.
“Th e longer the distance that had been introduced to them, the bet-ter they performed,” says ERIC PETERSON, their distance coach at UCLA who is now coaching at Tulane. “Th ey have the right mind-set
QUOTEWORTHY
“If it’s the case where I can get a few more hours of sleep before a race or study for a test to get an A-minus or a B-plus, I will get the sleep.”
— STANFORD SOPHOMORE CHRIS DERRICK, WHO PLACED THIRD AT THE NCAA CROSS COUNTRY
CHAMPIONSHIPS ON NOV. 23 IN TERRE HAUTE, IND.
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— STA
CHAM
Continued on page 12
The Shackletons (Drew, Kyle) earned spots in the 2012 Olympic trials.
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SHACKLETON TWINS EYE 2012 OLYMPIC TRIALS
BY BRIDGET MONTGOMERY
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SHORTS TWIN MARATHON RACERS • QUOTEWORTHY
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for the marathon, and they are athletes I consider to be ‘grinders.’ Th ey bring it every day, and they were not born with great tal-ent — they’re self-made guys, and they have done it the old-fashioned way by believing in themselves.”
Marathon training for Kyle and Drew con-sists of three primary components: long runs, tempo runs and consistency. Self-coached, running all singles and fresh from PRs in the 10K last spring (Kyle ran a 29:02 and Drew a 29:09), they maintained their college vol-ume of 80–100 miles per week — even while backpacking through Europe for several weeks last summer — but they shifted their intensity from intervals on the track to aer-obic-building runs on the roads.
“We try to keep it simple for training,” explains Kyle, who sought advice from UCLA alum MEB KEFLEZIGHI and Meb’s coach, BOB
LARSEN. “We took a simplifi ed version of what we were hearing from everyone, and we really focused on the long run and pushing
the second half. Th e long run was the most important thing, and the second most important was to get in a threshold run.”
Th e Shackletons built their Sunday long run to 22 miles, starting at 6:00 pace for the fi rst half and moving faster than 5:40 pace for the second half. Every Th ursday was a tempo run of up to 12 miles at slightly faster than marathon race pace, and the other fi ve days consisted of 11– to 13-mile runs between 6:20–6:30 pace.
“We would feel awful after some of those tempos and long runs and it felt never-ending sometimes,” says Drew. “Training did change a lot from college even though the weekly mileage stayed consistent.” When factoring in the sheer fatigue of marathon-specifi c tempos and long runs, Drew admits he did not “anticipate how much dif-ferent the training philosophy would be.”
If things go well in 2012, Kyle and Drew might consider devoting themselves full-time to running professionally. In the meantime, they’re juggling their training schedules with their full-time account-ing jobs at KPMG (Kyle) and Deloitte & Touche (Drew).
“I think every marathoner at our level with our background dreams of doing what BRIAN SELL did,” says Drew. “He was not a world-class athlete — he did not break 10 minutes in the 2-mile in high school; it goes to show that the marathon is a completely diff erent sport. People like us hope we can run under 2:12.” •
BOLT VS. BEKELE ? (WE HOPE SO!)
W e can see it now: KENENISA BEKELE racing USAIN BOLT in a middle-distance race somewhere short of 800m for a $1 million purse. If a 700m race became a reality this year, would Bekele push the pace early — say 51 seconds for 400m and 1:16 through 600m — to try to soften Bolt’s deadly kick? Or would Bolt purposely cruise through the fi rst quarter in a pedestrian-like 54 seconds, knowing he could
probably kick down a jackrabbit over the fi nal 300m after going out so slowly? Nothing was planned between the world’s top two runners as of mid-winter, according to agents JOS HERMENS and RICKY SIMMS, but that doesn’t mean we can’t dream about it until each of the stars returns to
action in this summer’s IAAF Diamond League series. (If it was up to us, we’d say have them race at Hayward Field in Eugene as part of the July 3 Prefontaine Classic and maybe throw in American 800m star and electrifying hometown hero NICK SYMMONDS just
for grins.) In the meantime, here’s how track and fi eld’s two biggest stars match up in the tale of the tape.
USAIN BOLTJAMAICA
KENENISA BEKELEETHIOPIA
23 AGE 27
6-foot-5 / 210 pounds HEIGHT/WEIGHT 5-foot-3 / 120 pounds
100m/200m records and championships MOST KNOWN FOR 5,000m/10,000m reco rds and championships
ran fi nal 100m of a 150m sanctioned UK street race in a blazing 8.70 seconds last year
CLOSING SPEEDwon 2008 Olympic gold at 10,000m by scorching fi nal 400m in 53.42
2007 World Championships in Osaka, 200m
(fi nished a distant second to Tyson Gay)LAST SIGNIFICANT LOSS
2007 World Cross Country Championships in Kenya (he dropped out because of the heat)
being a hip-hop party DJ ALSO EXCELS AT cross country (11 world titles)
Caribbean nations lack independent anti-doping federation
DRUG RUMORS BECAUSEfi ancée (and world-class runner) ALEM TECHALE died mysteriously of a heart attack in 2005
Manchester United soccer club A BIG FAN OFEthiopian actress DANAWIT GEBREGZIABHER
whom he married in 2007
Sports Illustrated, 2010 IAAF calendar ON THE COVER OF Running Times, Jan/Feb 2010
45.28 400M PR 48.5
1:47 BEST GUESS FOR 800M 1:43
BOB MARLEY COUNTRY’S OTHER TOP CELEB HAILE GEBRSELASSIE
go unnoticed in public WILL PROBABLY NEVER make an appearance on Letterman or Leno’s TV show
Qatar Athletic Super Grand PrixMay 14, Doha, Qatar
LIKELY NEXT BIG EVENTIAAF World Cross Country Championships
March 27, Bydgoszcz, Poland
will challenge 400m world record U LTIMATELY will challenge marathon world record
TWO OF A KIND Continued from page 11
Fierce competitors, but still brothers.
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JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2010 // ISSUE 373
HIT THE HILLS HARD: 3 WORKOUTS FOR FAST FITNESS
KENENISA BEKELEKENEE ENISAA BEKELEEKTOPS THE WORLD — AGAIN
KK
TIME TO SHAKE UP YOUR TRAINING
FIND FINDD
FRESH LEGS IN 2010
BUILD STRENGTH AND SPEED SAFELY
OFF-SEASON TRAINING
7 7 ESSENTIALS 77 ESSE ENTIALFOR RUNNING IN THE DARK WORLD'S GREATEST RUNNER?
WORLD'SGREATEST RUNNE BEKELE + RUNNERS OF THE YEAR TOP 10 IN THE WORLD/U.S.
BEKEKELE L+ RUNNERSOFTHEYEAR
VS. GEBRSELASSIE
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SHORTS TWIN MARATHON RACERS • BOLT VS. BEKELE?
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On those same Central Park roads where he pulled away from four-time Boston winner ROBERT CHERUIYOT to secure his historic win, Kefl ezighi had experienced one of the worst days of his running life, placing eighth in the Olympic trials marathon while run-ning with what was later diagnosed as a stress fracture of his hip. He had an off year
in 2008 (fi nishing 13t in the Olympic trials at 10,000m) and, at 33, some fi gured his best racing was behind him.
But he found the fountain of youth last year and won national titles at 7 miles, the half marathon and cross country, and set PRs in the marathon (2:09:15 at London) and half marathon (1:01:01 at San Jose Rock ‘n’ Roll). Heading into the New York City Marathon (which doubled as a U.S. championship race), he was as fi t as he’d ever been.
“It was defi nitely the best buildup I’ve ever had for a major race,” he says. “Every other time I’d always wished I’d had a couple more weeks or had done a few more tempo runs or something. But going into New York I knew I had covered all the bases. I was ready.”
While Keflezighi works just as hard as any top marathoner, the biggest change in his training after the trials disaster was an increased emphasis on strength, fl exibility, form and range of motion. “From January to March of 2008 I’d be getting therapy and doing strengthening at 7 a.m. every day,” he says. “When I started, I couldn’t even lift three pounds with my legs.”
In addition, Kefl ezighi began doing drills more regularly, under the guidance of DAN
PFAFF, perhaps the foremost biomechani-cal guru in the U.S., at the USOC Training Center in Chula Vista, Calif. “I’m a good lis-tener,” Kefl ezighi says. “When someone gives me good advice, I’ll take it.”
According to Kefl ezighi, “running an hour and a half every day is the easy part. It’s the
other non-running stuff you do that makes the diff erence.” When training in Mammoth, Kefl ezighi, RYAN HALL and the rest of the crew are famous for taking long post-run soaks in the frigid mountain streams. Such devotion to the ancillary activities of run-ning are often the diff erence between staying healthy and being injured, he believes.
“When you’re training at a high level like we are, you’re always pushing the envelope,” he says. “Sometimes you fi nd yourself going over the edge, and you’ve got to pull back and recover.”
Besides his appearances on TV, in parades, and at a New York Knicks game, Kefl ezighi’s two-month marathon tour took him to Florida and San Diego, where he was hon-ored at halftime of a football game at his old high school. “Th at was really an honor, as special as any of the other things,” he says.
Finally returning to Mammoth over the winter holidays, Kefl ezighi eased back into training in preparation for his next mara-thon, a rematch with Hall in Boston, where both have fi nished third, Hall last year and Kefl ezighi in 2006.
“I really hope Ryan and I go 1–2 at Boston,” says Kef lezighi, who turns 35 on May 5.
“Whichever one wins, I know the other will be happy for him.” •
Stronger,Rejuvenated
MEBFOR MEB KEFLEZIGHI, becoming the fi rst American man to win the ING New York City Marathon in 28 years last November was another peak in the career of a runner who has won Olympic silver and set the American 10,000m record. And the view from the top, which included reading the Top 10 list on “Late Night With David Letterman” and riding in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade with Miss America, had to be particularly sweet given the valley he’d been through much of the previous two years.
DON’T RUNBOSTON 50K
Didn’t get in to Boston this year? Or are you looking for something diff erent to break up the routine of running in from Hopkinton again? Either way, the aptly named Don’t Run Boston 50K on April 18 in Milton, Mass., is a pretty good alternative. Now in its 14th year, it’s run the morning before the Boston Marathon on the winding and hilly trails at the Blue Hills Reservation. (Beware: there’s more than 5,000 feet of total vertical gain.) It’s organized by the Trail Animals Running Club, a small, local group of hard-core trail runners that operate by the “keep it simple, stupid” philosophy and accordingly (and refreshingly) don’t charge for races or provide aid stations. Expect a rigorous and rugged self-supported training run with maybe two dozen runners,not to mention sore legs while you watch that other notable — and consider-ably larger — race the next day. For more, visit trailanimals.com
BY JIM GERWECK
Can Kefl ezighi pull off a NYC/Boston double?
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MEB KEFLEZIGHI SETS SIGHTS
ON BOSTON
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SHOWCASE RACE
14 / RUNNINGTIMES_APRIL 2010
SHORTS MEB SETS SIGHTS ON BOSTON • SHOWCASE RACE
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GEAR
MUSIC on the RunRUNNING A RACE wearing an mp3 player is a rather polarizing topic nowadays, thanks to shifting race rules and perceived ignorance of race etiquette. But, up until now, the biggest practical hindrances to listening to music on a training run or during a hard workout have been poor sound quality, the inability for ear buds to stay in place while running fast and safety issues. These newfangled gizmos have somewhat solved those dilemmas.
SEE HOW THEY DRILLFrom the picture-is-worth-a-thousand-words department comes this new DVD from coach and Running Times columnist GREG MCMILLAN. “Drills for Distance Runners” demonstrates at several angles and s peeds how to do 11 tech-nique drills that many elites use before hard workouts and races.
Intellectual honesty compels us to note that showing how to properly do
exercises is one area in which a well-made video trumps print. In “Drills for Distance Runners” you get to watch 2:10 marathoner BRETT
GOTCHER and Olympic trials steepler LINDSAY ANDERSON work through a simple routine that should help you be better prepared to tackle a tough speed workout. As McMillan explains, the drills are also great to do after a few easy runs per week to further improve your run-ning form and have you looking more like Gotcher and Anderson and less like the neighborhood slogger.
“Drills for Distance Runners” costs $29.99 and can be ordered from mcmillanrunning.com. For that price, you get McMillan’s distilled wisdom on how to most eff ectively add this important element to your training.
iBLINK HIGH FIDELITY EAR BUDS $25
It might seem a bit of a novelty to have earbuds and a mid-cord volume control switch that fl ash a colorful light in time with this system’s music, but iBlink headphones do off er some degree of safety given that you can be easily spotted on after-dark runs. Three sizes of rubbery earbud covers allow for a semi-customizable fi t and optimal sound quality.
myblinkusa.com
SENNHEISER/ADIDAS PMX 680
HEADPHONES $80
Of the four headphones in the new sweat-resistant sport line from Sennheiser and adidas, this neck-band model was the best. All have similar staying power, audio clarity and Kevlar-reinforced cables, but this one was so subtly secure during a fartlek run on rolling trails that it was easy to forget it was there. sennheiserusa.com
YURBUDS EARBUD
ENHANCERS $30
YurBuds are small rubbery adapters that allow common round, white earbuds to stay in place while running and also enhance an MP3 play-er’s sound. The asymmetrical funnel-shaped adapters come in three sizes tha t allow you to match the size and shape of your outer ear. yurbuds.com
GREAT GIZMO: ADIDAS MICOACHThe new adidas miCoach interactive training system might be looked at as a long-awaited answer to the Nike Plus mileage tracking system, only it’s more complex and is more applicable to competitive runners. The system
has two heart-rate monitor training devices: the entry-level miCoach Zone ($66), which has
a pulsing-LED heart-rate zone indicator to guide a runner through a workout;
and the more dynamic miCoach Pacer ($140), which allows a runner to download workouts and sync results with the coaching tools at adidas.com/micoach. The Pacer includes a triaxial accelerometer stride pacer and heart-rate moni-tor that measures speed, distance and stride rate, while also off ering real-time audio feedback and con-
nectivity to any MP3 player. The miCoach system has six goal-based
categories covering all skill and expe-rience levels and off ers more than 3,000
customizable training plans.
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SHORTS RUNNING HEADPHONES • MIXED MEDIA
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LIZZY HAWKER
WEARING THE REFRAXION JACKET
IN VALLORCINE, FRANCE
YOU CAN ALWAYS COUNT ON RUNNING, but you have to actually go running to feelthe benefi ts. Sometimes, that fi rst step out the door is the hardest. You can always count on
the Refraxion Jacket to eliminate those reasons that might prevent what is always a good run.thenorthface.com
Or better, be thankful you are running in the fi rst era to understand nutritional science.
Th ose aforementioned nutritional follies all aff ected marathon history. In the 1908 Olympic marathon in London, Canadian TOM LONGBOAT, the 1907 Boston Marathon winner, was closing on the leaders, but at 15 miles was given champagne to quench his thirst and was out of the race two miles later. In the 1904 Olympic marathon in St. Louis, unknown FELIX CARVAJAL (Cuba) looked a likely winner at 20 miles but stopped to eat a bowl of fresh fruit, and suff ered convulsive stomach cramps. He fi nished fourth.
A victory at the Boston Marathon would have been the highlight of the life of JOCK
SEMPLE, the impoverished Scot who loved that race with such passion. But in 1934, when he was one of the favorites, he fol-lowed the wisdom of the time, and ate a fat 2-inch steak an hour before the start, to “for-tify” himself. By Commonwealth Avenue, he was crippled by nausea, his dream in tatters.
AMBY BURFOOT lost a fi rst chance at vic-tory in Boston in 1967 by succumbing to a craving for lashings of apple butter at dinner the night before. He spent much of the race making pit-stops. Unlike Semple, Burfoot won the following year.
But the most famous example of his-tory being made by mistaken nutritional beliefs was the heart-rending collapse of England’s JIM PETERS in the hot-weather 1954 Commonwealth Games marathon in Vancouver, when the heat-exhausted world record-holder reeled and sagged helplessly halfway around the stadium, finally fall-ing unconscious 200 yards from the tape. I learned recently from sources close to Peters at that time that he believed you should take in no water for 24 hours, and none during the race, and he aggravated that folly by chew-ing salt tablets. It was a common belief. When the Princeton Packet interviewed the great 1930s miler BILL BONTHRON in 1982, he told them “fried foods were forbidden, as were bananas, and any water for 24 hours before a race.” Amazing.
Lacking our knowledge, and our access to varied food sources, earlier ages took an approach to nutrition that was derived more from instinct than science. Water seems weakening, steak seems fortifying. Th e ancient Greeks used to award cattle as race prizes, a custom that lasted into England in the 1700s, when one rural games staged an annual women’s race called “Lady of the Lamb.” The earliest training man-ual of the modern era, WALTER THOM’s
“Pedestrianism” (1813), again advocates “animal diet” but no vegetables, “as they are watery.”
Now we know better. In the marathon, water is strength. Peters would almost cer-tainly have capped his career with a gold medal in 1954 if he’d taken water. Instead, he never ran again, one of the last victims of primitive mistaken beliefs about nutrition. •
ROGER ROBINSON’s Footsteps column chron-icles great moments in distance running.
THE LIST
ALL-TIME U.S. MEN’S MARATHONERSP erhaps the most notable name miss-
ing from this list is FRANK SHORTER, who won Olympic gold in 1972 and
silver in 1976 but whose fastest mara-thon was 2:10:30. Also absent are DATHAN
RITZENHEIN, who was ninth at the 2008 Olympics and ran a 2:10:00 PR at London last spring but has yet to crack into the top 20; and ALAN CULPEPPER, who ran a debut of 2:09:41 in 2002 at Chicago and later won the 2004 Olympic trials marathon and placed 12th at the Olympics yet never ran faster over 26.2 miles. But forget the notion that you can’t run a fast time on Boston’s hilly, downhill course: Six of America’s best set their PRs there. Can RYAN HALL or MEB KEFLEZIGHI better their marks there on April 19?
01 KHALID KHANNOU CHI*
2:05:38, London, 2002
02 RYAN HALL
2:06:17, London, 2008
03 BOB KEMPAINEN
2:08:47, Boston, 1994
04 ALBERTO SALAZAR
2:08:52, Boston, 1982
05 DICK BEARDSLEY
2:08:54, Boston, 1982
06 ABDI ABDIRAHMAN
2:08:56, Chicago, 2006
07 GREG MEYER
2:09:00, Boston, 1983
08 MEB KEFLEZIGHI
2:09:15, New York, 2009
09 BILL RODGERS
2:09:28, Boston, 1979
10 RON TABB
2:09:31,Boston, 1983
*Khannouchi owns fi ve of the seven fastest marathon times in U.S. history, while Hall owns the other two.
Dehydration hamstrung Jim Peters in 1954.
FOOTSTEPS BY ROGER ROBINSON
STEAK, CHAMPAGNEand Apple Butter
HOW WRONG NUTRITIONCHANGED MARATHON HISTORY
FOR YOUR NEXT MARATHON, try this: no water for 24 hours before or during the race. Oodles of apple butter the night before. One hour before, eat a fat 2-inch steak. If it’s hot, drink champagne at mile 15. At 20 miles, eat a meal of fruit.
FLEZIGHI
New York, 2009
DGERS
Boston, 1979
BB
Boston, 1983
fi ve of the athon times ile Hall owns
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SHORTS NUTRITION AND MARATHON HISTORY • ALL-TIME U.S. MARATHON LIST
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TAMARA RICE LAVE, Ph.D., represented the U.S. in the marathon at the 2003 IAAF World Track and Field Championships in Paris.
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Being in theMomentSHUT DOWN YOUR BRAIN AND JUST BELIEVE
A FEW YEARS BACK, I was talking with Joaquim Cruz about his performance in the 800m at the 1984 Olympics. For those of you who don’t know, Joaquim won gold in Los Angeles and then silver four years later in Seoul. It’s not often that I get the chance to talk with an Olympic champion, so I was eager to hear details about the race. “When did you know that you were going to win?” I asked about that August race. “February,” Joaquim responded.
February! I was stunned. I had expected Joaquim to discuss the fi nal moments of the race, but he believed he would win months in advance. What amazing focus and confi -dence! How do you develop that kind of faith in yourself?
For an answer, I turned to Harvard women’s basketball coach Kathy Delaney-Smith, who led her underdog team to defeat Stanford at the 1998 NCAA tournament, the only time that a No. 16 seed has ever beaten a No. 1 seed. Kathy’s success stems from her “act as if” philosophy, that you should always act as if you already are what you want to become. “Act as if you’re not tired. Act as if you’re confi dent. Act as if you’re the best player because if you can do that, then you can get really and truly closer to it,” she told me. To that end, Kathy creates a positive atmosphere by making practices challenging but fun and focusing on players’ body language and posture. She prohibits players from yawning at practice and requires them to get up within three seconds after falling. Kathy knows it hurts, but she wants them to get past the pain. “We’re all too busy verbalizing and saying what’s wrong when we could be stronger and better if we envision what’s right.”
Olympic gold medalist Billy Mills embraced a similar philoso-phy when he shocked the world by winning the 10,000m at the 1964 Olympics. Mills entered the race with a qualifying time that was almost a minute slower than that of Australian Ron Clarke; yet he managed to convince himself that he could win by using “a form of self-hypnosis” in which for four years he “visualized [winning] dozens of times a day.” When the moment arrived, Mills was ready. In third place with less than 200 meters to go, Mills directed all of his energy toward winning. “Coming off the fi nal curve, I could not hear any noise at all, I could hear the throbbing of my heart; I could hear the heartbeat pounding. I could feel a tingling sensa-tion creeping down my forearm, my vision coming and going, but my thoughts changing from ‘One more try, one more try,’ to ‘I can win, I can win, I can win.’”
Athletes like Cruz and Mills excelled in part because they were able to stay fi rmly planted in the present. Richard D. Ginsburg, Ph.D., co-director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Performance and Character Excellence in Sports Institute of Sport Psychology and a faculty member of the Harvard Medical School, explained to me, “Th e fundamental part of sports psychology is being in the moment. If you can be in your body, focused and in the moment, you can do everything to your best. You can’t think about what hap-pened or what will happen, but you have to focus on this stride and on this breath. Athletes who get ahead of themselves can get para-lyzed with anxiety and stress.”
Confi dence. Th e kind that let Joaquim Cruz know he was going to win Olympic gold months in advance. Th e type that empowered a bunch of Harvard underdogs to topple mighty Stanford. Th e sort that motivated Billy Mills to PR by more than 50 seconds, setting an Olympic record at the time. We can all foster this kind of con-fi dence; we just need to shut off our brains and practice believing in ourselves. •
How do you develop that kind of faith in yourself?
20 / RUNNINGTIMES_APRIL 2010
THE RUNNER’S WITNESS BY TAMARA RICE LAVE
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GREG MCMILLAN is an exercise physiologist and USATF-certifi ed coach who helps runners via his Web site mcmillanrunning.com.
What’s most interesting is not the diff erences between the various groups of athletes but rather the similarities. Over my 20 years of coaching, I’ve noticed fi ve key traits of suc-cessful distance runners. Th ese traits apply to everyone — beginners just joining the sport; competitive folks who balance work, family and other commitments with their running goals; and Olympic-level athletes.
01 Don’t
Dwell
Every long-time runner has experienced this phenomenon: week after week of great runs suddenly interrupted by one of the worst workouts in years, for no logical rea-son. I’ve found that the most successful athletes don’t dwell on the bad days; instead, they’re eager to move on to the next day’s training or upcoming race. Successful run-ners know that bad days don’t last and aren’t a true indication of their fi tness. Bad days are just a freak occurrence that must be tol-erated on the path to your goals. Running is hard but fun, and that short statement should tell us that there will be good days and there will be bad days. Live through both. Neither lasts forever.
A personal example: I work with two out-standing athletes who took their fitness to new levels in 2009. One went on to win a national championship. Th e other never raced to his potential. Th e diff erence was in their outlook. The national champion endured a few bad workouts and races but let them slide. The underperformer also endured a few bad workouts and races but couldn’t get past them. He was training with other athletes who were having great
success. He was accomplishing workouts that he never dreamed he could do. He was recovering quickly and was not overtrained. But when we talked, his attitude was, “Yeah, but …” We’d talk about the hundred great workouts he’d done but he’d follow that with, “Yeah, but that tempo run last month really went poorly. I don’t know if I’m in great shape.” Clearly, this “dweller” will never achieve what the national champion did, and it has nothing to do with training. It has to do with mindset.
02 Find Your Sweet
Spot in Training
Successful training is about finding the balance in your stress/rest cycle. Training (and much of life) is stressful. It depletes your body’s energy stores. It stresses your muscles, ligaments, tendons, and bones. In short, training tears down your body. With rest, however, your body builds back stronger than before. The trick is to find the train-ing rhythm where your stress/rest cycle is in balance — where you’re having positive workout followed by positive workout, suc-cessful week followed by successful week. In fact, if we’re smart (and this is what I do as a coach), we set up the training from the out-set to be positive.
Th is can be tricky due to the unpredict-ability of our other life stresses (work, family, etc.), but if you fi nd a training routine where nearly every one of your workouts and races is positive then you’re in balance. If you fi nd that you frequently have poor/unpredict-able workouts or races, or are often injured, then your training (or life) stress is too great. You are under-recovering and should add
a bit more recovery to your plan. Progress things as your body adapts but think con-stantly about balance so that you can have successful training. Successful workouts lead to greater and greater motivation, which leads to better and better racing.
03 Focus on
Consistency
Once you fi nd your sweet spot, you can train consistently week after week, month after month and year after year. Th is “stacking” of successful training week on top of successful training week will lead you to your full poten-tial. Injuries and illness from overtraining cut short your improvement so structure your training with the long-term in mind.
We have a saying in our Olympic train-ing team that you must train consistently for two straight years — no unscheduled inter-ruptions due to injury or illness — to even begin to see how good you can be. Th is real-ity applies to all of us. A year of consistent running is more benefi cial than a few stel-lar weeks of training.
04 Be
Tenacious
Successful runners are tenacious (some of our loved ones would even say stubborn). Success is about keeping on keeping on. Put one foot in front of the other for long enough and the fi nish line will come. You have the ability to go to greater heights than you ever dreamed of — just by sticking with it. A little stubbornness can be a great attribute when you’re in the middle miles of a marathon. Foster tenaciousness in small ways every day.
05 Build Your
Confi dence Constantly
Th e most important key to success is confi -dence. You know the workouts and training rhythm that give you confidence. It’s a good idea to include these types of training throughout your year to keep you motivated. It’s also a good idea to put confi dence-build-ing workouts close to your key races. Th e last six weeks before a key race like a marathon should include all your favorite, confi-dence-building workouts. Don’t just follow a training plan because that’s what’s “accepted wisdom.” Instead, tinker with your training and add as well as omit workouts that just don’t work for you. •
The Five Habitsof Highly Effective RunnersTHE KEYS TO SUCCESS FOR ALL LEVELS OF RUNNERS
I’M A LUCKY COACH. Through my online coaching, I get to work with beginning runners just coming off the couch as well as competitive run-ners aiming for age-group victories or trying to qualify for Boston. And through my work with our Olympic training team in Flagstaff, I get to help Olympians and world championship-level athletes.
22 / RUNNINGTIMES_APRIL 2010
PERFORMANCE PAGE BY GREG MCMILLAN, M.S.
Performance Page RFB 22.indd 22 2/9/10 12:39 AM
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OWNER’S MANUAL DYNAMIC STRETCHING
THE BENEFITS OF SWITCHING FROM STATIC TO DYNAMIC STRETCHING
JIMMY FALLON ONCE SAID, “Don’t keep reach-ing for the stars because you’ll just look like an idiot stretching that way for no reason.” Turns out he may be right. New research indicates that the fl exibility that is a byproduct of pre-run static stretching may be a bio-mechanical factor that hurts running economy, which is a measure of your overall effi ciency. Do something to worsen your running economy before a race or workout, and you’re going to go slower. That’s why growing num-bers of elites have eliminated static stretching before their most important runs and replaced it with a series of dynamic stretching exercises.
A study published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research in 2009 explains the logic behind the switch. Researchers at Nebraska Wesleyan University enlisted male and female colle-giate distance runners to complete sit-and-reach tests to measure fl exibility, and then put them on a treadmill to determine running economy. Th e result: An increase in hamstring fl exibility generally correlated with a decrease in running economy.
As the researchers wrote, “[T]he less fl exible distance runners tended to be more economical, possibly as a result of the energy-effi -cient function of the elastic components in the muscles and tendons during the stretch-shortening cycle.”
RALPH REIFF, a licensed athletic trainer and director of sports performance for St. Vincent Hospital of Indianapolis, has worked with collegiate and elite runners for many years. He explains that static stretching isn’t all bad, but from a performance perspective,
“static stretching causes an inhibition or a breakdown of the excitabil-ity of the muscle tissue.” Th e immediate eff ects from static stretching
actually include decreased muscle function.“To get a good static stretch you are asking the body on a subconscious
level to relax,” says Reiff . “From a muscle-recruitment standpoint, you don’t want to turn the muscles off in a relaxed state prior to asking them to perform. Th e elastic energy of a tighter muscle is going to have more recoil and power than a heavily stretched muscle.
Th e caveat is that simply eliminating static stretching won’t nec-essarily increase performance and decrease injury. Th is is where dynamic stretching comes in. Rather than standing in one place and forcing your muscles to stretch, this type of stretching trains the muscles to warm up and fi re the way you want them to through a series of dynamic movements.
Under the tutelage of Reiff , Team Indiana Elite, a post-collegiate program out of Bloomington, Ind., has adopted a regular dynamic stretching routine. Speaking about a set of dynamic stretches and pre-activation drills developed by Reiff , Team Indiana’s STEPHEN
HAAS says, “I think it has really helped. I’ve done more mileage and better workouts than I ever did in college and I’ve somehow been able to stay healthy.”
Overall, the 13-member team has had no major injuries since forming three years ago. Haas, a 2:18 marathoner and 130-mile-a-week runner says, “It’s all about getting every muscle in the lower leg, upper leg, hip, butt, and glutes activated.” Th e team performs dynamic stretches before every run and race.
Team Indiana’s coach, ROBERT CHAPMAN, explains, “Basically, by engaging in these activities, we can neurologically activate spe-cifi c muscle groups prior to running, which helps us minimize injuries and perform better in the subsequent workout.” As seen with Chapman’s runners, dynamic stretching can assist in better-ing performance, while simultaneously reducing injuries.
On a physiological level, Reiff also describes dynamic stretching as a way to stimulate the neurological system, which in turn activates the muscles. Th is, he explains, makes them more resilient to exter-nal stimulus, which leads to a quicker neurological response, “so the muscle is standing ready when called upon to run faster, jump higher, and do what the athlete wants it to do.”
A DYNAMIC APPROACH“Th e dynamic warm-up piece is truly like turning a light switch on before walking into a dark room,” contends Reiff . Dynamic stretches that include quick-paced movements like bounding, jumping, and sin-gle-leg swings help to fi re up the muscles that you want to perform. To implement a dynamic warm-up routine, Reiff suggests choosing a set of exercises you will remain committed to and practice before every run and race. Th e routine described at the right can be done in 10 minutes.
While static stretching remains a good post-run ritual, the research and applied evidence touts the many advantages of engag-ing in a dynamic routine in its place. Says Reiff , “Dynamic stretching recruits more of the body than static stretching. We certainly don’t throw away static stretching, but it has its place. For pre-race and pre-training, dynamic fl exibility and movement has a much better return on the investment.” Reiff recommends performing the exer-cises before every regular run. Prior to hard workouts and races it tends to work best to do a warm-up jog and then perform the dynamic stretches, followed by strides. Th is helps to adequately warm up the muscles and then get the right ones fi ring in the right ways.
Reiff adds, “If you can train athletes on a daily basis to fi re those muscles appropriately and go through a dynamic warm-up that ensures that all muscle groups are worked, then you have a better runner.”
DYNAMICReturns
BY MACKENZIE LOBBY
Phot
o:
Pete
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ker
Stud
ios
Mammoth Track Club members warm up dynamically. Continued on page 28
Owner's Manual RFB.rev p25_30_32.indd 25 2/5/10 2:11 PM
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28 / RUNNINGTIMES_APRIL 2010
OWNER’S MANUAL DYNAMIC STRETCHING • MILEAGE INCREASES
USUAL WAY/BETTER WAY
MILEAGEINCREASES GOAL: BUILD TO A HIGHER WEEKLY MILEAGE WITHOUT GETTING HURT
SEVEN DYNAMIC STRETCHES
01 REVERSE LUNGE
WITH TWIST
Take an exaggerated step back-wards with the right leg. Go into the lunge position, twist your torso to the left, and reach for your right heel with your left hand. Come back to lunge posit ion, stand up, and step back with the left leg to repeat on the other side. Continue f o r 5 0 meters.
02 KNEE CRADLE
Standing, lift your left leg with the knee facing outwards. Use your hands to cradle the leg at the knee and ankle; avoid pulling on the foot. Simultaneously rise to your toes on your right foot before releasing your left leg, stepping forward, and repeating on the other side. Continue for 50 meters.
03 STRAIGHT
LEG MARCH
Ma rch for wa rd a nd swing your leg straight in front of y o u w i t h each step. Attempt to touch your foot with the opposite hand upon each swing. Continue for 50 meters.
04 BUTT KICKS
As you run, bend your knee and bring your heel back to your butt with each step. Steps should be short and rapid as you focus on the frequency of the butt
k ick s, rat her t ha n the pace at which y o u m o v e f o r-ward. Drive your a r m s f o r w a r d with each step. C o n t i n u e f o r 50 meters.
05 HIGH KNEES
Ru n n i ng on t he balls of your feet, b r i n g y o u r knees up as high as pos-s i b l e w i t h each step. As w it h but t k icks, pay attention to frequency rather than pace. Steps should be small
and quick. Drive your opposite arm forward as each knee comes up. Continue for 50 meters.
06 CARIOCA
W it h you r shou l-d e r s s q u a r e a n d f a c i n g one direction, g e t i n t o a semi-squat-ting position. Cross your lef t le g i n front of your right leg, bring your right leg through, and then cross your left leg behind your right leg. Go 50 meters one way, continue facing the same direction, and go back.
07 SCORPION
Lying face down with your chest on the ground, pull your left leg up and across the right leg to the opposite side of your body. Switch sides continuously until you have performed the stretch 10 times on each side. •
WHY: The conventional wisdom of “Increase weekly mileage by no more than 10 percent” means well, but ignores two important facts about the human body. First, your body isn’t based on the base-10 number system. Second, it adapts best to a new level of stress by being exposed to that stress and consolidating the gains produced by that exposure before adjusting to more.
Set aside the fact that the 10 percent “rule” would take someone coming back from injury six weeks to get from 15 to 25 miles per week. Th e bigger problem with it is arbitrary reliance on a num-ber system that has nothing to do with physiology. What do your muscles and blood vessels know about “10 percent”? Or miles, for that matter. (And pity the poor Babylonian runners of yore, with their base-60 number system!)
More important, adding a new level of stress week after week isn’t the best way to reset your mileage set point. Coach and exercise phys-iologist JACK DANIELS says, “I like to increase the stress every three to four weeks. I’m not a big fan of increasing mileage every week. If you’re doing 20 miles a week, I would much rather you stay there for three or four weeks, and then let’s go up to 30. Let the body adjust to something before we impose something new on it. Even if you’re increasing only 10 percent every week, that’s still something new. Your body never gets to say, ‘Th is is where I’m going to learn to be, and then I’ll learn to do it more or harder.’”
HOW: Daniels recom-mends once you’re ready for a mileage jump, add one mile to each run you do in a week. You could take the same approach with time, by adding 10 minutes to every run you do in a week. Th en stay at that new level for three to four weeks before attempting the next increase. •
USUAL WAY BETTER WAY
Start at your current average weekly mileage.
Start at your current weekly mileage.
Increase mileage by 10 percent each week until you reach your goal weekly mileage.
Jump to a new level of mileage more dramatically, then stay at that level for a few weeks before making the next jump.
Adjust to a new mileage level, then increase.
From
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DYNAMIC Continued from page 25
Owner's Manual RFB.indd 28 2/3/10 3:14 AM
30 / RUNNINGTIMES_APRIL 2010
OWNER’S MANUAL CONQUERING SHIN PAIN • TRAINING IN FLATS
Th e tibia is the large bone of the lower leg; the fi bula is the thin bone along the outer aspect of the lower leg. Th ere are four compartments in the lower leg, each of which includes sev-eral muscles along with a nerve, artery and vein. Each compartment is surrounded by a tissue known as fascia. Th e muscles in these compartments control motion of the foot and ankle. Many of the thigh muscles attach to the top of the tibia and fi bula. Diff erentiating between specifi c causes of lower leg pain may be diffi cult due to overlapping symptoms.
SHIN SPLINTSTh is term is used to describe pain along the inner tibia. Typically the pain involves a third or more of the bone. Th e pain develops while running and resolves afterwards; it usually improves with continued training. Th e inner aspect of the tibia will be tender to touch, with no area more tender than another. Th ere may be mild swelling in the lower leg.
The pain is due to microscopic tears of the muscle away from the lining of the bone. Predisposing factors include overpro-nation and running on hard surfaces. Shin splints are more common in novice run-ners. Treatment of the problem includes icing after exercise, appropriate footwear or possibly arch supports, and changing running surface. Improving f lexibility of your calf muscles and the strength of the muscles in the front and sides of your lower leg are important in treating and preventing this problem. To strengthen the muscles of the lower leg, place a weighted ring on your foot. Point your foot up, in and out 10 times; perform three sets. Th e pain usually subsides as fi tness improves.
STRESS FRACTUREAlso a source of bony pain, a stress frac-ture is an injury to bone due to repetitive microtrauma. Bone responds to stress by becoming stronger; the stress causes bone
resorption, which is followed by bone build-ing, as long as the stress isn’t overwhelming. With excessive stress, resorption is greater than the building phase, leading to micro-scopic trauma and microfractures. Repetitive microfractures result in a stress fracture.
Th e typical presentation is bony pain with impact. Initially the pain develops during the run, but may even resolve during the course of the run. Over time, the pain is pres-ent throughout the run and may be present while walking. Mild swelling may be pres-ent in the lower leg. Continued impact on a stress fracture can result in a complete frac-ture through the bone.
On clinical examination there is a specifi c area of signifi cant bony tenderness. Th ere is pain or even inability to hop on the single leg. X-rays will not reveal abnormalities for at least two weeks and possibly much longer. MRI and three-phase bone scans can detect stress fractures much earlier.
Stress fractures in runners tend to occur in the lower aspect of the fi bula and in the upper and lower aspects of the tibia. Th ey can also (though less commonly) occur in the front of the tibia; this stress fracture can
be problematic in healing due to the shape of the tibia.
Treatment begins with stopping impact activities. If there is pain with walking, a boot, cast or crutches may be needed. Non-impact cross-training may be performed. In some cases, a long air cast (stirrup brace that covers the lower leg) may allow a more rapid return to running. Otherwise, most athletes can return to a gradual running program in six to eight weeks.
Th e reason for developing the stress frac-ture should be determined. Increasing training too quickly (intensity and/or dis-tance) is the most common cause of this injury. A low bone density and possibly a low vitamin D level can predispose to
TRIED AND TRUEFLAT OUT NECESSARYWear your racing shoes for at least half of your speed workouts and tempo runs. Before a mar-athon, do at least two long runs in the shoes you’ll wear on race day. Otherwise, you’re likely to
get lower-leg soreness immediately after or even during your race. Says sport podia-trist BRIAN FULLEM, “When you consider that racing fl ats often have less
than 1 inch of cushioning in the heels, it’s easy to see why suddenly sub-jecting your legs to such a large diff erence can strain the calf muscles.”
If you haven’t been wearing racing fl ats on a regular basis, intro-duce them slowly by wearing them on a series of post-run
striders a couple of times a week. Says Fullem, “Then grad-ually build up to a full workout, starting with shorter workouts. For example, if your track workout ends with 200– or 400-meter repeats, put on the fl ats for this por-
tion of the workout.”
‘My SHIN Hurts’A PRIMER ON LOWER-LEG PAIN
THE SHIN OR LOWER LEG includes everything between the knee and ankle, and is a prime spot for pain in runners. Let’s look at the anat-omy of the area and some of the most common problems runners get in and around their shins.
BY CATHY FIESELER, M.D.
Continued on page 32
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Owner's Manual RFB.rev p25_30_32.indd 30 2/5/10 2:11 PM
32 / RUNNINGTIMES_APRIL 2010
OWNER’S MANUAL TREATING SHIN PAIN • RESUMING RUNNING
stress fracture. Training schedules, diet, and for women, menstrual history, should be reviewed to f ind risk factors for the development of stress fractures and any problems detected should be corrected.
COMPARTMENT SYNDROMEDuring exercise, muscles swell, increasing in volume by up to 20 percent. If the fascia that surrounds one or more of the compart-ments is too tight to allow the swelling to occur, it acts like a tourniquet, restricting blood fl ow and putting pressure on the nerve. Th is causes pain and possibly numbness in the lower leg and foot. Th e muscles may not function normally.
Th e runner with chronic exertional com-partment syndrome complains of pain that develops at a certain point during the
workout and becomes progressively worse, often to the point of having to slow or end the run. Slapping of the foot as it strikes the ground is another common complaint. Th e symptoms will resolve within a short while after the exercise stops, as the swelling resolves. Because of this, the runner’s leg usually seems normal when examined by a medical professional.
Compartment syndrome is diagnosed by measuring the pressure in each of the com-partments in the involved legs before and immediately after a run. (Th e run is usually performed on a treadmill and is continued until significant symptoms develop.) The treatment for compartment syndrome is surgery, after which most athletes are able to return to full activities.
TENDINITISTh is is a common problem in the lower leg. Tendons are part of a given muscle that attaches to a bone. Infl ammation of the ten-don causes pain when the muscle is stretched or contracted. The tendon may swell; strength and fl exibility are both diminished. Th e tendon will be tender to touch.
Achilles tendinitis is common in run-ners. The posterior tibialis (inner aspect of the ankle) and the peroneal (outside aspect of the ankle) tendons may also be infl amed. Common causes of Achilles ten-dinitis include a sudden increase in hill work or speed work. In addition, switching from training shoes to racing shoes without hav-ing worn the racing shoes in a long time may aggravate the Achilles tendon because of the racing fl at’s lower heel. Overpronation may cause infl ammation of the posterior tibia-lis tendon, while a stiff , underpronated gait may infl ame the peroneal tendon.
Treatment for tendinitis includes icing for 15 to 20 minutes three to four times a day, adjusting training to decrease the off end-ing stressors and modifying footwear when indicated. Th e peroneal and posterior tibi-alis muscles can be strengthened with the exercises described in the section on shin splints. Stretch the Achilles tendon once you’ve warmed up with easy jogging.
As f lexibility improves, strengthen the Achilles this way: With the heels hanging off the back of a step, the heels should be low-ered and raised repeatedly. Do this slowly at fi rst, then more quickly as your strength improves. Th en progress to single leg raises, starting slowly and gradually increasing speed over training sessions. Heel lifts can be added to shoes when the Achilles ten-don is painful; this will alleviate some of
the stress on the tendon. As pain resolves and fl exibility and strength improve, the lifts may be removed.
Prolonged problems with the Achilles ten-don may cause degenerative changes, known as tendinosis. Th e treatment is similar to ten-dinitis. Recalcitrant cases may be treated with deep tissue massage and manipulation (such as active release therapy), injec-tions with platelet-rich plasma and similar
substances, and, as a last resort, surgery. Cortisone injections shouldn’t be performed in the Achilles tendon due to the risk of rup-ture and weakening of the structure during the fi rst 10 to 14 days following the injection.
INFLAMMATIONTh e large calf muscles (gastrocnemius and soleus) may occur due to a sudden injury, in which the muscle tears. Th is most commonly occurs in the inner belly of the gastrocne-mius at the junction of the muscle and the tendon. When this happens, you might feel a pop. Pushing off will be extremely pain-ful. Th ere will be mild swelling and possibly some bruising in the leg.
Treatment includes using a boot and/or crutches. Ice should be used often. As pain subsides, strength and fl exibility exercises as discussed in the section on Achilles ten-dinitis should be performed. When the runner is able to weight bear on the aff ected leg without pain, heel lifts should be added to the shoes. Progress the exercises as dis-cussed above. Lesser injuries, in which the muscle is inf lamed, but not torn, may be treated like tendinitis.
COMPRESSION OF THE POPLITEAL ARTERYCompression of this artery during exercise is an uncommon but potentially severe source of pain. Th is usually occurs at the level of the knee. With compression of the artery, blood fl ow to the leg muscles is diminished, causing signifi cant pain until the exercise stops. Th e blood fl ow needs to be evaluated during exertion to diagnose this problem, and surgery is the treatment. •
“HELP ME GET BETTER!”
W ith all of the injuries discussed, medi-cations should be used with caution.
Short-term use (fi ve to seven days) of nonste-roidal anti-infl ammatory medications (such as ibuprofen and naproxen) may help relieve pain, as long as there isn’t a contraindication to usage, such as gastrointestinal, liver or kidney problems. Even then, these medications should be used with caution. There is equivocal data in the sci-entifi c literature on use of NSAIDs with stress fractures; several studies have suggested that these medications may impede the healing of fractures. Acetaminophen may be used for pain control if there are no medical contraindications to its usage.
In the case of stress fractures, running should be discontinued until the health care provider gives the green light. Compartment syndrome will not resolve without treatment. When the symptoms are severe enough, options are surgery or eliminating running. A torn gas-trocnemius usually precludes running due to pain. For the other problems discussed, some degree of running can usually be continued. This involves decreasing the distance and intensity of workouts, with the amount of modifi cation determined by the severity of the symptoms. The goal is to minimize symptoms while run-ning; cross-training may be performed in addition to running if it doesn’t aggravate the problem. Training should be increased gradually and ice should be used following the workout. Don’t forget to perform the strength and fl exibility exercises as training increases.
As flexibility improves, strengthen the Achilles with heel raises.
SHIN Continued from page 30
Owner's Manual RFB.rev2 p32.indd 32 2/18/10 3:48 PM
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Th e 2008 season had been about becoming the best by working hard on a daily basis. I do not pretend they were perfect. Th ere were some days they did not give 100 percent. Th ere were some days they whined because they were tired and sore and it was 100 degrees. School, fam-ily, and social life all competed for time with their athletic life. Still, I felt like they believed in the program, the philosophy, and the pro-cess behind success. When they considered if they really wanted it, they were willing to prepare.
Th us, on the night before state, I was confi dently able to tell them, “Guys, whether you win or lose, I’ll be proud of you.” Of course, I wanted the victory, and no assurance of love and pride could belie that fact to my runners. Our team had not won the state title since 1994, the year some of them were born.
Before we boarded the bus for the four-hour drive to Natchitoches, I pointed to the blue banner in the gym rafters that honored the 1994 season. I told them we would return home, remove the ban-ner from its hooks and stitch “2008” on it next to “1994.” My runners did not bat an eye.
I felt confi dent despite the fact that we were not the meet favor-ite. We would have to beat the prior year’s champion and another team that had beaten us three times during the season, including the district championships, where they had stepped on our necks and convincingly destroyed us. But I was confi dent that my team was prepared, and they needed to know that.
But within running, as in life, there is also the painful lesson that winning is not guaranteed no matter how hard you work. Th at is why we run races, and why we had to go to state.
A 5K cross country race is essentially over in fewer than 20 minutes, but the wait for results feels like an eternity. Standing in the bleach-ers, watching as the runners enter the track and sprint the fi nal 300 meters to the fi nish, I had my penciled quick-score on my clipboard held tightly to my chest. If my math was correct, we had just won the state championship by one point. If my math was wrong, if I had missed a runner, then we would be second. We waited.
Th e slower runners dribbled across the fi nish line. Th e clock read 25 minutes … 26 … 27. At 30 minutes, the announcer called us and the top-seeded team into the infi eld of the stadium. We knew then for sure we were in the top two teams. We waited.
Another fi ve minutes passed waiting on the infi eld. I called my team together into a huddle and said, “Hands in,” like I would on the starting line. I told them I was proud of them no matter the result. Huddled, hands in, we waited.
Th e top-seeded team was announced fi rst. Th ey were declared state runners-up. We did not hear anything else, but when every-thing calmed down, after all the photos, we carried the large gold trophy back to the bus and drove home champions.
Th e next morning, I woke to learn that the LHSAA had found an offi ciating error that aff ected the results of our race. A new rule stated that any runner fi nishing after 25 minutes had “lapsed” and would be disqualifi ed. Some of the runners higher up were now kicked out of team scoring as they no longer had enough fi nishers to score a team. Later that day, the commissioner made the offi cials rescore the meet and declare the second-place team as the cham-pions, and us as runners-up.
I had to tell my boys the bad news in person before they heard it from other sources. We gathered in an empty classroom with the lights out. I told them that I knew we had won the race, but a man would be coming to take our trophy away from us. At the end of the talk, I gathered them up into a huddle and said, “Hands in. I’m still proud of you guys. You’ll always be champions in my eyes.”
I was and I still am proud of them a year later. Th ese boys com-mitted themselves to a new season, ready to pursue another c h a mpion s h ip. S en ior s organized summer train-ing sessions without me. Enthusiastic freshmen joined, hoping to make a diff erence. I had my larg-est turnout for cross country ever.
The will to win was palpable on the team. T he boys k new f rom experience that awards are never guaranteed, so they looked for the i nt r i n sic re w a rd i n working. The true ath-lete knows it is the will to prepare that matters. Th at is the only thing. Th at is why you win … sometimes.
As we boarded the bus, I remembered the post-race ceremony at the 2009 Crescent Cit y Classic. T he 2008 w i n-ner, GENOVEVA KIGEN, had just placed second to LINETH
CHEPKURUI by less than 3 sec-onds in a sprint fi nish. Yet she said,
“We are athletes. It is what we do. We win. We lose.”
Last November, the team ran strong after a cold rain blanketed the course, drawing on their work to pass other runners through the fi nal mile. Th e blue felt banner hanging in our gym now reads “1994” and “2009.” •
The WILL toPREPARE
THE LESSONS OF WINNING AND LOSING A STATE CHAMPIONSHIP IN ONE DAY
THE HARDEST PART ABOUT COACHING high school athletes is convincing them that they want to put in all that hard work with no real guarantee that they will win anything. My 2008 boys team from Metairie, La., had worked all season to be the best team in Division 1A, personifying the JUMA IKANGAA quote, “The will to win means nothing without the will to prepare.”
BY BRENDAN MINIHAN JR.
34 / RUNNINGTIMES_APRIL 2010
HIGH SCHOOL
High School RFB.rev p34.indd 34 2/18/10 1:10 PM
Morgan and f ive other American high school runners were selected for the U.S. junior team to run in the World Mountain Running Championships. Her résumé is cer-tainly worthy — including PRs of 5:01:63 in the 1600m and 10:31:91 for 3200m, plus top fi nishes in cross country — but her experi-ence running at altitude is what landed her on the team.
Torrey Pines head coach BRENT THORNE
leads his runners through a week-long alti-tude training camp at Idyllwild in the mountains near San Diego every summer. Within the week, the team does a long run, a tempo run, a couple of steady state mile-age runs, and one day of 1200m repeats in the alpine air at 5,500 feet. Morgan also spends a week or two each summer with her family in Pinecrest, Calif., in the Sierra Nevada foothills near Lake Tahoe, where the self-motivated teen logs thin-air miles on her own.
“I think it definitely helps increase my anaerobic threshold,” says Morgan, 17, who typically runs 40–50 miles a week in the
summer. “When I return to sea level, I’m able to train at a higher level, which speeds up my improve-ment curve.”
Training at altitude paid off , as Morgan fi nished second in the junior women’s race at the World Mountain Running Championships, complet-ing the 4.34K course in 22:35, 17 seconds behind winner YASEMIN CAN from Turkey.
Morgan’s f inish was the best among U.S. runners in all categories, and the highest individual placing ever by an American junior runner. (Fellow Californian ALEX DUNNE, now at Stanford, was thir d in the girls junior race in 2008 in Switzerland, while Tennessee’s BRANDON
LORD was fourth in the 2009 junior men’s race.)
“It was totally diff erent from
anything I’d ever experienced,” Morgan says, explaining that she’d never run against an international f ield before, and that the small mountain village of Campodolcino full of athletes was like a mini Olympic Village. “Mountain run-ning in Europe is a much bigger deal than in the U.S.”
Morgan’s results in Italy proved she was completely back from an i l iot ib-ial band injury she sustained during the fi nal 400m of her best 3200m last spring. Instead of calling it quits for the season, she got in the pool and water ran for fi ve weeks, keeping herself fi t enough to run
10:33 soon after returning to the track.Cross country culminated with a sec-ond in the California state cross country meet, helping the Torrey Pines girls take
the team title.“It has been a goal of mine since my
freshman year to lead my team to a state championship,” she says, “so to see that goal become a reality was an amazing accomplishment.”
A month later, Morgan placed 17t at the Foot Locker Cross Countr y
Championships in San Diego, just down the road from her home.
Morgan will run for the University of Washington in the fall, but she has a few goals left as her high school career winds down, including lowering her PRs in the 1600m and 3200m and fi n-
ishing on the podium (top six) at state in the 3200m.“She’ll do it,” assistant cross country coach
MICHELLE VAN SOMEREN says. “Megan is just driven. She knows what she wants, she knows what it takes to get there.”•
Maintain THE EFFORT THE LONGER YOU RUN, the stronger you get. The stronger you get, the longer you can run. The lon-ger you run and stronger you get, the faster you can run. If all that seems pretty obvious, please permit me to explain in more detail.
In the fi rst phase, I mean “longer” in terms of years. As the years of running add up for high school runners, maturing bodies simply get stronger with the development of greater muscle mass.
In the second phrase, as your muscles get stronger and you add more years, you will be capable of going for longer long runs, and going longer on easy, recovery days. Mature bodies are simply stron-ger and can handle the higher mileage. Because there is a limit of
how much high-intensity training you can — and need — to do, more easy, aerobic mileage is the simplest and safest way to increase your weekly workout load.
While all this is pretty obvious, here is the not-so-obvious result of the above. As you get older and stronger, you don’t need to train harder to get faster. By “harder” I mean at higher and higher lev-els of intensity. Once you have run a PR (at whatever speed) at your best all-out emotional, mental and physical eff ort, that 100 percent eff ort becomes your standard for enduring pain, torture and agony.
Trust me on this: Giving it the old college try at 105 percent or 110 percent is impossible. Try to take it over 100 percent and you slow down and/or collapse. And if 100 percent always feels the same, so will each of your other types of workouts in the typi-cal effort zones. As you get older, stronger, and faster, paces per mile simply speed up, but always at the same perception of how easy or hard they feel.
Nice to know the benefi ts of aging, isn’t it? Th e hard things in life, as you get better at doing them, just take less time. •
INTO Thin AirMEGAN MORGAN RUNS TO NEW HEIGHTS
LAST SEPTEMBER, as her cross country teammates were starting practice and getting settled into the fi rst few days of class at Torrey Pines High School in Del Mar, Calif., MEGAN MORGAN was 6,400 miles away rac-ing against an elite international fi eld on the rugged trails of the Italian Alps.
BY LISA JHUNG
BY ROY BENSON
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THE WILL TO PREPARE • MEGAN MORGAN • UPPERCLASSMEN BENEFITS
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PURPOSEMETRO STATE’S LUNA MAKES THE MOST OF A SECOND CHANCE
FIVE YEARS AGO he was an apprentice electrician whose track career seemingly ended before it began, so it’s easy to see ANTHONY LUNA’s improbable transfor-mation into a two-time NCAA Division II 800m champion as an inspirational tale of faith, hope and fi erce deter-mination. But to PETE JULIAN, the man who gave Luna the second chance he so desperately needed, it’s fun-damentally “a love story.”
It’s about love for a son whose unplanned conception soon after Luna’s graduation from high school forced him to turn down a track scholarship to Division II power Adams State. It’s about the lunch-pail labor Luna put in to support his infant son when he wished he could be chasing glory on the track instead. It’s about Julian, the coach who saw something special in Luna and wanted to help, all the while knowing the likelihood of success was slim. And it’s about the parents and girlfriend who supported Luna when he went after the dream he deferred for fatherhood.
“It’s about the right people at the right time taking care of him and loving him,” Julian says. “It’s about him loving the sport, and about him understanding it’s a ticket for him. It’s an opportunity. It’s a love story with a happy ending.”
Luna won the 2004 Colorado 4A 800m title for Ranum High School (1:54.8) in the Denver suburb of Westminster, but after becoming a father and forgoing his ticket to Adams State, he would go more than a year fearing he’d never get to run competitively again. Th at changed when he heard Julian was bringing track and cross coun-try back to Denver’s Metropolitan State College after a hiatus of two decades. Luna went to see Julian and begged for a chance to compete.
“Th e fi rst thing out of his mouth was, ‘Coach, I have a kid, I have a job, I haven’t run in 15 months, but I’ve been waiting for this day for a long time. Just give me a chance and I know I’ll make it,’” Julian recalls.
Luna had already proven his character. He and his girlfriend had considered an abortion but decided that way out of their pre-dicament would be wrong. Anthony, Jr., an occasional spectator at Metro track practices, is 4 years old now and thinks his dad is the fastest guy on the planet.
“When I was 19 years old, I was faced with a life-changing situa-tion — my girlfriend was pregnant,” says the 23-year-old Luna. “I had a chance to run at one of the best schools in the nation. I felt like there was a million tons of bricks on me. I said, ‘Instead of giv-ing up, I’m going to do what I have to do to be a man and take care of my son. But when I get that second chance, you best know I’m going to take it and I’m going to make it worth my while.’”
Th at he did, but it wasn’t easy, and there were times when it seemed he was fooling himself to think he could ever be competitive again.
He was ineligible to compete his fi rst year at Metro State, and was so out of shape he couldn’t run an hour at an easy pace, but he did well in school while continuing to work to support his son. When he fi nally could compete a year later, he was so proud of his uni-form that he got on the team bus carrying his singlet on a hanger. But it wasn’t long before he developed stress fractures in both legs. After those healed, he could barely break 2:00 for 800 meters the following spring.
But Luna wouldn’t quit, and Julian didn’t quit on him. Th eir faith began to pay off the following season when Luna fi nished third in the 800m at NCAA indoors. Th en he fi nished second at NCAA out-doors, diving at the line to fi nish in 1:49.39 and losing by .02 of a second while breaking a wrist in the process. Luna’s dream didn’t seem so delusional anymore.
“I embrace every moment I get on the track because you never know when it’s your last,” says Luna, who often thinks of making his son proud when he hits the home stretch of races. “I’ve had a lot of second chances in life, I had a lot of missed opportunities, but I’ve also had a lot of opportunities that came my way. When I step on the track, my whole life boils down to this moment. You seize the moment. I feel free. I feel like I could change the world or something.”
Th ere was another setback his junior year, a stress fracture during cross country season that forced him to do much of his training for the indoor season in a pool. But he won the NCAA indoor title (1:51.99) and won again at NCAA outdoors (1:49.26). Th ree weeks later
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Luna has excelled at 800m, but his future might be in the 1500m.
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RUNNINGTIMES / 37
DIVISION II 800M CHAMPION ANTHONY LUNA • COACH PETE JULIAN
he ran 1:47.9 to qualify for his fi rst USATF outdoors. His father’s co-workers on the night shift at a Waste Management landfi ll took up a collection to help defray the cost of fl ying him to Eugene.
Th en out of the blue Washington State came courting Julian, and the Oregon native couldn’t resist the opportunity to coach in the Pac-10 (see “Coaches’ Corner”). Luna considered transferring so he could stay with Julian, but decided to fi nish his collegiate career at Metro State. Luna plans to join Julian in Pullman after he graduates, with hopes of a successful post-collegiate career.
“When I was a sophomore I remember stepping on the track and he was like, ‘You’ve got what it takes to be a phenomenal track ath-lete,’” recalls Luna, a criminal justice and criminology major who earned academic All-American accolades last spring. “He said, ‘If you’re willing to put in the hard work and be here every day, you’re going to do great things in this sport.’ I always kind of believed that, I always thought I was pretty good, but when he told me that, it stuck.”
Julian is thinking about moving Luna up to the mile after he fi n-ishes his collegiate career. Luna certainly has a miler’s body, a slender 5–9, 140 pounds, and is blessed with a silky smooth running form. And he owns a credible 3:46.44 PR in the 1500m, a mark he set last spring at the Mt. SAC Relays.
“Pete always told me I would be a better miler,” Luna says. “I was like, ‘No, Pete, I want to run the 800 meters.’ He was like, ‘Th e 800-meter runner is like a bass player of a rock band. If you want to be the rock star, you run the mile. You’ve got to be the guitar player.’”
Th at sounds good to Luna. Heading into the indoor season the plan was to have him run the mile leg of the distance medley relay at NCAA indoors — instead of defending his 800m title — and then defend his NCAA outdoor title in May. Having him run the DMR gives Luna a taste of the longer distance while making it possible for three teammates to become NCAA champions.
“Anthony’s a team player, and he’s 100 percent on board for that,” said JOHN SUPSIC, who replaced Julian as Metro State’s coach.
“He wants to give other people an opportunity to be in the spotlight, which I think says a lot about him.”
Luna hopes to fi nish his college career with a chance to repeat his outdoor title at the May 27–29 NCAA championships in Charlotte, N.C. Julian hopes a shoe company will recognize Luna’s talent — and
the power of his story — so he can support his son and continue to pursue his dream when his collegiate career ends. He hopes prospec-tive sponsors notice the kid has the kind of charisma on the track that creates fans.
“He understands there is a sense of urgency every time he gets on the line,”
Julian says. “He understands that when you get an opening, if you don’t take it, that
door is closing. Maybe that’s why he has that intuition when he races. He can see an opening, and he knows if he doesn’t match that move, if
he doesn’t jump through that window, if he doesn’t take that hole, it’s going to close. Because that’s the way life really is.”
It helps that Luna loves what he does.“I get to races, I look at the crowds, I look
at the starting line, I look at the people I’m racing, and it’s such an amazing feeling to
me,” Luna says. “I’m so blessed to do this. I know the race is going to hurt like hell, but I’m going to embrace it. It’s totally cool.” •
COACHES’ CORNER:
WASHINGTON STATE’S PETE JULIANM ost coaches at Division II schools with scant history of track
and fi eld success would be overjoyed to be off ered a job at a Pac-10 school, but when Washington State came calling
last summer, Pete Julian was faced with a heart-wrenching dilemma.An Oregon native who as a young child saw STEVE PREFONTAINE
compete in twilight meets at Hayward Field, Julian saw the Washington State off er — head cross country coach and assistant track coach respon-sible for distance events — as a fantastic opportunity. But it would mean leaving Denver’s Metro State, whose track and cross country program he restored in 2005, two decades after the school dropped the program.
“It was the toughest decision of my life,” Julian says. “We were diff er-ent. We grew up together, because we started from scratch. It was really hard, and meeting with the athletes individually was incredibly diffi cult.”
But how could he turn down the chance to become an assistant to RICK SLOAN at Washington State, to compete with the likes of Oregon and Stanford? He couldn’t.
“Growing up on the West Coast, I’ve always looked on the Pac-10 as the marquee conference in the country,” he says. “My own professional goal was always, if I could coach in the Pac-10, that would be a dream come true.”
Julian, 38, ran for the University of Portland, graduating in 1993, where he was a four-time All American. He ran professionally for sev-eral years with PRs of 3:42 in the 1500m, 13:33 in the 5,000m, and 28:05 in the 10,000m. He won a bronze medal in the 10,000m at the 1999 Pan American Games and made the fi nals of the 10,000 at the IAAF World Championships in Seville that year.
As a young coach living in Boulder and coaching in Denver, he would pick the brain of Colorado coach MARK WETMORE whenever he could. Julian’s other coaching infl uences include VIN LANANNA, BOB GAGLIANO, ALBERTO SALAZAR and his father, Bob, who coached him at Ashland High School in southwestern Oregon.
“The Wetmores and the Lanannas are the Lydiards of my time,” Julian says.
Julian, who organized the 2007 U.S. cross country championships in Boulder, is a student, but not a blind follower.
“Mark Wetmore once told me, ‘Never have a philosophy, because then you’ll have to live by it,’” Julian says. “That probably is my mantra — don’t ever have a philosophy, because every athlete is diff erent. I try to approach each athlete without preconceptions in terms of what I think is best for their training.” —J.M.
Julian with Washington State senior Lisa Egami.
College RFB.rev p37.indd 37 2/5/10 2:09 PM
Case in point: Masters standout SYLVIA
MOSQUEDA started racing at age 16. In her 20s and early 30s, the Californian reg-istered PRs of 15:30 (5K), 31:54 (10K), and 2:33:11 (marathon), and qualified for the U.S. Olympic trials five times. Mosqueda, now 43, has a consistent record of age-cor-related achievement that hasn’t wavered much over the years. For example, her half marathon progression reveals a 1:10:47 at age 21 (93 percent age-graded score), 1:09:52 at age 37 (96 percent), 1:14:25 at age 40 (92 per-cent), and, as of this writing, a 1:18:20 at age 43 (90 percent).
When many top runners burn out after a time, how has Mosqueda maintained this record of competitive consistency? She focuses on quality and relies on an accu-mulated training base that spans almost 30 years. At age 41, for example, Mosqueda cut her weekly training mileage from an average of 65 to 35 – 45 per week. She also reduced her speed workouts from up to three per week to one high-quality workout weekly.
“If you’ve consistently run at a pretty high level over the years, you can change and tweak your training and still run pretty decent,” Mosqueda maintains. “You don’t lose any training that you put into your body. Basically, you store it.”
E x per t s i n t he science of r u n n i ng
substantiate Mosqueda’s experiences.“Some physiological adaptations from
running accumulate over time and some adaptat ions reverse ver y slowly w it h reduced training,” says two-time Olympic marathoner and exercise physiologist PETE PFITZINGER.
He points out that the development of capillaries increases with accumulated endurance training, and it remains high for a long time. Th e heart gets bigger and stron-ger, and this adaptation reverses very slowly. Basically, your cardiovascular fi tness doesn’t disappear overnight.
“A nd, anecdotal e v idenc e e x i s t s that demonstrates o n c e y o u ’ v e a c h i e v e d a specifi c maximal oxygen uptake w ith train-ing it’s easier to achieve that same level again,” says Pfitzinger.
“A l s o w it h ac c u mu-l a t e d e n d u r a n c e training, fast-twitch muscle f ibers gain
more of the characteristics of slow-twitch fi bers, which is a good thing for distance run-ners.” Pfi tzinger does warn, however, that,
“adaptations such as capillarization may reverse over a year or a few years. Th ere are many adaptations to training and a broad range of rates of detraining between these variables. Plus, there is also a large genetic component involved, and some people will have more age-related deterioration and oth-ers will have much less.”
Exercise physiologist DAVID MARTIN,
PH.D., points out that, for optimum perfor-mance, recovery is more important than the number of miles run. Th is is a particularly important principle for older runners.
“As runners get older, our connective and muscle tissue recovers a little less quickly from the stress of training. Th at means you need to spend more time recovering and less time putting in high mileage,” says Martin, a longtime member of USA Track & Field’s Sports Medicine and Science Committee. “If you try and push yourself and do the mile-age that you did when you were younger, you won’t last long because you’ll be injured.” Martin says that age 50 is the time that run-ners really need to begin paying attention to this eff ect.
Physiologist and coach JACK DANIELS is conducting an extensive longitudinal study of competitive runners, and prelimi-narily conclusions, he reports, indicate that
“older runners are just like younger run-ners — some can handle more than
others.” While his study doesn’t yet reveal any trends in terms of masters miles, Daniels discloses that he asked his subjects how many days they had
taken off due to injury and illness from training over the 25 years since he
had seen them last. “Th e f it test 50-yea r-old,”
Daniels reports, “had documented every
day he took of f and they totaled over three years, which tells me it pays to take time off when you are sick or
injured.”Pfi tzinger
and Martin agree that longtime runners
should concentrate more on the speed aspects of their training rather than long runs to maintain optimum
Miles in the BankCAN (AND SHOULD) MASTERS RUN FEWER MILES?
AS RECOVERY TIMES get longer with age, masters who have been training hard for decades often start to wonder if they need to log as many miles as they did in their prime. According to exercise physiologists, many veteran runners who appropriately modify their training mileage — cutting back on training quantity and, instead, focusing on quality — are better able to maintain a similar level of racing performance as they age.
BY MARK WINITZ
“If you try and push yourself and do the mileage that you did when you were younger, you won’t last long because you’ll be injured.”
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TRAINING PHILOSOPHY
“My basic training philosophy is to periodize the year into distinct phases and to run really easy on rest days. I don’t always adhere to that
philosophy, but I try. All of my ‘easy’ days are 60–90 minutes on very rugged
and hilly trails with my dog. Most people fi nd these runs hard, but I am used to it. I am not pound-ing my legs. The pace is probably 8:00 a mile, but I am getting an aerobic benefit because of all the steep hills. Most of my intervals are run on an 800-
meter grass loop. The only paved running I do is on a mea-
sured bike path when I do tempo r uns and an impor tant long r un.”
“My basic training philothe year into distinct pheasy on rest days. I don’
philosophy, but I tryare 60–90 min
and hilly trapeople fi nI am useding my leg8:00 a man aeroball the stintervals
meter grpaved run
sured bike par uns and an im
But the disappointment of missing the record was assuaged somewhat when Schwelm real-ized he had won his division by more than 16 minutes and had topped all younger mas-ters by more than 2 minutes.
Schwelm’s personal best marathon of 2:20:58 was recorded in the 1998 Steamtown Marathon when he was three months away from joining the masters ranks, but he has not been under 2:30 since the 2002 Philadelphia Marathon, when he clocked 2:29:37. “I kind of retired from marathon running then,” he explains, “but as I got closer to 50 the 2:29:11 goal got in my head and I tested the waters last year [2008] at Philadelphia with a 2:32:29 without serious training. I knew then that the record was in reach. Oh, well!”
Since turning 50, Schwelm also has run a 16:12 for 5K and 54:31 for 10 miles.
At Bedford High School, outside of Boston, Schwelm got down to a 2:00:7 half mile, but soccer was his primary sport and earned him a scholarship to Franklin and Marshall College, where he ran only cross country. He also played basketball and baseball during his school years. Although he continued running after leaving school, he did not peak until his mid-30s, when he ran a 14:37 for 5K and 30:38 for 10K. “I never have quit running and have put in well over 100,000 miles, but there was a long learning curve there,” he explains about running faster at 35 than 25. “Th ere were a number of confl icts during my 20s and it took a while for me to settle down and things to start fall-ing into place.”
W hile he realizes t hat his best t imes a re behind him, Schwelm feels as motivated as ever. “Mentally, aging hasn’t affected me,” he muses.
“I still feel quite young and immature, but then I look in the mirror. I guess being around a younger wife, two babies, younger coworkers, and my much younger training partners keeps me in a different mindset. I love that I can still go out and hammer with the young guys, that I can run with my dog Deek for two hours in the woods, or can push the double baby jogger and run with my wife and two kids.”
Looking ahead, Schwelm plans to race more often and shoot for some of Green’s many 50-plus records. “Norm is a good friend of mine, but he has way too many American records,” he concludes with a smile. •
BOB SCHWELM STATSBORN: JANUARY 3, 1959
LIVES: MEDIA, PAMASTERS BESTS: 5K: 15:33
[ADRENALINE 5K, HADDONFIELD, NJ, 2001]; 8K: 25:13 [ROTHMAN,
PHILADELPHIA, 2000]; 10K: 31:36 [PRINCETON TWILIGHT, 2000];
10M: 52:43 [BROAD STREET, 2002]; HALF MARATHON: 1:07:18 [LAS VEGAS 1999]; MARATHON:
2:23:42 [BOSTON, 1999]
performance. “However, you need to approach speed very judiciously as an older runner to avoid injury,” Martin advises.
Pfi tzinger believes that veteran runners can get the most bang for their buck by doing one run a week at goal race pace. “Race pace training for races of 10K or longer tends to be reasonably forgiving in terms of injury, and is very effi cient in improving performance,” he says. For example, if you are training for a 10K, once a week, do a training session in which 3 ½ – 6 ½ miles are at goal race pace. During the workout, for the upper end of this range, run at goal pace for 2 ½ miles, jog 2 minutes, then 2 miles at goal pace, jog 2 min-utes, then 1 mile at goal pace.
On another day, put in your long run of, say, 13 to 15 miles. On the days after hard work-outs or long runs, consider cycling, water running, or swimming as an alternative workout to reduce the likelihood of injury.
Remember, your training background is your most important running asset: Years of training and conditioning is money in the bank. As a running veteran, invest it con-servatively and wisely. “One of the most important things about success in running is to avoid injury and illness,” says Daniels.
“Err on the side of too little,” advises Martin. •
TRAINING REGIMEN (Sept. 7, 2009 to Sept. 20, 2009, in preparation for the Oct. 11 Chicago Marathon)
Mon/Wed/Fri: 8 miles trails @ 8:00/mile pace
Tue: a.m.: 8 miles trails @ 8:00/mile pace;p.m.: 5 x 1200 m @ 5:04/mile pace with 400m rests + 4 x 200m in 33 seconds with 200m rests
Thur: 15 miles tempo @ 5:35–5:40/mile pace
Sat: 10 miles trail @ 8:00/mile pace
Sun: 21 miles with fi rst 90 minutes easy, followed by 10 x 30 seconds hard with 2-minute rests between, fi nish relaxed
Mon/Wed/Fri: 8 miles trails @ 8:00/mile pace
Tue: a.m.: 8 miles trails @ 8:00/mile pacep.m.: 4 x 1000m @ 5:04/mile pace, 3-minute rests + 4 x 200m in 33 seconds with 45-second rests
Thur: 8 miles @ 5:40/mile pace, 8 x 300m on hill with 3-minute rests, 2 miles in 10:49
Sat: 10 miles trails @ 8:00/mile pace
Sun: 22 miles with cut-down pace every 30 minutes; fi rst few miles @ 6:40/mile pace and last couple @ 5:30/mile pace
AGE-GROUP ACE BY MIKE TYMN
Bob SCHWELMAFTER PASSING the halfway point of the 2009 Chicago Marathon in 1:14:06, BOB SCHWELM was confi dent that he would break the American 50-and-over record of 2:29:11 set by NORM GREEN back in 1984. “Even at 19 miles I was thinking I was going to run 2:28, only to have my legs tighten up,” Schwelm laments. Schwelm fi nished in 2:30:52.
TIMES / 39
MILES IN THE BANK • BOB SCHWELM
Masters RFB.indd 39 2/3/10 3:11 AM
THE KAUA’I MARATHON—
MARATHON
YOUR
DREAM
With stunning island views set against a challenging course, this is a world-class destination running event.
NEW THIS YEAR:
THE $15,000 MARATHON CHALLENGEA new bonus for fast fi nishers promises to make this an exciting event
to remember. All 2010 participants offi cially registered in the marathon
are eligible for the $15,000 Kaua’i Marathon Challenge, which will be
shared among all men who fi nish under 2:30, and women under 2:45.
The fi rst participant to fi nish the marathon of each sex under the set
time standards will be awarded a $2,500 bonus. In addition, all runners
(male and female combined) under the standard will receive an equal
amount of the remaining bonus ($10,000). This new element is sure to
give reigning champ JT Service, a run for his money!
RETURNING CELEBRITY GUESTSUltramarathon man and legend Dean Karnazes is returning to host the
event this year, along with offi cial running ambassador Bart Yasso, the chief
running offi cer for Runner’s World magazine. Runners will have the chance
to go on a fun run with both Bart and Dean for an unforgettable weekend.
BREATHTAKING VIEWSYou’ll experience amazing sites as you follow the contour
of the scenic Kaua’i coastline, offering magnifi cent views of
the island’s picturesque beaches, rugged volcanic peaks, and
green tropical rain forests. As dawn breaks, runners will
run among lush green vistas as they approach the shade
of the century old Tunnel of Trees. The course then winds
through misty Omao where the half marathon enters
Kukui’ula Resort, offering spectacular ocean views for the
last few miles. The full marathon heads out to Lawai
before climbing to reveal stunning ocean views at the top
of Kalaheo. The remaining miles are a gradual descent
until runners receive a rousing island welcome upon their
return to Poipu Beach, for a spectacular fi nish.
This September, run in paradise at the 2010 Kaua’i Marathon
and Half Marathon. Celebrity hosts, spectacular views,
island adventure, amazing volunteer support, and a
challenging course await you at this tropical paradise
destination race.
advertisement
Our annual Marathoner of the Year rankings
are designed to honor runners specializing
in the marathon, whose narrow focus and
limited racing schedule often keep them off our
year-end road racer rankings. Unlike all of our other
rankings, which are based solely on placing well in
competitive races, our Marathoner of the Year for-
mula also considers fast times in light of the fewer
head-to-head matches that the marathon allows
in a year. Our system calculates points on a formula
that assesses a runner’s place in the year’s most
competitive marathon fi elds, the year’s fastest
marathon times, and the fastest adjusted times
using statistically calculated race-day conditions
and course-diffi culty factors.
As in 2008, a remarkable number of men ran
fast times last year. We didn’t see the world record
fall, but course records were set in many of the
top marathons, and seven of our top 10 men ran
low 2:05 or faster. At the top, our points system
delivered three runners separated by less than a
2 percent spread. We selected Sammy Wanjiru to
repeat as Marathoner of the Year, given his victo-
ries at London — over the most competitive fi eld
of the year, including No. 2, Tsegaye Kebede — and
in Chicago, both in course record times. A case
could be made for putting Kebede on top, as he
medaled in three top marathons, topped by a vic-
tory and course record in Fukuoka. Less than a tick
of the clock behind, Abel Kirui rounds out the trio,
having won the world championships and placed
third at Rotterdam, the year’s fastest marathon.
They’ll be able to settle who is the best at London
this spring, where they are currently scheduled to
face off , along with Duncan Kibet (fastest mar-
athoner of 2009), Jaouad Gharib and Emmanuel
Mutai from our top 10 list.
On the women’s side, while Irina Mikitenko
repeated as the world’s best marathoner, run-
ning the best time of the year and winning over
the most competitive fi eld, behind her the list is
almost entirely new, with Mara Yamauchi and
Yoshimi Ozaki the only familiar names from 2008.
Missing are big names like Paula Radcliff e, Dire
Tune, Berhane Adere, and Madina Biktimirova,
replaced by youngsters like 20-year-old world
champion Xue Bai, or those young to the mar-
athon, like Liliya Shobukhova, who got third in
London at her debut at the distance, then won
Chicago. The average age of the women’s top 10
dropped from 31 last year to 29 this year, which
matches the average age of the men’s top 10. None
of them, however, are running anywhere close to
what Radcliff e ran six years ago, or others of that
era: 2009’s best time ranks 50th on the all-time
list for women’s marathons.
For the U.S. rankings, the competitive levels are
based on American runners only and are calculated
separately from the world competitive level that
considers the top fi ve runners regardless of nation-
ality. Meb Kefl ezighi came back from nowhere (he
wasn’t even ranked in 2008) to lead the list after
his win in New York and top American fi nish in
London. Meb tied with last year’s leader, Ryan Hall,
in total points, but we gave the nod to Meb in con-
sideration of their head-to-head results in New
York. Lower in the list (far lower, as Meb and Hall
scored nearly four times the points of the tightly
grouped chase pack), four other names are new
this year, two moving up (Torres and Hartmann)
and two, like Meb, coming back (Browne and Cox).
Kara Goucher also repeated at the top, earning
more than double the points of the second woman
on the U.S. list, Desiree Davila, who fi nished one
place behind her at the Berlin world champion-
ships. The ageless Colleen De Reuck placed third
due to her second in Twin Cities, which served as
the national championships, combined with her
eighth overall (second American) fi nish in Boston,
sneaking past Deena Kastor. Kastor’s only mark
was her sixth overall (fi rst American) at Chicago in
the third-fastest American time of the year, albeit
9 minutes off her best of 2:19:36 from 2006. In
fi fth, 21-year-old Ilsa Paulson became the young-
est U.S. marathon champion since 19-year-old Kim
Merritt in 1975. •
BY
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200
9
Marathoners of the Year RFB 42-44.indd 40 2/10/10 10:20 AM
Sammy Wanjiru (KEN)
WORLD MEN
WORLD WOMEN
MOST COMPETITIVE FIELDS
WORLD MEN01 London
02 World Championships
03 Boston
04 Chicago
05 Rotterdam
06 New York City
07 Berlin
08 Fukuoka
09 Amsterdam
10 Dubai
WORLD WOMEN01 World Championships
02 Boston
03 London
04 Osaka
05 Chicago
06 Nagoya
07 Beijing
08 Paris
09 Dubai
10 Berlin
USA MEN01 New York City
02 Twin Cities
03 Boston
04 World Championships
05 Cal International
USA WOMEN01 Chicago
02 New York City
03 Twin Cities
04 Boston
05 Grandma’s
AGE LAST YEAR’S RANK
1 Irina Mikitenko(GER)
37 1st
2nd
2:22:11
2:26:31
London
Chicago
1
2 Xue Bai (CHN)
20 1st 2:25:15 World Ch. 27
3 Mara Yamauchi (ENG)
36 2nd 2:23:12 London 6
4 Yoko Shibui (JPN)
30 1st 2:23:42 Osaka 30
5 Liliya Shobukhova(RUS)
33 3rd
1st
2:24:24
2:25:56
London
Chicago
NR
6 Aselefech Mergia(ETH)
25 2nd
3rd
2:25:02
2:25:32
Paris
World Ch.
NR
7 Yoshimi Ozaki (JPN)
28 2nd 2:25:25 World Ch. NR
8 Bezunesh Bekele(ETH)
26 4th
16th
2:33:08
2:30:03
Boston
World Ch.
13
9 Salina Kosgei(KEN)
33 1st
5th
2:32:16
2:31:53
Boston
NYC
25
10 Teyiba Erkiso(ETH)
27 4th 2:26:56 Chicago NR
NR* Not Ranked in top 40 in 2008
Irina Mikitenko (GER)
AGE LAST YEAR’S RANK
1 Sammy Wanjiru (KEN)
23 1st
1st
2:05:10 CR
2:05:41 CR
London
Chicago
1
2 Tsegaye Kebede (ETH)
22 1st
2nd
3rd
2:05:18 CR
2:05:20
2:08:35
Fukuoka
London
World Ch.
7
3 Abel Kirui (KEN)
27 1st
3rd
2:06:54 CR
2:05:04
World Ch.
Rotterdam
NR
4 Duncan Kibet (KEN)
31 1st 2:04:27 CR Rotterdam NR
5 James Kwambai (KEN)
26 2nd 2:04:27 Rotterdam 6
6 Haile Gebrselassie(ETH)
36 1st
1st
2:05:29
2:06:08
Dubai
Berlin
2
7 Jaouad Gharib (MAR)
37 3rd
3rd
2:05:27
2:10:25
London
NYC
5
8 Emmanuel Mutai (KEN)
31 2nd
4th
2:07:48
2:06:53
World Ch.
London
10
9 Deriba Merga (ETH)
29 1st
1st
2:08:42
2:07:52
Boston
Houston
22
10 Robert Cheruiyot(KEN)
31 2nd
5th
2:09:56
2:10:46
NYC
World Ch.
21
Marathoners of the Year RFB 42-44.rev2.indd 43 2/15/10 9:32 AM
From Top: Victor Sailer/Photo Run Stacey Cramp
MARATHONERSOF THE DECADE
WORLD MEN2001 Abdelkader El Mouaziz
2002 Khalid Khannouchi
2003 Evans Rutto
2004 Evans Rutto
2005 Jaouad Gharib
2006 Haile Gebrselassie
2007 Martin Lel
2008 Sammy Wanjiru
2009 Sammy Wanjiru
WORLD WOMEN2001 Catherine Ndereba
2002 Paula Radcliff e
2003 Catherine Ndereba
2004 Paula Radcliff e
2005 Paula Radcliff e
2006 Berhane Adere
2007 Gete Wami
2008 Irina Mikitenko
2009 Irina Mikitenko
USA MEN2003 Meb Kefl ezighi
2004 Meb Kefl ezighi
2005 Alan Culpepper
2006 Brian Sell
2007 Ryan Hall
2008 Ryan Hall
2009 Meb Kefl ezighi
USA WOMEN2003 Deena Kastor
2004 Deena Kastor
2005 Deena Kastor
2006 Deena Kastor
2007 Deena Kastor
2008 Kara Goucher
2009 Kara Goucher
USA WOMEN
USA MENAGE LAST YEAR’S RANK
1 Meb Kefl ezighi (CA)
34 1st
9th
2:09:15
2:09:21
NYC
London
NR
2 Ryan Hall (CA)
27 3rd
4th
2:09:40
2:10:36
Boston
NYC
1
3 Dathan Ritzenhein (OR)
27 11th 2:10:00 London 2
4 Jorge Torres (CO)
29 7th 2:13:00 NYC NR
5 Jason Hartmann(OR)
28 1st 2:12:09 Twin Cities NR
6 Nicholas Arciniaga (MI)
26 8th 2:13:46 NYC 9
7 Dan Browne(OR)
34 24th 2:16:49 World Ch. NR
8 Brian Sell(MI)
30 14th 2:16:31 Boston 7
9 Josh Cox(CA)
35 2nd 2:13:51 Cal Int. NR
10 Matthew Gabrielson(MN)
31 36th 2:18:41 World Ch. 8
AGE LAST YEAR’S RANK
1 Kara Goucher (OR)
31 3rd
10th
2:32:25
2:27:48
Boston
World Ch.
1
2 Desiree Davila(MI)
26 11th 2:27:53 World Ch. 6
3 Colleen De Reuck(CO)
45 2nd
8th
2:32:37
2:35:37
Twin Cities
Boston
7
4 Deena Kastor(CA)
36 6th 2:28:50 Chicago 3
5 Ilsa Paulson(AZ)
21 1st 2:31:49 Twin Cities 14
6 Magdalena L. Boulet(CA)
36 6th 2:32:17 NYC 2
7 Tera Moody(CO)
29 9th
28th
2:32:59
2:36:39
Chicago
World Ch.
15
8 Sheri Piers(ME)
38 11th
7th
2:37:04
2:37:24
Boston
Twin Cities
NR
9 Melissa White(MI)
28 8th 2:32:55 Chicago NR
10 Mary Akor(CA)
33 1st
3rd
9th
13th
2:36:51
2:36:44
2:38:51
2:41:09
Grandma’s
Singapore
Twin Cities
Boston
11
NR* Not Ranked in top 40 in 2008
Meb Kefl ezighi (CA)
Kara Goucher (OR)
Marathoners of the Year RFB 42-44.rev2.indd 44 2/15/10 9:32 AM
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Untitled-1 1 8/29/08 3:18:52 AM
MUCH ADO ABOUT MINIMALISMT H E S C I E N C E A N D P R A C T I C E O F R E D U C I N G Y O U R R U N N I N G S H O E S
By Richard A. Lovett
1
46 / RUNNINGTIMES_APRIL 2010
Minimalism RFB 46-53.rev.indd 46 2/11/10 2:04 PM
WE CALLED HER BAREFOOT Bonnie. She showed up at a training
run in Earth Shoes and clobbered
most of the guys. Th en she ditched even that
minimal footwear for a summer on the track,
beating several of the local elites. At the time,
less than two years ago, most people didn’t even
know it was permitted to race without shoes.
Today, we’re in a minimalist running craze.
Th e untraditionally shod are, if not everywhere,
vociferous enough that they certainly seem to
be. Is there anything actually to it, or is it just
noise, inspired by Born to Run, Christopher
McDougall’s New York Times bestseller about
the sandal-wearing ultramarathoners among
Mexico’s Tarahumara Indians?
Proponents of minimalism speak with the
zeal of the recently converted. Opponents spout
dire warnings: you’ll ruin your arches, step on
an HIV-contaminated needle, pound your feet
to hamburger. “If you talked to people in podi-
atry a decade ago, nobody would have said that
barefoot activity had any benefit,” says Ray
McClanahan, a Portland, Ore., podiatrist. “But
now, a few people are starting to say it might
be good for you.”
Away from the hype and the extremes, the
minimalist movement is rightly correcting
decades of drifting in the other direction when it
comes to running shoe design. At its core, min-
imalism asks the runner to look for the least
amount of shoe he or she can safely wear now,
and to work toward reducing the amount of
shoe necessary through strengthening the foot
and improving one’s stride. It assumes that run-
ning is a natural movement of the body, rather
than an unnatural act that requires pads and
braces to perform safely. Putting it plainly, the
movement embraces the notion that the beef-
ier the shoe, the more a runner’s natural stride
is inhibited.
After 30 years of making shoes with large
amounts of cushy foam and structured sta-
bility, shoe companies have gradually gotten
into the act — starting with Nike’s Free in 2004.
Although most brands have always had some
type of lightweight trainer or racer in their line,
this spring many manufacturers are offer-
ing some type of shoe specifi cally designed to
promote a natural running gait. “More peo-
ple are shifting toward this type of product,
or at least trying it,” says Sean Murphy, man-
ager of advanced products engineering and
sports research for New Balance. “I think
this movement is going to start to aff ect even
the training shoes you see on the wall [in
running stores].”
In fact, Murphy says, we may be on the verge
of a sea change similar to the one that spawned
today’s “traditional” shoe in the late 1970s and
early ’80s.
Th at movement came out of research inspired
by the fi rst running boom, when doctors began
wondering about a rash of injuries affl icting the
runners of two decades ago. One of those stud-
ies, by D. B. Clement, then of the University of
British Columbia, tallied injuries to more than
1,600 runners severely injured enough to seek
treatment from sports medicine clinics. It found
that three of the most common injuries were
Achilles tendinitis, metatarsal fractures, and
tibial stress syndrome (leading to shin splints
and stress fractures of the tibia). At the same
time, other labs were discovering from strike-
plate tests that runners hit hard in two places:
the heel and the forefoot. Th e conclusion: Shoes
needed elevated, cushioned heels to take stress
off the Achilles tendon, plus a cushioned forefoot
to protect the metatarsals. “At the time, it was
all about reducing those stresses,” Murphy says.
Two other injuries of concern were runner’s knee
2 3 4 5 6 7
QUICK TIPS TO ADAPTING TO MINIMALISMBy Brian Metzler
Converting to more minimalist shoes requires more than just buying a new
pair of lightweight fl ats. Here are a few tips to guide your metamorphosis.
41 GE T NE W SHOE S
2 T R A NSI T ION SLO W LY
3 RUN B A REFOOT — BRIEF LY
4 DO FORM DRIL L S
RUNNINGTIMES / 47
Minimalism RFB 46-53.rev.indd 47 2/11/10 2:04 PM
and plantar fasciitis. For them, Murphy says, the
conclusion was that prevention meant prona-
tion control. “If you started putting something
fi rm on the medial side [of the shoe],” he says,
“[the idea was] that would prevent everything.”
Suddenly, many shoes looked more or less
alike: lots of heel lift, lots of cushioning, and, for
runners who needed stability, beefy protection
against excess pronation. Th e shoes, in other
words, that most of us have been wearing for
the last 25 years.
GRASSROOTS REVOLUTIONIn the early 1980s, running-shoe design was
reinvented by the research labs. Today’s revolu-
tion is more grassroots. And rather than starting
with the traditional running community, it’s
working its way backward, from extreme min-
imalism enthusiasts into mainstream running.
(The majority of highly competitive runners
have always done some of their training in low-
to-the-ground trainers and racing f lats, but
until now, they were dismissed as simply being
biologically gifted.)
Minimalist runners have a number of com-
plaints about modern shoes. Th ey argue that
the more material added under the foot — foam,
rubber, plastic, air bags, gel packets — the less a
runner’s feet can “feel” the ground and the less a
runner can utilize the aff erent feedback gained
from the foot-ground interaction. “It’s like a
gymnast landing on a mat that’s too soft,” says
Michael Sandler, who coaches barefoot running
in Boulder, Colo. “Or like trying to play the piano
in heavily cushioned gloves.” Th e need to make
fi rm, fully controlled contact with the ground,
he argues, means that softer heels require you
to come down harder than you would in less-
cushioned footwear.
Portland podiatrist McClanahan agrees. In
addition to heel lift, McClanahan has two main
beefs with traditional shoe design. One is the
narrow toe box, which he believes pinches toes
too close together. Th e other is “toe spring,” in
which shoes turn upward at the toes by as much
as 30 degrees.
Toe spring, he says, appears to have been
designed to help runners roll more effi ciently
forward, off their toes — a possible boon back
when midsoles were stiff er than they are today.
But he thinks it’s outlived its usefulness. Th e
spring is so strong, he says, that a study of
Boston Marathon participants found that,
standing neutrally, most runners’ toes never
even touched the ground. “Only one in 100
had any toe imprint,” he says. “You’re never in
neutral position.”
Whatever the cause, everyone agrees that
shoes radically change the way most people run.
Just to start with, barefoot runners don’t heel
strike. “It hurts,” Sandler says. Instead, unshod
runners or those wearing very minimalist foot-
wear will tend to land on their midfoot, at the
ball of the foot.
“If you run with a shoe,” says New Balance’s
Murphy, “about 80 percent of the population
lands with a heel strike and 20 percent on the
middle or forefoot. [But] when people take their
shoes off , they change the way they run.”
BUT WILL IT MAKE ME FASTER?For serious competitors, most of this is
meaningless if we don’t know its eff ect on per-
formance. Years ago, South Africa’s Zola Budd
ran world-class times barefoot. And my club’s
Barefoot Bonnie could easily produce a sub-
18:00 5K. But were they fast because they ran
barefoot? Or would they have been fast, regard-
less, and being fast and effi cient allowed them
to run barefoot?
To get the full benefi ts of natural running or a barefoot style of running,
look for minimalist shoes with a few key characteristics. First, the shoes
should be lightweight, low to the ground and fl exible, have a limited heel-
to-toe drop and have a thin layer of medium-fi rm cushioning under the
forefoot. (Some minimalist runners prefer a slightly more cushy shoe
for longer runs, but even a thin layer of soft foam under the midfoot and
forefoot will dampen the foot’s ability to feel the ground and respond
accurately, particularly for faster-paced eff orts and races.)
By nature, minimalist shoes off er little to no support and no stability
control, based on the belief that the foot in an effi cient gait can natu-
rally off set much of the rolling (pronation/supination) that would occur
after a heavy heel-strike gait. Essentially, minimalist shoes off er just
enough protection from the pavement while letting the foot move natu-
rally through a stride cycle.
Many traditional training shoes put the foot 22–24mm off the ground
in the heel and 10–15mm off the ground in the forefoot, and the dif-
ference between the two — typically 12–14mm in traditional training
shoes — creates a forward-leaning slope, designed to reduce stress on
the Achilles. Minimalist shoes trend toward being much more level (a
2–10mm slope) with the assumption that the runner will land on the mid-
foot and use the natural cushioning of the arch, thus the built-up heel
only adds weight and gets in the way of an effi cient stride.
But understand that there are varying degrees of minimalist shoes. For
example, a Pearl Izumi Streak has a 10mm heel-toe drop (20–10mm), a
Brooks Green Silence has an 8mm drop and the Newton Gravity Trainer
has a 3mm drop. Other current shoes within the minimalist realm include
the New Balance 100, ASICS GEL-Hyper Speed 4, adidas adiZero Ozweego
365 CLIMACOOL, ECCO BIOM A, and K-Swiss Ultra-Natural Run II S.
1 GET NEW SHOES
8 9 10 11 12 13
48 / RUNNINGTIMES_APRIL 2010
Minimalism RFB 46-53.rev.indd 48 2/11/10 2:05 PM
Nobody’s sure. “Th ere are good arguments
[why barefoot is faster]” says Benno Nigg, a
professor of biomechanics at the University
of Calgary, “but it’s just anecdotal. Your [foot]
muscles are becoming stronger, so you should
be able to have better performance. It makes
sense, but nobody has proven it.”
But evidence is starting to come in.
A 2007 study in the Journal of Strength
Conditioning Research showed that foot motion
and performance are defi nitely linked. Hiroshi
Hasegawa and colleagues from Ryukoku
University in Kyoto, Japan, videotaped 283 elite
runners at the 15K mark of the 2004 Sapporo
International Half Marathon. Even among
the elites, they discovered, nearly three-quar-
ters landed on their heels. But the fraction was
reduced to 62 percent among those running
faster than 4:55 miles.
Th e front of the pack also had reduced contact
times — the interval in which the foot touches
the ground, each stride. And heel strikers’ con-
tact times were nearly 10 percent longer than
forefoot or midfoot strikers’, again suggesting
that heel striking might slow you down and that
barefoot-mimicking minimalist footwear might
speed you up. It certainly fi ts barefoot-running
theory, which argues that the barefoot style not
only puts you up on your midfoot, but leads you
to run with a lighter, springier stride, translat-
ing to reduced contact time.
But again, this isn’t concrete proof. Perhaps
landing on the forefoot is simply a side eff ect of
going faster.
Jack Daniels, author of Daniels’ Running
Formula, is a coach and exercise physiologist
who sometimes runs barefoot on tracks near his
Flagstaff , Ariz., home. Some years ago, he con-
ducted studies (never published) on the eff ects
of footwear on oxygen demand. Th e results were
limited but they too suggest that minimal foot-
wear is better.
Much of the work was designed simply to test
the eff ect of shoe weight on performance. (He and
his colleagues found a 1 percent increase in aero-
bic demand for each 100 grams of weight per shoe.)
But they also found that skimpier designs
increase performance … to a point. After that,
cutting down the shoe not only failed to reduce
the aerobic “cost,” but minimalist shoes actu-
ally became less effi cient.
“Presumably,” Daniels says, “[that’s] because
to get real light you sacrifi ce shock-absorbing
and energy-return characteristics.” (On the
track, however, they found improvements all
the way down to the most minimal shoes they
could devise. Apparently, the nice, resilient
surface of a well-built track gave their test sub-
jects all the shock absorption and energy return
they needed.)
And what of the unparalleled East African
runners, who reputedly develop their perfect
strides running barefoot to school? Why are
shoes one of the first purchases African run-
ners make once they can aff ord them?
Even if you’re a veteran runner who is used to running in lightweight shoes,
you should take caution when transitioning to a more minimalist type
of shoe. You’re bound to engage muscles in your feet, lower legs and core
diff erently than you’re used to, partially because you’ll be landing less on
your heel with a braking angle and more near your midfoot with a more
level landing. Th at will require a period of adjustment, especially if you
haven’t been doing general strength or dynamic strength exercises, says
Mark Cucuzzella, M.D., a 2:24 marathoner and family pr actice doctor
and faculty member of West Virginia University who has done running
gait analysis to study running injuries.
Plus, while your core will no longer be working so hard to keep your
upper body balanced because you’ll be running in a more natural posi-
tion without a built-up heel, your body will have to adjust slightly for the
newfound positioning. Elite coaches and Running Times contributors Jay
Johnson (runningdvds.com) and Greg McMillan (mcmillanrunn ing.com)
have both produced strength exercise videos geared toward distance
runners. Michael Yessis’ Explosive Running presents many resistance-
band exercises targeted at improving elements of your stride. A regular
dedication to general and dynamic strength is crucial for anyone run-
ning in minimalist shoes.
Should you eventually be running all of your miles in minimalist shoes?
Purists will say yes, of course, but contrarians argue that this can lead
to injuries for runners who are larger or not optimally fi t. As you transi-
tion, consider using your minimalist shoes for short and fast workouts
and wait until you’re strong enough to crank out that 14-mile negative-
split marathon simulation run.
2 TRANSITION SLOWLY
14 15 16 17 18 19
“IF YOU START WITH A THICK SHOE AND SLOWLY WHITTLE DOWN, AT WHAT
POINT DOES THE PERSON START TO RUN LIKE THEY’RE BAREFOOT?”
RUNNINGTIMES / 49
Minimalism RFB 46-53.rev.indd 49 2/11/10 2:05 PM
“[In Kenya,] only children are running bare-
foot, and indeed only because they don’t have
the money to buy shoes,” Pieter Langerhorst,
husband and agent of Kenyan-born world-
record holder Lornah Kiplagat, said by email.
But, he adds, that doesn’t mean the top runners
have totally abandoned barefoot running. After
track workouts, they often take barefoot cool-
downs on the grass of the infi eld.
“Th is keeps the muscles in the feet also eager,”
Langerhorst wrote in his Dutch-fl avored English.
Many top Western runners also run barefoot
strides for similar reasons, even if they didn’t
grow up unshod.
Or consider Ethiopia’s Abebe Bikila, who ran
b arefoot through the streets of Rome in the 1960
Olympics, setting a world-record 2:15:17 mara-
thon. Score one for barefoot running. But four
years later he was back, this time in shoes, albeit
a pair of Pumas that, typical of the era, were
lightweight and minimally constructed. Th e
result, another world record, 3 minutes faster:
2:12:12. Was he simply in better shape? Or was
it the shoes?
Sandler thinks it’s because all those years of
running barefoot has trained African runners
to “feel” the ground with each stride. With that
background, super-lightweight shoes that still
allow them to retain most of that feel become an
asset. Th e argument is similar to that put forth
by Nike when it introduced the Free, one of the
fi rst formal corporate forays into minimalism.
After years of studying barefoot runners, Nike
launched them in 2004 as a training tool, one
that could teach your body a more barefoot style,
but with a stern warning that you don’t have to,
indeed should not, run in them every day.
New Balance’s Murphy agrees that too lit-
tle shoe can hold you back, especially on trails.
Th at’s because, however naturally these shoes
encourage you to run, you’re going to feel every
lump. “You’re more fearful of that next sharp
rock,” he says. “You won’t put as much force on
the next step.”
In addition to possible skin damage, one must
consider the hardness of the surface. Kenyan
kids don’t run on concrete sidewalks, but soft
dirt roads and trails with a similar under-foot
feel as Daniels’ cushioned track.
LESS VS. TOO LITTLEIn other words, less is more … but only to a
point. And nobody’s really sure yet where that
point lies. Most likely, it’s an individual decision,
ranging from Bonnie in her bare feet to someone
whose Brooks Beasts are doing their job per-
fectly and who has every reason not to change.
Most runners are not going to want to go all
the way to barefoot running, or to barefoot-
simulating shoes like the Vibram FiveFingers
or Terra Plana EVO Barefoot. For them, mini-
malism will mean something less radical.
Shoe companies are scr ambling to get into
the act of producing scientifically designed
“moderate” alternatives.
First, though, they have to fi gure out precisely
how shoe design aff ects running style.
Obviously, it’s not the simple fact of having
something on your feet that makes the diff er-
ence. Runners using the Vibram FiveFingers
run barefoot style, even though it is techni-
cally a shoe (albeit a very stripped-down one).
Presumably, the diff erence lies in the thickness
of the cushioning and the geometry of the heel.
Th ere would seem to be a point at which, with
reduced cushion and heel design, a standard
shoe begins to behave more like a FiveFingers.
“If you start with a thick shoe and slowly whit-
tle down,” Murphy asks, “at what point does the
person start to run like they’re barefoot?
“We’ve completed those studies,” he adds,
Barefoot running can be very useful in your transition to minimalist
running, but it should be done safely under controlled circumstances.
Physical therapist Mark Plaatjes, co-owner of Colorado’s Boulder
Running Company, doesn’t condone a full-time minimalist approach
for most runners, but says even if you’re not switching to minimalist
shoes, consistently running barefoot strides after workouts is a good way
to help build dynamic strength in the feet and lower legs. Th e key is to
focus on good form: light foot placements that don’t entail heavy braking,
a short, compact arm swing, and an upright, but slightly forward-leaning
posture that allows your center of mass to be in front of your footsteps.
Consider ending your run where you can run on soft grass — a park,
the edge of a public golf course or the infi eld of a high school track — and
do a handful of buildup strides of 50 to 75m reaching 80 to 90 percent
eff ort two-thirds of the way through. Start with a few during your fi rst
week and ease your way up to about six to eight after a few weeks, extend-
ing the length and your speed slightly but always focusing on optimally
effi cient running form.
Another form of barefoot strength-building can come through slow
heel-toe walks on grass or through sand — either on a beach or the long
jump pit of a local high school track. Start a stride by pushing your heel
into the sand and then forcefully rolling through the midfoot to the ball
of the foot and then extending up on the toes. Th e resistance from the
soft surface or sand will require more muscular exertion and, if done
regularly, will help build foot and ankle strength.
3 RUN BAREFOOT — BRIEFLY
20 21 22 23 24 25
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Minimalism RFB 46-53.rev.indd 50 2/11/10 2:05 PM
“and come up with some pretty solid lines of
thinking on how you make the foot work as nat-
urally as possible, and at the same time protect
[it] from the elements.” Expect to see the results
in early 2011, joining a slew of new designs that
have emerged in recent years from companies
old and new to meet the minimalist demand
(see ”Barefoot-Style Running Shoes”).
Even with today’s options, the choice is far
more complex than “to bare or not to bare.”
“People are trying to separate this into ‘no shoes’
[vs.] ‘motion-control shoes,’ whereas there is a
whole bunch in between,” says Mark Plaatjes, a
physical therapist and co-owner of Colorado’s
Boulder Running Company.
“I’m convinced that going in the direc-
tion of minimalism, if you do it responsibly,
will be a healthy thing for most people,” adds
McClanahan. “[But] not everybody.”
Who shouldn’t do it? Diabetics, to begin with.
“They don’t feel their feet,” McClanahan says.
“Th ey’re going to damage their joints.” Also on
McClanahan’s don’t-try-it list are people with
rheumatoid arthritis or otherwise abnormal
feet. Sandler includes people with bones that
didn’t heal properly from a break.
Plaatjes, the 1993 world champion in the
marathon, believes the no-go list is a bit larger
than that. “Th ere are people who will absolutely
hurt themselves, regardless of how easily they
go into [minimalist] running,” he says. “It’s an
issue of ligament laxity and biomechanics, and
they just can’t do it.”
Plaatjes believes there’s only one way to fi g-
ure out which group you belong in. “You really
have to have somebody look at you and give an
opinion as to whether this is really an option for
you,” he says. And in doing this, he adds, don’t
automatically presume that running stores are
out to sell you the beefi est shoe they can con-
vince you to buy.
“I don’t make more profi t from a stability shoe,”
he says. “If you come into my store, I have abso-
lutely no reason, other than to put you in the
right shoe, to put you in a stability shoe or a min-
imalist shoe.”
Finally, if you do decide to shift to a more min-
imalist shoe, caution should be your watchword.
While there’s not yet a lot of coaching experience
with minimalism, a standard coaching rule is
not to jump into anything too quickly.
Th at’s particularly true for those contemplat-
ing major changes. Even the extremists started
slow: “I went out 100 yards the fi rst day,” says
barefoot coach Sandler, “then walked home and
iced my feet for a couple of days. Th en I did a cou-
ple hundred yards and iced for a couple of days.”
“It took me a year to get fully accustomed to
my Vibram FiveFingers,” adds McClanahan.
So, start easy, both in how far you move away
from the shoes you’ve been running in, and how
long you spend in more minimal footwear.
You also need to pay attention to your feet.
Don’t just throw on the new shoes and head out
the door, Murphy says. “Do it with a great deal
of awareness. You’re going to use muscles you
haven’t used for a while.” In particular, he says,
minimalist shoes will probably give you sore
calves, and possibly soreness in little-used mus-
cles of your feet. “Th at’s not necessarily a bad
thing. It just means you’re working that part of
your body a little diff erently.”
Working new muscles to strengthen them
is what we do as runners. Moving to a less-
supportive shoe will likely reveal core and
hip weakness as well, and require work to
strengthen these. Ultimately, the minimalist
goal is to run better — more naturally, more
effi ciently, with less impact — making us less
prone to injury, so we can run longer, and faster.
It’s not about the shoes. •
Boulder, Colo.-based running coach Bobby McGee is one of many form
gurus who preach the need to do form drills before workouts when you’re
fresh as a way to develop effi cient running form during a race when you’re
battling fatigue. By repeatedly working on the tenets of good running
form — light foot placements, high stride cadence, compact arm car-
riage, upright, forward-leaning posture — you’ll be able to instill in your
brain and the rest of your body how your body should be functioning in
the latter stages of a race, he says.
Drills come in many varieties and you can make up your own to make
things more fun, but a few common ones include high-knee strides (alter-
nating every other stride or every third stride with a “knee kick”), butt
kicks (an exaggerated rear leg extension in which you alternate kick-
ing yourself in the hind quarters) quick feet (doing as many fast, short
strides as possible in about 20–30m) and acceleration strides (50–60m
buildup sprints that top out at about 90 percent). Every drill should stress
or accentuate some aspect of good form, even if exaggerated during the
drill. Drills should be done several times per week.
4 DO FORM DRILLS
26 27 28 29 30 31
For a podcast on transitioning to less shoe, go to runningtimes.com/apr10.
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GROWING UP SHODT H E T R A I T S O F G O O D F O R M B L O S S O M ( O R W I LT ) E A R LYBy Jonathan Beverly
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‘‘WE DIDN’T ALL GROW UP KENYAN, after all.”
Every discussion about minimalism
seems eventually to come around to this state-
ment. If the argument is that, having grown up
shod, we’re trained to need supportive shoes,
what about the next generation? Can and should
we as parents do anything to help our kids grow
up more Kenyan than we did?
Th e medical establishment tends to be con-
servative on the issue. When asked, David
Davidson, D.P.M., president of the American
Academy of Podiatric Sports Medicine (AAPSM),
stated, “Kids should not be running in ‘mini-
malist footwear’ at all and, as in other shoes,
should be wearing brand name running shoes
with good motion control, cushioning, etc.” Th e
Academy’s offi cial statement is somewhat more
agnostic, stating, “Currently, inconclusive sci-
entifi c research has been conducted regarding
the benefi ts and/or risks of barefoot running.”
It makes sense that doctors would be cau-
tious. They also tend to see kids who have
problems, and supporting the foot and con-
trolling the stride helps alleviate many of these
problems. It would seem to follow that all
developing feet could use some support. But as
runners, learning that many of these issues stem
from foot, hip, or core weaknesses and improper
strides, putting kids in motion-control shoes
before they demonstrate the need for them feels
like prescribing corrective eyeglasses to all chil-
dren as soon as they start to read. Is it possible
that overbuilt shoes contradict the medical
mandate to “fi rst, do no harm?”
Michael Yessis, Ph.D., professor of biome-
chanics and kinesiology and author of Explosive
Running, believes so, stating that motion-con-
trol shoes “change how you run, preventing the
foot from functioning normally.” Yessis main-
tains that these shoes “don’t do what they are
supposed to do — if anything, they will lead to
more injuries.” Paul Langer, D.P.M., chair of the
AAPSM’s Shoe Committee, points to three stud-
ies from 1985 to 2008 that found diff erences in
toddlers learning to walk when barefoot com-
pared to wearing shoes, and between those in
“sneakers” or less supportive shoes. “Th e signifi -
cance of these studies,” Langer says, “is that they
show how our feet are sensory organs that allow
us to interact with our environment and to
develop natural movement patterns. Th ese stud-
ies suggest that shoes can interfere with that
development. Balance, stride length and stride
width are all infl uenced by our ability to sense
the surface we are landing on. Clearly, the more
“stuff ” between the foot and the ground the less
ability we have to sense the landing surface.”
Th e thousands of East African youth running
miles to school barefoot argue also against the
idea that shoes are necessary to prevent injury,
and the resulting stride they develop speaks for
itself in terms of running results. Watch very
young American kids and you’ll note that most
of them also naturally demonstrate a “Kenyan”
stride, up to a certain age. Nicholas Romanov,
Ph.D., professor of physical education and sport
known for his “Pose Method” of running, ana-
lyzed several thousand school children in Russia
during the 1980s. Based on these observations,
he told us, “Kids, with some exception, have a
natural ability to run properly, meaning to fall
forward, keep high cadence and the feet under
the [general center of mass], their body weight
on the forefoot, until age 5–6 years old.”
Romanov blames the change after that age
not on shoes but on training, noting that the
age boundary is concurrent with the beginning
of education. “Of course,” Romanov says, “this
education is based mostly on our experience,
habits, eclectic knowledge with lots of individ-
ual preferences in thoughts on ‘proper’ running
technique.”
Romanov goes on to say that, when kids begin
to think about their running, they base their
technique on visual images of those around
them, which does not often include the best
runners: “Top runners, unfortunately, are out
of our sight, because we consider them as a spe-
cial case with ‘God-given’ abilities, who are out
of our league.”
Yessis agrees that education is much to
blame, lamenting, “No one teaches how to run.”
Observing my 8-year-old son’s fi rst basketball
practice, in which 90 percent of the time was
spent teaching how to stand, run and pivot
with proper balance and posture, I can see their
point: Does anyone do this with running, par-
ticularly at this formative age?
Yet, again recalling those barefoot African
youth, it seems that such education should only
be necessary for those who have already learned
poor habits. Something else happened at that
basketball practice that may be even more sig-
nifi cant in forming a young athlete’s running
style: Th e coach used running as punishment
for disruptive talking.
Several experts, including Ron Usher, coach
and PE teacher with an M.A. in kinesiology,
believe that doing a lot of slow slogging, both as
punishment and conditioning for other sports,
emphasizes the development of poor form, and
teaches kids to hate running. Related, when they
are required to be fast, they often are pushed to
run too hard, making them tense up and over-
reach, or too far, beyond what they can complete
with their natural, fl oating stride of youth.
Other changes happen about school age that
aff ect children’s stride. Bruce Williams, D.P.M.,
past president of the AAPSM reports, “When
kids begin to gain weight and enter puberty
their risk of foot ailments seems to drastically
increase.” Rob Conenello, D.P.M., international
lecturer on podiatric sports medicine, reports
an increase in injuries related to growth spurts
in 8- to 14-year-olds. “Th eir soft tissue and bone
structure is not entirely in sync,” Conenello says,
“and as they get bigger and stronger, their stride
changes.” Because of these changes, and the neg-
ative running education they often get in PE and
sports, Usher believes that currently approx-
imately 80 percent of middle-school through
high school kids do need instruction in proper
running form, and most need strengthening
work to be able to run properly. “Th ey just aren’t
getting the movement experience,” Usher says.
Which brings us back to shoes. Given that
most kids aren’t running completely eff i-
ciently, and that they aren’t typically running
on the dirt roads of the Rift Valley, it seems
that most American kids are in a similar posi-
tion as their parents: Th ey need some level of
shoe. “You can’t make a blanket statement,” says
Conenello. “Some kids, some adults can adapt
to a barefoot stride.” Rather than recommend-
ing traditional cushion/control shoes off the bat,
however, Conenello advises putting them in the
“most minimal shoe possible, and adding sup-
port if necessary.” Th e level of minimal that is
possible will vary with the child — Conenello
52 / RUNNINGTIMES_APRIL 2010
Minimalism RFB 46-53.rev.indd 52 2/11/10 2:06 PM
NIKE FREENike was the fi rst to mass produce minimalist running shoes specifi -cally designed to work with a natural or “barefoot-style” running gait in 2004 with the introduction of its Free line of shoes (nikerunning.com). It continues to update three models that off er varying levels of foam cushioning, from next-to-nothing in the Free 3.0 v2 to mod-erate amount of foam in the Free 5.0 v4 to fairly thickly cushioned Free Everyday+ 2. Free shoes incorporate minimal outsole (only small
pads of durable rubber in high-wear areas) and have a lightweight foam midsole that can fl ex according to the dynamic move-
ment of a foot; however, they maintain a signifi cant heel-to-toe drop and support under the arch like traditional running shoes.
NEWTON RUNNINGSince its inception in 2007, Newton has developed lightweight train-ing and racing shoes with minimal heel geometry and an almost level
heel-toe slope that allows a runner to avoid heel striking (and instead land near the ball of the foot) and utilize its inno-
vative Action/Reaction Technology that captures downward energy and channels it into forward propulsion. newtonrunning.com
SKORA FOOTWEARThis entrepreneurial eff ort from barefoot running proponent David Sypniewski is expected to launch later this year. The shoe will include a rounded minimal heel, an ultra-thin midsole/out-sole with the same depth from heel-to-toe, an extra-wide toe box and adjustable lacing for a customizable fi t. skorafootwear.com
TERRA PLANA VIVO BAREFOOTAnother new player to the natural running game, Terra Plana’s new featherweight EVO running shoe (expected to debut this spring) is made from a pliable, soft plastic cage interlaced with a thin mesh fabric
and a minimal footbed. The company is already selling several shoes with its Vivo Barefoot Technology, including a super-
fl exible model designed to help transition runners into the minimalist movement. terraplana.com
VIBRAM FIVEFINGERSWith a thin, durable rubber outsole, micromesh upper and a glove-like design that encases the foot and individual toes, these are about as minimal as you can get. Vibram has continued to evolve the concept since the initial launch in 2007, with various models for road running, trail running and cold-weather running (as well as other activities like yoga, hiking, surfi ng, martial arts and boating). vibramfi vefi ngers.com
Can releasing your toes cure your plantar fasciitis? Go to runningtimes.com/apr10.
has observed genetic diff erences on the required
level of support even among his three children
— and may vary as the child ages. Langer agrees,
concluding, “While research does not yet allow
us to predict the long-term risks/benefits of
minimalist footwear in children, it does sug-
gest that allowing the feet and lower extremities
to develop naturally with minimal cushioning
or support is ideal.” Given what we’re learn-
ing about the running stride, it seems parents
should think twice before putting their kids in
a pair of “good sturdy shoes.” •
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR PARENTS:
01 Encourage kids to go barefoot whenever possible: in the house, yard, parks, on the beach.
02 Buy the most minimal shoes appropriate for your child. Look for low heel height, low-profi le cushioning, fl exibility (in the right place, at the ball of the foot), light weight, ample toe room. Often the minimal choice will be general-use shoes rather than running specifi c shoes, which tend to be designed as mini-adult, cushioned stability trainers.
03 Ensure all of your kids’ shoes are running-friendly. Kids don’t change into running shoes to run, they do it naturally throughout the day.
04 Add support only if necessary. Get an evaluation from a physical therapist or podiatrist if your child shows signs of needing structured support.
05 Allow and encourage kids to run more like they do when they are very little: short bursts that end when fatigued, with a relaxed stride, at a variety of paces.
06 Encourage kids to participate in a wide variety of physical activities that build strength and fl exibility.
07 Help kids stay at an appropriate weight through diet and activity.
08 Model good running technique and expose kids to excellent, effi cient runners. For reference on running technique, a good starting point is Run Tall, Run Easy by GP Pearlberg.
B A R E F O O T- S T Y L E R U N N I N G S H O E S
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Minimalism RFB 46-53.rev.indd 53 2/11/10 2:06 PM
AN EFFORT-BASED ROUTE TO SUCCESSBy Pete Magill | Photos by Di Zinno
RUNNINGTIMES_APRIL 2010
5K Training RFB 54-59.indd 54 2/9/10 12:45 AM
T he 5K is the race where runners come to
meet. It’s the race where real distance
runners drop down, taking a break from the usual
smorgasbord of 15Ks, marathons, and 24-hour relays
to snack on an event that seems nothing more than a
sustained sprint. And it’s the place where middle-dis-
tance runners go up, fi guring to grit their teeth and
hang for 3 miles, then streak past all the slow-moving
shuffl ers like cheetahs picking apart a herd of gazelle.
Th e 5K is where these two distinct groups of run-
ners face off and where a third group, the 5K specialists,
are likely to steal the show. Because the 5K specialist
knows what neither the mileage junkie nor the speed
racer seems to grasp: Th e 5K is a unique eff ort that
demands a full range of physiological and psycholog-
ical preparation.
And blending the correct components of that prep-
aration takes more than marking down miles in a
training log or recording splits during an interval ses-
sion. It takes collecting and then putting together all
the pieces of the 5K puzzle.
RUNNINGTIMES / 55
5K Training RFB 54-59.indd 55 2/9/10 12:46 AM
THE 5K PUZZLEZen master Yuan-tong noted, “When the task is done before-
hand, then it is easy.”
I’ve coached hundreds of 5K runners over the past 25 years,
from college All-Americans to middle-aged mortgage bro-
kers to seniors battling osteoarthritis. And those who met
their 5K race goal arrived at the start line properly trained
in every aspect of the 5K. Th ey had completed their “task”
beforehand.
Surprisingly, most runners don’t practice this simple
concept. Volume enthusiasts assume that big numbers in
training logs ensure success in a race that is only 3.1 miles
long. Interval warriors pound out 5K-pace repetitions, con-
vinced that all they’ll have to do is connect the dots come
race day. Both groups arrive at the start line with their task
unfi nished. Both are missing pieces of the 5K puzzle.
In a puzzle, we start with lots of little pieces, then match
those pieces to build small islands (in a landscape puzzle,
these islands might be patches of blue sky or a cluster of red-
woods), which we then bring together to complete the puzzle.
For our 5K puzzle, we assemble pieces to create these
six islands:
• Stride Effi ciency• Aerobic Endurance• 5K-Specifi c Endurance• Intermediate Fast-Twitch Endurance• Versatile Race Pace Effi ciency• Post-Run Recovery & Injury Prevention
On race day, we join these islands to complete our 5K puz-
zle. Voila! Our task is done beforehand.
THE PIECES OF OUR PUZZLETh ere is an ancient Chinese proverb, “A journey of a thou-
sand miles begins with a single step.” So does our training
program…
1 STRIDE EFFICIENCY
It all begins with our stride. Stride effi ciency is the single
most important element of our future training and racing
success. An effi cient stride allows us to meet the demands of
training without falling prey to injury. And a smoother, lon-
ger stride is an essential ingredient of a fast 5K. So how do
we improve our stride?
If we wanted to improve as a ballet dancer, we wouldn’t
throw on a CD of the Nutcracker, then twirl madly across
the fl oor. Instead, we’d do drills to develop proper posture,
correct placement, and alignment. We’d improve strength,
fl exibility, movement skills, and artistry. And we’d train until
we could perform individual movements automatically, with-
out having to think our way through every plié or pirouette.
It’s the same with running. If we want to improve our run-
ning stride, we don’t dash madly through the streets, across
a park, or around a track. Instead, we begin by developing
the parts — the individual actions that make up our stride.
And we do this using two methods:
• Technique (Form) Drills
• Short Hill RepetitionsTechnique drills involve variations of movements such as
skipping, bounding, and marching. Th ese drills are designed
to promote muscle fi ber recruitment, improve nervous sys-
tem function, increase strength, and correct muscle and form
imbalances. Go to runningtimes.com/magilldrill to see some
key drills demonstrated.
Short hill repeats are 40- to 60-meter sprints up reason-
ably steep hills. Our eff ort level should be slightly less than an
“all-out” sprint — but just slightly. Also, remember that this
workout is designed to challenge our legs, not our lungs. Our
legs should feel momentary fatigue as we recruit their full
range of muscle fi ber, but we should recover quickly. Don’t
make the mistake of turning this stride-effi ciency workout
into a fi tness session. After each repetition, we walk back
down the hill, wait until a full two to three minutes have
passed, and then sprint up the hill again. Eight to 10 reps
will do the trick.
Of the two workouts, technique drills are better for
improving stride. But short hill reps will do in a pinch. A
half dozen sessions of either during the fi rst 8-12 weeks of
your 5K training (no more than one session per week) should
provide 100 percent benefi t. Naturally, each session should
include a proper warm-up and cool-down.
I tell my athletes, “Run fi rst, train later.” When we focus
on mechanics at the outset of our program, we set the stage
for better overall training in the weeks and months to come.
2 AEROBIC ENDURANCE
Th is is just a fancy way of saying, “Run long and run often.”
But understand that long is about duration, not distance.
Our bodies are not odometers. Our legs don’t know a mile
from a kilometer. Or a kilometer from a run to the park and
back. Runners who focus on “mileage” miss the point of
aerobic endurance training. Th e point is to keep our bod-
ies working at a moderate level of exertion for a sustained
period of time — not distance.
Th ink about it. Let’s say we decide that 50 miles per week is
the optimal volume for 5K training. It would take a 30:00 5K
runner approximately twice as long to complete that train-
ing as a 15:00 5K runner. Do we really believe that slower
runners should train for twice as long as faster runners?
Instead, we focus on time. Whatever our ability, we’ll gain
similar benefi ts from 60 minutes of lower-intensity running
(65–75 percent VO2 max). Or from 90 minutes. Or from 30.
Long also refers to an accumulation of volume. “Volume” is
not a single long run, a single week of high mileage, or even a
single season of training. It is a long-term, consistent amass-
ing of lower-intensity, aerobic conditioning.
For our purposes, there are three types of aerobic dis-
tance runs:
• Short: up to 40 minutes in duration. Short runs aid recovery from hard workouts and add to our overall volume.
• Medium: 1 to 2 times the duration of our short run. Medium runs are “normal” distance runs and provide the bulk of our volume.
• Long: up to (approximately) twice the duration of our medium run. Long runs build capillary density, increase mitochondria (our body’s cellular power plants), improve stride
RUNNINGTIMES_APRIL 2010
5K Training RFB 54-59.indd 56 2/9/10 12:45 AM
effi ciency, burn fat, expand glycogen stores, and do all kinds of other wonderful stuff.
For the beginner, there might not be much difference
among short, medium, and long runs. Don’t worry about it.
Just make sure to increase the duration of aerobic runs grad-
ually, focusing fi rst on the medium and long runs.
3 5K-SPECIFICENDURANCE
Th e 5K race demands a unique mix of aerobically and anaero-
bically generated energy. Th e only way to prepare our bodies
for this demand is to train at 5K eff ort. We do this by run-
ning repetitions. Th is is the place where most of us make
our biggest mistake: We base the pace for our repetitions
on the fi tness we’d like to have rather than on the fi tness we
already possess.
If our goal is a 20:00 5K, we want to run repetitions at
20:00 5K pace right now. We want to skip ahead to the glori-
ous conclusion of our training program. Only one problem:
We aren’t in shape to run goal pace yet.
Remember, we don’t run repetitions to practice run-
ning faster. We run repetitions to improve the physiological
systems that will allow us to run faster in the future. To
accomplish this goal, we train 5K “eff ort” rather than 5K
“pace.” As our fi tness improves, our pace will improve. But our
perceived eff ort will remain the same, allowing us to become
well-versed in the eff ort level we’ll use in the race itself.
To avoid the trap of training by pace, we go off -track for
our workouts, running on the trails or the road. Th is elimi-
nates the temptation to check split times during our reps. It
also allows us to practice adjusting for race-day variables:
weather, terrain, our fatigue level, etc. Th e ability to adjust
for variables is essential to race-day success.
Some runners bristle at leaving the security of the track.
Let’s face it, there’s comfort in a perfect 400m oval and the
equally perfect splits we can record while running around
it. But that’s the problem. Road 5Ks are not perfect ovals. We
won’t record perfect splits as we dodge runners, climb hills,
and make 180-degree turns. Our goal is to become effi cient
at the race we’re training to run, and training on trails and
the road is the best way to make that happen.
5K-specifi c workouts should be run once a week. Th is is a
typical progression of sessions. All reps are followed by three
minutes of jogging unless otherwise indicated:
• 5–10 x 1 minute (2-minute recovery)• 5 x 2 minutes• 5 x 3 minutes• 4 x 4 minutes• 5 x 4 minutes• 4 x 5 minutes• 5 x 5 minutes
It makes no diff erence whether we’re 15:00 5K runners or
45:00 5K runners. Our repetitions last the same amount of
time. We’re targeting specifi c physiological processes, not
mimicking race distance.
If you’re unsure whether you’re running 5K eff ort, try this
simple test: As you’re running, ask yourself, “Is this an eff ort
I can maintain for an entire 5K?” Be honest. If the answer is
yes, keep up the eff ort. If it’s no, slow down.
Still unsure about proper repetition eff ort? Th en here’s
another guideline guaranteed to keep you within the proper
range: Whatever pace you run your repetitions, you should
fi nish your last one feeling as if you could run one or two
more. If you’re completely exhausted at the end of your rep-
etition session, you ran too hard. Adjust the next week by
decreasing your eff ort. If you’re barely winded, then increase
your eff ort the following week.
“But how will I know if I’m on track to meet my time goal?”
Many athletes set specifi c time goals and crave reassurance
in training that they’re on track to hit that pace in a race.
Two of my athletes, K
and M, fell into this camp.
Both were 19:00 5K run-
ners. Both wanted to run
mid-18:00. Both balked
when I explained that we’d
be training off-track. They
didn’t want to waste months
of training only to discover
that they hadn’t improved. I
explained that workouts are
not races, that training “race
pace” on the track has little
bearing on what they’d run
in an actual race. I also told
them that they were limiting
their potential. Why train for
mid-18:00? Why not train
the physiological systems
involved in 5K racing and
see where the chips fell?
K and M finally agreed.
Three months later, K ran
16:40 and M ran 17:50.
Th ere is one exception to
the off-track rule. As race
day approaches, some run-
ners like to add a couple
track sessions (also at 5K
eff ort) to “sharpen” their fi t-
ness. Th is isn’t about testing
pace. It’s about solidifying
our stride effi ciency at 5K eff ort. While adding hills and turns
and uneven terrain has prepared us for actual race condi-
tions, doing one or two training sessions on a perfectly fl at
surface helps to hardwire the relationship between stride
effi ciency and 5K-specifi c endurance. Two workouts I rec-
ommend for this are:
• 16–20 x 400m (100m jog recovery)• 6–8 x 1,000m (400m jog recovery)
4 INTERMEDIATE FAST-TWITCH ENDURANCE
Our best 5K eff ort results from a combination of stamina and
speed. And it just so happens that we have a type of muscle
fi ber that’s perfectly suited to this task. Fast-twitch type IIa
muscle fi ber provides much of the “speed” associated with
fast-twitch type IIx (sprinter) fi ber, but it also has the capac-
ity to function aerobically.
Bingo! Th is combination allows us to run faster longer —
the defi nition of 5K racing.
Th e best way to train this intermediate fast-twitch fi ber is
to run long hill repeats. Th is has nothing to do with whether
we’ll be racing on hills, fl ats, roads, or the track. Long hill
RUNNINGTIMES / 57
5K Training RFB 54-59.indd 57 2/9/10 12:46 AM
repeats make us faster — period.
Th e fi rst step is to fi nd a hill that’s not too steep and not
too fl at. Th e incline should be challenging, but it shouldn’t
chop our stride or require
mountain climbing gear.
I prefer about a 6 percent
grade. This increases the
workload for each stride
while allowing us to main-
tain full range of motion.
We use our watches to
time the fi rst hill repeat of
each week’s session. Let’s
say our rep for that week is
supposed to last 60 seconds.
We stop running as soon as
a minute is up. That’s our
finish line. We won’t have
to time the rest of our repe-
titions, allowing us to focus
on correct effort and form.
Recovery between reps is
four to fi ve minutes, includ-
ing our jog back down the
hill and some walking at
the bottom. Less recovery
won’t give us a better work-
out, but it will increase our
risk of injury and burnout.
Remember that we’re tar-
geting a specif ic muscle
fi ber type that is recruited
during a specific range of
effort. Too little recovery
forces us to recruit the other
type of fast-twitch fi ber and/or to burn through our mus-
cle glycogen stores.
Th e correct eff ort level for each repetition varies depending
on its length. As with our 5K-specifi c workout, the guiding
principle is to fi nish our long hill repeat session with enough
energy remaining to run one or two more reps. We want to
fi nish with gas in the tank.
Th is is typical progression for long hill repeat sessions:
• 8 x 30 seconds• 6 x 60 seconds• 8 x 60 seconds• 4 x 90 seconds• 6 x 90 seconds
Long hill repeats should be run two to three times a month
until we’ve accumulated six to eight sessions. My preference
is to alternate hill repeats with technique drills on a weekly
basis. If you’re already in fairly good shape, you can begin
incorporating these reps at the outset of your 5K program. If
you’re a beginner, wait three to four weeks. Never do long hill
repeats the week of a race. Also, on weeks that don’t include
hill reps or a race, it’s benefi cial to incorporate a few hills into
our long runs. Th is reinforces the gains we’ve made.
5 VERSATILE RACE PACE EFFICIENCY
A 5K puzzle isn’t complete without pieces obtained from
training at eff orts above and below our 5K goal pace.
Training faster than goal pace serves two purposes.
Physiologically, it makes us effi cient at paces that might be
required in the race (at the start, during surges, and for our
fi nishing kick). Psychologically, it makes our actual 5K pace
feel “slow” — our race pace feels relaxed since it’s less than
100 percent of the eff ort we’ve trained to run.
Two faster workouts are:
• Track: 16 x 200m at 3K effort, with 200m jog recovery
• Park or Trail Fartlek: 8–10 x 30- to 90-second surges at >3K effort, with jogging recovery equal in time to each surge
3K eff ort isn’t meant to imply an exact pace; rather, the
point is to run harder than 5K eff ort but not quite as hard as
we’d run during a mile race.
Training slower than goal pace allows us to increase the
duration of higher-intensity endurance sessions without
overstressing our bodies.
Two examples of this type of workout are:
• Tempo Runs• Progression Runs
Tempo runs are one of the great misunderstood workouts of
our sport. In his seminal book, Daniels’ Running Formula, über-
coach Jack Daniels writes that “the intensity of eff ort associated
with [tempo] running is comfortably hard. [Y]our eff ort should
be one that you could maintain for about an hour in a race.” Th is
is what tempo is not: a time trial. To be on the safe side, when
preparing for the 5K we should tempo train at an eff ort approx-
imately equal to half marathon race pace.
Because the 5K doesn’t require the sustained endurance
eff ort of longer races, it’s OK to break tempo runs into two
sections. Th is gives us most of the benefi t while reducing the
chance of overtraining. For example:
• 2 x 10 minutes, with 2-minute jog recovery• 2 x 15 minutes, with 3-minute jog recovery
Progression runs begin at our normal distance pace, then
drop 10–15 seconds per mile until we can’t go any faster (or
until we reach 5K race pace). Th is usually occurs at between
6–9 miles. A Garmin is great for this workout, but it’s OK
to guesstimate pace while using a watch to trigger each
increase in eff ort.
Varied pace work should be introduced four to six weeks
before our 5K race. Faster work can take the place of the
weekly drills or hills session. Slower than goal pace work
can substitute for the 5K eff ort repetitions. Always make
sure to subtract one hard workout from your weekly sched-
ule before adding one of these.
6 POST-RUN RECOVERY & INJURY PREVENTION
One of the biggest mistakes we runners make is to call it quits
on our workout once the running part is fi nished. We fi gure
we’ve done the work, so what can it hurt to skip the stretch-
ing, injury prevention exercises, and icing?
Answer: It can hurt a lot.
Running depletes muscle glycogen, generates mini-
spasms in our muscles, triggers infl ammation, and leaves
us dehydrated. Th e most important 15 minutes of our work-
out is the time we spend post-run counteracting these eff ects.
In order, we need to incorporate:
• Glycogen replacement and rehydration• Stretching
58 / RUNNINGTIMES_APRIL 2010
5K Training RFB 54-59.indd 58 2/9/10 12:52 AM
5K TRAINING PROGRAM1 BASE-BUILDING
PHASEUse this two-week pattern of workouts several times before your
racing season starts.
Day AM PM
Monday 5K Eff ort Repetitions
Tuesday Medium Run
Wednesday Short Run* Medium Run
Thursday Technique Drills/Short Hill Sprints
Friday Short Run* Medium Run
Saturday Long Run with Hills
Sunday Short Run, Medium Run or Off
Monday 5K Eff ort Repetitions
Tuesday Medium Run
Wednesday Short Run* Medium Run
Thursday Long Hill Repeats
Friday Short Run* Medium Run
Saturday Long Run
Sunday Short Run, Medium Run or Off
2 RACEPHASE
Follow this schedule before your key 5K races of the year to reach them
rested and raring to go.
Day AM PM
Monday Tempo Run
Tuesday Medium Run
Wednesday Short Run* Medium Run
Thursday 16 x 200m (3K effort), with 200m jog
Friday Short Run* Medium Run
Saturday Long Run
Sunday Short Run, Medium Run or Off
Monday 20 x 400m (5K effort), with 100m jog
Tuesday Short Run* Medium Run
Wednesday Park or Trail Fartlek
Thursday Short or Medium Run
Friday 20-minute Run or Off
Saturday RACE
Sunday Short Run, Medium Run or Off
* Optional Workouts
• Injury-prevention exercises• Icing
Glycogen replacement and rehydration is easy. We simply
consume 300–500 calories of carbohydrates, washing them
down with lots of water. Bagels, bananas, and sports bars are
great sources of carbs. Or choose chocolate milk or a sports
drink to get a combination of carbs and fl uids.
Static stretching has gotten a bad reputation in recent
years. (See “Dynamic Returns” on p. 25.) Done before running,
it can reduce strength and even cause injury. Post-run is a
diff erent story, however, as stretching releases pesky muscle
spasms that can lead to pain and infl ammation.
Injury-prevention exercises are geared toward prevent-
ing and rehabilitating conditions like plantar fasciitis and
iliotibial band syndrome. Towel toe curls and foot orbits can
reverse many cases of plantar fasciitis, while a revised hur-
dler’s stretch can sometimes erase iliotibial band pain in
the space of a minute. Th ese exercises and stretches should
be incorporated into our post-run routine on a daily basis.
Go to runningtimes.com/fi rst15 to watch a video of a good
post-run routine.
Icing is the silver bullet that makes our sport possible. We
need to ice each and every sore spot that could potentially
progress to injury. And we need to begin our icing within 15
minutes after completing our run. Th is is truly a case of a
stitch in time saving nine.
COMPLETING THE PUZZLEFinally, race day arrives. We step to the start line injury free.
Th e gun goes off , and we immediately fall into a pace that
matches the 5K eff ort we’ve been practicing for weeks. Our
stride is eff ortless as we blend aerobic endurance with speed
and strength gained from the hills. We make adjustments
in our eff ort level based upon feedback from our bodies, a
method we rehearsed during all those repetitions on the
roads and trails. And when fi nally the fi nish banner comes
into view, we call upon our fartlek-trained fast-twitch mus-
cles to carry us to the fi nish line, then cross at the exact
moment we reach 100 percent eff ort.
Th ere’s no part of the race for which we’re not prepared.
Th ere are no surprises awaiting us. We completed our task
before race day. We assembled all the pieces of our puzzle.
Our race is no longer a test. It’s show and tell. It’s graduation.
It’s a foregone conclusion. It’s a celebration.
Best of all, the race itself now adds to our overall fi tness,
locking our puzzle pieces into place. We can look forward
to improved 5K performances in our next races. And as an
added bonus, the same training that’s prepared us for the
5K has also prepared us for races like the 10K — even the
marathon! Th at’s right. Since we’ve focused on improving
the essential aspects of training — from stride effi ciency
to muscle fi ber recruitment to aerobic endurance — rather
than simply adding miles to our training logs, we’ve emerged
as better overall runners: fi tter, faster, and more effi cient. •
Pete Magill holds three American age-group
records and is the oldest American to break
15:00 for 5K, which he did at age 47.
TIMES / 59
5K Training RFB 54-59.indd 59 2/9/10 12:46 AM
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RUNNINGTIMES / 61
SPRING 2010Shoe Buyer’s Guide
adidas adiZero Mana $80
A featherweight speedster that eschews most technologically advanced features, the Mana is a low-to-the ground, no-frills racer/trainer. A wedge of fi rmer foam on the medial side of the midfoot offers a twinge of stability to offset late-stage pronation. It has a fairly level profi le (6mm heel-toe drop), which encourages effi cient, high-cadence run-ning, and a semi-fi rm foam in the forefoot that makes it easy to rev up to higher speeds. The price could be considered a bargain, but like most lightweight trainers in this category, it probably won’t have quite the longevity as some of its beefi er brethren. It’s not that this shoe isn’t durable, it’s more that it’s a shoe you’re bound to run roughshod over with fast workouts and hard miles.
8.0 oz./6.7 oz.
NEUTRAL RUNNERS TO SLIGHT OVERPRONATORS
How much shoe do you need? That’s the question you should be asking yourself when you buy new running shoes this spring.
No matter where you stand on the various ideas swirling about in the running shoe revolution afoot (see “Much Ado About
Minimalism” on p. 46), from a simple point of view the path to better running — at least when concerned about effi cient
mechanics and optimal performance — is gained by wearing shoes that allow your feet and legs to control your running and
not the other way around. That doesn’t mean you should start wearing racing fl ats or newfangled ultra-minimalist footwear every
day (or running barefoot most of the time) because it’s the latest trend. But it does mean you shouldn’t have to be stuck wearing
shoes that might control or alter your gait because it’s been the status quo. Ultimately, the “best” running shoe for you is one
that allows you to be as effi cient and smooth as possible with the least amount of effort based on your gait, body type and style
of running. In other words, it’s a shoe that promotes (instead of inhibits) good all-body running mechanics and a high stride
cadence, no matter if you’re running fast or slow. (And yes, it takes time for your body to adapt to running in more minimal shoes.)
How can you fi nd that shoe? Following a “less-is-more” perspective that falls somewhere between minimalism and tradi-
tionally constructed shoes, we’ve reviewed a variety of new, lightweight performance-oriented models you’ll see in stores
this spring. But you still have to go to your local running shop and try on many different pairs to fi nd the combination of size,
weight, shape, cushion, fl ex and whatever else results in that magical “feel” that allows you to run with optimal effi ciency.
When you fi nd it, you’ll know. It’s not an easy task — especially if you have to shed the conventions of what you’ve been run-
ning in — but it can have huge rewards.
Edited by Brian Metzler | Wear-Test Analysis by David Spetnagel
MORE SHOES! For a complete overview of Spring 2010 shoes, including technical data, visit runningtimes.com/apr10.
Phot
o:
Pete
r Ba
ker
Stud
ios
Shoe Guide RFB 61-70.rev.indd 61 2/11/10 1:19 PM
62 / RUNNINGTIMES_APRIL 2010
Phot
os:
Pete
r Ba
ker
Stud
ios
Brooks Green Silence $100
This lightweight fl at is the fi rst true “green” sho e. Each and every part of it has some kind of eco-friendly component — including soy-based coloring, 100 percent recycled laces and a midsole foam that will break down in 20 years, not 1,000. But more importantly, it’s a smooth-riding shoe that doesn’t get in the way of your stride. It has a lower heel-toe drop (8mm) than most shoes and has a midsole comprised of a single layer of not-too-soft/just-fi rm-enough foam that offers good responsive-ness for fast running and appropriate cushioning for longer runs. The shoe’s unique off-center lacing system and wrap-style tongue does a nice job of cinching the airy mesh upper to the rest of the shoe to pro-vide a reliable fi t for fast running.
6.9 oz. (unisex sizing)
ECCO BIOM B $195
With its BIOM line of shoes, ECCO has created low-profi le trainers aimed at greater proprioceptive interaction between the foot and the ground and more natural upright running mechanics. The BIOM shoes are made with polyurethane midsoles (instead of more typical foam materials), which results in a fi rmer, but more responsive feeling under-foot. ECCO retooled the fi rst version of the BIOM B with a slightly softer density midsole in the heel and forefoot and also created a more bev-eled heel shape to allow for more level footstrikes (aided by a 10mm heel-toe slope). Our testers were dazzled by these shoes when run-ning with a midfoot gait at faster speeds (and felt the shoes ran lighter than they actually were), but disenchanted running with a heavy heel-strike gait at slower paces.
12.2 oz./9.7 oz.
Karhu Forward Ride $130
This lightweight neutral trainer has perhaps the most unique design of any shoe we tested. The fi t is plush but very snug, especially in the low, tapered forefoot, and the midsole features one of the highest heel-to-toe drops we’ve come across. Combined with Karhu’s midfoot “fulcrum” bridge, a rigid plastic insert aimed at transferring energy from heel to forefoot, our testers reported a feeling of forward propulsion, one that was both fast and smooth. It all adds up to a shoe that’s most com-fortable running at a faster pace with good mechanics. (And defi nitely not for slower-paced heel-striking.) A few of our testers thought it was too snug in the forefoot and too loose in the heel, but many reported the lack of overlays on the meshy upper helped mitigate the snug-ness of the toebox.
10.3 oz./8.9 oz.
Shoe Guide RFB.indd 62 2/8/10 2:38 PM
64 / RUNNINGTIMES_APRIL 2010
Phot
os:
Pete
r Ba
ker
Stud
ios
K-Swiss Keahou II $95
Of the more traditional neutral cushioned trainers we tested, the Keahou II was a favorite among a lot of our testers because of its buttery, heel-toe ride and soft interior cushiness. For such a highly cushioned shoe, it runs fairly light, and although it has a high heel it doesn’t have quite as dramatic a heel-toe drop as some of its contemporaries. It’s a ver-satile everyday trainer that excels on long runs but holds its own on shorter tempo runs and fartleks, too. Our larger testers appreciated the sizeable footprint this shoe affords, not to mention the soft cush-ioning throughout.
11.0 oz./9.0 oz.
Mizuno Wave Elixir 5 $105
The latest revision to this popular lightweight trainer, which includes a new midsole material, got high marks from our test team. Testers raved about the resilient, energetic feel of this low-heeled fl yer, but didn’t think it was as supportive as so me of the other lightweight stabil-ity shoes in its class. Still, our test team felt the thin forefoot offered just enough cush and underfoot protection to make it an everyday trainer.
10.0 oz./8.2 oz.
Newton Gravity $175
A lightweight neutral trainer designed for effi cient runners who practice midfoot or level footstrikes and good all-body mechanics, the Gravity has one of the lowest heel-to-toe drops (3mm) of any shoe we’ve seen. That’s made possible by four external energy absorbing/releasing lugs that protrude out 7mm from the midfoot. The unique design essen-tially offsets the height of the heel and, with the right gait, allows the midfoot to engage the ground sooner. Our testers found the shoe to have a snug fi t, easy fl ex and fairly fi rm but energetic feeling underfoot. Testers said it took time to get used to the singular sensation this shoe produced (or to adjust to more effi cient form), but once the “sweet spot” was found they raved about its responsiveness.
9.4 oz./8.4 oz.
Shoe Guide RFB 61-70.rev.indd 64 2/11/10 1:22 PM
66 / RUNNINGTIMES_APRIL 2010
Phot
os:
Pete
r Ba
ker
Stud
ios
Nike Lunar Racer+ 2 $100
With modest cushioning under the heel and midfoot and a 7mm heel-toe drop, this racer has a feel-the-road agility and an easy fl ex that promotes fast running and natural mechanics. Its dual-density midsole construction and virtual medial post (alternately beveled soft/semi-soft foam core encased by a fi rmer foam carrier) allows the shoe to feel both very soft and mildly resilient as the foot rolls through to the toe-off phase. (A few testers thought it was too soft underfoot.) The new version has a more durable outsole and a higher arch, but it retains the snug, athletic fi t with stretchy micro-mesh fabrics that make the compact forefoot seem a bit roomier.
6.7 oz./5.5 oz.
Pearl Izumi syncroFuel $110
A narrow, dynamic fi t in the midfoot and semi-fi rm feel in the fore-foot make the syncroFuel geared for high-cadence running. It’s light enough to be an all-around trainer and comfortably cushy enough for longer slogs out on the open roads. Most testers agreed that it had a feel-the-ground responsiveness in the forefoot that was conducive to uptempo running. While it doesn’t have the fl ex of some of its more pli-able contemporaries, the exaggerated toe spring keeps it from feeling restrictive during toe-off. A midfoot shank and plastic medial support provide a little stability, but this shoe is most appropriate for effi cient runners with a mostly neutral gait.
10.5 oz./9.2 oz.
Zoot Energy 2 $110
A lightweight, low-profi le shoe with a glove-like fi t, the Energy lives up to its name as a charged-up performance trainer. Most testers were fi ne with the decidedly tight fi t, even though it took some effort get-ting into the bootie-like, lace-free upper. The midsole has a soft feeling underfoot, with a large heel cushion in the rear and thin but cushy foam in the forefoot. The snug fi t, mesh upper and easy fl ex allow uninhib-ited foot movement and contribute to the smooth and responsive ride. While it’s most at home as a fast-paced training shoe, it’s also a shoe neutral runners could use for longer race-pace training runs.
9.6 oz./8.1 oz.
Shoe Guide RFB.indd 66 2/8/10 2:39 PM
Some days it’s the road,
some days it’s the trail.
Some days it’s both. The Montrail
Rockridge is built with outstanding
cushioning and traction for a smooth
ride on all your runs.
Ultra shock absorbing midsole with a
grippy dual-lug outsole smooths out
pavement and trails.
“Crash Zone” heel bevel to enable
biomechanical movement.
Trail Shield at forefoot protects against
rocks and roots.
Defl ecting lugs for cushioning
Digging lugs at perimeter provide
traction for up- and downhill runs
ROCKRIDGEMen’s & Women’s
VERSATILE
Montrail Reminds Us,
for Best Results Mix It Up
Redefine Your Run.
As more runners seek to find
their own road, Montrail takes
the lead with a series of shoes
designed for runners pushing
beyond typical training routines.
The way Montrail sees it, the
future of running is not more
laps around the track. It is with
runners who break new ground
with where and how they run,
and who look to the outdoors
for inspiration.
Road, trail, fireroad, path, hillside, sand?
All of the above, and often on the
same run. Mixing the comfort and
cushioning of road shoes, with
traction and stability for the trail,
runners can now have a blend
of both.
Since traction and stability are
critical for off road performance,
Montrail uses 3 different outsole
designs to optimize performance
on different surfaces. Lug pattern
and blades are placed to maximize
traction: smearing for grip on
smooth rocks and roots and
digging for purchase on loose or
wet soil. Additionally, shanks and
posting are used to protect the
foot from roots and rocks for a
smooth and comfortable ride
Your Speed, Your Path, Your Way
Sprint trail intervals with empty
asphalt? Mix it up. Smooth fi reroads
with challenging single track? Mix
it up. Changing terrain and speed
requires proper biomechanics
and a responsive midsole design.
Montrail’s exclusive Terra-Hex
midsole delivers extra cushioning
with multi-directional fl exibility for
stable and quick changes of pace
and direction.
PHOTO: KEVIN WINZELER
ADVERTISEMENT
68 / RUNNINGTIMES_APRIL 2010
SLIGHT TO MODERATE OVERPRONATORS
Phot
os:
Pete
r Ba
ker
Stud
ios
adidas adiZero Tempo $100
The Tempo has quite a fast and light feel to it, even though it’s geared for high-mileage everyday training, thanks to its snug fi t, lightweight upper and responsive ride. Essentially, it’s a lightweight stability trainer with the agility and mindset of a racing fl at. The heel provides plenty of shock absorbency, but it’s not as high as many similar shoes, which makes it profi cient for both long, slow distances and faster-paced work-outs. The responsiveness comes from the semi-fi rm cushioning in the forefoot; some testers (primarily neutral runners) thought it was a tad too stiff, others (those who needed support) reveled in it.
9.8 oz./8.5 oz.
ASICS DS Trainer 15 $110
A mainstay in the ASICS line for years, this year’s version has a new upper design with stretchy material aimed at providing a secure fi t without buckling or chafi ng, while also accommodating lower-volume foot sizes. Otherwise, recent variations in the midsole have returned the DS to the shoe that had defi ned this category for many years: a light and fast trainer for runners who needed a tinge of extra support. It has a very fl exible forefoot yet still feels reasonably protective. The result is a go-fast ride without too much road feel. A few testers thought the tongue was a bit too long, but that was the only negative feedback.
10.2 oz./8.6 oz.
New Balance 905 $110
A soft, dual-density heel crash pad and large mid-stance medial post make this one of the most stable lightweight trainers on the market. Despite the stability, it’s light and nimble enough to be a racer, and cushioned and supportive enough to be an everyday trainer, with a fast-feel ride enhanced by the unobtrusive upper. Although most tes-ters liked the super-snug fi t provided by the wrap-style tongue, some complained about a lack of arch support and a few thought the toe box was too long (both of which made it a favorite for long-toed neu-tral runners).
9.5 oz./7.4 oz.
Shoe Guide RFB.indd 68 2/8/10 2:44 PM
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70 / RUNNINGTIMES_APRIL 2010
For a podcast with senior editor Brian Metzler on trends in run-ning shoes, go to runningtimes.com/apr10.
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Stud
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Reebok SF Attack $95
This new lightweight, low-profi le stability trainer has some real zip to it, with a low-to-the-ground feel that still provides ample cushioning. It has a large, soft lateral heel crash pad that fl ows smoothly into the medial support post under the midfoot. The fl exible forefoot has a semi-fi rm feeling, something our testers appreciated for faster running over short distances but not for slower maintenance runs.
10.2 oz./8.4 oz.
Saucony Fastwitch 4 $85
The Fastwitch is made for one thing — running fast — but this isn’t another ultra-minimalist racer. There’s suffi cient cushioning throughout and a modest amount of mid-stance support in this stealthy, feather-weight package. It has an amazingly fl exible and energetic forefoot that lends toward good all-body mechanics. It’s obviously ideal for short and fast workouts (including intervals) but it is surprisingly profi cient on longer runs for lighter and more nimble runners. All of those fac-tors combine to make it a sublime marathon shoe, too.
7.0 oz./6.0 oz.
Scott Makani II $110
A new player in the U.S. shoe market, Scott has been selling running shoes in Europe for several years. For a debut shoe, this lightweight stability trainer was a big hit. Testers appreciated the low-slung ride and semi-fi rm feeling because it provided an energetic interaction with the ground at all paces. They also liked that it had an easy fl ex and wasn’t burdened by too many overlays. The airy upper includes a gus-seted tongue wrapped by two independent minimalist laced fl anges that snugly secure the arch and heel. Some testers felt the material under the arch was too high and fi rm, but the shoe ran great at faster paces with a mid-to-forefoot stride.
9.7 oz./8.1 oz.
Shoe Guide RFB.indd 70 2/8/10 3:01 PM
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72 / RUNNINGTIMES_APRIL 2010
RT_0410_LR1_R1.indd 72 2/12/10 4:03:49 PM
NoVACANCYHOW THE RUNNING INDUSTRY IS DEALING WITH OVER-DEMAND, AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR YOU
IN MID-NOVEMBER of last year, the Boston Athletic Association announced that registration for the 2010 Boston Marathon had closed. The announcement came much earlier than many runners expected — entries for the 2008 and 2009 races fi lled up in February and January, respectively, and before that Boston rarely closed out before race day. For a cottage industry of events that bill themselves as “Boston qualifi ers” — races like the Philadelphia Marathon in late November and the California International Marathon in early December — and for runners who met a qualifying standard but hadn’t yet registered, it was tough news.
Boston’s closure is the earliest in the race’s history, and it means that the race is fi nally coming to terms with an issue that is increas-ingly testing road races across the United States: A lot of people want
to run, and at many of the most popular events, there isn’t enough space for all of them.
“Right now, there are more people running in this country than any time in our country’s history,” says RYAN LAMPPA, media director for Running USA, a nonprofi t organization that monitors and promotes Americ an distance running. Lamppa maintains a list of major events in 2009 that sold out or reached capacity ahead of race day, and it’s a long list: 34 races, from the New York City Marathon to the Kentucky Derby Marathon, reported record or sold-out fi elds in 2009. Dozens of smaller races and nearly all trail events set a limit and close entries well before race day. Distance running has been all but recession-proof, and we are in the midst, Lamppa says, of a “second running boom.”
In the face of fi lled-up races, early registration close-outs and crowded fi elds, how are runners supposed to get into races, and how exactly are major marathons structuring their registration policies as they try to cope with an overwhelming demand for their product?
YOUR MILEAGE MAY VARYTh e answers largely depend on the races, their niche in the running world, and how many runners the events can (and want) to accom-modate. And there are a lot of answers.
Boston has carved out a market among major marathons that appeals to serious competitive runners, and its registration process refl ects that position. Of the 25,000 runners to whom it has granted entry for the 2010 event, around 80 percent have met a time stan-dard, which ranges from 3:10 for a 25-year-old man to over 4 hours for a woman over age 45. Th e remaining 5,000 spots go to a variety of runners, including those with a connection to one of the mara-thon’s corporate sponsors or charity groups.
BY PETER VIGNERON
Runners and races are having to come to terms with too much of a good thing.
RUNNINGTIMES / 73
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Other major races take a diff erent approach. Th e New York City Marathon grants automatic entry for runners who hit age-specifi c time standards in the marathon or half marathon (and they’re faster than at Boston — the marathon times are 2:45 for men, 3:23 for women), but in 2009 more than half of the 43,000 fi nishers got into the race for other reasons: Th ey joined a charity team, won a lottery spot, or, for foreign runners, signed up with one of the New York Road Runners’ international travel partners. Still, NYRR has taken steps to encourage more competitive runners to enter the race. In addition to creating time standards, in 2000 NYRR began off ering automatic entry to club members who had competed in nine races during the calendar year leading up to the race, and to runners who had tried unsuccessfully to qualify via lottery three times. “We already had an abundance of 4-hour-plus marathon-ers, and the area where we could safely add more people was in the ‘faster’ categories,” NYRR spokeswoman SARA HUNNINGHAKE told Running Times.
The 100-year-old Dipsea trail race north of San Francisco also has several methods for securing one of its coveted 1,500 race numbers, including qualifying in the previous year (first 450 fin-ishers), returning your entry first (500 spots), winning a lottery (300 spots), and the chance to buy your way in: 100 entries are awarded to the winners of a silent auction, starting at $50 over the entry fee. The “bribe” money goes to the Dipsea Foundation, a nonprofit organization that awards scholarships and main-tains the trail. Race directors report that the bidding goes higher every year. The Chicago Marathon has no trouble fi lling its 45,000-runner fi eld.
74 / RUNNINGTIMES_APRIL 2010
RACING
VACANCY Continued from page 73
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A RACE TO THE START LINEMost races, though, aren’t so complicated. Th ey open registration, usually online, and close when they’ve hit their target fi eld size. Th is process can take months or weeks, but for the most popular races, online registration is happening a lot quicker.
At Washington, D.C.’s Cherry Blossom Run, race director and Road Race Management publisher PHIL STEWART saw registration times fall off a cliff . When the race went to online entry in 2006, registration was open for 29 hours. Th e next year it dropped to 21.5, then four hours, then two hours and 45 minutes last year. “I said, ‘If somebody has a business meeting at the wrong time …’” Stewart says. “I would hear from teachers who would say, ‘I’m a public school teacher and I can’t get online until lunch time.’ Knowing that all those people were closed out just didn’t seem fair to me.” Th is year, concerned about the razor-thin registration window, Stewart switched his system to a lottery.
Among popular events, lotteries are common. Oregon’s Hood to Coast Relay, a 197-mile trek from Mt. Hood to Seaside, Ore., uses one to choose nearly every spot in its 1,000-team fi eld. Th e Western States 100 must limit its fi eld size to 369 and it holds a lottery for those spaces each year. (Why 369? Th e race travels through the Granite Chief Wilderness area, and race organizers would run afoul of a 1984 federal law that prohibits more than that number of competitors from entering the park.) Like Boston and New York, Western States grants a limited number of guaranteed spots where it needs to — to past winners, event trustees, and sponsors — but for most runners there is no alternative but to enter the lottery and hope for the best.
But even with a lottery system, not everybody walks (or runs) away happy. After this fall’s Hood to Coast lottery, veteran HTC
racers BRIAN WRIGHT and PAUL VANDERWAL found that, even with 18 years in the race, their team “Naked Love Pretzel” would not be granted entry. “We got our [rejection] letter,” Wright says, “and there were members of the team who had been doing it for 18 years straight, and they were just crushed.”
Wright wishes that HTC race organizers had given some weight to the team’s status and seniority in the race, both because their expe-rience on the course could be an asset to newer teams and simply because they’ve been part of the event for so long. “I think the frus-tration comes for the team because we were there when they weren’t having a problem,” he says. Naked Love Pretzel was there to help the race grow, and now they’d like the race to note the favor, Wright adds.
When Boston closed out in November, it rubbed plenty of people the wrong way. Although the race hasn’t always required entry times, it has a longstanding reputation as an event especially for compet-itive runners. Until this year, if you were fast enough — charity and corporate runners notwithstanding — you were nearly guaranteed a spot on the starting line in Hopkinton. News of the closure spawned dozens of threads on message boards and has helped boost the Exeter Marathon, an April 17 event in Rhode Island that is targeting closed-out Boston aspirants. Exeter race director MIKE TOMMARO has limited registration to runners who have met strict time stan-dards — no exceptions. In each age division, the Exeter times are 5 minutes faster than the times Boston hopefuls needed to hit this year.
“Races over the last 10 or 15 years have become marketed much more like products,” Stewart says. “Th ey look for an identity: What about my race separates it from other races? I think in the case of
RUNNINGTIMES / 75
OVERCROWDED RACES
Continued on page 76
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Boston and time standards, that is the identity of Boston.” In some ways, Boston and other races are victims of their own popularity, which seems to build upon itself every year.
If Stewart is right, and races are more like products than they are institutions or public goods, the road race market will likely respond by increasing prices (suppressing demand) and creating new events (increasing supply). “I had one email this year from a guy who said you’re not using the basic economic model,” Stewart says. “If you want to discourage people from running, you just raise the price.” Stewart’s not interested. “In my mind, that’s not the tradition of the sport.”
For races like Cherry Blossom, which is wary of raising prices, an increased supply of other road races isn’t likely to dampen demand either. Cherry Blossom, Hood to Coast, and Boston continue to be popular both because they’re well run and because they’re pres-tigious. For their part, Wright and Vanderwal hope to popularize other races. After losing out on the HTC lottery, they started the Hood 2 Coast Rejected Team Support Group. One of their aims is to raise awareness about all the other relay marathons in the United States, many of which don’t have problems with over-registration.
“We created this place where, if your team gets rejected, there’s other relay races to go to,” Wright says. Th eir Web site can be found at h2crejectedsupportgroup.ning.com.
Boston plans to look at changing its registration policies for 2011, though the BAA’s GUY MORSE hasn’t yet made any decisions about what those changes might be. He is interested in maintain-ing Boston’s reputation as a competitive race, which may mean
Even 5Ks like the Freihofer’s Run for Women are now megaevents.
76 / RUNNINGTIMES_APRIL 2010
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Another turning point came during Moen’s senior year at Wartburg, when he battled it out up front with the likes of JORGE and ED TORRES, ADAM GOUCHER and JONATHON RILEY at the 2004 U.S. club cross country national championships. Placing fi fth that day told Moen that post-collegiate running was hardly a far-fetched proposition.
“It didn’t matter to me who I was racing because a race is a race, and I was in it to beat whoever I could,” Moen recalls. “Instead of being intimidated, I was motivated. I feed off success. Before the race I was planning
on entering the real world as an elementary teacher. After that race I realized God had a diff erent plan for me. I chose to continue using my gift.”
Six months later he graduated as a fi ve-time NCAA Division III National Champion and 10-time All-American and headed to Michigan to join the Hansons-Brooks Distance Project in Michigan.
A mong Moen’s highl ights w it h t he Hansons program were a fourth-place fi n-ish at the 2005 U.S. 10K championships and teaming w ith RYAN HALL , MATT
GONZALES, IAN DOBSON, BRIAN SELL and FERNANDO CABADA to fi nish third at the 2005 International Chiba Ekiden. Also p romising was Moen’s fi rst half mara-thon, a 1:04.37 at Houston in January 2007, the same race in which Hall set an A merican record of 59:43.
But despite steady improvement, Moen opted to return to Iowa later that year, moving back to familiar sur-roundings of the family home in Fairbank and resuming training under Wartburg coach STEVE JOHNSON. Moen scored high fi n-ishes at the 2008 USA 8K and 10K road races but found the solitary training regimen less than enjoy-able, especially during the long winter months. “It got real demor-alizing that year,” he recalls, and thus another change was in order.
Fortunately, he’d met DENNIS BARKER, the co-founder and head
Josh Moen KEEPS BREAKING THROUGHLINING UP for his fi rst indoor 5,000m race seven years ago, Wartburg College sophomore JOSH MOEN was looking to break 16:00. The early pace was much too stiff for someone of his limited experience, but Moen wouldn’t back down, fi nishing a full minute faster than planned. It’s a result he still looks back to fondly — an early breakthrough that pushed him toward bigger and better things.
BY JOHN KISSANE
RUNNINGTIMES / 77
OVERCROWDED RACES • JOSH MOEN
Continued on page 79
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B y any measure, PATRICK SMYTH had a successful collegiate career. A seven-time All-American at the University of
Notre Dame, he was a Big East champion at 5,000m and 10,000m (twice). He recorded 10 sub-14:00 performances at 5,000m, more than any other athlete in Notre Dame history. He set the school 10,000m record (28:25.85) and was fourth at the NCAA championships at that dis-tance. In cross country, he fi nished 11th in the 2008 NCAAs.
Despite these successes, Smyth was unable to secure more than a gear sponsorship (Nike) when he graduated last year. Blame the reces-sion economy, but the harsh reality was that Smyth found himself living on a shoestring as a professional runner. He enrolled in graduate school at the University of Chicago, but found it impossible to balance academic demands with athletic ambitions. “After a couple months I came to the realization that the two endeavors were mutually exclusive,” he says.
“It was humbling.”With the support of Team
USA Minnesota, which he’d joined in July, Smyth withdrew from graduate school to run full-time. Success on the r oads came quickly, as he placed fifth at the national 10K championships in July (28:49), third at the national 10-mile champi-onships in October (47:09), and second at the 4.75-mile Manchester Road Race in November (21:41). On Jan. 1, he won the 4-mile Emerald Nuts Midnight Run in New York City (18:35).
“It’s been exhilarating,” Smyth says of the transition. “Every race has really been do or die. Going into every race the objective is twofold: One, to fi nish in the money so as t o stay afl oat fi nancially, and two, to be
as competitive as possible to increase my vis-ibility and increase my potential value to shoe companies loo king to pick someone up.”
If that sounds stressful, Smyth insists other-wise. “I think my experience bodes well for the sport as a whole,” he says. “At the elite level it should be about business, exposure, incentive. If it’s not, then the words ‘professional’ and ‘pro-fessionalism’ lose signifi cance.”
Serious competitive runners — at any level — have to make the most of whatever opportu-
nities the sport has to off er, says Smyth. “Stick your neck out there and take risks, especially on the roads,” he advises. “The road racing scene is an absolute must for post-collegiate distance runners who don’t have the fi nancial latitude to wait around until track season. It’s perhaps the best way to make a name for yourself while also demonstrating a willingness to compete across a wide range of distances.”
Smyth plans to mix plenty of cross coun-try and track racing with his eff orts on the roads; he hoped to make the U.S. team for the world cross country championships on March 27 in Poland, to lower his 5,000m and 10,000m PRs this spring, and to join a group
of Team USA Minnesota athletes on the European summer track-racing
circuit. Although mixing it up this way is differ-
ent from the type of focused run-ning he did in college, Smyth embraces the experience,
and so far he’s staying healthy,
avoiding burnout, a n d c o n t i n u i n g
to improve.“We’re going to stay
on the roads even dur-ing track season,” he says. “It’s a great way to experience com-petition on a regular basis, and
I’m really enjoying it — traveling to places all over the country and
meeting interesting people as I get my name out there.” •
TACTICS
MAKING THE TRANSITION
BY GORDON BAKOULIS
RUNNINGTIMES_APRIL 2010
RACING
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coach of Team USA Minnesota, and liked what they had going in Minneapolis. Living in a large metro area would be an adjustment, but Moen had the credentials and outlook the program was looking for and made the move the summer of 2008. And he found just what he needed in training partners MATT GABRIELSON, JASON LEHMKUHLE, PATRICK SMYTH and ANTONIO VEGA. “Th ey really work well together and Josh is very receptive to coaching,” Barker says. “As he’s gotten better and gained more confi dence he’s become a great racer. He isn’t intimi-dated by anybody.”
Th ose characteristics were on regular dis-play last year. In April Moen scored 5K and 10K track PRs at Mt. SAC (13:35) and Brutus Hamilton (28:26), and he also placed sixth at the USA 7 Mile Championships (Bix 7) in July.
Th en at the USA 10-Mile Championships on Oct. 4 in Minneapolis, Moen and ABDI ABDIRAHMAN pulled away from the pack after 3 miles and dueled to the fi nish, with Abdi eking out a 3-second win. “I felt on a good day I might go under 47:00,” Moen says,
“but I was really surprised to run 46:38.” He accordingly adjusted his goal for his debut marathon in New York, down from 2:16 to something in the 2:12–2:14 range.
Unfortunately, Moen’s lone poor per-formance of 2009 came in the Big Apple, where he felt bad early (even though he went through the half in 1:06:46) and dropped out at mile 17. “I had a fueling problem, and I also think I went out too hard against the wind,” he says. “It was just a bad mix.” But while disappointed, he got past it quickly — took a break, got engaged, and began looking excit-edly toward a new year. He started things off on a good note by fi nishing sixth in the U.S. half marathon championships (1:02:53) on Jan. 17 in Houston.
“The marathon’s off the table for 2010,” says Moen, who’l l shoot for the world championships “A” standard of 27:48 for the 10,000m this spring and hopes to race in Europe this summer. After that he’d like to run Bix 7 again and the Crim 10-miler and maybe the U.S. 20K championships.
“I’ve only run one half marat hon,” he adds, “so my plan is to run some longer races and kind of work myself back up to the marathon.”
Sounds promising. Are more break-throughs on the horizon for Moen? Barker seems to think so. “After every race or sea-son Josh raises his sights and strives for the next level,” Barker says. “He always has big-ger things simmering inside.” •
tightening qualifying standards, but he’s also thinking about simply allowing more people into the race. Like most race direc-tors, though, Morse can’t let the event grow too big. He has to worry about the quality
of the race, which is conducted on nar-row, winding roads and travels through eight cities and towns. Hood to Coast and Western States have similar problems. Unlike those races, Morse has no plans to create a lottery system for Boston, and he doesn’t feel comfortable eliminating any of the 5,000 spots that go to non-qualified runners. They are, he says, “a fact of life,” the price of hosting a major athletic event that involves a lot of moving parts — spon-sors, charity partners, and the good will of each of the race’s host towns.
For competitive runners just looking for a solid event, the new registration landscape may take some fi guring out. Th e era of day-of sign-up is fading fast, and runners will need to be just as organized about registra-tion as they are diligent about preparing for
the physical demands of the race itself. Or, serious runners can eschew the celebrity events and compete in smaller, equally well-organized grass-roots races. But, as Running USA’s Lamppa says, the problems people are having entering races are ultimately good for the sport, and he isn’t worried that the net benefi t is going to race directors. “As far as the runner goes, I wouldn’t quite say that. Th ere are 15,000-plus races in this country, and so if you don’t get into Boston, or New York City, or Bolder Boulder or something like that, there are plenty of races out there. But there is a pent-up demand. People want to do these races and they’re signing up in record numbers and as fast as they can.” •
“There are 15,000-plus races in this country, and so if you don’t get into Boston, or New York City, or Bolder Boulder or something like that, there are plenty of races out there.”
Go to runningtimes.com every Monday morn-ing for a recap of the weekend’s big races.
RUNNINGTIMES / 79
TACTICS • JOSH MOEN
VACANCY Continued from page 76
MOEN Continued from page 77
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No worries in fl yover land, though. Down below the clouds as you jet west or east, trail running enthusiasts in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois and Michigan enjoy some of the most rugged, technical and sce-nic trails in the U.S.
Take the Superior Sawtooth 100 in Two Harbors, Minn., for example, regarded as one of the most diffi cult 100-milers in the country.
“Th e Superior Hiking Trail is rugged — all rocks, roots and up and down,” says race director LARRY PEDERSON. “Th ere’s just nothing easy about it. A lot of other 100-mile races around the country have sections on forest service roads or nice smooth groomed trails. Th is is 100 percent rugged trail. Th at’s why a lot of people come to race. It is so diffi -cult, there’s an added challenge to it.”
The Midwest has always had a robust running population, especially in pop-ulat ion centers l ike Madison, Duluth,
Minneapolis-St. Paul and Chicago. And with many metropolitan areas designating trail running courses in park reserves, trail run-ning is alive and well in the Midwest.
Outside of the cities, the Midwest boasts a wealth of long-distance trails. Combined, the Superior Hiking Trail in northeastern Minnesota and the Ice Age Trail in Wisconsin off er more than 1,000 miles of accessible trail running adventures, just to start.
And off-roaders f ind no lack of races, either. “Wisconsin is very fortunate to have a great number of superbly organized and scenic ultra races,” says JEFF MALLACH, race director of the Ice Age Trail 50, the fifth-larges t 50-mile race in the country. The North Face Endurance Challenge in Madison drew 1,250 runners in four races from 10K to 50 miles last October, with 80 percent of the running being held on sin-gletrack trails.
Off TheBEATENPATHTECHNICAL TRAIL RUNNING THRIVES IN THE MIDWEST
BEST TRAINING RUNSSUPERIOR HIKING TRAILThe Superior Hiking Trail is a 205-mile long wilder-ness trail that follows the ridgeline high above Lake Superior. Located in northeastern Minnesota, the Superior Hiking Trail runs from Two Harbors, Minn., to the Canadian border. Trailheads and parking areas can be found every 5–10 miles. The SHT is used for several of Minnesota’s most popular ultramarathon trail. races. shta.org
THREE RIVERS PARK DISTRICTThree Rivers Park District is a park system near the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area. Within minutes of the downtown business cen-ters, runners can disappear into the wilderness on 200 miles of trails that can challenge the most experienced trail runner. threeriversparks.org
ICE AGE TRAILThe I ce Age National Scenic Trail is a 1,000-mile long path wandering through 30 counties throughout Wisconsin. The Ice Age Trail cele-brates the landscape left behind when glacial ice carved the earth more than 12,000 years ago. The trail is used for several popular ultramarathon runs. Guidebooks provide detailed information about dozens of trail segments. i ceagetrail.org
BEST RACESTRAIL MIX RACEApril 17, Bloomington, Minn.The 19th annual Trail Mix, which includes 25K and 50K events, is run on a course in the Hyland Lake Park Reserve featuring wood chip and grass trails arranged in 12.5K (7.75 miles) loops with aid stations every 2.5 miles. Trail Mix race proceeds are donated to the Three Rivers Park District Adaptive Equipment Fund. trailmixracemn.org
THE ICE AGE TRAIL 50May 8, La Grange, Wis.The 29th running of The Ice Age Trail 50 will fea-ture 50-mile, 50K and 50K relay events. Part of the Montrail Ultra Cup race series, the course follows the Ice Age National Scenic Trail in southeastern Wisconsin. Participants encounter prairies, ponds, marshes and more than enough hills. The course record of 5:53:21 was set in 1988 by Andy Jones. The 50-mile fi nishers receive an Ice Age belt buckle and those completing the 50K get an Ice Age key chain. badgerlandstriders.org
AFTON TRAIL RUN 50K ULTRA AND 25K RUNJuly 3, Afton, Minn.The Afton Trail Run is a USATF-sanctioned event. The course is a hilly, 25K loop meandering
The Glacial Trail races are run amid the changing colors of fall foliage in Greenbush, Wis.
BY LOU DZIERZAK
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THE MIDWEST OFTEN SUFFERS from an inferiority complex when it comes to media coverage of trail running and outdoor recreation. With their majestic mountain ranges, deep canyons and coastal perches, Western states offer mouth-watering vistas, and most of the images of trail run-ning. Back East, where most of the country’s population lives, trail events up and down forested mountain ranges get their due.
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through the park’s trail system. Bordering the St. Croix River, the trail rises and falls on long climbs from the river bottom to awesome vistas on the bluff s above. The rocky ravines challenge uphill stamina and downhill balancing skills. aftontrailrun.com
TAHQUA 25K & 10K TRAIL RUNAug. 15, Paradise, Mich.Set on the northeastern edge of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the singletrack course on the North Country Trail winds through spruce forest, pine ridges, bogs, jack pine savanna, and past sev-eral lakes where attentive runners may spot a moose. Near the finish, runners hear the roar of Tahquamenon River fl owing over the largest waterfall east of the Mississippi.gre atlakesendurance.com
DANCES WITH DIRTJuly 10, Baraboo, Wis.The Dances with Dirt Devil’s Lake event includes a 50-mile relay, 50 mile, 50K, half marathon and marathon. The courses wind through Devil’s Lake State Park and the nearby Ice Age National Scientifi c Reserve. dwddevilslake.com
DANCES WITH DIRTSept. 11, Hell, Mich.Yes, if you run this race, it means you’ll be run-ning in Hell. It might not be that bad, but it’s
no walk through the pearly gates, either. You’ll find a rocky, muddy course in the Pinckney Recreation Area that winds around sev-eral lakes on tantalizing singletrack trails. dwd hell.com
FALL SUPERIOR TRAIL RACESSept. 10–11, Two Harbors, Minn.The weekend celebration of wilderness run-ning includes 50-mile, marathon and 100-mile events. The Superior Sawtooth 100 Mile Trail Run is a point-to-point, starting at the Gooseberry Falls State Park Visitors Center, and fi nishing near Caribou Highlands Lodge in Lutsen, Minn. Participants enjoy 14 aid stations and never go more than 10 miles without support. More than 99 percent of the course is on the Superior Hiking Trail. Race director Larry Pederson calls it one of the most diffi cult 100-mile races in the country. superiortrailrace.com
THE NORTH FACE ENDURANCE CHALLENGESept. 18–19, Madison, Wis.Saturday events include the Gore-Tex 50 Mile, 50K, marathon and marathon relay. The course, located 60 miles east/southeast of Madison, is in the southern section of the Kettle Moraine State Forest and uses a portion of the Ice Age Scenic Trail. On Sunday a half marathon, 10K, and 5K are designed to get road runners into the woods. www2.thenorthface.com/endurancechallenge/index.html
GLACIAL TRAIL 50M, 50KOct. 10, Greenbush, Wis.Hosted by the Badgerland Striders, largest run-ning club in Wisconsin, the 24-year-old Glacial Trail 50-mile and 50K race is an out-and-back course that follows the Ice Age National Scenic Trail in the northern unit of the Wisconsin Kettle Moraine State Forest. badgerlandstriders.org
WILD DULUTH 100K, 50KOct. 16, Duluth, Minn.The Wild Duluth 100K and 50K courses follow the high ridges that run through the city above the southwestern shores of Lake Superior. Participants will encounter a narrow singletrack route through the woods with overlooks to the largest of the Great Lakes. More fantastic scenery than you would expect in a city of 80,000 people. wildduluthraces.wordpress.com
WILD, WILD WILDERNESS RUNSept. 26, Danville, Ill.Held on the winding trails at Kickapoo State Recreation Area, this 7.5-mile race off ers some of the best aspects of high-cadence cross coun-try running and rugged wilderness trail running.
There are steep climbs and descents, rocks, roots and mud and a few creek crossings — some with a bridge, some without. kennekuk.com
BEST TRAIL TOWNMadison, Wis.Host of the Madison Marathon, Ironman Wisconsin and The North Face Endurance Challenge, this chic college town, second-larg-est city in Wisconsin, off ers abundant running resources and a vast trail network. The 40-mile Badger Trail connects to several other trails including Military Ridge and Sugar River trails and runs from Madison to the Illinois state line. The 40-mile Military Ridge State Trail follows a Rails-to-Trails conversion of the Chicago and North Western Railway corridor. The crushed limestone trail with a grade of only 2 to 5 per-cent winds through forests, wildfl ower prairies, wetlands and small villages. Just south of the city, the 23-mile Sugar River Trail meanders through wetlands and forests on a segment of the lon-ger Ice Age National Scenic Trail. •
WILD THINGSKNEAD AND SQUEEZE
S Tr ai l r unn e r s , especially those r a c in g ul t r a s ,
will agree that there are only two food groups: sweet and salty. And one of the favorite combina-tions of those delectable groups comes in the form of peanut butter. But now you don’t have to concern yourself with aid stations to go natu-rally nutty on the trail. Justin’s Nut Butters are all-natural and, in many cases, organic treats that come in convenient 100-calorie and 1.15-ounce squeeze packs. For sustainable energy with the added bonus of protein, fat, salt, and other nutritious attributes, you can satisfy many a craving with any of the following fl a-vors: classic peanut and almond, almond maple, honey peanut and almond, cinnamon peanut and chocolate peanut, chocolate hazelnut and chocolate almond. $0.79-$1.25; justinsnutbutter.com — ADAM W. CHASE
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Wild Duluth 50K, Oct. 16 near Duluth, Minn.
RUNNINGTIMES / 83
MIDWEST TRAIL RUNNING • WILD THINGS
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Kids enjoy an impromptu race on the track down the hill from their school in Iten, Kenya.
“Kenyan kids copycat and aspire to be the next great global stars. Running back and forth to school and during after-school activities is fun, and as they mature these Kenyan children build strong aer-obic bases naturally. Kenyan kids goof around running like American kids enjoying basketball and football, emulating their favorite sports idols. This photo reminds me of racing my schoolmates in primary school. We used to make up imaginary tracks in the woods and race each other while we were supposed to be herding goats, sheep, and cows.” — BOAZ CHEBOIYWO
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Art of the Run RFB.indd 84 2/3/10 2:58 AM
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