To Race

There are runners who have run for years and have yet to pin on a number and race against their peers along a timed and measured course. Those who do race on a regular basis look at these people and shake their heads, wondering what is the point of regularly putting in all of those miles and then not putting them to good use ina contest of speed.

They construct various analogies: It’s like dating your whole life and never getting married. It’s like writing twothirds of a novel and then putting it in a drawer. It’s like buying a hot sports car and locking it in the garage. It’s like working your way through college and then skipping the senior prom and graduation ceremonies. It’s like. . .

What their critics don’t understand is that for some, running on a regular basis is an end in and of itself. It lessens daily workplace or family stress. It maintains healthy body weight. It confers a level of fitness. It controls blood pressure. It bestows a bandoleer of health and fitness benefits.

After all, this is the modern world. We no longer run from saber-toothed tigers or chase down our next meal in order to survive. We can run merely to run—for the simple, elemental joy of it. And by that evolution to the modern, more laid-back era, we’ve clawed our way out of Hemingway’s definition of sport. To Hemingway, there were only three sports: mountain climbing, bullfighting, and auto racing; everything else was a game, he contended, because there was little chance of losing your life in the process. No saber-toothed tigers, no “sport” to running.

The simple act of running today is an opportunity to connect with our world on the most basic of levels and, in the process, to use and sometimes abuse ourselves in a healthy, seemingly natural way. It is no accident that the largest bones and muscles in the human body are in the legs. They were meant to serve as the primary motive mechanism for the human animal.

It is also no accident that the human being’s cooling system is so sophisticated—so sophisticated, in fact, that paced properly, the human being can run for mile upon mile, day after day if necessary, the sweating mechanism keeping the runner cool and efficient while mere animals begin to slow roast from the inside out.

But the same intrinsic natural mechanisms that allow us to run seemingly forever are complemented by a deep-seated psychological lust to challenge ourselves. Again, mankind would not have flourished if it lacked the inner drive to excel in a number of areas, one of them running: against the dangers and complications of the natural environment and against each other.

It is not difficult to imagine ancient man engaging in contests of speed after

dining on a mammoth steak or competing with each other to see who could bag the greatest number of warthogs during the current porcine season. If, as modern scientists say, there is a risk-taker gene present in a certain percentage of the human population, that gene must certainly be a branch of the more common competition gene, which is, of course, located directly opposite the helix from the lazy-as-afly-glutted-toad gene, which used to be either recessive or present in those who drowned in the gene pool or were eaten by the saber tooth.

Today, in a less vital and tenacious world, the competitive gene too often morphs into the He With The Most Toys Wins gene.

In those bygone days, it was more basic stuff: the stuff of survival and the stuff of ranking one another, something that filters down to man from most of the animal species. The clack and crash of caribou antlers echoing over the vast tundra during rutting season is not uncommon within the animal planet.

In the world of “games” (in anod to Hemingway’s distinction), competition can invigorate or destroy.

It can destroy those who live for nothing else and who see every movement in the brush a potential contest to the death—whether the movement comes from a squash rival or a gentle breeze off the ocean.

But competition can also inspire and invigorate and can serve to nudge

the runner to the next level of training and the intrinsic satisfaction that comes with living on a higher level. It’s wonderful to spend some time ona plateau while you catch your breath, but taking up residence there usually turns out to be less than advertised: there’s too much erosion going on at your feet and too many boulders tumbling down from above to make it comfortable. (Can I get a “That’s enough!” on the analogies?)

“While the law [of competition] may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department,” wrote Andrew Carnegie in the essay “Wealth” in the June 1889 issue of the North American Review.

To compete can be hard on the individual. Think of the final 10K stretch in a hard marathon. But in the process, it elevates the race—it elevates the human condition as a whole.

Although competition, especially in today’s schools, is politically incorrect, what else is there in life? Without it, we are a bird that has too long overstayed the nest… . Ask any parent whose grown children have come back home to roost.

Competition forces us to become better—even in the long, quiet moments when we are no longer competing. We must stress and strain so that the pause afterward can strengthen us. That’s the nature of all physical and mental training: stress, rest, improve.

—Rich Benyo

GUEST EDITORIAL

A Modest Proposal for Selecting the U.S. Olympic Marathon Team for 2008 and Beyond

Since 1968, the United States has selected its Olympic marathon team by taking the top three finishers in the Trials marathon if they meet the International Olympic Committee’s qualifying standards. In 1968, the Trials were held at Alamosa, Colorado, to pick a team to race in Mexico City. The top three finishers were George Young, Kenny Moore, and Ron Daws.

Prior to 1968, the American marathon team was picked by a committee of selectors who relied heavily on performances at Boston and Yonkers (at that time the U.S. Marathon Championship), hence the parallel of names in the Boston/Yonkers win columns and the U.S. Olympic teams: Clarence DeMar, “Tarzan” Brown, John A. Kelley, John J. Kelley, and others.

As we are into anew century, itmay be time to make a major change in how we pick our Olympic marathoners. We are currently in the lengthy process of selecting a marathon team for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

Let’s beseech the USATF LDR (Long-Distance Running) Committee (the group commissioned to set criteria for selecting our team) to think creatively to put together the best possible team to represent us in Beijing, to maximize publicity for the members of that team, and to create a structure that will work effectively through the rest of this century.

It is not impossible to be brave, adventuresome, creative, and practical in selecting our best marathoners to represent us. To improve the process, we do not have to reinvent the wheel. We can customize for the United States a system based on how other countries select their teams.

Many of the top marathon teams selected by other countries for the Olympic Games and the World Championship marathons use a panel of selectors. Among countries that use a panel of selectors are Japan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Morocco, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, Russia, Italy, Spain, and France. Several of these countries don’teven host Trials marathons in their own countries to gauge athletic fitness. For instance, Kenya bases its picks on athletic performances at the Boston Marathon in Olympic years.

HOW WOULD THE USATF LDR SELECT SELECTORS?

The USATF LDR Committee is charged with selecting the U.S. Olympic marathon team. It would, therefore, be charged with selecting a panel of selectors should the committee decide that is the best method of picking a team.

To keep the selection process streamlined, my suggestion would be to pick a panel of three selectors, as well as three alternates. The alternates would be available to replace any selectors who, for whatever reason, were unable to fulfill their duties.

The selectors would ideally come from a coaching background and be as little burdened by bureaucratic backgrounds as possible. The selectors should be coaches who have proven their expertise at producing athletes with impressive credentials. (The primary flaw in this approach, of course, is that good coaches would be inclined to pick one of their own athletes. [hope that the goal of picking a winning team would override this consideration.)

My own choice for two of the selectors would be Joe I. Vigil and Bob Larsen, as both of them have produced Olympic medalists in the marathon— the first American medalists in the Olympic marathon in two decades. I would then put it to coaches Vigil and Larsen to pick the third selector.

WHY NOT FOUR U.S. MARATHON ENTRIES?

Allow me to digress for a moment. I would ask USATF to lobby the IAAF

and through the U.S. Olympic Committee to lobby the IOC to allow the United States to include our current medalists as additional members of the 2008 team—if within 18 months of the 2008 Games they can run a marathon in world-class time.

Consider that the limit of three entries is arbitrary. In the 1924 and 1928 Olympic Games, the United States had six marathoners; at the 1904 Games at St. Louis, the United States entered 18 marathoners.

This concept of adding a space for a proven medalist is not outrageous. Currently, the IAAF allows this to be done in World Championship events; it allows the defending champion a place on the team while still giving a country up to three other athletes per event, which is why in the recent World Championships in Helsinki, the United States took first, second, third, and fourth in the 200 meters. Up to five marathoners per country can run at the Worlds, where the first three crossing the finish line count in the team scoring.

As Coach Vigil has mentioned in his lectures, this is not such an alien concept when it comes to the marathon, since the event isn’t limited to eight lanes as a track event is.

Why not have all three male and female medalists from 2004 invited to participate in the Olympic marathon in 2008 if they can prove their fitness level? Three more spots in a field of fewer than 200 runners on an open road isn’t exactly overdoing it. The inclusion of the reigning medalists would do nothing but elevate the field.

THE BEST U.S. MARATHONS SHOULD BE TRIALS SITES

The next logical item that needs addressing is where to hold the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials.

Itcurrently costs roughly $1 million to stage each of the two U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials races. That is a million dollars that could better be used to support U.S. training efforts for its marathoners.

My suggestion is to designate the top three American marathons as Trials sites: Boston, Chicago, and New York. As I have already mentioned, Kenya uses Boston as its Trials marathon, using Kenyan performances at Boston as a guideline toward its selectors’ choices.

An American who wins Boston, Chicago, or New York outright would receive an automatic ticket to the Olympic team. If an American was not the overall winner, the first American with a time of 2:10 or below for men and 2:22 or below for women would also receive an automatic spot.

Consideration could also be given for outstanding American performances at London and Berlin.

Designating Boston, Chicago, and New York as U.S. Olympic Trials races would further elevate the status of those races and would also bring additional media and spectator interest to the Trials efforts within those races. Let’s face it, there is precious little media coverage of the current U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials. This would solve that problem, and it would also provide for a decent period of recovery for the

marathoners who do well enough at those races to make the team.

WHY DEENA AND MEB SHOULD BE THE LEADERS AT THIS POINT

Were we to follow this scenario, Deena Kastor would be in the top position for the 2008 team at this point. And why not? She is currently ranked in the top 10 female marathoners in the world. She won the Chicago Marathon outright this past autumn. And she is a proven medalist. What more qualifications should we demand of her? To demand that she qualify is unwise and unjust and does nothing to recognize her for her already awesome accomplishments. All she would need to do is to run a world-class marathon within 18 months of the 2008 Games.

On the men’s side, the automatic qualifier at the moment would be Meb Keflezighi. Meb, of course, is the Olympic silver medalist and the highest-ranked American marathoner in 2005. In the last two New York City Marathons, he placed second and third (and was first American both times); his third place in 2005 was against the current world record holder. Meb has more than adequately proven his mettle and deserves an automatic spot on the 2008 team. Like Deena, he would (merely) have to run a world-class (sub-2:10) marathon within 18 months of the 2008 Olympic marathon.

To make this process even more interesting, the three American selectors could also use the two major

international marathons (London and Berlin) as qualifiers. An American who won either race would automatically make the team. This would give our former world record holder, Khalid Khannouchi, a chance at a spot should he be able to regain his winning ways.

WHAT THE CRITICS MIGHT SAY

Some critics of this proposed system might contend that it is unlikely that a marathoner who runs a world-class marathon in the spring of 2008 (Boston or London, for example) would be recovered sufficiently by the late summer of 2008 to be able to run competitively at Beijing. Certainly every marathoner is unique. Some cannot run more than one good marathon in a year; others can. Remember that Frank Shorter ran three world-class marathons in a five-month period in 1972: the U.S. Olympic Trials, the Olympic marathon (where he won), and Fukuoka (where he ran his personal-best marathon).

For this system to work, the trio of selectors must have supreme confidence in their expertise, and we must have confidence in them. The fact that the United States has two medalists from the 2004 Games as well as a former world record holder speaks well of the comeback in this country. It is imperative, however, that the momentum we have be continued. By bringing the Trials out of often-remote locations and into the public eye at wellestablished marathons, the profile of the marathoner is greatly elevated. Letting

top-level marathoners make qualifying attempts at Boston (spring), Chicago (fall), or New York (fall) would allow them to fashion their attempt in the season that best suits them while permitting them to put as much time between their qualifier and the Games as seems best for them. And it would add to the excitement surrounding our most famous marathons.

It would also allow them to make a second attempt should they have a bad day.

SUMMARY

Our Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, recently said, “If every action required a precedent, there would be no firsts.” It is a propitious time to fashion a first by modifying our Olympic marathon team selection process. We have three of the five top marathons in the world; why not use them each year between now and the next Olympic Games to showcase our talent and to offer multiple opportunities for Americans to make qualifying attempts? Then leave it up to the team of three expert selectors to pick the best possible team for the conditions and course the runners will meet at the Olympics.

AL MORRIS has run 36 marathons with a best of 2:44. He now lectures on training and nutrition for longdistance and marathon running. Al is the men’s LDR chair for the Potomac Valley Association of USATF and a fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine.

ON the ROAD WITH JOE HENDERSON

Talking the Walk

A student of mine refuses to walk. That isn’t unusual. Many runners _ think they’re cheating or failing if they ever stop to walk during a run.

But one student takes this phobia further. She runs the recoveries during interval training and runs to cool down, when everyone else walks. She hasn’t yet noticed that walking speeds up the recovery.

A runner on my Marathon Team made one of her goals in the race “not to walk a step.” She didn’t succeed that way and as a result couldn’t give herself full credit for a PR. She didn’t notice that most of the runners around did some walking, if only through the drink stations.

That student reminds me of myself at her age, not yet 20. That marathoner reflects myself at that stage of her marathon life, early and with more PRs to come.

Back then, I, too, never walked by choice. I not only ran my interval recoveries and grabbed drinks on the run, but I also avoided walking anywhere, anytime.

You could have seen me do what I still see runners doing: come to a stoplight and run in small circles while awaiting a break in traffic, thinking that walking or stopping would bring down a deadly lightning bolt.

My walk-avoidance went beyond the running hours. I would run for miles but would drive a half mile to the grocery store. There I would circle a parking lot until a space opened up at the front door. Anything to keep from walking.

To runners who still think and act this way, “walk” is a four-letter word. It is synonymous with giving up or wimping out.

Like it or not, though, more marathoners each year run with walk breaks, walk with run breaks, or purely walk the distance. They are the reason that marathons have grown so much in this country—and running purists will add, accurately, why these events have slowed so much.

Walking has caught on because it works, and not just in marathons. Walks can work not just as breaks within runs but also as a warm-up before arun, as a cool-down afterward, as an early rehab method after an injury, or as the first choice in substitutes when we don’t or can’t run.

If the word “walk” still strikes you as dirty, think of it instead as interval running. Intervals aren’t just for speed training anymore.

Breaking any big job into smaller pieces, separated by recovery breaks, lets us do more total work without feeling we’ve worked any harder. Walk breaks can make a long run last

longer, a fast run go faster, an easy run feel easier.

Walking has served me well in all of these ways. But this happened only after I learned that “walk” is not a nasty word.

Thad run, and only run, for a long time before finally learning to walk. It happened, as many good and lasting changes do, because I talked to the right people at the right time. This column both relays their teachings to you and gives them thanks from me.

BEGINNING TO BREAK

Ken Crutchlow passed through this sport briefly in the 1970s. Before moving on to other pursuits, the British adventurer crossed Death Valley in the summer and also ran from Los Angeles to San Francisco.

That second run of 500 miles brought us together for an interview. I asked how he had trained.

“Oh, notat all,” he said. “I wouldn’t do any special training. That would take the sport out of it. The challenge to me was to do this totally unprepared, as any man on the street might.”

So how could he run 50 miles a day for 10 straight days? Few trained runners could do even a single 50. (I never had at that point.)

“You want to know my secret?” he told me. “I don’t hurry, and I don’t run very far at one time—only a mile or so—and then I walk for a while, then I run some more and walk again. It takes me the whole bloody day, but I get there.”

Back then I was dabbling in ultras, unsuccessfully. My only attempt at a 50-mile race had ended 20 miles too soon. My longest completed run was a SOK.

Thad tried a three-day race of equal segments totaling 100 miles. One day’s running had been my limit.

The next year, that same event squeezed itself into a single 24-hour period. Based on the wisdom of the times, I had no business entering.

We believed then in the collapsepoint theory. It held that runners would hit their Wall at about triple the length of their average daily run. That meant you could eke out a marathon while averaging just under nine miles a day.

My corollary to collapse-point also seemed to work. I needed a longest training run the length of the race, in time, to be assured of finishing strongly.

I wasn’t going to average 33 miles in training for the 100. Nor would I take a 20-hour trial run.

So why try? In a word, Crutchlow. I figured that if this untrained runner could go as far as he did, what was my excuse?

My plan didn’t include walk breaks. Mine would be stop breaks, milling in place or sitting down to rest before starting to run again from the same spot. I would run five miles between these breaks through 50 miles, then 2 1/2 miles (the length of each lap) from then on.

This experiment failed. I bailed out at 70 miles, at two o’clock in the morning, after 14 1/2 hours on the road.

But in three other ways this effort was a great eye-opener: (1) the distance more than doubled the length of my longest nonstop run; (2) the running averaged eight-minute miles, which was about as fast as I usually trained at a small fraction of this distance; and (3) the recovery afterward took far less time than any marathon I had run.

The rest breaks had made all of this possible. But I wasn’t convinced enough to try them again in my next, and last, ultra.

Running without pause, my race ended 10 miles short of its scheduled 50—and 30 miles short of the go-andstop distance covered a few months earlier. I still had a lot to learn about walking for runners.

LEARNING TO WALK

Ernst van Aaken, a German physician/coach, first published an article in English in 1960. I read it then but wasn’t yet ready to believe it. He talked of run-walk as child’s play, and at 17 I already thought of myself as a grownup runner.

Dr. van Aaken wrote then, “The play of children is nothing more than a long-distance run, because in a couple of hours of play they cover many kilometers with several hundred pauses. The play of children is a primal form of interval training.”

His adult runners trained the same way, covering great distances but seldom going far between walk breaks. By the time I finally met the man about 30 years ago, he had coached an Olympic

medalist (Harald Norpoth in the 5,000) and advised two world record setters in the marathon (Liane Winter and Christa Vahlensieck).

By then, van Aaken himself had lost both legs in a traffic accident and didn’t have long to live. As he spoke that night to a too-small group of runners in California, I wasn’t yet a converted run-walker but was about ready to become a believer.

“Run as a child runs,” van Aaken said in German, with Dr. Joan Ullyot translating. “Run playfully, for 10 kilometers a day, without pain or fatigue. The plan is the same for everyone, from competing athletes to patients recovering from heart attacks. Only the pace and the amount of walking vary.”

I didn’t plan to prove van Aaken’s theories correct right away. My plan the very next morning was to take a long run with several friends.

Barely two miles into that scheduled 15, a sore calf that I had nursed for the past week cramped up and stopped me. I began walking back to our starting point.

A few minutes of this loosened the offending muscle, so I tested myself with a short run. At the calf’s first sign of rebellion, I walked again.

These run-walk intervals continued for two hours that day—this after failing to run two miles steadily. The intervals were just what the doctor, Ernst van Aaken in this case, would have ordered.

I’ve since learned that almost any injury responds better to intermittent than to uninterrupted running. Run-walk

is, above whatever else it offers, a leg saver.

DOUBLE THE DISTANCE

Hundreds of running books have passed through the presses since I first read one in 1958. Too many of them moved me too much to name a single favorite, but I could give a short list.

Certain to make it would be the Serious Runner’s Handbook, which didn’t sell well enough in its day (published in 1978) and fell into out-of-print obscurity too soon. Its author, Tom Osler, is so little recognized now that I call him an “unsung genius.”

Tom never was a running writer by trade. He was, and is, a college math professor in New Jersey.

He viewed running as a long series of problems to be solved, then described his solutions quickly and clearly. His book covers 255 topics in barely half that many pages, giving more good advice per paragraph than some writers do in a chapter.

Tom is the godfather of walk breaks in this country. He used them while running races as long as 48 hours.

“T find it convenient to walk briskly for five minutes following every 20 minutes of running,” he wrote in his Handbook. “More walking seems to leave my legs heavy and unwilling to run again.”

Tom didn’t judge the effects of walking less than five minutes at a time or running shorter than 20. Later users of these breaks would have to find their own answers here.

He understated his case for walks in the book. But my prodding led him to speak more boldly for a magazine article that I edited.

He wrote, “Runners can instantly double their longest nonstop distance by taking the walk breaks.” I had already believed this from my 70 miles of run/rest.

That experience was almost a decade old before I truly tried walk breaks in a race. Circumstances conspired to put me at a marathon starting line woefully undertrained. My longest run lately had been six miles.

lintended to follow the Osler plan: run 20 minutes and then walk five. Maybe finishing a marathon wouldn’t be possible, but doubling my longest recent distance would still be a good day’s work.

Two problems arose early: stopping while others kept running proved embarrassing, and a five-minute walk seemed interminably long. I made midcourse corrections by running the two miles or so between drink stations (where many runners stopped with me) and walking about one minute for each running mile (while pretending to drink slowly).

This routine had payoffs both immediate and long term. It let me get through that marathon without undue struggle. And it previewed future runwalk advice to marathoners, shortening the runs and the walks of ultrarunner Tom Osler.

THE GALLOWAY WAY

Want to hear the war of words over walk breaks heat up? Mention Jeff

Galloway’s name. His detractors and devotees are equally vocal.

Ask purist runners what they think of “Gallo-walks,” and they’ll tell you this is a ploy to make marathoners of people who really aren’t. They’ll blame Jeff for slowing down—some critics say “dumbing down”—the sport. I’m sad to see Jeff defamed this way,

because there is no more sincere missionary for running.

You can agree or not with his approach. The fact remains that no American has contributed more to the marathon’s growth in recent years. Upward of 100,000 marathoners have come through his training program, centered on walking early (from the