Run Under Control

For many a runner—especially a long-distance runner—learning to run under control (that is, with self-control and discipline) is more difficult than the training needed to be able to race in the first place. How many runners have you heard use the phrase “I run like I feel”?

How often does running as you feel get you where you want to be as far as a time goal in the marathon goes? The marathon is a race designed for the patient, disciplined, under-control personality.

There are various lures embedded in the marathon that can guarantee run-asyou-feel runners a disaster every time they line up at a starting line.

Let’s consider just a few:

1. The tapering period (the two to three weeks leading to the marathon) brings together the strength and endurance of 16 to 18 weeks of hard training so that the runner arrives at the starting line filled with enormous reserves of energy, both physical and nervous. The runner, unless well disciplined, allows the built-up energy to dictate the early pace, which leads to disaster because the runner covers the first half of the race too fast and has little left for the bitter final miles.

2. The runner is disciplined in the early miles because of previous disasters from going out too fast. But then the runner hits the sweet midportion of the race, between seven and 16 miles, where the deepest parts of the big leg muscles are warm and supple and the stride is smooth and rhythmic. The runner is in such a heaven of wonderful running as to conclude that in some magical way, training has gone better than expected and conditioning is better than anticipated. So hey, let’s go for it! The runner allows the legs to run as fluidly, as smoothly, and as fast as they want, and what happens? They not only use up the energy reserved for that portion of the race, but they also leach some of the energy that is being saved for the final miles. By the time the incredibly powerful runner reaches 22 miles, the incredibly powerful runner is no longer so powerful or smooth or filled with running, and the final miles become a nightmare.

3. Another embedded obstacle is failure to monitor. By that we mean the need to constantly monitor what the body is doing throughout the race: the breathing, the heart rate, the striking of the feet upon the pavement, the arm swing, the position of the hips, the perspiration rate. Like an airline pilot, the conscientious and patient marathoner monitors all systems and does not “run wild” or “run as you feel.” During the

early portions of the race, if you’ve done the training, you’re going to feel mighty wonderful. Later on you won’t.

The matter of running under control extends to two other areas of concern: basic training and the frequency of racing, both of which relate directly to satisfaction—or lack thereof—in racing.

Many runners these days cheat themselves of a full and fulfilling running/racing experience by not preparing properly for race day, by not carefully laying out the training period leading up to the race. Their training sessions are either haphazard or half-hearted; they are not well thought out or are executed in a less-than-maximum method.

Some runners don’t even bother to lay out a training program. Instead, they run when they find the time or feel the inclination, and then they are disappointed in the results of their racing. Races are one of the few arenas in life where great expectations are anticipated based on weak investments.

A term paper at school, an end-ofquarter report at work, building a house, even washing acar are all accomplished in a logical, methodical manner. If certain steps are not followed, or if a few steps are skipped, the project falls apart and is a disaster. The same is true of a training program toward running a race. To do well in the race takes planning and dedication in the preparation. You literally get out of a race what you put into the training leading up to it.

That is what makes the long-distance racing scene so fascinating: it isn’t a game of checkers; it’s a game of chess.

Key workouts must be sandwiched between “filler” workouts where you run easily in order to recover. The hard/easy method must be closely adhered to if the runner is to avoid injury and burnout. On race day, runners must go into the race fully cognizant of their current ability. In the race itself, extreme discipline must be employed in order to have enough energy and speed left in the final mile to squeeze out that extra second or two.

To do well in racing, you’ve got to dedicate a certain amount of time and energy to the process. The race itself is the cherry on top of the sundae. To look at the training as a chore is to lose yourself outside the process. In disciplined running, the process is all.

As we’ve said many times, the sport of long-distance running and racing has a great storehouse of knowledge accumulated over many centuries and many billions of miles run. There are numerous knowledgeable and practical books and Web sites available with proven training programs for virtually every distance imaginable. If it comes to a choice between a Web site and a book, always choose the book. Why? Because numerous trained professionals have had an opportunity to review every line in the book, whereas any yahoo can throw up a Web site.

If you insist on using a Web site, make sure it is being managed by someone whose name you recognize for a long history of teaching runners to run well: Joe Henderson, Hal Higdon, Jeff Galloway, Mike Schreiber, and so forth. And stick faithfully to the program.

Sure, you can still do well in a race after skipping a few of the marginal workouts; but skip one of the critical workouts (such as the weekend long run), and you’re asking for yet another disastrous race experience.

And then there is the subject of racing.

Racing under control means entering races fresh, not attempting to race every weekend either because you’re trying to create a reputation for yourself as a mega-racer or because you are obsessed with running and racing. Obsessions lead only to burnout and frustration. Obsessions are an admission that something other than you is in control of your actions. If you are obsessed, you have deeded control of yourself to what amounts to a compulsion. And if you are obsessed, logic and reason have been stomped into the mud and are no longer available as tools to improve or control your training and racing.

And let’s look at the race experience. A race, by definition, is a contest that pits you over the distance against the clock, against yourself, and against others. Runners who each weekend show up at races, pin on a number, and jog through the race aren’t racers and they aren’t racing. They’re accumulating race numbers.

Someone who is truly racing can perform well only a limited number of times per year. The shorter the race, the more times the distance can be contested. World-class marathoners will tell you that they can pull off only two top-performance marathons

per year, usually one in the spring and one in the fall.

But even races at shorter distances demand payment from your body and your head. And they demand downtime for recovery. The typical formula is one day of easy running for every mile raced.

Runners who jog through races can literally jog a race every weekend, but they are accomplishing nothing more than logging miles. And 10 years down the road, with hundreds of pedestrian 10Ks and dozens of mediocre marathons on their resume, if they were honest (and later in their careers, some of them are), most of the joggers/racers would gladly trade 100 lame 10Ks for one sub-40:00.

Run under control, follow a sensible and proven program, and the 40-minute 10Ks, the sub-three-hour marathons, and the under-10-hour 50-milers become a possibility.

There are, of course, exceptions, the outliers, the physiological freaks. We know one fellow from Maine who is closing in on his 50th sub-three-hour marathon. Nice accomplishment, but it pales in comparison to Michigan runner Doug Kurtis, who in his career ran 76 sub-2:20 marathons!

But guess what?

They monitored the reaction of their bodies to training and racing, and they applied that hard-won knowledge to learn how to train and race very much under control.

Observers of the scene continue to weave fantasies about runners who run like they feel or who run wild.

For decades, people pointed at Rhode Island Narragansett Indian runner Ellison “Tarzan” Brown, who reputedly trained little and ran as he felt. We now know, thanks to Michael Wood’s extensive biography, that before the 1936 Boston Marathon (which he won convincingly), Brown and his coach went off to a quiet cabin in the woods and trained scientifically and extensively. During the race, Tarzan did not go out at a sprint to lead and dominate the entire race. He laid back, conserved his resources, and when the time was right, he made his move.

To do well in long distance (and in life) requires patience, delayed gratification, self-control, and a sense of pacing. Run wild at your own peril. But learn to run under control, and the lessons can be transferred to any number of aspects of your life.

As we all know, all journeys begin with a single step. We also know that often it is not the destination but the journey itself that is more important.

This philosophy becomes abundantly clear in Clint Morrison’s delightful Running the Seven Continents: Tales of Travel and the Marathon (Inkwater Press; www.inkwaterpress.com), a book that isn’t so much about running as it is about running within the larger context of life itself and taking life’s journeys as they come as a route to growing mentally and spiritually. Yeah, yeah, I know: that makes it sound really, really New Age. If it did, I would have trouble saying that Clint is a mighty fine writer with a mighty fine story to tell; what makes his stories interesting is that poor Clint suffers from a serious case of the periodic wanderlust.

By that, I mean he isn’t traveling all the time. Sometimes he even stays home for long periods of time. But then the wanderlust urge takes hold, and he doesn’t fight real hard to battle it. His wife at that point is probably glad to see him go away for a month because he’s probably driving her crazy itching and twitching, trying to scratch the wanderlust bug—a bug that no scratching will alleviate.

He lays out his book very nicely, ignoring chronology and instead jumping back and forth, after—and here’s his stroke of genius in this book—he calls up his August 2001 running of the Yukon River Trail Marathon. Why is it genius? Because he follows in the footprints of the stampeders who rushed to the 1896 Yukon gold strike. Most of them never even made enough money to get back home, but once they arrived and took stock, they realized that it wasn’t the gold they were after—it was the journey, the adventures along the trails, the hardships and friendships. This theme is brilliantly portrayed in Pierre Berton’s magnificent Klondike, a history of the Yukon gold rush that reads like a novel. At the end of each chapter of his book, Clint lists the books that he carried in his book bag. Berton’s book was not listed, and we hope he doesn’t read it at this point or he will once again point his nose north. (He did carry along a copy of the poems of Robert Service, a very good pick for capturing the mood of the men who moiled for gold under the midnight sun.)

Very little in the chapter is about the race itself, which runs from and back to Whitehorse, one of the centers of the great stampede. Most of the chapter is about the journey. Inbound, Clint made it on Alaska state ferries, which is an adventure in itself. After the race, he travels back home to Portland, Oregon, by bus. On his return trip, he has this to say: “It feels like three or four weeks that I’ve been gone, very satisfying to the travel itch, but it has only been eight days off the calendar. It was certainly more about the journey than the destination. It wasn’t the gold that I wanted after all so much as the journey towards the gold. Still it is the destination that determines the journey, and thereby determines the scenery passively present along the way, and the fellow travelers who have made similar choices to take a journey in the same direction on the same path on the same day and in the same vehicle. Just like running a race, even to the fact that without a finish line to attain it is not complete.”

Clint Morrison makes a likeable travel companion, even more now that he has such adventures to relate. Stories of running marathons in Asia (Japan’s Lake Kawaguchi International Marathon), Australia (Victoria State Championship Marathon, Melbourne), Antarctica (the famed Antarctica Marathon), Africa (Two Oceans ultra in Cape Town), Europe (Athens), and South America (Florianopolis Marathon in Brazil) would make for good campfire talk somewhere in the middle of a Wyoming ultra. —Rich Benyo

ONtheROADWITHDONKARDONG

Strangers in Our Midst

On a February morning two years ago, I headed out for an easy five-mile run. Snow was in the forecast and a few flakes had already fallen, but not enough to cover the ground. The temperature was a degree or two below freezing. There was no wind.

In short, conditions were about as mild as they get in winter here in the Inland Northwest. No slipping, no stumbling, no frozen face. Within five minutes, I was comfortably warm and moving with ease. After months of struggling to regain fitness following double knee surgery, things were falling into place. Even the weather was cooperating.

As I trotted through my morning rounds, I checked my watch at a few checkpoints along the way. I was running faster than I had two weeks, even a week earlier, and it felt effortless. I wasn’t quite experiencing the proverbial runner’s high, but it was still an uplifting morning—comfortable, light footed, and with weather that was trending toward spring. I don’t typically smile when I run, but it was tough not to.

Then, in the final mile, I passed a woman who was stepping gingerly toward the front of an office building.

She looked up, watched me pass, and blurted out her surprise.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she proclaimed, and hurried on toward the door.

Kidding? It took me a few seconds to put it all together, but it finally registered. The woman considered running on this particular morning a bizarre kind of behavior. In the world she inhabited, I was acting very strangely.

Was I? In the past four decades, running for fitness has become so commonplace that those of us who run sometimes fail to fathom the perceptions of the rest of society about what we do. As we run, people stare at us from cozy living rooms, temperaturecontrolled automobiles, or comfort-optimized office buildings and consider us . .. what? Heroes? Idiots? Freaks?

Weare still a minority, that’s for sure, no matter how much our numbers have grown. But when simply exercising outdoors on a mild winter day is considered extreme behavior, I can only conclude that the vast majority of citizens have lost their compasses that point in the direction of the bizarre. Are these really the descendants of hard-edged pioneers? Is bipedal outdoor travel on a February morning in the 21st century now the definition of ridiculous? I’ve done a few things in my four decades of running that could fairly be called extreme, like

a rim-to-rim-and-back journey in the Grand Canyon or a circumnavigation of Mount St. Helens. Going outside for 40 minutes of easy running, though, shouldn’t be on anyone’s list of daunting or wacko endeavors.

But if winter running is nutty behavior in most Americans’ reckoning, I think turnabout is fair play. I was visiting a running club in North Georgia a while back, and my host was explaining, rather sheepishly I thought, that certain citizens of her community liked to reenact Civil War battles on the outskirts of town. Imagine her surprise when I told her we had a similar group in Spokane, a locale farther removed than France from the carnage of the War Between the States. In the 1860s, the Inland Northwest belonged to Native Americans, missionaries, and the occasional fur trapper. And yet there they were in the middle of one of our running routes one Sunday morning, hundreds of Yankees and Rebels in full regalia, happily firing blanks at each other. This was what, the Battle of Riverside State Park?

And I’m goofy because I run when it’s cold outside?

Another anecdote: At the Lilac Bloomsday Run, the 12-kilometer race Idirect in Spokane every spring, we’ve worked hard the past few years to put various forms of entertainment along the course. Having rock bands, drummers, cheerleaders, belly dancers, and an Elvis accordionist along the route doesn’t seem at all outlandish any more, but this year we received a query from a local Renaissance revival group that

wanted to do some jousting next to the runners. On actual horses. We put our hooves down on that one. No jousting on the racecourse.

Incidentally, there are about 30,000 members of the Society for Creative Anachronism worldwide. The SCA is “an international organization dedicated to researching and re-creating the arts and skills of pre-17th-century Europe.” I don’t think our Renaissance group was affiliated with the SCA, but in case you’re wondering, Spokane is in the Kingdom of An Tir.

I’m not putting anyone down, trust me. Whatever musters your musket is fine with me. I’m just wondering, again, given the way some people spend their time, if trotting around in tights and a Gore-Tex jacket in February really warrants a turn of the head and a derogatory or dismissive comment.

There are people—normal people, let’s call them—who spend their waking hours collecting things: string, aluminum foil, snow globes, matchbooks, Beanie Babies, porcelain elves, pet rocks, memorabilia of Gary Lewis and the Playboys. Meanwhile, we runners collect miles and are considered strange.

Yes, Icollect miles. And along with miles, I also collect wildlife, or at least wildlife sightings. In a given year and without really trying, I’ve seen deer, elk, coyotes, foxes, osprey, and the occasional pileated woodpecker, to name a few. Now and then I’ve collected a moose.

Every spring I collect wildflower sightings. Spring begins with buttercups, then widow lilies, then bright yellow splashes of arrowleaf balsamroot, followed by lupine, Indian paintbrush, purple vetch, fireweed, fleabane, and an ongoing parade of species, in every color of the rainbow, more varieties than you can shake a 10-foot lance at.

Even in winter, when fauna is scarce and flora mostly dormant, there is plenty of nature to collect. In winter, the river is noisy and swift, and the sky flashes purple, pink, and gold at sunrise. All very collectible. I’ve been known to run 10 miles well after dark, with only the enigmatic twinkling of a few distant constellations to keep me company. I collect those too. And scarce or not, I enjoyed the best bald

eagle sighting of my life one snowy morning, when one of the elusive raptors watched my running buddy and me from the branch of a pine tree no more than 20 feet away. He beamed a malevolent eye at us for about 10 seconds, then gave two powerful pumps of his wings and was off down the river. Go ahead and tell me I must be kidding to be outside in winter, able to collect a sighting like this. I’m a collector, and proud of it.

Running, though, is more than a chance to collect the natural world in vision and memory. It’s also one of the healthiest activities on the planet. Running strengthens the heart, cleans the arteries, improves blood cholesterol, burns excess calories, enhances the

disposition, and bonds friendships. In spite of all this, there are people who are just aching for us to see the light, see how foolish our activity is, and do something else.

Like the guy at the bike shop.

Don’t get me wrong, I think cycling is a hoot, and I’m a regular rider. I typically manage three days of riding each week along with my four days of running, and the combination is a winner. Cross-training helps keep the injury banshees away, and 40 minutes on the bike is a smooth, swift, and enjoyable way to start the day.

I just don’t want to hear that it’s “better than running.” Yes, biking is easier on the legs, and for anyone who needs an activity that gives a modest boost to the cardiovascular system without challenging the joints and muscles, cycling is wonderful.

“Lots of guys I know who used to be runners like biking a lot better,” says the guy at the bike shop.

Thold my tongue, but what I want to say is, “Yes, and a lot of guys who used to bike like sitting in front of the TV a lot better. For the same reason: it’s easier.”

Yes, I know, those Tour de France studs train really, really hard, even when they’re not juiced on steroids. You can get a hell of a workout on a bike, assuming you’re pedaling uphill at an altitude of around 7,000 feet. Other than that, the heart rate elevates only slightly for a rider in decent shape. For a lot of people, that ease of motion makes biking “better than running,” but in truth it’s the opposite. Running

is better, because it puts more demands on the cardiovascular system and burns more calories. You can get a roughly equivalent workout on the bike—it just takes three times as long.

I made this point once to a worldclass triathlete, and after chewing on it for a few seconds, he agreed.

“You’re right,” he enthused. “I can really thrash myself with 30 minutes of running.”

Now that’s what I’m talking about! There’s no coasting in running; it’s wall-to-wall workout. My muscles may be shaky and my knees achy, I may be sweating like Joe Frazier in the 15th round and feeling just as abused, but, by Thor’s hammer, I enjoy a worldclass effort when I run. Even when I run slowly.

So please, bike-shop guy, don’t try to use biking as a wedge to pry me away fromrunning, especially since my biking in winter is stationary, indoors, and damned tedious. Let me stay with my trusted friend, two-legged travel, whatever the weather.

All right, maybe I’m just a bit testy these days, and the comment from the guy at the bike shop hits a little close to home. It has been three years since they wheeled me into the hospital operating room with faulty meniscuses, and I still haven’t recovered enough from arthroscopic knee surgery to be able to run with ease.

Let me rephrase that. Actually, I’ve recovered a bunch of times since the surgery. Once, I recovered and retrained well enough to notch a couple of 18mile runs. A return to marathoning

seemed imminent. And then the floor collapsed and I was back to square two. Since then, I’ve had a half-dozen other rebuildings, followed by a halfdozen other collapses. Sometimes it’s a serious ache in one knee or the other. Sometimes it’s a calf or hamstring tweak. Either way, when the running collapses I’m cycling full-time, with the words of the guy at the bike shop echoing in my skull.

As I write this, I’m in yet another rebuilding phase. About three months ago, running in the state park with two buddies and feeling great, I suddenly felt a sharp pain just above my right knee where the tendon attaches. I walked for a few steps and, hoping the pain would be one of those mysterious transitory ailments that evaporates as quickly as it appears, started jogging again. No dice. Thad to walk most of the way home, until one of my running buddies could return in his car to pick me up.

A week after that episode I felt fine again, ran a full 12 miles, and decided I was back in business. Sadly, that was self-deception. Since then, I’ve had four more “blowouts” in the middle of a workout or race, and each time I’ve had to walk home. After the last incident, I took five weeks off and tried a stretching routine recommended by my physical therapist. Now I’m back to running four days a week, and I can’t

tell you how great it feels, no matter how slowly I’m covering the territory. Oh yes, and I’m cycling three days a week, which is just the right number.

So let’s think again about how foolish it is to run in winter. Here’s one more anecdote:

About a week after that February morning when I was told that I had to be kidding to be running outside, the temperature plunged into single digits. There was very little wind, though, so I decided that a run on a very cold, sunny morning was still reasonable. A bit dicey, to be sure, but no trek to the South Pole.

As it turned out, it was actually quite pleasant, and I nodded solidarity to other runners as I chugged through my five miles. I was in almost exactly the same spot I had been a week earlier when a different woman, on her way to take the trash out, looked up in surprise.

“That’s just crazy,” she announced, and scrambled back toward her door.

Well, craziness can be defined as holding beliefs or pursuing activities that are inconsistent with the beliefs and activities of the world around us. So go ahead, call me nuts. Just let me continue to be able to run—winter, spring, summer, or fall—and you’re welcome to call me any name you like. As long as it’s not “cyclist.”