When More Is Actually More

A theory in long-distance running that was popular in the 1970s has reemerged as a mantra of successful world-class runners today: to become a better runner, run as much mileage as your body can stand for as long as is practical, and then rest from your labors before restarting the cycle.

This sounds so eminently logical and practical that it hardly seems necessary to say it. Yet in the same way we have cycles in the seasons and cycles in a running career (think of Lasse Viren peaking every four years in time for the Olympics), we periodically need to state and then restate the obvious lest it be lost in the cacophony of scientific certainty and general-interest know-it-all-ism.

What I mean by that is that logic doesn’t always rest with the experts. In fact, on a fairly regular basis, the experts (in whatever field) bulldoze logic under a landfill of statistics and Swiss cheese research.

Let’s look at a short history of running long in order to run best.

In the first half of the 20th century, there was a fellow in New England named Clarence DeMar. He won the famed Boston Marathon seven times and might have won it at least two or three more times if, at the height of his prowess, doctors hadn’t warned him to

take time off from running in order to protect his enlarged heart—enlarged, as it turned out, by lots of aerobic exercise. Clarence, a reticent and often truculent man, used twice-a-day workouts to his advantage.

He wasn’t a scientist who after long and thorough study came to the conclusion that twice-a-day workouts were the way to become a better marathoner. He was a printer who ran to and from work each day, a clean, dry shirt tucked under his arm. He found that twice-a-day workouts fit well into his workday world; on weekends he ran long. The mix allowed him to charge up a tremendous battery of strength and endurance, which served him well when he raced. It also allowed him to commute to and from work without having to pay for carfare. It would not be reaching to say that along with everything else, Clarence DeMar was a skinflint; he grew up poor, worked at a boys’ home, and never learned to waste his money.

Other runners against whom Clarence competed began to take note of his racing success and began to adapt some of his training methods. Among those were John A. Kelley and John J. Kelley. John A. won Boston in 1935 and 1945 and earned a spot on the U.S. Olympic marathon team three times;

John J. Kelley (no relation) won Boston in 1957, was an Olympic marathoner, and won the AAU marathon championships at Yonkers an incredible eight years in a row.

Between the two Kelleys, Emil Zatopek, the legendary Czech distance runner, set new standards for the volume of distance he trained per week in order to compete on the world stage. Zatopek remains the only runner in history to win the Olympic 5,000 meters, 10,000 meters, and the marathon in the same Olympic Games: 1952 at Helsinki.

In the 1960s, Arthur Lydiard, the New Zealand coach, codified the theory of long, slow distance as a base preparatory to specific strength and speed training not in a laboratory but in the Olympic record books by placing his neighborhood runners on the medals platform at the 1960 Olympic Games: Peter Snell won gold in the 800 meters, Murray Halberg won gold in the 5,000, and Barry Magee took the bronze in the marathon.

By the time the 1970s arrived, American postcollegiate distance runners had concluded that a combination of heavy mileage, occasional speed training at the track, and a regular regimen of racing were essential to marathon success. At the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, the American marathon team placed first (Frank Shorter), fourth (Kenny Moore), and ninth (Jack Bachelor). No other national team before or since has ever placed so well in the Olympic marathon, not even the East Africans (Kenya and Ethiopia) in the modern era. It was a golden age

for American long-distance racing. In the previous Olympics, the American team (Moore, George Young, and Ron Daws) also would have taken the team title; and in the next Olympics after the 1972 extravaganza, Americans placed second (Shorter) and fourth (Don Kardong) and would have been first and third had winner Waldemar Cierpinski been disqualified for his use of performance-enhancing drugs.

It was an intoxicating era for American distance running and extended into the early 1980s when Americans Alberto Salazar and Dick Beardsley staged their historic “Duel in the Sun” at Boston in 1982, the top three places in Boston 1983 were taken by Americans (Greg Meyer, Ron Tabb, and Benji Durden), and Joanie Benoit won the first women’s Olympic marathon in 1984 in Los Angeles.

But after that, American distance running fell apart, in large part because of the scientific community stepping in to assert that marathoners needed no more than 75 miles of training a week to perform at a world-class level. The extravagance of previous decades, where marathoners were training regularly at 120 miles a week with experimental forays into 150 miles and even 200 miles a week, was belittled and denigrated by the scientists who studied running. Marathon running (and winning) was no longer to be an art form restricted to creative coaches such as Arthur Lydiard, Ernst van Aaken, Bob Sevene, and Bill Squires. It was to be dictated to by slide-rules and heart monitors.

Itis only within the past decade that coaches such as Bob Larsen, Joe Vigil, Alberto Salazar, and others in regional American distance-training enclaves have reinstituted longer long-distance training as a route to long-distance glory. The results were obvious in the 2004 Olympic Games, where Americans again medaled in both the men’s and women’s Olympic marathons, and the trend seems to continue with the development of outstanding distance runners such as Ryan Hall.

But, you say, what do world-class distance runners doing megamileage have to do with me?

Excellent question. The answer is that the trend has everything to do with improving both the efficiency of your training and the results of your racing.

Except for those on the verge of fatigue from too much mileage, every runner can benefit from a bit more mileage. And in that tried-and-true but frustrating phenomenon, the runner who is already doing less will benefit much more from adding a little, while the runner who is doing most will need to do much more to gain minor advantages.

By gradually and carefully adding mileage, the average runner will gain on several fronts.

The added mileage will increase the endurance reservoir and thereby increase performance, especially in the later stages of the marathon where mere mortals falter.

The added mileage will make the runner more efficient. To do anything

well, we need to do it frequently and at some volume. But once we do, we naturally become more efficient at doing it. Everything from long-distance running to playing chess to playing a musical instrument benefits from increasing the amount of practice we put in.

There is another benefit to becoming more efficient at running: the practice of running additional miles doesn’t take as much additional time as we thought because we are typically getting better at it and therefore doing it at a faster pace. Certain parts of our regular runs are fixed in the amount of time they take. Getting ready to run takes a set amount of time. Cleaning up after a run takes a set amount of time. Those two factors don’t change whether you run two miles or 20. When you become more efficient at running and are therefore doing average runs at a faster pace, the additional amount of time the practice takes is minimized.

Naturally, if you race regularly, increasing your endurance increases your performance at all distances, but especially at the longer distances where endurance is disproportionately rewarded. The extra mileage simply allows your body to go longer, better.

And once you get better at something, you derive more enjoyment from it, which is a motivator to do it better still.

We must admit that we live in a society in which, on many fronts, excellence is not only not rewarded but is punished. Teachers don’t want Junior to feel bad about his dismal performance brought on by lack of motivation, so

he is rewarded whether he tries or not. Meanwhile, the student who is motivated and puts in a great effort and excels is slowed down so as not to bruise the poor, beleaguered self-esteem that Junior is stuck with, because after all, it isn’t Junior’s fault that he’s a wholesale waste of protoplasm. Nothing is Junior’s fault. Hence, no games of tag at recess because ultimately somebody is stuck being “It.” Et cetera.

In running, some of this crap has slopped over. Indeed, there are runners who want to be rewarded for existing, for doing little. They want to be praised for merely showing up. They want the tules to be stretched to accommodate them when they would fit nicely within the rules if they tried a little harder in their running. Included are the egodriven self-aggrandizers who “train” for and survive a marathon just so at the next social gathering they can say they ran one (so they can check “marathon” off their list before moving on to something else), no matter how long it takes them to finish it. It is difficult to justify ascribing the word “run” to a marathon that takes a perfectly healthy 35-year-old more than 6 1/2 hours when you can cover the same 26.2 miles at a brisk walk, at a 15-minute mile. Consider, for example, that on October 28, 2007, in Monterey, California, 61-year-old Bill Penner racewalked a 10K in one hour flat; right behind him came 69-year-old J. Beckett (in 1:00:54), and behind Beckett came 52-year-old Karen Stoyanowski in 1:02:40. They averaged less than 10 minutes per mile.

On December 2, 2007, at Sacramento, California’s California International Marathon, Helen Klein, 85 years old, won her age group in 5:48:59.*

Fortunately, the demographics that characterize most runners are spiked with motivation, ambition, and dedication to purpose. Some runners, especially newer arrivals, quite simply don’t know how to get better or, in some instances, don’t realize that they can get better by making only minor changes to their training regimen.

Set aside a six-month season and experiment with adding a bit of extra mileage each week. Don’t add very much. Try adding one extra mile for the first week, two the second week, and three the third week, and then drop back the fourth week to your original weekly mileage in order to give your body a chance to rest.

In the second four-week series, add two miles the first week, three the second, and four the third, and for the fourth drop back to your original level.

If you started at 30 miles a week, by the sixth month you’ll have topped out at 38 miles per week, which doesn’t sound like a massive increase but which is significant in terms of percentage. Aside from the 38-mile-per-week peak, it is the extra miles between the 30 and the 38 that add up and that make you a better, more efficient, and likely faster runner.

Some of the efficiency will come from the simple act of running increased mileage as opposed to “slogging,” which is that inefficient bobbing along.

Consider two factors: any vertical movement when you run requires energy. The higher you move at each step, the more energy it requires. Watch world-class road racers from the side. You could set a glass of water on their heads, and it wouldn’t spill. This perfection in smooth, efficient forward motion is very apparent when you watch coverage of a race such as the New York City Marathon when a camera is trained on the side of the Queensborough Bridge. The bridge railing is tall enough that it obscures the runner’s body except for the head. The runner’s head is just above the railing, and it moves along the railing as smoothly as a bowling ball rolls down an alley. If your head rises one inch per stride, and if you take 2,500 strides per mile (measuring each stride at a little more than 2 feet), a marathon would require 65,500 strides, and you would have “climbed” 5,458 feet into the air in addition to running 26.2 miles horizontally. How much energy does it take to climb 5,458 feet? Run more miles to teach your body to run more efficiently and you’ll have 5,458 climbing feet of energy to apply to your marathon.

By the same token, slogging involves short steps, while running involves a longer stride. Consider the increase in performance if you could add 1 inch to each stride. What would that translate to? Again, let’s take the marathon. Those 65,500 strides translated to 65,500 inches or 5,458 feet (a bit more than a mile) means that your running self would be finished with

the marathon while your slogging self would still be more than a mile from the finish line.

In a sport like long-distance running, inches translate to miles.

Run more miles. Allow your body to increase its efficiency and speed, and the rewards can be enormous.

26 and 30 respectively. Eo * *

Hear, ye! Hear, ye! All ye of sensitive bent, I urge you to read no further. In fact, I command you to turn to Don Kardong’s column so that you might avoid heart palpitations, skyrocketing blood pressure, and the urge to fire off

a nasty letter of complaint. What follows is a book review of one of the crudest—and funniest—

novels I’ve ever had the pleasure to read. And another fair warning: it is not arunning book, although it is written by a runner.

Timothy Martin has long been a friend of this magazine, one of its first—and best—scribblers. He won the RRCA award for best writer in a club newsletter several years ago and he is the author of There’s Nothing Funny About Running and Why Run If No One Is Chasing You?

He once won the now-defunct Russian River Marathon but was never able to explain how he managed to do that.

He’s aretired engineer (not the kind that gets to drive a locomotive) and has written a half-dozen screenplays, several of which are being considered by Hollywood producers.

But it seems that Tim had some time on his hands now that he’s writing fulltime since retiring from having a real job, and we all know that idle hands are the devil’s workshop.

The book is The Culverts of Humboldt County (PublishAmerica, 2007) and any similarity to The Bridges of Madison County is purely intentional.

The little novel is both an indictment of and a celebration of wicked love (or more likely lust) among the redneck elements running around loose in far-northern California. You know the type: beer-drinkin’, pickup-trucktinkerin’, gun-totin’, mouth-breathin’, cigarette-smokin’, God-fearin’, deodorant-averse, constantly sweatin’, single-wide trailer-trash, CAT-hatwearin’, salt-of-the-earth maniacs. There is little good that I can say about the book other than it’s one of

THE CULVERTS OF

Wye hm EN au iy

the most hilarious novels I’ve ever read, and trust me on this, even in this kids-can’t-read environment, over the years, I’ve read enough books to fill a two-story double-wide . . . if there is such a thing.

The book should come with one of those “‘sanitary toilet” paper belts they put around the john at the Motel 6, warning that “This Book Should Be Enjoyed Only by Terminally Politically Incorrect Cretins.”

The plot is entirely simple(ton): Earl Perkins works for the California Department of Transportation inspecting and repairing roadway culverts. He leaves his wife, heads out on a job, runs into Charlene Bickle (a very unhappy wife stuck in a very unfulfilling marriage), and sparks begin to fly—and they ain’t from his Bic cigarette lighter. ’Nuff said. If you like Jeff Foxworthy and Larry the Cable Guy, this book makes them look like Rhodes scholars.

We anxiously await Tim’s next sociological tome, in which we anticipate that he will take on the far-northern California college professors and their 60-year-old leftover hippie students who have made a career out of going to school while living inside culverts next to their marijuana groves. Ya ever notice how “culverts” rhymes with “perverts”? Tim hasn’t either.

Get it. Read it. Put it into a plain brown envelope, and burn it before the kids or the police get hold of it. I normally am dead set against the burning of books, but I can see how I would have to make an exception in this case.

—Rich Benyo

ON the ROAD WITH DON KARDONG

Return to the Marathon

T’mamarathoner again. Boy, am I proud. And, boy, did that hurt.

It didn’t hurt the whole time, just those last six miles. Or maybe it was the last eight miles. But I’m getting ahead of the story.

Until last December, my most recent marathon had been in the fall of 2001, when I ran Marine Corps and New York City a week apart. This was just a few weeks after the horrific events of September 11, and both Washington and New York were still reeling. Running those marathons was, I suppose, a tribute to those cities, a pedestrian pep rally, and a statement of faith in the future—not just for me, but for everyone who ran and everyone who cheered.

But for me it was also two full marathons with a slim week of recovery in between. A symbolic show of support is one thing, but doubling up on 26.2 miles is another. I ran 3:37:49 and 3:35:40, and then hobbled home to nurse my legs back to life. Perhaps, I thought, this would be a good time to ride my marathoning career into the sunset. I had nearly 50 efforts to my credit, and the distance wasn’t getting any easier. Ididn’t exactly retire, but marathoning moved to the back shelf of the broom closet of my ambitions. I had no idea if I would ever do another.

The running, though, kept up. It was six days a week for a while, then five after I took a new job that I found to be both physically and emotionally demanding. Five days a week was enough to reduce stress and maintain decent conditioning but not enough to fire up the marathon urge. So I just ran when I could and kept goals on that back shelf.

Unfortunately, even limited running wasn’t trouble free. I was bedeviled by calf and hamstring tweaks, and when those weren’t nagging, I would have to take time off after periodic tumbles while running trails. My running seemed to be haunted by bad karma, and Thad to cut back on training again and again as I recovered from one thing or another. Then, in the summer of 2004, a persistent knee pain brought the whole bandwagon to a screeching halt. An MRI revealed a complex tear of the meniscus of my right knee. Arthroscopic surgery followed. Then, as I started jogging again, the other knee started to ache. It was another torn meniscus, and another arthroscopic surgery followed. By the time I was jogging again, I had been off for seven months, and my weight had ballooned up 20 pounds. I was a mess, and marathoning was the last thing on my mind.

Ah, but the beast has a way of sneaking back into the tent. As I started

jogging again after the second surgery, carefully coaxing my flabby bod back toward a semblance of my presurgery form, regrouping and restarting after a series of setbacks, and occasionally feeling comfortable calling myself a runner again, I discovered the marathon lure on that back shelf. I picked it up, dusted it off, and took a good look. My daughter was living in Boston. They have a marathon there every spring (you probably knew this). You need a qualifying time to run it. For my age group, I would have to run 3:45 or faster.

Could I do that? My Marine Corps and New York times were fast enough, and I had a fairly swift 2:57:15 to my credit as recently as the 1998 Napa Valley Marathon. Of course, those performances now seemed to be from another lifetime, separated from my postsurgery life by a gaping chasm of inactivity measuring seven months long. And I hadn’t gotten any younger since my last marathon either. How much of my prior running ability could I reclaim?

On December 2, 2007, in the streets of Las Vegas, I would find out.

The Zappos.com Las Vegas wasn’t the first marathon I set my sights on after my layoff. In the three years that followed my surgeries, I had chosen one city or another as the likely venue for my return to marathoning, but again and again my recovery suffered setbacks. My knees would seem to be healed, and then one would go gimpy for no apparent reason. My mileage would increase steadily, only to have

to be curtailed when one muscle or another would tweak, squeak, or squawk. It was frustrating, and on more than one occasion, I thought I would have to bail on ever running a marathon again.

Finally getting my weight down to where it had been before the surgeries seemed to be the last key to recovery. With some deliberate dieting, I had managed to drop a pound a week, and my knees appreciated the effort. They healed, although still not without the occasional whimper. The distance of my long run started creeping up to respectability, and my confidence that I could go the distance crept up along with it. When my wife, Bridgid, suggested that we both travel to Las Vegas, she for the half-marathon and I for the full, found myself saying yes. If either or both of our races fell apart, at least we would be in an interesting, if zany, vacation spot. And so off we went.

Thad managed to build my long run up to 21 miles on two different weekends, and those runs went reasonably well. But looking back, the rest of my training was sadly anemic. Aside from my long run, I was running three short routes a week, each only five miles. My highest weekly mileage in the lead up to the marathon was 36. This, I would learn, was not enough.

Of course, you don’t go to the start of a marathon questioning your preparation—at least, not on purpose. Doubts will float to consciousness no matter what, and it’s virtually impossible to feel fully prepared. Even so, I was focusing on confidence, not questions. I had done long runs. I had

penciled out a reasonable and attainable pace, 8:30 per mile, that would bring me to the finish under the Boston qualifying mark. No worries.

The marathoners and half-marathoners were scheduled to start together on the south end of the Vegas Strip, so Bridgid and I headed to the line together that Sunday morning, a first for us. The sun rose on a beautiful day—sunny, cool, and calm—and before long the folks ahead of us were trotting up the Strip to the accompaniment of fireworks and a half-dozen Elvis songs. Standing and waiting our turn, the question in my mind was, would my theme song of the day end up being “Viva Las Vegas,” or would it be “Don’t Be Cruel”?

There is no place on earth quite like Las Vegas, and the marathon was an apt reflection of the locale. It was reported later that the event shattered the world record for the largest number of people running as Elvis (208) and the largest number of couples tying the knot at the Run-Thru Wedding Chapel (55). [have no idea where you would find records like this written down, so I’ll take organizers at their word. In any case, after crossing the starting pad, leaving Bridgid to her own devices, and starting up the Strip, I quickly lost count of how many Elvi and bride-groom combos I passed. It was a lot.

At my 8:30-per-mile pace, I was faster than most of the crowd, so I had to bob and weave my way up the Strip, past the Pyramid, the Sphinx, the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, and the other freakish landmarks along

the roadway. Somewhere around three miles, Blue Man Group was performing, but I wasn’t paying them much attention. I was trying to keep to my goal pace. Aside from the Elvis- and newlywed-dodging, I felt pretty comfortable, and I was mostly on target as I passed five miles in 42:39, a measly nine seconds slower than my plan.

Other than the crowded course, I had very little to complain about. The temperature, at just over 40 degrees, was pleasant for running, and the wind that has blown furiously in other Las Vegas Marathons was hiding somewhere out in the desert. Las Vegas organizers have been lambasted in past years for a number of sins, including misplaced mile markers and late payment of prize money, but most organizational wrinkles seemed to have been ironed out for the 2007 version. The only mile mark that appeared to be out of place was the 11th, and I wasn’t in any position to worry about prize money. Then too, perfect weather has a way of smoothing over a multitude of sins.

At six miles, the half-marathoners took a left and began wheeling back toward their finish line, and suddenly the course was open for those of us going the full distance. No more dodging, and in another couple of miles, we began heading north. I passed 10 miles in 1:24:26, a sweet 34 seconds ahead of pace. I was feeling fine.

Most marathon mistakes are made in the first 10 miles, when locomotion seems easy and the temptation to exceed goal pace is damn near irresistible.

Since I had passed 10 miles nearly on target, though, I thought I had skirted the mistake of starting too fast. It seemed like a good time to let it all hang out. In retrospect, that was probably one of the things that precipitated an exceedingly painful final six miles. In other words, I should have stayed on pace.

Instead, I picked it up. By 15 miles, I was another minute ahead of 8:30 pace. By 20, I was almost three minutes ahead. Since 8:30 pace will yield a final time of under 3:43, I was now flirting with a final time below 3:40, a five-minute cushion on Boston qualifying. Even with a little slowdown over the final miles, I felt that I could easily scoot under the 3:45 mark.

Flirting, though, can get you in trouble. By 18 miles, I was already sensing danger. My quads, in particular, were getting tight. By 20 miles, my energy was seriously flagging, and I was looking for someone to latch onto, someone who could help me maintain. I tucked in behind a couple of guys who were chatting and seemed to be running an appropriate pace. As we passed 21 miles, though, they dropped me like a jilted lover. I’m not sure they even knew I had been there.

This was not a particularly interesting part of the course. It was missing the dizzy distractions of the Strip, and afterward the only images I could conjure up were of apartment complexes and random businesses. Later, I heard people complaining that they didn’t like the course, but for me it wasn’t a problem. The course was fine, as flat

as a tabletop. The problem was me. I was imploding, and I still had miles to go.

Then began the worst part of the debacle. I was bargaining with myself, promising that if I would run 500 steps, Iwould allow myself to walk 50. Within amile, it was 250 steps running and 100 walking. By 23 miles, I was jogging 100 steps and walking 20. Even then, every jogging step was an excruciating effort. I had no go power, no reserve of strength to draw on. I knew that the five-minute cushion I had built up was evaporating like sweat on a sidewalk, but this was the best I could muster: 100 steps jogging, 20 walking. Repeat. Somewhere deep in my psyche, I clung to the hope that I might get to the finish before the cushion was gone. But deeper down, way deep, I knew that I was kidding myself.

At 23 1/2 miles, we rejoined the back-of-the-pack half-marathoners, and I limped down the homestretch on Frank Sinatra Drive. Somehow I managed to hobble in from there: 100 steps jogging, slowly, 20 steps walking. I crossed the line in 3:48:38, not so much disappointed at missing the qualifying time as relieved to be done. I found Bridgid, and together we scuttled back to our hotel.

Marathon agony is transitory, just like the pace numbers I had written on my arm. As those numbers started to fade, so did the pain of the race. Of course, those numbers were written in indelible ink, so it took a few days and as many hot showers to erase them. Same with the agony.

But as pain faded, understanding and perspective emerged. I began to deconstruct my race and especially my collapse. I shouldn’t have picked up the pace. I should have started taking Gatorade earlier. And especially, I should have added some heft to my training. Four days a week, 36 miles per week on the top end, was not enough.

So it’s back to the drawing board. If and when IJ enter another marathon, it will be with, let’s say, an additional 10 miles per week of background. I may get that with a fifth day of running each week, with longer runs in general, or by adding a semilong midweek run to back up what I do on the weekend. One way or another, I’ll find a way to do more mileage.

For now, though, I won’t spend too much time belittling my Vegas performance. In fact, while some of my “friends” pointed out that my time was over an hour anda half slower than my personal best, one of the women in my book club had a different reaction. “That’s sooo fast,” she said. This is why I belong to a book club.

Yes, 3:48:38 may have been slower than I wanted and short of Boston qualifying. I may have fallen off the pace wagon something fierce. And those final miles may have hurt like tooth surgery without benefit of anesthetic.

All of that may be true, but I also know for dead certain that I’m a marathoner again. And in spite of everything, boy, am I proud.