THE FIRST 100K. What would be a reasonable training program to follow to build toward a good track or road 100K performance at age 53? Coincidentally, ’’ve run 53 marathons to date with a PR of 3:25.

Seth Sundin Portland, Oregon

THE SAME discipline and training that you applied to successful marathoning is applicable to ultradistance—it’s just longer. Ten percent of your training should be speedwork, but in training for ultradistance events, you focus onendurance.

Increase your weekly mileage by five percent until you are regularly running back-to-back weekend runs totaling 50 miles.

Then, enter 50-mile races. When you can run 50-milers in approximately 7 hours and 30 minutes (which is based on two times your theoretical marathon average time of 3:30, plus a 10 percent drop off on the second 25 miles), you are ready for a 100K!

Some 100K tips:

¢ The last 12 miles of a 100K are just like the last 6 miles of the marathon. Run the 100K like

it’s a 50-mile race, and then “hang on” for the last 12 miles.

Be smart about fueling your 100K training and racing. While you might be able to get away with nutrition and fueling mistakes in a “short” 7:30 effort (a50-milerace), youcannot make fueling mistakes in a 100K and still be successful.

Americans usually have a difficult time psychologically with the metric 100K distance. You’re ahead of many potential competitors with your interest in this distance.

—Teresa Daus-Weber

is the 1995 USA Track & Field Masters 100K Champion and has been a member of four U.S. 100K teams. Her 100K PR is 8:22.

She is the ultradistance correspondent for Racing West.

YOU AND I, Seth, are in just about the same place: I’m 50, my over-45 marathon best is 3:16, and I do about 70 slow miles a week (8 to 9 minutes per mile, and sometimes even slower on long runs).

If you can run a 3:25 marathon, you can probably run a 100K right now. Learning racing strategies and techniques is more the issue than your training. You will want to adopt a run/walk technique in the 100K. There are numerous ways of doing

this. One way would be to run two miles and walk a quarter-mile. On a track, this is easy to do. On the road, it is easier to run 15 or 20 minutes and then walk four to five minutes. Some runners like longer running stretches, say, 30 minutes, and then 5 to 10 minutes of walking. If you have never mixed walking with running, you might want to experiment with this in your training to discover what is best for you.

While you are most likely trained well enough to cover 100K, you might not believe you are. You can begin to convince yourself by using the run/ walk technique on a series of long trainingruns. Be concerned more with the time you spend on your feet than the mileage you cover. If you are presently taking a long run of 20 miles, you could try along run/walk of three and a half to four hours and gradually increase this to five hours.

Once you’ve run a few ultras, I don’t think these four- to five-hour runs are really necessary. (I’ve covered 136 miles in 24 hours on 80 miles a week, with no run over 15 miles.)

Another concern is fueling yourself during the race. Again, experimentation is important. The availability of carbohydrate replacements has made running ultras much easier than in the past. My own eating and drinking has evolved over the years

to the following: About once an hour I drink 12 ounces of a carbohydrate drink and eat one packet of an energy gel. In addition to this, I drink water at each aid station, with an occasional caffeine drink for variety. In a race under 12 hours, I eat no solid

food. —Ed Dodd is the author of The Great Six-Day Races and an accomplished ultrarunner for the past two decades. He lives in New Jersey and continues to compete in ultra races.

THE BIGGEST challenge you’ll have in training for the 100K is increasing your endurance. The best way to accomplish this is to slowly increase your weekly or biweekly run from the 15 to 20 miles that’s standard for the marathon to the 30to 40-mile distance. Based on your marathon PR, you’ll be running the 100K for over 10 hours, which is three times longer than you’ ve ever run, so you’ ll need to build your endurance to compete that long. Another thing that will factor into your training is learning to eat and drink while running. During the long weekly runs, try different foods and drinks to see how they settle while you run. Training your body to process foods and drinks during the run is crucial, especially during the last portion of the race when fatigue is

ON THE MARK @& 109

setting in. Also, train on the surface you’ll be racing on. A track can do funny things to your legs when you have to do 100K on it, and a road is brutal compared to a soft forest trail. Lastly, practice your walking. In my first 50-miler, I walked a portion of every 10-minute section of the race in an effort to keep my running muscles loose and delay the inevitable fatigue of running so far. I was pretty wasted at the end, but I was still able to break seven hours. It’s a lot more fun to feel like running portions of the entire distance than to run the first 70 percent and walk the last 30 percent. —Tim Twietmeyer is 4-time Western States 100 Trail Run champion and 15-time finisher and 6-time champion of the California 50-mile endurance run. He’s run over 50 marathons and 80 ultras.

THE ULTIMATE ALTITUDE ADVANTAGE. We hear of the advantages of altitude training in preparation for running a marathon at sea level. Do those same physiological principles continue to be enhanced if you run below

sea level? Jack Anderson Eugene, Oregon

IS THIS question a joke? I’ve never heard of any PRs run in the depths of Death Valley, and the submarine races

I’ve followed for years don’t fall

under the gaze of this publication, do they?

—Mark Conover

coaches runners of various abilities,

is the men’s distance coach at Cal

Poly/San Luis Obispo, contributing

editor to The California Schedule,

and a freelance writer. He’s also

represented the United States

in the Olympic Marathon.

VERY SIMPLY, the answer is “Yes.” However, the question is of practical relevance only to an extraordinarily small percentage of distance runners, as there is only one marathon at any sizeable distance below sea level— the Dead Sea Marathon in Israel, held typically in December or January. Virtually no Americans have competed there at a competitive level where actually changing one’s environment by going to altitude for training is warranted. The race has become a “tourist marathon” in recent years, but the additional difference in altitude (averaging 1,000 feet below sea level) is not sufficient to cause measurable physiological differences in performances from what we’ve seen at sea level. —David E. Martin is the chairman of Sports Science at the USATF, the marathon event chairman of the Men’s Long Distance Running Committee of the USATF, and author of Training Distance Runners, which goes into its second edition this year.

TRAINING AT altitude before competing at sea level has been used by

elite athletes since about 1968. Several coaches are enthusiastic proponents of this mode of preparation. However, experimental studies do not confirm any beneficial effect on VO,max and exercise performance when compared to sea level training. The reports in support of altitude training provide only anecdotal evidence. The “hot” opinion now in this respect is that the optimal combination may be to live at medium altitude but train at low altitude (less than 1,000 meters above sea level). Some researchers have found a small but significant increase in maximal oxygen uptake with this combination. However, itremains to be proven that endurance athletes may also benefit by living at altitude and training at low altitude.

—Pedro Pujol

is a medical doctor working at

the Olympic Training Center in Barcelona. He was the medical director of the Olympic Marathon at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 and a member of the Olympic Medical Team at Atlanta in 1996.

THE SIMPLE answer is yes, very much so. We can say without a doubt that the effects of living at high altitude not only hold true below sea level, but are also amplified to a greater extent. The reason I say high attitude living instead of training is that the general circulatory system benefits—namely the capacity of your cardiovascular system to carry more oxygen—come from simply spending time at altitude.

The most important benefit is that your body’s production of red blood cells is stimulated. The blood hematocrit (the ratio of red blood cells to the blood plasma) increases when you live at altitude. That means when you go back to sea level, or below sea level in your case, you have more red blood cells to carry oxygen.

It works like this: In response to the lower partial pressure of oxygen at altitude, your body—inas little time as four hours, according to some studies—treleases a hormone callederythropoietin (EPO), which travels to the bone marrow and stimulates it to produce more red blood cells, those hardy footsoldiers that carry oxygen on a compound called hemoglobin.

The rate-limiting step is something called the “oxygen cascade”—how fast oxygen gets from the air to the capillary beds of the lungs to the bloodstream and then to the muscles. The more red blood cells you have, the more oxygen you can carry, and the more oxygen your muscles will have to work with.

However, here’s the key point: You have to be able to use this increased oxygen. Even if your circulatory system can deliver more oxygen to your cells from having spent time at attitude, you also need to consider how “fit” your cells are. University of Colorado kinesiology student Thomas Richman, a4:05 1,500-meter masters runner, explains that “the oxygen is no good unless you can use it. The cellular level is where the work is done.”

You increase your body’s ability to do work by doing interval training, which gets your muscles and nervous system used to running at faster speeds. This is where I must give out a warning: Individuals respond to altitude in different ways, and lurking behind every hill is the danger of overtraining. I’ve seen scores of runners come to altitude and try to maintain their sea level training load. The big mistake is that they try to do the same interval workouts as at sea level without taking more rest between hard days and even during intervals. They never fully recover and run themselves into a hole.

It is well-documented that you can’t train as fast at altitude as at sea level, yet it is hard to accept that you can’t run 70-second quarters at altitude like you can at sea level.

Researchers tell us that the best scenario is to sleep at altitude and train at sea level. That doesn’t sound realistic, but there is an option if you want to live at high altitude without leaving your lovely green Eden of Eugene; you might want to investigate a “Gamow Bed,” a high-altitude chamber invented by Igor Gamow, a University of Colorado engineering prof (whose father, interestingly enough, helped originate the “Big Bang” theory of the origin of the universe).

Gamow calls the bed “holistic blood doping.” With the use of apump that removes some of the air, the altitude in the bed can go all the way up to that of Mt. Everest. It’s been used by mountain climbers acclimating

before climbing in the Himalayas. In essence, it allows you to “train” while you sleep, because your body adapts to the lower partial pressure of oxygen, giving you the general circulatory benefits. For more information, call Gamow at (303) 443-4938.

Oh yes, one last point: Don’t go too far below sea level, or else you’ ll be running under water.

—Michael Sandrock is a 2:24 marathoner and author of Running with the Legends. He lives

at 5,730 feet above sea level near Boulder, Colorado.

TO STRETCH OR NOT TO STRETCH. I’ve heard logical explanations about when not to stretch, but I’ve also heard that it is crucial to maintaining flexibility. What is the safest and most effective way and time to stretch?

Leanne Seddon-Howell Victoria, British Columbia

LET’S BEGIN with the “when” part. The best time to stretch is when you can. Or, more to the point, when you will. In other words, the most important consideration is that you actually do it. Place stretching into your routine, as you have done with your eating, sleeping, and running.

Here’s what I do: Every morning before getting out of bed I do 50 situps, then my hamstring stretches right there in bed, on my back. This routine

has cured my sciatica, and it gets some stretching done first thing! I will admit that I’m still as tight as a drum, but a little less tight than I was.

also stretch a bit after my long runs, but never before. I stretch the Achilles tendon, gastrocs, quads, and hams. It takes no more than a few minutes while I’m cooling down, and before I get into the car. The muscles are still (relatively) limber and responsive to stretching. On arare occasion, I will stop in the middle of arun to stretch if I’m having a bit of tightness.

Do not confuse stretching with warming up—they are two entirely different animals. Think of the muscles being stretched as though they belonged to an infant. Stretch them, but don’t abuse them.

Avoid ballistics, avoid pain. Go to the library and get yourself a good book on stretching. The long-accepted master is Bob Anderson in Colorado (not to be confused with the Bob Anderson who founded Runner’s World, who almost never stretches). Better yet, find a stretching guru in Victoria. I’m sure there are several there. They often disguise themselves as yoga teachers. If you go to a yoga instructor, you might find out that there are other parts of your body besides your legs. Go with the flow. You’ll be a better person as a result. Do come back to running once in a while, though.

Be aware that some of the top runners refuse to stretch, but I think that may be because they never learned

how to do it right in the first place. Happy hamstrings!

—Joe Oakes

has managed to stretch

his life out to where he now gets Social Security. He has been running since 1948 and has competed in distances from 200 yards to ultramarathons and multi-day events. Occasionally Joe can be found playing at triathlon or floating facedown in San Francisco Bay.

STRETCHING IS most effective when applied to a muscle that is already warmed up. It would be best, therefore, to run for a mile or so to warm up the muscles, and then stretch. A prolonged constant (static) stretch is always more effective than a ballistic (bouncing) stretch. I find it both convenient and effective to stretch gently at bedtime and upon rising in the morning, although stretching can also be done before getting out of bed. Stretching should always be done gently; if it hurts, stop. I concentrate my stretching program on the sites of previous and occasionally current injuries. —Dr. William Roberts is the co-director of the MinnHealth SportsCare Consultants in White Bear Lake, Minnesota, and is vice president of the

International Marathon Medical Directors Association.

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