Ryan

What makes a champion?

/ Training / 4 minutes of reading

This article was originally posted by Ryan at the original HillRunner.com Blogs.

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Last year, I listened to a TED Radio Hour podcast episode titled Champions. I wanted to write about it at the time but never got around to it. That episode ran again last week and I’m not going to let it slip by again.

In the podcast, the host interviewed three speakers, two athletes and a sports journalist. All had some interesting comments on what makes a champion. I highly recommend listening to the whole episode but I’d like to highlight a few points raised.

From Diana Nyad (first person to swim from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage) on what makes a champion:

The fear of failure is stronger, more motivating, than any other fear they’ve got.

What a great answer! They don’t let anything stand in their way because their biggest fear is not accomplishing the goal.

What can we take from this? Well, we may have fears that are greater than our fear of failure. Not everyone is trying to swim from Cuba to Florida or become an Olympic champion and that’s fine. However, I always think of the Michael Jordan quote here:

I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.

If we put ourselves out there, we’re going to fail. Fearing that failure will hold you back from taking the chance at success. Sometimes you have to take risks. Of course we need to consider the pros and cons. I’m not telling you to show up at the Boston Marathon next year and run with the elites because you no longer fear failure. However, be willing to take a chance. Push the pace a little harder than you normally would at your next race. Challenge someone you always seem to finish right behind. You can’t succeed without risking failure.

From David Epstein (sports journalist and a great speaker and writer – I highly recommend his talk and reading some of his other work) there were several interesting topics but I’d like to focus on this one:

Actionable goals: Set more proximate goals that tell you what you need to do today.

There were other parts but I’m going to focus on this. Listen to his whole talk because there is a lot of good material in there.

What can we take from this? We all (hopefully) have goals for our next race. Those are great and we need to have those goals. However, we also need to have more immediate goals. What are you going to do today to get to that longer term goal? Think about that every day when you wake up.

Also good advice for other parts of your life.

From Amy Purdy (amputee snowboarder, Paralympic medalist):

Instead of looking at our challenges and our limitations as something negative or bad, we can begin to look at them as blessings. Magnificent gifts that can be used to ignite our imaginations and help us go further than we ever knew we could go. It’s not about breaking down borders. It’s about pushing off of them and seeing what amazing places they might bring us.

Another great line! I love this!

What can we take from this? I know it may seem a little cliche but try reframing "obstacles" as "opportunities". At the very least, don’t let an obstacle block you. Find your way around. If possible, catapult off that obstacle and find a way to use it as a positive.

For example, you can’t run in the evening because you have to practice soccer with your child. Why not turn this into a training opportunity? Get some running in. Practice some agility drills that will improve your strength and neuromuscular coordination, making you a better runner. Maybe the run can happen in the morning and the evening soccer session with your child becomes a second training session.

We can’t all be Olympians or do amazing feats that seem impossible to the normal person. However, we can take ideas from the people who are doing these things or have achieved those levels of greatness and apply them to our lives. Above are just a few things we can take from this episode to make ourselves better, in and out of running. Listen to the episode and you might get even more ideas. I know I did.

Eau Claire Half Marathon

/ Race Reports / 3 minutes of reading

This article was originally posted by trivianut at the original HillRunner.com Blogs.

If anyone wants to run a really well organized race, I would recommend this highly. I had the chance to run it on Sunday with my daughter. She had been trying to get me to run this throughout her tenure as an undergrad at EC, and we finally got it done. She wanted to run under 2 hours and I thought that was doable. Several things were against us though. It was unseasonably warm for NW Wisconsin, with a high of 83. Added to that was the fact I wasn’t the greatest pacer, and her lack of training did her in a bit. But we went after it, with her mom and brother and all her sorority sisters cheering us on at various points during the race. Our first 5 miles were about 8:40 pace, pretty much right on. It felt really slow to me, but Megan said she was ok. She began to struggle at that point, and she was not sure she was going to be able to finish. I told her whatever pace she could handle was fine, we would get through it together. We did a bit of walk 1-2 min run 10 min cycles. Then I had to make a pit stop and it took about 10 minutes to find her and catch up. When I did reach her I could tell she was laboring even more, and our overall pace dropped below 9 min. Then the 2:00 hour pacer passed us, and she was still struggling. This was very weird for me, because I felt good. But I began to understand that it wasn’t about me. My daughter, who rebelled against any running advice from her dad during her high school career, needed me to get to the finish line. We saw her mom and brother at the 11 mile mark, and then the gauntlet of sorority girls 5 minutes later gave her a momentary energy boost. But we were walking more frequently and for longer periods. I got a bit harder on her, challenging her to keep moving forward. Finally I knew we had just 1/2 mile, and we turned into Carson park to see finishers walking back towards us. She saw a women with a finisher’s medal around her neck – pointed at her and said " I want that!" So I said ‘then let’s go get it" We did run steadily to the end, and finally she kicked it in at the finish. 2 hours and 6 minutes after we started, we cross the line together. It was a great moment for me as a father. Megan was pretty spent the rest of the day, but you could tell she was really happy. She wouldn’t take the medal off. And I had run my longest run in perhaps 7 or 8 years. As I mentioned at the beginning, nothing but good things to say about this race. Well organized, wonderfully scenic course, and the best spectators I have experienced in 35 years of running races. Maybe next year I could come back and run again, but alas, our daughter is graduating and moving out of state to Minnesota to become a Nursing Home Administrator. I am very proud of her for many reasons, and yesterday was but one of those. Ryan you said you’d love to have that opportunity to run with your kids, and I truly hope you do. It was one of the best days of my life. Now my 24 year old son wants to run the Madison Mini (13.1) in August. Of course, I’d love to run at MY pace this time. We’ll see how that goes….

Lactate is NOT that bad, more on carbohydrate mouth rinses

/ Roundups / 2 minutes of reading

This article was originally posted by Ryan at the original HillRunner.com Blogs.

A couple interesting things I want to point to today. One on that old boogeyman, lactate. Another on the idea of rinsing your mouth with a carbohydrate drink after exercise.

Lactate

For decades, lactate has gotten a bad rap. While some of us have known for years that lactate isn’t the boogeyman that it’s been made out to be, it can actually be used as a fuel for one thing, it still has that bad rap.

To be clear, when your muscles are sore the day after a hard workout, that has nothing to do with lactate. Once your workout is over, lactate is cleared from your body very quickly as it is used for fuel or converted to other substrates that can later be used for fuel.

Let’s take a look at another myth: the myth that lactate causes fatigue:

These results suggest that blood lactate appears to have a protective effect against fatigue, at least at level of primary somatosensory cortex, although at the expense of efficiency of adjacent areas.

So let’s stop hating on lactate. It’s not all good but the bad rap it gets in many circles is almost totally unwarranted.

Post-workout carbohydrate mouth rinses

In recent years, we’ve seen some interesting results from studies testing simply rinsing your mouth with carbohydrates before a hard workout or race. You apparently don’t even have to swallow. Just rinse with the carbohydrates and your body responds by assuming that more fuel is about to be available and makes more fuel available for use. That’s a good thing in shorter races where we’ll never tap into our complete stores.

What about post-workout, though? Does simply having carbs in your mouth, even if you don’t swallow, have a benefit?

It appears the answer is a qualified yes:

These data suggest that CHO mouth-rinsing attenuates neuromuscular fatigue following endurance cycling. Although these changes did not translate into a performance improvement, further investigation is required into the role of CHO mouth-rinse in alleviating neuromuscular fatigue.

No performance improvement found here so maybe the benefit isn’t functionally useful. However, it’s interesting that there was a reduction of neuromuscular fatigue. I’ll be interested in watching for some follow-up to this.

Larry Rawson’s weight comments at the Boston Marathon

/ News/Elites / 2 minutes of reading

This article was originally posted by Ryan at the original HillRunner.com Blogs.

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Lightweight? Yes. Also and more important: powerful, extremely fit, amazing stamina.

Did Larry Rawson do a disservice to young and likely not so young runners across America? In my opinion, yes.

I didn’t see the coverage live. I saw a lot about the topic as it was happening via Twitter, though, and it reminded me of previous races I did see live where Rawson constantly focused on the weight of the elite female runners. When I saw some replays of the race, I heard at least some of his comments and heard what I feared but also expected given his history.

During the race, as he has done during other races, Rawson repeatedly references the weights of certain members of the elite women’s field. He at times seems fixated on their weights, as if the weight of the runner is the most important factor in the race.

What does this do to the high school runners watching the race who want to emulate these runners? When a commentator focuses this much on the weight of the runners, it will appear to some who are watching that weight is the key to their success.

The truth, as is obvious to most of us who will read this, is much more complex. Yes, weight matters. There’s a reason 150 pound women and 200 pound men aren’t winning major marathons. However, there’s much more than just weight.

I would argue that even more important than weight is strength (or power) to weight ratio. Obviously, also, aerobic and muscular endurance. Efficiency also matters. As do various other things that are too numerous to list.

We already have a problem in this sport. Some ill informed coaches and others who young runners, especially girls and young ladies, take advice from already place way too much importance on weight. Eating disorders are a problem for too many runners. I’ve seen the damage eating disorders can do. While these disorders are complex, focusing too much on the weight of the elite runners surely doesn’t help.

Before he does this again, I would ask Rawson what kind of message he wants to send.

Nutrition

/ Training / 1 minute of reading

This article was originally posted by cesar at the original HillRunner.com Blogs.

Hey,

I have been very consistent with my trainig, but my diet is terrible, i am 192 pounds and when I ran my best times I was about 155-160 pounds, so I think the only way that I ll run that fast again is in that weight.

Could you please put an example of the food and snacks that you eat on a daily basis, do you eat junk food here and there?

Thanks a lot

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