The Magic of Recovery

POP QUIZ!

Does running make you stonger?

A) Yes!
B) No!
C) Uhhhhh, you didn't say there was going to be a quiz!
D) Shut up, stinky, you should take a shower before you blog!


The correct answer is...

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B! No. Running does not make you stronger. Recovering from running makes you stronger! Let me give you a quick example as proof. You just ran four 1 mile repeats at a very strong effort. Could you immediately repeat the same workout again? No, of course not! The workout made you weaker for the time being, but as you recover, your body builds back stronger.

What if you don't let it rebuild?

Injury. Illness. Lack of energy. Dead legs. Grouchiness. Burn out.

We've all been there, I'm sure of it. Whether it has been caused by sudden good weather, peaking for a marathon, a new ambitious running partner, or any other reason I've missed -- It sucks. It's something to be avoided at all costs, if we'd like to continue to reap the health and fitness gains from our commitment to running.

There are two key ways to avoid these negative effects: Decrease the time it takes to recover or increase the time spent recovering. Easy enough, right?

Decreasing the time it takes to recover is the route most runners want to take. Faster recovery equates to more miles/higher intensity equates to better performance come race day. Although these are intuitive, they're easy to overlook. The main idea here is recovery happens during those 22-23 hours every day you aren't running! Here are some tips to decrease your time to recover:

• Sleep more. Make it a priority to get 1 more hour of sleep every day (either at night, or with a nap) and your running will reap the benefits
• Eat healthy. Food = fuel. This is especially important before or after a hard day. What fuel would you rather burn on a fast or long run: ice cream or pasta? See Heidi's post and everything she links to. It's full of great information!
  
• Eat to recover. As soon as you finish a run, eat! The 30 minutes following a run your body is begging for nutrients, and it soaks them up like a sponge. Take advantage of this.
• Stay hydrated. Always have a water bottle with you to sip from. Being well hydrated will help your body repair itself.
• Get a massage. Obviously this isn't something to be done frequently (unless you have a money tree), but getting a massage every month or two can really help recovery after a hard week of training.
• Increase your mileage slowly. As your body gets used to more miles, it recovers from them more efficiently since that is exactly what you're training it to do. However, if you increase too fast you're begging for all the symptoms of overtraining listed above!
  

Now for the other side of the coin. Increasing duration of recovery:

• Take more time between workouts. Obvious, right? The only problem is we always want to run more. We don't want to take a day off.
• Take a 'fake' day off. This is for people who just can't take a day off from running. They're so horribly addicted that hell would very likely freeze over if they missed a run. For you guys, take a fake day off: One day run early in the morning, the next day run late at night. This gives your body 36+ hours to recover between workouts.
• Run easy. After hard workouts, your body needs the break. Don't underestimate the benefit of an easy run. Focus on relaxing for the entire run. Pfitzinger's book, Advanced Marathoning, advocates the idea of the Hard-Easy principle. You want to run to recover, rather than recover to run.
  

Does anybody have any tips to add to these lists? What do you do to make sure you're ready to run hard when it counts?

Nutrition: Round One

I'm that guy everybody has a grudge against for being naturally skinny. Go ahead, hold that grudge! During the summer in high school I would sit at the computer all day and my diet consisted largely of Doritos and Coca Cola; I didn't gain a pound. I'm lucky in that sense. However, this luck left me with little interest in nutrition for most of my life.

I started caring a lot more this year when I really started training seriously, I did the basic things to improve my diet without doing any real research. I cut pop / soda out of my diet, stopped eating a majority of the junk food, went for a lot of carbs to fuel my long runs; things of that nature. Sure, I knew I should be eating more fruits and veggies like Mom always told me, but those rules don't apply to me anymore, right?! (wrong)

This summer I had a friend, Dan W, who was probably the biggest health nut I (or any of you) will ever meet. He was full of information about good and bad foods to eat, and started getting me on the look out for high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oils in the ingredient lists of things I eat. I looked a little bit, but ultimately if I wanted to eat something, I would.

Recently SLB put on his apron and threatened to do horrible, horrible things as he pulled out his rolling pin if I didn't shape up in terms of nutrition. I ordered the book he suggested and it came in the mail today, as I mentioned earlier, which immediately gave me reason to procrastinate grading! I read the first little bit and decided I'm going to take this nutrition thing in phases. I can't just turn it around over night, but I'm starting to make changes now!

I learned quite a bit in the first chapter or two. I learned I'm not drinking enough water. Remember that old rule of 8 cups of water a day? Yeah, that doesn't cut it when you're active. Try 16! Thats right, if your pee has color in it, you better get to drinking! I always keep a water bottle with me, but I'm going to drink a lot more now that I got the inside scoop on hydration.

Hmmm! What else did I learn? Oh yes. Fruits and veggies. Eat them! They're very important in those vitamins and minerals and they help prevent injury since they provide what your body needs to rebuild itself. What? Oh, this hip? I guess I should have gotten this book sooner!

Next up, whole grains! When you're not eating whole grains you're eating, well, partial grains. If you're only eating part of it, you're probably missing out on something, don't you think? Yeah. You thought right. The extra goodness in whole grain helps fight disease and offers more vitamins, mineral, and fibers. Sure, most of us probably knew this, I think I had it stored in the back of the vault somewhere, but I'm actually making the switch.

I went to Walmart tonight, since I'm taking my car into the shop tomorrow and don't know when I'll get it back. I made up a list of what I wanted and decided I would cover at least as much as I mentioned above. I switched to whole grain bread and bagels, and bought a whole bunch of fruit including: bananas, apples, frozen mangos, frozen pine apple chunks, frozen black berries, and sliced peaches. I bought a blender too, per a friend of mines recommendation. He makes a ton of smoothies every week to get all his fruits and suggested I do the same; anything tastes good once its a smoothie, right?

And now that I will be without a car for the next few days, I'm locked up in my apartment with only this healthy stuff to eat, so this ought to be good for me!

Its a big change, though, because generally speaking, I'm one picky eater. I usually try new things if they're offered to me, but rarely on my own. I am the one person on this planet who doesn't like lettuce, and that is not going to change unless I get amnesia; or maybe if someone can prove simply by eating lettuce I will knock 20 minutes off my marathon time, not likely!

Theres still other changes I have to make to my diet, but they will come in time. Things to add include: fish, even more fruits and veggies, and whatever else this nutrition bible recommends. For now, I need to work on getting used to this batch of new stuff!

Round one!

Fight!

Stretching and Injury Prevention

Everybody knows they should stretch. The problem is a vast majority of runners simply don't know how to do it right! For a while I had heard there is more to stretching than I learned in grade school gym class, but I never listened too much. I had my way of doing things. I was stubborn. One day I was at the book store (Borders or Barnes & Noble, not sure which) and finally gave in and bought a fairly cheap ($25) book on stretching: The Anatomy of Stretching by: Brad Walker. Since then, I've completely revamped how I stretch; and it has paid off!

There are several parts stretching which are important, and are very common mistakes to make, here are some pointers:

• Breathe! A lot of people have a tendency to hold their breathe while stretching. This makes the benefits of stretching much less since the muscles aren't getting the oxygen they need.
• Hold it -- The benefits of stretching don't really start until you've held it for 10 seconds. This means 10 seconds should be the bare minimum, I usually hold them for 20. Actually, I generally hold it for 5 deep breathes, this combines the last two points!
  
• Only until there is tension -- Stretching shouldn't hurt! Go as far as there is tension, and hold it there; it will generally get easier, so feel free to move forward as your muscle stretches, but only to the point of tension. If you stretch too far the body has a protective reflex to contract the muscle, which won't help with stretching at all!
• Don't bounce! This is one I actually learned in gym class, but wasn't emphasized much. Let me emphasize this point. When bouncing further, you constantly cause the protective reflex, then when bouncing back you aren't stretching it much. Keep it constant!
  

To me, stretching falls into three big categories, each with their own purpose:

• Before running -- Prevent pulled muscles, injury prevention
• After running -- Aids the recovery process, improves flexibility
• Stretching sessions -- Improves flexibility

Now, let me elaborate a little bit on each of these.

Before running:

You need to be careful when stretching before running. Its a big no-no to stretch cold muscles. If I can borrow a metaphor from Walker, its like trying to stretch an old rubber band; they don't have the usual stretch to them.

There are two ways to warm up muscles: active and passive. Active is just as it sounds; do something active to get your core temperature up a little bit to warm your muscles. You could run for a few minutes before stretching, do jumping jacks, push ups, sit ups; anything to get the blood pumping. Personally, I like to do push ups and sit ups.

An example of a passive warm up is to take a nice hot shower to warm up the muscles without doing work. I opt out of this because I don't like the idea of taking a shower both before and after I run, but to each their own.

After being warmed up, stretch away using the guide lines above!

After running:

The point of stretching after running is to help with the recovery process. This will help your legs not feel like bricks the next day; although it won't completely alleviate it. I usually hold stretches for a little longer after running. I'm not sure why, but I do.

Stretching sessions:

This is something really new for me. I never would have considered stretching except to run, but now I do; imagine that! The point of this is to improve flexibility, which in turn helps prevent injury. Also, I'm 95% sure stretching helped cure some knee problems I had in the past. My knee was hurting a little bit for a few weeks, and the only thing I think I changed in my training was my stretching; and viola, no more knee pain! And this is when running 50+ mile a week on pavement, so I think that says something.


In my opinion, its very important to make stretching a key part of working out; not an after thought, not "oh, if I remember to." Its helped my knee recover from what could have turned into an injury, so its definitely part of my routine now. Plus, its fairly relaxing to boot!

If theres any interest, I might post something on specific stretches I've deemed as useful. Although if there isn't much interest, I'm not going through the trouble of taking pictures of the different stretches. If you want to see specific examples, be sure to let me know! One more time I'd like to recommend the book The Anatomy of Stretching by Brad Walker; it talks in very simple terms and breaks things down very well. I've recommended it to several friends who purchased it, and none have been disappointed.

Happy running (and stretching!),

-Doug

Long Runs with a Kick

We all know our long runs are the meat of any marathon training program; the most basic training programs essentially consist of base milage and a long run on the weekend. However, I've recently put a twist on my long runs. The idea originally came from Hal Higdon: he suggests doing a 3:1 workout every few weeks when feeling good. The idea is simple, run the first 75% easy then push for the remainder of the run.

I first read about this while training for my first marathon last year, and simply discarded it as crazy talk; running fast at the end of a 20 miler?! However, this time around my training is more about speed, and when I read similar advice recently (I believe in Runners World, although I'm not positive) I decided to give it a shot at the end of a long run where I'm feeling fresh.

My strategy is to do the majority of my run at a relaxed pace, about a minute per mile slower than goal race pace. If I have to run slower to run with a group, this is not a problem for me. Slow long runs are better because you will be on your feet for a longer time, thus increasing your endurance; although going too slow can result in poor form, too slow being more than 20% slower than goal pace (Advanced Marathoning by Pete Pfitzinger).

However when training with a specific time goal, one lingering question that was always on my mind is: Sure, I can do a tempo run at race pace, but can I hit it and hold it after 15 miles? To answer this question, I started running race pace for the last 25% of my long runs on days I'm feeling good at the end.

Although the experts may argue the physiological advantages of this aren't there, I can vouch for the psychological gains! The confidence this instills is tremendous, since you're proving there is still some spring left in your step at the end of a long run. I am much more confident in my ability to break three hours at Chicago after my last few long runs. Also, since I only ran hard for the last five miles I'm not as drained as I would be if I ran quick for the entire run; I will be ready to run hard again by Tuesday, as scheduled.

Please let me know if you've had any experience with this technique, or are planning to give it a shot! Make sure you let me know how it goes!