The Language of Burn out

This kills my pride, but it’s time for an unplanned down week.  I’m feeling burned out.

Oh things were so good just a week and a half ago.

Actually the weather was lousy a week and a half ago.  One of those days where just looking out the window gets you depressed. It was 33-34 degrees and raining.  If you’re from New England you’ve experienced these rain drops.  They’re fat, and thick and one step away from being snow.  They’ll soak you to the bone in a minute and chill you to your bones the next.

So I ran on the treadmill that day.  I decided to push it.  I did 3 x 2 mile with 3 minutes rest.  I-CRUSHED-IT.  All of them were 10:20-10:40.  And it was effortless.

I was riding high.

Keep running like this then and just imagine what will happen April 17th.

This week was a sharp contrast.  I have been ravenously hungry every single day.

I graze through the pantry non stop.  I just want treat after treat.

I am seriously tired all the time.  8 pm comes and I’m asleep in my chair.

I try to meditate and Zzzzzzzzz….

I try to read a book or a long article and Zzzzzzzz….

I’ll sleep 9 hours and then I can’t get out of bed the next morning.

And now my back is sore.  There’s a shooting pain that radiates up into my neck if I turn to my left too quickly.

I probably slept on it wrong but it’s been bugging me for weeks.

My body is telling me something.  It is clear as day.  This is how the body communicates.

But I don’t want to listen.

I want to believe that my 3 x 2 mile workout was just the beginning, that I’m just going to keep getting faster and faster until April when I taper.

Yeah, I’ll just put off that proper rest until April.  I’ll take a two week taper, watch what I eat and everything will come in line.  I’ll be ready to go.

No.  I’m old.  I know better.

It’s time for a down week.

Or maybe two.

However long it takes to feel right.

Success is not a straight line.

No one gets better and better and better.

Imagine a movie where all that happens is the hero wins.  That’s a boring movie.

You win one round (3 x 2 miles) and then you get taught a lesson a round later (this week).  To train well, especially as you age and your body recovers slower (first thing to go for me), you have to learn the body’s language.  This scene from ’13 days’ is analogous.

This is part of how our body communicates.  Aches, pains, fatigue= language.  You have to treat it as information and let go of any emotional attachment to the kind of training you’re doing.

I’d love to continue crushing miles and workouts but I need to listen to what my body is saying.

Sore, achey, hungry, tired.  The message is clear.

But so many runners ignore the message and push through.  Why?

Running rewards pain.  The more you can suffer the faster and further you can go.  When that general fatigue, or achy shins and knees appear we often think of it as one more obstacle to push through on our way to the finish line.  Our austerity will be rewarded.

Not all pain is created equal.  We all know the difference between good pain and bad pain.  You have to look at the pain and discomfort analytically and figure out what it is trying to tell you.  Learn your language.

There’s also an emotional component to the answer.  My daily run is an affirmation of my fitness.  It’s a reminder of part of my identity.  It makes me feel confident and strong.  Hitting the goal miles, the goal times reaffirms a sense of self and gives you the satisfaction checking a goal off of your list.  Missing runs chips away at that emotional identity.

And then there’s a chemical component.  If I skip my run then I don’t get my endorphin rush for that day.  Missing your endorphin rush for the day isn’t like alcohol or drug withdrawal, but it’s there.  I call it runner’s guilt.  When you’re training a ton and you take a day off, planned or otherwise, it’s on your mind.  Somewhere deep in your psyche you’re thinking ‘Maybe I can cut out and get in a few miles.’  I think it’s the missing endorphins urging us to get out there so we can feel whole again.

If you identify with any of what I’ve described above I want you to remind you

SUCCESS IS NOT A STRAIGHT LINE.

There will be bumps along the road.  You have to roll with them.  Will power can get you through, but it can also run you into the ground.

Listen to your body.  It has great instincts.

You tear yourself down with tough workouts.  Literally.  You break down your muscle fibers.  You are weaker after a tough lift, a tough run… and then your body adapts to the demands placed on it.  It rebuilds to run far if you ask.

To lift heavy if you ask.

To be more flexible if you ask.

It Specifically Adapts to Imposed Demands.  SAID Principle.

If you let it.

If you listen.

If you rest (occasionally)

Your IT Band: Don't Stretch, Don't Roll It, Don't Even Look At It

You run a few steps and you’re in agony.  You have pain on the outside of your knee.

The pain is on the outside of the knee.  Not the hip, the side of the thigh or under the knee cap.  The side of the knee.  Lateral epicondyle for all you smart kids.

Congratulations.  You’ve just been diagnosed with IT band tendonitis and no one really knows what to tell you.  IT Band syndrome is, in the words of Winston Churchill,

Russia= your IT Band

‘A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.’

He was referring to Russia.  But if he’d had IT Band tendonitis…

No one knows for sure what it is.  There are some great guesses.

-IT Band friction syndrome- some think the pain comes from the band sliding and snapping over the side of the knee (lateral epicondyle) creating inflammation.  This is challenged by recent findings that suggest the band is fixed and does not slide at all.

-Compression of fatty tissue under the band under-  A recent study stated ‘that ITB syndrome is caused by increased compression of a highly vascularized and innervated layer of fat and loose connective tissue that separates the ITB from the epicondyle.’

-Tightness in your hips referring down- pulling the band out of place.

Most cases come from an intense, unfamiliar effort in running, hiking or walking.  Your first long run, long hike etc.  It’s always associated with a hard effort in your legs.  Other contributing factors are increased speed, new terrain or new shoes.

My experience with IT Band tendonitis: I’ve had it twice.  Once I got it the day after running the Martha’s Vineyard 20 miler (unfamiliar distance at an unfamiliar (hard) speed).  That was the second longest run of my life to that point and I PUSHED IT.  Ran 5:50 pace for 20 (more like 5:40’s for 17 and then I died a slow miserable death for 3).  The next morning I woke up and couldn’t walk across the room.

What fixed it?  Rest.  I took a month off from running and lifted weights.  No repetitive stress on the knee and I got some compliments on my shoulders.

So there.

My second experience with IT band tendonitis was in the Disney Marathon.  This was the second time I was running Disney and my heart just wasn’t into it.  My training was unfocused and forgettable.  I got 22 miles into the race (where you jog onto the track at ESPN zone) and my right knee said enough.  Ran onto the track, walked off it.  I tried to do the old leg swing and foot hop thing but it just wasn’t happening.  I assessed a real threat of major injury and decided to call it a day.

There would be other races.

What caused it?  Not sure.  I had done my long runs.  I’m not a stranger to the distance. Like I said… it’s a riddle.

A mystery.

An enigma.

What fixed it?  Rest.  Took a couple weeks off and then went for a test run.  It was fine.  Made me question whether or not I’d been hurt in the first place.

Looking back- yes I was hurt.  Definitely.

What did both races have in common?  I was pushing the pace off so/so base training.  Life was busy.  Too busy to pay close attention to weekly miles.  I was winging it on talent and hoping for the best.

So rest gets two anecdotal votes from The Running Man.

What we know: This is an overuse injury.  It usually happens when you have gone from doing some running to lots of running.  From my friends at Post physical Therapy:

Iliotibial band syndrome (ITBS) is a non-traumatic, overuse condition characterized by pain on the outside of the knee when the foot meets the ground during walking or running. The knee is usually slightly bent during when pain occurs.  ITBS typically occurs in runners and cyclists due to the repetitive bending and straightening of the knee  during these activities.  After the initial onset of pain, people suffering ITBS might find it difficult or painful to walk, squat, climb stairs or increase lower body exercise intensity. Some may also notice an increase in swelling and tenderness to the touch on the outside of the knee.  It is important to consult with a physical therapist to rule out any other possible problems that can have similar symptoms.

So my experience is consistent with your traditional IT band injury.

What should you do about your IT band injury?

An ounce of prevention beats a pound of cure.  Be smart about increasing mileage.  This is commonly brought on by a singular effort that you were unprepared for.

Treatment can be tricky.  No good stretching it.  You could hang a piano off your IT band it won’t stretch.  You CAN stretch upstream and downstream of the band with some good results though.  I recommend Figure 4 stretch, twisted triangle, the standing hip stretch, and half pigeon.

Stretching rule #1: Don’t stretch a cold muscle.  Warm up first.

Stretching rule #2: Don’t stretch a cold muscle.  Why twice?  Because I mean it.

And don’t foam roll it.  You’ll just destabilize the band and that will make things worse.

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Seriously, don’t roll your IT band.  I see it every day.  I see trainers do it every day.  I used to do it every day.  Stop.  This is the most common mistake I see in the gym day to day.

Your IT Band- You can’t stretch it.  You can’t roll it.  What are you supposed to do?

R.I.C.E. it.  The main thing to do is rest it, ice it, and compress it.

Rest- I can vouch for this (review above).

Ice- my knees would kill me at the movies or during long drives.  I would throw ice on the knee and the pain would disappear.  So, anecdotally, I can vouch for ice.

Compression- I’ll get to that below.

Foam Roll- Not on it, but upstream.  Roll out your piriformis, hip flexors, and TFL.  Pain refers out.  If stuck fascia and tissue up and downstream are released then the IT band may function better.  Click on the links to have a look at how to roll these spots.

Hopefully this works- but research has been inconclusive about the efficacy of foam rolling on IT band tendonitis.

Some of you have rolled out and are still struggling.

So now we’re going to break out the big guns.

Discliamer: None of what is outlined below can hurt you.  I’m not a Doc but I use this stuff all the time with some amazing results.  What I outline below may not fix you but it’ll get you moving better and WILL NOT HURT YOU.

So lets try some left field treatments on an injury that DEFINITELY lives in left field.

So lets think about pain for a moment.  Your brain sends the pain signal.  Why?  Usually because there is tissue damage, but not always.

There’s a story about a Doc doing 20 MRI’s on the shoulders of MLB Pitchers.  Of the 20 Pitchers, 13 had shoulder pain and 7 did not.  The results showed that 15 of them had significant structural damage, another 3 had enough damage to require surgery and two were fine.

So why did 5 pitchers with structural damage have no pain?

The easy answer: no one knows.  Pain, like your IT Band, and Churchill era Russia, is ‘A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.’

Pain starts in the brain though.  That I can state confidently.

Everything is controlled by the brain.  Even your IT band.

If ITB is caused by ‘compression of a highly vascularized and innervated layer of fat and loose connective tissue that separates the ITB from the epicondyle’ then two potential (and immediate) pain solutions present themselves to me.

First left field ITB release: Compression.  And by compression I mean voodoo floss.

I repeat that no one knows exactly what causes ITB (beyond a hard effort your legs were unprepared for) but voodoo floss works by engaging fascia.  And…

‘Fascial layers are densely populated with all sorts of receptors, most notably mechanoreceptors… and I get a hunch that it can massively alter neural input by making a quick change in the mechanical transmission of the fascial system (and it’s many mechanoreceptors) when moving underneath some strong compression and stretchy-pulley forces.’

Translated- Voodoo floss draws the attention of your brain down to the area where you are flossing.  The fat layer is ‘highly vascularized and innervated’.  The floss will draw the brain’s attention to your knee while constricting and then flushing blood through the fat layer.

Wrap your voodoo floss above and below the knee, then take the knee through a range of motion, even go for a short run with it wrapped.  Take it off after 2 minutes and see if your knee feels any better.  You should feel a flushed, tingly feeling over your knee.

Second left field ITB release- Mirroring.  ‘Mimic performance, mirror pain.’  Straight from Z health.  Mirroring is the process by which we work on the opposite side of the body to enhance range of notion and lessen pain.  Start at the joint where you have pain, find the opposing joint, and then move it in the opposing direction.  I’ve seen AMAZING changes here.

This works based on the fact that mirrored joints have similar bio-mechanical and neurological pathways.  So moving the mirrored joint will clean up the pathways on the injured one.  This is a consistent ‘WOW’ for clients and students.

Does it work every time?  No.

How do you know it’s working?  Assessments.  Testing strength and or joint ROM will tell you instantly whether your body is a fan of what you’re doing.

The opposing joint to your affected knee is your elbow on the opposite side.  So to Mirror knee pain we simply move our elbow through a number of drills.  Here’s a link to show you how it’s done.

And since pain refers out lets move through some hip/shoulder mirroring to see if we can clean up thoseneuro and mechanical pathways.

To ascertain if mirroring works you have to test before and test after.  What do we test?

1- you can run, see how it feels, then stop, do your elbow circles/ shoulder figure 8’s, then run again.  Feel better?  It worked.

No difference?  Back to the drawing board.

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2- A Range of motion test.  Test your range of motion, perform the mirror, then retest.  If it increases then the mirror worked.  If not then

Maybe something above worked and you’re feeling better.  Maybe you read this and now you’re saying ‘I should just leave this in the hands of a professional.’  That is a great idea.  I received some great insight on this article from Post Physical Therapy and also from painscience.com‘s in depth ITB e-book.

When in doubt, refer out.

Rest is the simplest solution, but there may be some simple, easy technique to get you back on your feet.

But in the meantime…  Don’t stretch it, don’t roll it

Don’t roll it.

Does Pump up music work?

It’s late in the race.  You’re exhausted.  Finish line’s in sight.  Goal time within reach.  This is a defining moment but you’re redlining.  You need something extra.

This is where music comes on in the movies.  The score to ‘Rocky’, to ‘Chariots of fire’, to ‘8 mile’.  If I could just hear the right song right now, you think, it would give me what I need.  It would push me through.

I’ve been here.  I’ve heard the music and I’ve won the race, beaten the time.

But the songs that cane weren’t the one I expected.

Let’s have a listen  shall we?

What’s on your playlist?

I went to Private school as a kid.  Either my parent’s weren’t impressed with my academic progress, the local school system, or both.  They decided it was time to for me to follow my Sisters to Thayer Academy in Braintree.

My friends talked down on Private school.  Who can blame ’em?  Everybody talks down on Private school until it’s time to choose a school for their kid.  The world hates rich kids.  Think on that stereotype a moment: entitled, sweater tied around his shoulders, crashing Daddy’s jag after a weekend at a friend’s ski house.  Rich Kids are always the villain, or a self loathing protagonist in the case of Holden Caulfield.

My new school sucked at sports and nobody there was tough- according to my neighborhood friends.

I hated that part of being a Private School Kid: The world assuming that I was entitled and weak.

That I lacked a backbone.

There’s nobility in coming from Public school, right?  You grew up in that town.  You represented.  You had roots.  You started at home plate, not third base.

NO-SPECIAL-TREATMENT.

And after all is said and done you have something no one can gift the rich kids in their fancy little private school: authenticity.

You can’t buy Backbone.

The quest for authenticity was part of my teenage years.  I wasn’t from my hometown.  I lived there, sure; but I ceased being from there the moment I transferred.  I had roots at Thayer (great school) but the campus was small, tucked away into a small corner of Braintree.

A town that never really claimed us.

Wait, what am I saying?  The Braintree kids LOVED US.

As in… they LOVED fucking with us.  I was often chased by Braintree High kids when I went running off campus.  They never caught me but, believe me, a few of them tried.  Chi-Raq this was not, but consider…

• I had a rock the size of my fist hurled at my head while running through the Braintree high parking lot. A prehistoric drive by. No good reason for it, just a ‘take that Rich Kid’.

• I was chased by a car full of Braintree kids for flipping them off… after they drove through a large puddle and tried to drench me.

• I was chased onto campus after a confrontation with some Braintree kids at a local park. It went like this:

EXT. PARK-DAY

RUNNING MAN and his friends, among them JOSH, play basketball.  They are approached by some BRAINTREE KIDS.

BRAINTREE KID

Hey Pussy!  You have a fucking problem?

Running man and his friends note that they are outnumbered.

RUNNING MAN

Nah, we were just leaving.

BRAINTREE KID

Pussies.

JOSH

What college are you going to next year?

Thayer kids run.  Braintree kids chase.

And scene.

Got some time?  I could go on.  Like I said, those kids loved us.

I felt inauthentic.  I didn’t belong anywhere (not Braintree, not home).  I belonged at Thayer but there’s that whole ‘I don’t want to be a part of any club that would have me as a member’ thing, coupled with the rich kid stereotypes.  So I sought out ways to prove I was tough, that I could belong somewhere.

But let’s be honest.  I’m a Runner not a fighter.

So to prove how tough I was I developed what my family so charmingly called ‘a mouth’.

And I listened to tough music.

What is more authentic to a young person than music?  Loud.  Angry.  Lots of swears (just keeping it real).  Artists who prided themselves on how honest and real they were.  Listening made me feel like I was tough.  I wasn’t.  But when they talked about the hood, about death, and about drugs, about groupies, I was right there with them.

Listening made me street smart, right?

I could survive a bar fight cause I listened to Guns N Roses.

I knew all about Gangs and drugs cause I listened to Dre.

Music gave me a tourist’s pass through being tough.  It didn’t completely fill the void, but it was a start.

I remember a friend’s aunt amusing herself by playing the Geto boys for a couple of 10 year Olds.  Talk about a shock.  I still remember it today.  Vividly.  Funniest car ride of my life.

I remember hearing NWA/LL Cool J/Slick Rick and thinking ‘My God… Did I just hear that?  Did they just say that?’

How can I explain what hearing that felt like?

You’re constantly told by your parents that you have it easy, that you have no idea about the ‘real world’.  That it would chew you up and spit you out faster than the wind from a ducks ass.

That you have no idea what it’s like out there.

Ahem… I listened to ‘let a hoe be a hoe’ in 5th grade, ‘Appetite for Destruction’ a year before that.  I think I know about this so called real world.

Life can’t deliver no surprise to me.

The main attraction was the music, the beat, the vocal percussion, the melody; but the alleged realness added to it.  If I understood what they were saying then I was more than some snotty rich kid.  I was REAL.  I was street smart.  I had to be taken seriously.

This is what I would listen to entering the ring before a heavy weight fight.  This music was toughness channelled into speakers.  I listened to this music before races to get psyched. To get pumped.  To get angry.  Because anger helps you run fast, right?  Michael Phelps knows what I’m talking about.

I remember being told to play angry as a kid.  To play with a chip on my shoulder.  It makes you tougher.  Better.

And this music was anger distilled.

Excerpt from the Runinng Man’s High school pump up mixtape:

• Time’s Up- OC

• Scream- Michael Jackson

• Craziest- Naughty by Nature

• U Da Man- Black Moon

• Bulls on Parade- Rage Against the Machine

• Scam- Jamiroquai

• State of Love and Trust- Pearl Jam

• Give it Away- Red Hot Chili Peppers

• The Choice is Yours- Black Sheep

• Slam- Onyx

• Stranded on Death Row- Dr. Dre

• The Distance-Cake

I could go on.  For the most part this is angry music.  Listening to this mix pre race was like taking PED’s.

Or was it slowing me down?

Can you run angry and still run fast?

Does tough/angry music help?

As they say in music… let’s take it from the top.

High School

I made a ‘Pump up Jams’ mix CD during one cross country season.  I mean, listening to this thing would probably make you rob a liquor store, steal a car…something.

‘Your honor, in my defense I was listening to ‘Me against the World’ by Tupac.’

‘Case dismissed.  Listen to some Vivaldi next time young man.’

I placed the ‘Pump Up Mix’ in the wrong CD case (remember those).  I was on the bus to Lawrence Academy when I popped open the CD case and found Sade’s ‘Best Of’ instead of my usual diet of fight music.  The bus ride was over an hour and all my teammates were listening to their headphones to get pumped up.  So I made do.

I was going up against one of the best runners in the league and ‘Smooth Operator‘ was supposed to get my competitive juice flowing.  Good luck Steve.

If you’re at home laughing at my music taste I suggest you listen to ‘Stronger than Pride‘.  Only one of the 5 best love songs ever.

A funny thing happened during that race.

I got to the final quarter mile of the race with a slim lead.  The previous year this guy finished third in the league meet.  I finished 20th.  This was Fight music time.  This was where anger would push me to the finish, right?

I don’t know about you but sometimes music comes on my head.  I can hear it clear as day.  Not in a Brian Wilson, I hear original compositions in my sleep way, but just like someone turned on the radio.  It’s not something I can call on at will, but it happens a lot when I run.

Sade’s ‘Kiss of Life‘ came on full blast.  This is about as un-hardcore as you get.

But I sped up.  I got into the zone.  I felt happy; light.  I found another gear, charged up the final hill and straight through some thick puddles.

I won my first cross country race… and the soundtrack was smooth jazz.

Perfect.

That’s about as wimpy as you get.  But you know what?  Winning solves everything.  I got over it.

Maybe there’s different kinds of toughness.

Maybe loud, angry music isn’t synonymous with toughness, or authenticity.

Or maybe it is, but just not for me.  Perhaps I’m at my best when I’m relaxed.

And maybe there’s nothing wrong with that.

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I dropped my teammate off later that night.  We drove to his house, listening to the radio, dissecting our respective races.  We made plans to meet up later, clapped hands and he left.  He closed the door behind him and I pulled one of these:

I immediately cranked ‘Kiss of Life’ on my ride home.  Probably played it ten times straight… and loud.

What’s on your next pump up Jam, Running Man?  Kenny G?

Funny you should ask.

College

The thing about music- it has a shelf life.  You listen to a song enough times and it loses steam.  You know every note.  It becomes rote. The effect diminishes.  Sade wasn’t working anymore.  I found myself in search of that song that would take me up a notch. That aural PED.

I wasn’t fully ready to ditch hardcore music yet.  I went to college when DMX and Eminem’s popularity was at an apex.  There were still plenty of pump up mixtapes… but now they looked like this:

• It’s on- DMX

• My Name is- Eminem

• Contusion- Stevie Wonder

• Deeper Underground- Jamiroquai

• Kiss of Life- Sade

• Singin’ for the Lonely- Robbie Williams

• Tubthumping- Chumbawumba

Hard… and mellowing.

It wasn’t until college that my running really began to take off.  You think you’re hot shit in high school when you’re all league/all state.  Then you get to college and realize everyone in every race was all league and all state.  You have to figure out how to adapt to that level of competition.  You have to train a certain way.  And you have to toughen up.

This search for authenticity on and off the track led me to Pre.

Legend.

Steve Prefontaine made running cool.  He was handsome, fast as hell and had an attitude. He didn’t run a race to see who was the fastest.  He ran to see who had the most guts.

Tough.  Authentic.  This is where my search led me.  If I trained hard enough maybe I could do this.  But Pre was from Coos bay, a working class town where you could get ‘decked for holding your glass wrong’. Me, I went to Private school in Braintree where they throw rocks at you for going to private school.

Somewhere along the line I had forgiven myself for going to Thayer.  My Parent’s kicked ass and wanted  me to go somewhere special.  I’m not going to apologize for their caring.   Besides the Allisons weren’t wealthy enough for me to be the rich kid cliche.  Believe it or not I made it through his school without crashing Daddy’s jag, doing too much cocaine or tying a sweater over my Polo shirt.

I wanted to be like the version of Pre shown in the movie ‘Without Limits’.  Cocky, strong, the song ‘Summon the Heroes‘ by John Williams scoring my victories.

But it was classical.  It wasn’t written by a tattooed rapper or rock star.  It was written by a guy who looks like this:

Making classical Rock!

The adjective tough does not come to mind.

But the song captured me.  On long road trips I’d retreat into my headphones , stare out the window and see myself thundering down the home stretch, exhausted, music blaring, victorious.

My teammate Tim Georoff noticed me putting the John Williams CD in my travel bag one day.  ‘Yeah… ‘Summon the Heroes’, right?’ he said, and I was like:

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We both LOVED the opening chords of the song.  ‘BA NA NAAAAA, BUM, Ba naaa ba nanaaaa….’  Tim ran the hurdles but lets be honest- every runner wants to be Pre.

It was outdoor track.  The Maine winter had worn me down.  The weather wouldn’t warm up, every training run was spent picking my way through mud soaked paths.  I had overcome a tough winter, a bad bout of the flu and still come within .01 seconds of being an All American indoor miler a month earlier.

I gave that season everything and came up short.  .01 seconds short.  I was depressed.  Not in a lock yourself into the room and sleep all day, but I wasn’t enjoying myself.  I wasn’t in flow.

The depression followed me to the conference meet.  NESCACs were a two day affair back then.  Relays and prelims on Saturday, Finals on Sunday.  I anchored the Distance medley Saturday and got my ass kicked by a really gifted Miler from Bates.  I let my teammates down.  The depression deepened.

The next day I was one of the top two seeds for the mile but I wasn’t feeling it.  I had run over :10 seconds slower than my PR in the relay.

Where does one go when the going gets tough?  Pre didn’t have bad races.  How do you pull yourself out of an athletic funk?

Well, my Mother had some choice words for me on my way to the start.  That got me going.

The race went off and I positioned myself in the front of pack.  I went through the motions for two laps.  It was VERY windy so no one wanted to lead.  Nobody made a move.  Everyone was waiting for someone else.  We trudged.

And then the bell lap.  Everybody made a move at once.  I got shuffled to the back as a bunch of guys passed me before the turn.

Rule #1 of track and field– don’t pass in a turn.  You end up running further than you have to.  Trust me on this.  I’m a 2 time All American who is .02 seconds from being a 4 time All American.  Seconds count.  Inches count.  Don’t run farther than required.

Did I follow this advice?  Of course not.

Why?

‘BA NA NAAAAA!’

The opening chords to ‘Summon the Heroes’ blared in my head and I reacted.  I took off.  I passed EVERYONE on the turn.  I dug deeper and found another gear, faster than ever before.  The music continued to blare on the back stretch.  I couldn’t hear a thing outside of trumpets and drums.

And there was Tim, grinning ear to ear, watching from the corner with 100 yards to go, waving his finger’s like conductor’s wands.

‘BA NA NAAAAA!’

There I was: home stretch, music blaring, exhausted, running into a stifling head wind with everything I had.

Victorious.

Tim and I talked about that afterward.  It wasn’t in my head.  He heard it.

Experience is the greatest teacher.  And experience was revealing that volume/anger didn’t necessarily mean tough.

Bad words and attitude didn’t mean tough.

Maybe being tough was just handling what life sets in front of you.

Maybe tough could be classical… or smooth jazz.  Or polka.  Or even (gulp) country.

Toughness/authenticity had slowly morphed for me.  I used to think I could get it through music/movies or coming up hard.  I was learning there are different ways to be tough.  Maybe one way to be tough was confronting a mental funk.  Maybe a kid from private school could get tough if he just decided to run hard.

IN FLOW

Two anecdotal stories about me getting better results from relaxing music led me to this conclusion:

Anger will get you off the start line, over a hill, away from a predator but as a race strategy it will fail.

Go ahead.  Get Angry. Flex your muscles.  Grit your teeth.  Scream at the top of your lungs.

Do it for a mile.

How’d that work out?

Anger can give you a burst but running is all about the flow.  So wrong sport.

I had no idea.  I thought my pregame had to be loud.  It had to be tough.  It had to shake speakers.  Let people know how tough I was.  How REAL I was.

Let’s find more proof.  Let’s look at science.  Look at the effect of loud music on water:

Look at the difference between Heavy Metal and classical.  Metal is a mess.  Classical is organized, clear, beautiful.

I’m gonna go ahead and lump rap and hard rock in with metal.

‘So what?’ you say.  ‘Loud music pumps me up.  Look at Phelps.  This is the effect of music on water, not on me.  What do you have to say about that?’

You’re composed of 70% water.

It worked for Phelps because he’s a sprinter.  Or because he’s Michael Phelps, he’s the GOAT and nothing can stop him.

Maybe he could have gone faster listening to John Williams?

Without further ado here’s The Running Man’s List of proven performance enhancers (the 5 from the title):

1. Summon the Heroes- John Williams

2. Rodeo- Aaron Copland (Can’t listen to this and not get in flow.

3. Kiss of Life- Sade

4. Singin’ for the Lonely- Robbie Williams (the last :45 seconds of this song led me to a 2 mile PR- at the end of a 7 mile workout).

5. Tubthumping- Chumbawumba (NESCACS Cross Country championships my freshman year. This song led to my first decent Collegiate race).

And how about four more suspected performance enhancers (unproven as of yet):

1. Live Your Life- Yuna (this song is just complete flow. Perfect for long races. I’m expecting to hear it durimg the middle miles of a long race).

2. Coming Home (instrumental)- Madlib (simultaneously beautiful and tough, like a runner with perfect form running on the knife’s edge).

3. aujord hui c’est toi- Francis Lai (This song is thunderous, and cool. I can feel this one coming on late in a race).

4. Contusion- Stevie Wonder (only the most epic guitar solo in R&B history).

IMHO You’ll run better, lift better, perform better when you’re in flow.

When your tunes clarify.  Organize.  Focus.  Like water crystals.

I’m a Z health trainer.  I’m consistently blown away by what I’ve learned in Z.

The main belief in Z: the brain runs your body.

Every aspect of movement, mood, and performance starts in the brain.  And the brain shows immediate results.  When your brain is happy you get instantly stronger, more flexible, more relaxed. When unhappy we get weaker and less flexible.

This shows up in strength and range of motion assessments.

So lets find out what kind of music enhances your performance. Break out your headphones.  Cue up some classical music and perform a range of motion assessment.

Then listen to something hard core.  Retest.  I did it for you HERE.

I can’t claim our results will be the same… but clearly my results are better when I listen to classical.  There’s even a name for this: the Mozart effect.

But maybe death metal made you stronger.  The Metallica effect?

The Michael Phelps effect?

We’re all different.  In fact I WISH I assessed better with hardcore music- I like it more.

But alas… My body is happiest with smooth jazz and classical.  It is my cross to bear.

You’ll perform better when you’re HAPPY.  Trust me.

The kind of music that acts as your aural PED may not be what you think.  Try a variety.

And hope the right song comes on when you need it.

I’ve been around long enough to know that the loudest person in the room can be the weakest.

Can one go to Private school and still be tough?

Or just the loudest.

Same goes for music.

Tough talk is one thing.

And toughness is another.

Same goes for music.

That’s the truth Ruth…. Taught in the school of hard knocks…

And private school.

I outran the T

Nothing sets me off like the MBTA.  Just scan my FB page over the years.

‘It’s the coldest day of the year and the MBTA leaves the doors open at JFK for 5 MINUTES!’

‘Possible new MBTA logo: Give us an hour, we’ll take you twenty minutes away.’

‘It’s snowing outside, freezing cold and the MBTA is running trains about every twenty minutes.  Figures.’

‘I know I give the MBTA a hard time but they did me a solid.  Lost my Charlie Card and they hooked me up with a new one.’  That was Weds, March 15, 2017.

‘It only took 12 hours- the MBTA sucks again.’  Also Weds, March 15th, 2017.

I hate to be late.  My biggest pet peeve.  90% of the time they do OK.  But Man, when they mess up and you’re left waiting for the train it’s ALWAYS 2 degrees, windy, snowing, sleeting, and you’re bone tired at the end of the day.

And the sign that tells you when the next train is due… It’s always those insufferably cold days where the sign reads ‘Next Train in 5’ that it ends up being 20, or 30 minutes.

Once during a snow storm I waited 30 minutes only to be told I had to walk to the next station, where I waited another 30 minutes for a packed car.

There’s always a disabled train, or a police action at Kendall to slow you down when you’re running late.

Grrrrr.

I’ve been raising money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital this year (link here).  I’m always searching for gimmicks, things I can do to raise money for my cause.  Theres the bad dancing, the polar plunge.  I thought about outrunning the green line from BC to Kenmore square…

But that’s too easy.  The cars are old.  There’s a ton of traffic lights/T stops to slow it down.  I’ve outrun the C line during long runs.

I needed a bigger challenge.

So I had that idea on Weds night.  Thursday morning, completely out of the blue, my friend Tim posted a video of a guy outrunning the London Tube between two stops.  I mentioned it to my client Ted early Thursday.

‘The Redline would be the challenge.’

‘Yeah.  Trick is to find the right stops.  The longer you go the tougher it gets for you.’

‘Park street and Downtown Crossing.  Could be done.’

He agreed.  But it would be tough.

I timed the interval between the doors opening at Downtown and their closing at Park street.  :89 seconds.

In :89 seconds I would have to exit the doors, run up the escalator, around a tight corner, through the turnstiles, up two more flights of stairs into the street.  Then it was a .16 mile uphill sprint through snow banks, black ice, dodging pedestrians and crossing Tremont.  This is where fate would play a role.  Crossing Tremont can take :89 seconds.  Traffic would have to break right.  Then it’s down three flights of steep stairs, through the turnstile, around a TIGHT corner, down two narrow stairs and onto the platform.

:89 seconds to run .16 miles uphill and then tack on some stairs, corners, and obstacles.

I can run a quarter in under 60.

It could be done.

This was more than just a race.  This was me hitting back at the T which stresses me out on a weekly basis.

This would be vengeance for the all the breakdowns, police actions, disabled trains and mean workers that have vexed my commute over the years. This is bigger than just a simple race.  This was lowly David trying to bloody the lip of the almighty behemoth that is the MBTA.

I have to admit.  I did not get a good night’s rest before.  I envisioned slipping on ice, slamming into pedestrians, getting stopped by cars, MBTA police, dropping my T pass.

But I decided to do it.

I took the train in, using my phone to time the average amount of time the doors opened.  :09 seconds at JFK.  :15 at Andrew.  :20 at Broadway.  :09 at South Station.  I was hoping for a long transition.  The longer two (:15 and :20) were on crowded platforms.

My car pulled into Downtown.  There was NO ONE on the platform.  The moment I was up that first flight of stairs the train would be moving.

And now the moment had arrived.  No excuses.  Just man vs Machine.  Watch for yourself.

Was there ever any doubt?

Victory for the Running Man.

Some moments will stick out in memory.  There was construction atop the escalator so I had to run wide around that corner (:03 seconds lost).  There was a woman atop the stairs who was trying to get out of my way but ended up only making things worse (:02 seconds).

The blessing of no traffic on Tremont.

There was a tense moment where my card wouldn’t open the turnstile heading into Park (:02 seconds).

The fact that no one on the train gave a shit that I just beat the Redline.

Total time running- :84.

Think you can do better?  Talk is cheap.

The final memory I have is one of EXTREME GRATITUDE.  This stunt  added almost a thousand dollars to my St. Jude fund raising.  The kind words and the event kinder donations have made this an AWESOME week.  Thank you all.  I can’t say how much this means for St. Jude Children’s research Hospital or how great it makes me feel.

THANK YOU!

Now I’m being challenged to run between Downtown and Charles/MGH stations.  I just timed out the subway.  2 stops.  4 minutes 19 seconds.

.84 miles bw stops.  I can cover that in a little under 4.

We’ll see, maybe.

Impressed?  Donate to my Crowdrise and help sick Kids recover from Childhood cancer.

https://www.crowdrise.com/StJudeBoston2017/fundraiser/stephendallisonii

The Eastern States 20 miler

‘You could use a swift kick in the ass.’- Sometimes Mom, sometimes Dad.  Mostly Mom.

The Eastern States 20 miler kicked my ass.

I thought I was ready.  I was mistaken.

Sunday was one of the few ‘nice’ weather days of 2017.  It was an OK weather day for March.  Cold, with a sometimes biting wind.  The sun made an appearance for the first time in what felt like months.

It was a nice day.  For March.  I heard others qualify it as beautiful.  It was ‘Army hot’ at best.

This race was important: a dry run for the Boston Marathon on 4/17.  I was using it as a supported 20 miler and a chance to get a long race in and test my physical readiness for Boston.  My goal was to be around 6 minute pace (2 hours) or a little under- if I was feeling good.  If I can run that in April then I will be ecstatic.

Here’s the results:

The course is the one of the reasons I was attracted to the race.  You begin in Maine, cross into New Hampshire, run the coast line, and finish in Massachusetts.  20 miles of beautiful, flat to slightly downhill coast line.  I remember telling a girl about how my main long run in high school took me from Pembroke, through Marshfield, briefly into Duxbury before finishing in Pembroke again.  3 towns.  She was amazed.  Just think of all the girls I could impress with three states.  

Spoiler- no one was impressed.

There was one specific thing I wanted to test on this run: in race nutrition.  I’ve run two twenty mile races in my life.  I bonked in both of them and then went on to bonk in the ensuing marathons they preceded.  If doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity (according to none other than Albert Einstein) I am a certifiable loon.  I’ve bonked in every marathon I’ve ever run.  I’ve bonked in every 20 mile race.  I have changed my preparation before the races, but let’s face it, I’m stupid.  I tried gu on a couple of long runs, Swedish fish on a few more, and then just gone out and hoped for the best.

Stupid.

Experience dictates I have enough stored energy for about an hour and forty minutes.  Then I’m running on fumes.  This is what has kept me from reaching my potential in the marathon.  I’m not afraid of the pain, I’m not afraid of hills, I’m not even afraid of the bonk.   It’s just that when you bonk it feels like someone turned up gravity in your body.  The will is there but you just can’t perform.  Let’s work on that part then.

So I brought along some sport beans.  I was going to push the pace, carb up a  little at mile 7’ish, then again at 14.  If I can postpone the bonk then I know this will be my best marathon yet.

The other test was of my general fitness.  That’s something you’re always gauging.  There’s three weeks to go until the Marathon.  I could push the pace and still have time to recover and get fresh for the big one.  This test would give me an idea if my goal of a sub 2:40 marathon is in the cards.

The race went off around 11, which is close to when I’ll cross the start line in Hopkinton on 4/17.  I ran with the lead pack for about 5 miles and quickly learned that I was overdressed.  I had running tights, an under armor base, my St. Jude singlet, a light windbreaker and a winter hat.  The other racers in the front with me wore singlets and running shorts.

I hung with a couple of the leaders for about 5 or 6 miles.  I downed my first bag of sport beans.  The hardest part was getting the bag open.  Note to self, cut a small incision into the bag for 4/17.

I’m not quite sure where along the course I downed them because I didn’t see any mile markers.  I was told afterward that they were on the ground.

‘Why?’

‘So no one steals them.’

Being somewhat unsure of where you are in the race sucks.  I suffered because New Hampshire is full of thugs who steal mile markers.

So I made it to about mile 7 and I realized that I just wasn’t feeling great.  The leader was in sight but he was an increasingly smaller dot on the horizon and I needed to make a pit stop.  There was a huge row of porta johns across the street in this parking lot so I crossed, hopped a fence and was running to the first one when I hear a yell.

‘There’s a crapper up ahead on the right.  Go there!’

It was shaping up to be that kind of day.  I hopped another fence and got back on course.

I used the loo.  I hopped out and was promptly informed by one of the race officials that I had spent a minute in there.  I thanked him, asked him to take my winter hat and windbreaker to the finish (he did- Great guy.  Buy his Book).  So now I think I’m at mile 7, I’m not feeling super sharp, and I’ve lost a minute.

Why wasn’t I feeling sharper?  Looking back I had run 2 large mileage weeks, one of them featuring a 20 mile run from Hopkinton to Newton (middle hills of Heart break).  The twenty had felt great but I was pushed.  I planned on running 5 of it easy and then picking up the final 15 but my ego killed that.  At mile 2 a bus pulled up, some runners filed out and one of them ran past me like I was standing still.  A good Angel and a bad angel appeared over my shoulders, like in the cartoons.

Good angel: Steve, you’re 38.  You’ve got to pick your spots.  Let this kid go and follow the plan.  Hard for 15, starting at 5.  You’ll be fine.

Bad Angel: You’re gonna let this punk go?  It’s bad enough you’re wearing running tights in public, but your wife’s bra too?

So I caught the kid.  Lucky I did.  He is awesome.  His name is Patrick Caron and he’s a 19 year old stud running over 100 miles a week.  He had pity on the old boy and let me tag along for 18.  The time flew by as we got to know each other.  Run long enough and at some point you’ll make friends with some random person out for a jog.  It’s a perk.  He’s working at Marathon sports (where I worked at his age) putting off college for a while and pursuing his passion: running trail runs and ultras.  Jumping into Boston to run in the 2:30-40’s is just another days run for him. He pulled me out for a fast and fluid 20.

I kept thinking ‘I hope I feel this good on race day.’

That run, plus the two weeks of training I’d done since had chewed up my hamstrings and calves.  Two days before the Eastern States I ran 8 miles.  It was tough, plagued by dead legs and tight calves.  By Sunday I was feeling better, but the tight rear chain was still there.  There was no flow in my stride.

One great thing I know about my body- it knows when race days is.  I’ve had plenty of days where I felt like absolute rubbish the day before a big race, then on race day the body knows.  It shows up feeling good.  The last long race I did (back in August), I felt horrid the days leading up to it.  Miraculously when I toed the start line I was gifted 17 effortless miles.

Not so today.  Today I got about 7.  And then it was effort.  Pure effort.  Another runner passed me.  This is where my fiercest opponent showed up.

Yes.  I’m referring to myself.

It may surprise you to find out that I’m what you may call a ‘Head Case’.  No one can beat me quite as quickly and effectively as I can beat myself.

My worst ‘quirk’: I’m very hard on myself.  Cut to my family/former teammates nodding their heads.  ‘SDA= head case.’

My self talk shifted here.  I went from enjoying the race, constantly monitoring my pace, my body, to beating myself up.

‘You don’t have it.  Too old.  Too heavy.  Too muscular.  You don’t want it like you used to.’

‘FAIL HERE AND YOU WILL NOT REACH YOUR GOAL TIME IN BOSTON.  8 MONTHS OF TRAINING FOR NAUGHT.’

Miles to go, not feeling great, I started to make excuses.  My training has been too hard.  My legs are feeling like shit.  I’ve been pushing too hard at work, not sleeping enough, eating enough.  The runner who passed me was now 100 yards away.

Full disclosure- I’ve been taking a business course.  I am in the top 1% of trainers as far as skill and experience are concerned, but I am not a business person.  Now if you are in a gym and you don’t know what you are doing I advocate you hiring a trainer.  It would be hypocritical if I didn’t follow my own reasoning.  So I enrolled in a course called the fitprenuers.  The leader of the course, Simon, takes a very wholistic approach to changing your business.  Thoughts are things.  Your mindset is the product of your thoughts, specifically your sub conscious thoughts.  All those negative affirmations/limiting beliefs above are coming straight from my sub conscious.

So how does one rewrite their sub conscious?

Meditation.

I’ve been meditating.  If Mom could only see me now…

And I’ll tell you what… I was able to change my thought process today.  I was able to subvert the negative thoughts and enjoy the race.  I ceased to care about the pace, the wind, the course, the effort.  I let go of where I  thought I should be and just ran.

‘Just get in flow.’  I kept repeating it, over and over.  I caught the runner who’d put 100 yards between us over the last few miles.

I’d love to tell you I kept pushing, kept catching people but the reality was the wheels were coming off the bus after 15/16.  I never bonked.  I had some more sport beans at 14’ish (still couldn’t open the package), but I let that same runner go again.

More important than beating him was that I stood up to myself.

I crossed into Massachusetts over a narrow bridge.  I knew the finish line was somewhere close by and I found I was able to pick up the pace here in the 19th mile, a first.

And then the finish.  I glanced at the clock as passed the finishing shoot.  2:02.  That means 2:01 if I subtract the bathroom break.  6 minute pace.

On a bad day.

With some tough training miles behind me.

What would be more valuable?  Running a race where everything felt great and I whizzed through 20 miles, won the race and learned nothing new.

Or running hard for 7, losing momentum, beating myself up for 2 miles, then rallying, pushing, scratching my way back to my goal time and learning something along the way.

Sometimes a good ass kicking is exactly what you need.

I’m writing this on Thursday night.  The race was 4 days ago and I can’t go down a flight of stairs without some major discomfort.  Yeah… the Eastern states 20 kicked my ass.

and it was just what I needed.

The Knife’s edge

Is it still customary for Runners to shake hands before a race? We used to do it and say something like ‘good luck.

I used to say ‘Do your best.’ My thinking was if I did my best, and you did yours, we’d run great and feel great. The wishing of luck implies that a good performance is a product of serendipity and not the product of good training.

I want you to run your best.

Leave out the preparation, leave out the training numbers, the splits, the course.  Those matter for speed.  I’m not interested in speed.  I want your best.  On this day.  With this preparation.  With this wind and this weather, with the body you showed up with today.

Do the best you can with what you have?  The clock doesn’t tell the whole story.  A 3:10 finish can be better than a 3:05.

How do you run your best?

So many things affect your race and so few of them are running related.

A week to go before the race and your bed is made. You’re running somewhere between 2:34-2:55, 3:44 to 4, 4:30-4:50.  Your preparation dictates that.  Race day weather conditions  will have their say.  Then… it’s up to you.

You have to find the knife’s edge.

The knife’s edge is the center.  Run too hard early, the edge cuts you and you fall apart later in the race.  Run too easy early, the blade dulls and you leave minutes on the clock.  It’s an elusive balance.  The edge is different in mile 3 than it is in mile 23.  It’s in the moment.  It’s a living, breathing force that shifts with the race.

I’ve caught the edge before, I’ve even held it for a mile or ten.  You feel every hill, adjust to every nuance the race throws out.  You adjust effortlessly.  Keeping the edge for 26.2 is difficult.

The edge is inside of you.  You have to dial in.  Listen.  Release expectations of how you want to race and trust that your body knows the edge.  Finding your edge can be humbling early.  You may have to let other runners go, or slow your pace on uphills, you have to hold back and trust your instinct.  The time you want may not be the one that is in play for you.  That can also change.

The edge responds to momentum.  You’ll pass other runners, you’ll pass through late miles with legs fresh enough to make a move at the end.  Your confidence will build as you realize you’re not breaking down, but holding pace.

Momentum goes the other way too.  Remember that saving energy early in the race gives away seconds per mile.  Hitting the wall early adds minutes per mile.

The edge thrives on even and negative splits.

In the last mile or two you can forget about the edge.  This is the hardest section of the race.  It may be one of the hardest sections of your life. No matter how clean you run this, no matter how beautiful you felt for 20, 22 miles, this last section hurts.  Here it is all about self talk.  Your thoughts become things.  Any negative self belief, however minute, however sub conscious, will surface.  You will have to battle it.  No matter what demon surfaces don’t stop.  The knife will cut if you continue on at pace; it will cut you worse if you stop.  Running rewards pain.

What gets you through?

Two things.  Competition and Gratitude.

To run on the knife’s edge you have to tune out what others are doing and run your race.  But in the end you have to compete.   Don’t get angry, don’t run against others, but run with them.  You share a goal.  You can push each other to greater heights.  Run with your competitors, never against them.

Their best inspires yours.

And now gratitude.

This is where you want to be.  You’re here and you’ve never been more alive. Love it.  Every agonizing step.  There’s someone out there who would kill to be where you are.  Think about that.

Be grateful for the journey.  No one comes out of marathon training the same way they entered.  You’re stronger. Love the person you’ve become.

Be grateful for your support.  Whether you run for a charity, a team or yourself, no one gets here alone.  Love your support network.  Love the crowd.  You’re part of something bigger than you.

The knife’s edge will bring out your worst.  But if you accept it, if you’re grateful, if you love it, it will bring out your best too.

The 30 day no processed sugar challenge

My name is the Running Man and I am a sugarholic.

For as long as I can remember I have LOVED sweets.  Cookies.  Sodas.  Brownies.  Ice Cream.  Dairy Queen!

It is this addiction that has been at the heart of my professional hypocrisy.

Discover & share this Whatev GIF with everyone you know. GIPHY is how you search, share, discover, and create GIFs.

A trainer/nutrition coach who can polish off a pint of Ben & Jerry’s in a single setting= Authentic.

But I kept seeing articles talking about how much inflammation sugar causes. I saw how disruptive it was to your health. I decided to give it a try.

I undertook a 2 week no sugar challenge.  In hindsight I could have picked a better 2 weeks.  There were 2 birthday parties crammed into that 2 week period, but somehow I managed.  I stuck it out.  And I lost some weight.

I noticed increased energy.

My clothing fit better.

My skin looked really good.

My sleep was like a coma.

I had a huge ice cream Sunday after the final day and passed out with a headache.

It made me feel more authentic as a trainer and nutrition coach; the same way that only people who have done drugs are drug counselors.

I suffer from all the same problems as my clients.  I over eat .  I eat crap.  I love sugar.

So if I can do this, so can you.

I missed sugar when I was at those birthday parties, but that was all.

And to tell you the truth… I liked the feeling of being on a quest.  Of noticing little improvements every week.

And then slowly I started to relapse.  A donut here.  A sugar in my coffee.  Next thing you know I’m drinking Coke out of a twizzler straw with a DQ Blizzard in my other hand.

So I challenged myself to do it again.  This time for a month.  I weighed in.  And I decided to bring a few clients along for the ride.  I posted every day on FB.  The outpouring of support was amazing.  So many people offered up words of encouragement, and then, as I neared my completion date people were reaching out to me asking how I did it.  What are the rules?

The No processed sugar challenge rules:

1. Limit processed sugar. It’s impossible nowadays to completely eliminate it. But cut it close to zero. (Question Running Man: what does processed mean? A: If it doesn’t come from nature then it is probably processed)

2. Natural sugars (fruit) are ok. Plain yogurt is OK too.

3. 1 splenda in 1 coffee is ok.

4. If you mess up once then clean slate. Get it going again. 27 or 28 good days beats 5 perfect ones followed by a shut down.

5. I’ll add a fifth rule here- and that is post about it on social media. It keeps you accountable.

6. If you can summon the strength… cut out booze at the same time.

So there.  The rules.

Number 6 is a stickler for most people.

I’ve dropped sugar for over a month 3 times now.  I’ve lost up to 8 lbs doing it, and that is off a fairly lean frame.  On one go around I caliper tested my body fat and lost 3%.  I weighed in at 185.  So losing 3% is 5 lbs.  Here’s what that looks like:

And here’s my before and after from my most recent No sugar challenge where I lost 5 lbs:

Before

After

If there is one thing I’ve learned about fitness and nutrition it’s this: Nothing is simple.

So now we should look at some key questions.

1. Why did this work for me?

2. Will this work for you?

3. Is sugar as bad as we’re led to believe?

4. Should I stay away from processed sugar?

Let’s take it from the top.

Why it worked for me:

1. I am a sugar addict. Left to my own devices I eat a lot of it.

2. I was incredibly active during every challenge. Running, yoga and lifting every day.

3. I wasn’t starving myself. I nourished my body in the absence of sugar. I cut out empty calories and replaced them (mostly) with more nourishing ones. Because I was more nourished by less food it meant…

4. Cutting sugar meant cutting total calories.

5. Much of my processed sugar consumption was motivated by boredom (i.e. I have an hour to kill before my next client, I think I’ll treat myself to an ice cream).

6. The challenge caused me to pay attention to everything I ate. Not just sugar. And as a result…

7. I ate less processed crap.

There is research out now that suggests some people are genetically pre disposed to LOVE sugar, some not so much.

I am in the first camp.  I can never get enough, but if I’m to believe some of the research then it’s the genetics handed down from my parents.  Thanks a lot Steve I and Diane.

I think it is important to mention this because in the past I’ve been hard on myself for wanting sugar so often.  I’d look at people who would never eat it and ask myself ‘Why can’t I just be more like them.’  Turns out there may be a reason.  Knowing that makes me feel a little better.

A little.

Will cutting out processed sugar work for you?

YES!

and No.

Everyone has a different response to different kinds of food (see my inherited sugar addiction above).  I’ve found that in diet and exercise everything works for about 6 weeks.  Then you may plateau.

Sub question: Do you consume too much processed sugar already?

If you don’t then you probably won’t see much of a change.  But if you do, then yes, this could work for you but…

Is sugar as bad as we think?

Natural sugar: no.

Processed sugar: Yes and no.

Processed sugar consumption isn’t the sole reason so many people are gaining weight and suffering from diabetes.  Sugar consumption has actually dropped in the past few years.  If sugar were the sole cause of obesity and diabetes then rates of those two disease also would have dropped, right?

But they have not.  As I said: Nothing is simple.

There is no one single food that will cause everyone to put on weight.

In my case: I love the taste of sugar.  It’s sweet and addictive.

But by itself it is just a carb.

A carb that makes me crave more sugary carbs.

And the foods that are loaded up with extra sugar are often highly processed.  Lots of chemical crap.  So in the process of cutting out sugar I cut out a ton of processed crap.

And when we eat minimally processed foods we are sated quicker, receive more nutrition and digest fewer calories from them.

My gateway drug

Again, sugar is just a carb.  But for me it is a gateway carb that leads to eating processed crap.  And processed crap is what sticks to me.

Should I stay away from all processed sugar?

There are so many conflicting ideas out there about what you should eat, how much, when.  It is very confusing.  Everyone is saying something different.

There’s low carb, high carb, low calorie, high calorie… yada yada yada

What everyone seems to agree on:

1. Eat less processed food.

2. Eat mostly plant based.

Cutting out sugar helped me cross #1 off my list.  And because eating added sugar leads to eating more processed foods I would advocate you dropping as much processed sugar as possible.  Someone like me is well served by an all or nothing approach because once that bag of M&M’s gets opened it’s getting emptied.

I can’t trust myself to moderate.  I am an addict.

But lets face it.  We’re all going to have good days and bad days when it comes to eating well.  The all or nothing approach doesn’t work if you get discouraged by the bad days.  You’ll 4 or 5 really great days, get some momentum, and then because you’re human, you slip up and you have some processed sugar.

And then you lose hope.

I’ll never be able to keep this up.

I suck.  I’ll always be a slave to sugar.

You give up.

Or… you can just say ‘one bad day won’t kill me.’

If you eat clean for 9 days out of 10 that is a huge win.

If you get 1% better every day you’ll be so much better at the end of a week, end of a month.

I went to a dinner party on 6/4 and had some cherry pie.  It was one of those occasions where I would have felt rude to refuse.  The next day I started again at day 1 but then rethought it.  Imperfect action beats perfect inaction 10 times out of 10.

There will be slip ups.  Keep moving forward.

I didn’t start over.  I just gave myself a clean slate and kept moving forward.  Perfection is unattainable.

There are articles like this one which warn against quitting sugar, but remember I’m talking about PROCESSED SUGAR.  Added sugar.  This is the stuff they add to our foods to make them more addictive, not the natural stuff we get from a healthy diet.

Can you stay away from all processed sugar?

It takes a lot of will power and preparation.  Will power that honestly, I don’t think I possess.  I love ice cream.  I love sweets.

But I also know I can go without them.

1 month at a time.

 I’m addicted.

But I’m hardly alone.

And if I can do this.  So can you.

Some further reading for you:

http://www.wral.com/one-month-sugar-detox-a-nutritionist-explains-how-and-why/16751931/

http://www.precisionnutrition.com/truth-about-sugar

http://metro.co.uk/2017/05/31/70-year-old-hasnt-eaten-sugar-for-28-years-looks-incredible-6674143/

No Bliss on the couch

All you can think about is the couch.

When you’re hungry, tired, stressed, overworked… and the only place you want to be is on the couch.  To sink deep into the cushions, feel your eyelids get heavy, your breathing slow down; this is bliss.

You’ve read something about sleep.  An article probably slid through your FB newsfeed and you’ve clicked on it, read 3/5 of a summary of some sleep study at UCLA that  showed how people operating on minimal rest are just as dangerous behind the wheel as drunks, or how sleep scientists woke some poor college kid every time he entered REM sleep and took him from healthy to pre-diabetic in three weeks.

Rest is important.  Recovery essential.

The soundest advice I’ve read about rest is to make it consistent. Try to sleep the same hours every night.  Keep bed time and wake up time as religious for your 20/30/40 year old body as you would for a 6month/1/2 year old.  Even for you type A’s who only sleep 5 hours, make it the same 5 hours, and keep your naps consistent.

I’ve tried a thousand times to get this right, but being an adult gets in the way.  My schedule is a living, breathing thing.  Always moving, always changing.  I don’t think I’ve had the same schedule day to day or week to week in my adult life. I’m constantly playing catch up.  Even perfectly scheduled days can become an endless run of clients, scheduling, working out, programming, dog walking, cooking and commuting.

And all I can think about is the couch.

What sweet bliss awaits on the couch.  I’ll close my eyes and sink into the pillows, hit the reset button; problems wash away when my head hits the pillow and I don’t need to set the alarm?  This is bliss.  Earned.  It’s almost worth the sleep deprivation, the stress, the endless days and appointments to feel like this.

And yet sometimes you look for that bliss and it’s not there.  I lay there, bored, mind racing, can’t sleep.  I’m tired and can’t sleep.  All you can do is lay awake and think.

This summer I came down with walking pneumonia, a hamstring injury, a hip pain, a knee click.  My body is sending a message. Slow down.

All I’ve had is the couch.

And all I can think about is getting back out there.

The bliss is in the balance.

What was that?

Some people think running is boring.  You’re out there.  No music, no friends, no cell phone.  Just you and the road, or the trail.  What could possibly happen?

Well…

It was a cold, seriously cold Xmas morning and I was out for a 17 mile run.  This was many years ago.  I was still in college.  My 17 mile route took me down rt 37 in Braintree and then hooked down by Circuit City (R.I.P), and past the office park that sits beside the Braintree Mall.  As I rounded the corner into the office park I looked up and saw two middle aged men hovering over a briefcase.  The moment they noticed me they both stood bolt straight, snapped the case shut and booked it for their cars.  There was something about their body language that screamed ‘oh shit it’s the cops.’  They hastily ran to their cars and I ran across the mall parking lot towards Common street thinking ‘What in the hell was that?  A drug deal?  Was it a black market tickle me Elmo sale (that was the hot toy that Christmas)?’

‘Maybe it was the briefcase from Pulp Fiction?’

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The contents of the briefcase (both in the movie and irl) will remain a mystery.  My gut tells me cocaine.

This wouldn’t be the only time something like this happened while I’m out for a run. I’ve seen things.  Crazy things.  Things you wouldn’t believe.  Ask around, I’m not the most observant guy.  When I run I get tunnel vision.  My mother once boxed my ears for running past a group of her friends and not saying hello.

‘Right by them?’

‘Same side of the street.’

My defense: I honestly never saw them.  And that’s the truth.  I’m sorry Mrs. McKinnon.  Tunnel vision.

In Greek tragedy it is often the blind characters who see things clearest.  So art imitates life, for even I, the unobservant one, Mr Tunnel Vision, have noticed some crazy shit while out for a run.  My running routes take me through wood and trail, down ill trodden paths where people think they’re alone, often early in the morning or late at night (when freaks come out).  Sometimes I’m in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Sometimes the wrong place at the right time.  Examples?

Imagine you’re a young man, desperately in love.  You have the conversation with her father, plunk down two months salary on a ring and then you wait.  This moment has to be special.  You wait until one summer night you’re strolling on the Charles River.  You’re all alone, hand in hand with your lady love, the sun is setting on the far side of the river, a brilliant pink and orange.  This is the moment.  You take a knee, reach in your pocket, start that speech you’ve rehearsed a hundred times and then… what’s that sound?  Heavy breathing?  Feet skimming across the pavement.  You’re not alone.  There’s a runner, just in time to blow up your perfect moment.

This happened to me twice on one run. One proposal by the Hatch shell and another one by the exercise station near BU.  Beautiful hallmark moments ruined by this third wheel running past and muttering ‘sorry’.  The looks I got that night… How’s that Southwest Airlines commercial go?

When it comes to romance, other people’s romance, you’re never in the right place at the right time.  Either you’re ruining the moment (proposals) or you’re ruining the moment… I’ve run past people in the moment(catch my drift?).  One of these people happened to be a cop.

How do I know he was a cop?  As mentioned I’m no detective myself but his car was right there, and his uniform was on.  Hell, his squad car was parked right there in the woods.

I ran away as fast as I could because I live my life by three rules.

1. Don’t play cards against someone named for a city.

2. Don’t try and win a marital argument with logic.

3. When you catch an officer of the law in commission of a crime look the other way and hope that karma returns the favor.

How’s that Southwest commercial go again?

Call shenanigans if you want (I neglected to get the badge #) but I was there, I wouldn’t make this up to impress the dozens, literally dozens, of people who read my blog.

You want funny?  How about the time I finished a 20 mile run on the Mugar way.  I was wrecked, could hardly walk straight, sweat poring out of me, salt rings staining my clothes and up walks this beautiful woman.  One of the most beautiful women I’ve ever laid eyes on.  So beautiful that as she approaches you swear you heard Etta James sing ‘At Last’ somewhere in the background.  So I take a moment to fix my hair and then remember that I just ran 20 miles.  In heat.  Not even the guys from ‘Queer eye’ could have made me presentable.  I looked like Daffy Duck with his beak shot off.

And she had her boyfriend with her. A girl like this has to have a stud for a boyfriend, right?

WRONG.

He was like 5′ 6″, weighed an emaciated 120, balding with a comb over.  He was carrying two Whole Foods grocery bags for her (so that’s how it is).  How the hell does this chump get a girl like that?  I looked closer, I had to see him, learn his secret.  I looked into his beady little eyes and got my answer.  Because I knew him.  You know him too.  Here’s his picture.

That’s right.  I saw Batman and his girlfriend.  She looked like you’d expect Batman’s girlfriend would look.  He was in town filming ‘the Fighter’.  He won an oscar for playing a drug addict former boxer.  He looked the part.

Chump.

Speaking of actors, you ever see an actor in something and just hate them.  I’ve always thought the guy who played Robin Williams’ son in ‘Birdcage’ was annoying.  I saw him out for a run once.  He’d tripped, fallen, and was rubbing his knee in pain.  Whatever.  Don’t know him, may be nice for all I know, but I hate that guy.

On another eventful Braintree run I cut off a guy trying to park his jeep in his driveway.  The driver honked at me.  I’ll admit now that I was clearly in the wrong, but in the moment flipped him off anyway.  I get horns all the time (most not my fault) and before I can even think out flies my middle finger.  It’s a habit, a defense mechanism.  One time a friend saw me running and gave me friendly ‘hello’ honk.  Out came my middle finger.  I thought it was a driver messing with me.  Whoops.  Thought you were someone else.  Don’t take it personal.

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So yeah, he honks (justified), instinct takes over, the middle finger comes flying out and the driver takes the time to roll down his window and tell me to ‘Go F myself’.

The driver was one Donny Wahlberg.  When I realized what I’d done I stopped, apologized and told him what a big fan I was. ‘Hanging Tough’ is a master work.

Just kidding.  I kept running.

I’ve seen it all… couples fighting in parked cars, kids smoking weed behind their parent’s house (and hiding it like I’m gonna narc them), teenage beer bashes, drug deals, movie stars, movie sets (The Town, Ted, some zoo movie), commercials, car accidents (a car took a dive off a 15 foot bridge and miraculously no one was hurt), trysts, proposals, drug deals (I think), Moose, turtles, coyotes, deer, hunters (never been shot at but my friend Steve Mac has).

All this is just the tip of the iceberg.  I’ve seen things man.  And some people think running is boring.

Don’t believe me?  Sign up for a race, get out on the road, run down some back alleys and short cut paths.  See for yourself.

How to Run fast

Shaquille O’neal once dismissed billionaireDallas Maverick’s owner Mark Cuban saying, ‘He made all his money through luck.’

Mark Cuban’s reply, ‘Shaq’s right.  I am lucky.  But Shaq being 7 feet, 300 lbs, that was planned.’

There are some things you just can’t teach.  You got ’em or you don’t. You can’t teach luck, you can’t teach 7 feet, 300 lbs.

You’ll be surprised at what can be taught though.

And, more importantly, what you can learn.

Too many athletes have an attachment to who they are presently.  They say things like ‘I’m not flexible’, ‘I’m not strong’, or even, gasp, ‘I’m slow’, like they can’t do something about it.

Does this sound like you?

If it does I have some good news.  None of these are permanent afflictions.  You can improve flexibility, strength, even speed.  Look at my Sister Jamie.  She ran her first marathon (in her 20’s) in just under 5 hours (at the time I questioned if we were actually related).  Her latest marathon was in the 3:20’s (definitely related).  She blogged about it.

So how does one make the leap and get fast?

Big question with many, many answers.  There are as many answers to this question as there are races, body types, and athletes.  A fast 100 M dash is different than a fast Marathon.  And since this is a distance running blog I’m going to assume you want to get fast for a mile, 5k or longer.  Since there are hundreds of ways to answer this question I’ll do it over several blog entries in lieu of one overly long post.

We’ll go down the rabbit hole today and talk about interval training.  But first…

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“‘If you do what you have always done then you will be who you have always been.’”

To get fast you have to do something different.

Let’s start with your mindset.  To get faster you have to swallow that red pill and believe you can go faster.

I think we all have the potential to run faster, we just choose not to believe.  Why?  Fear.  You think that running fast hurts (it can).  Logic would indicate that to go faster would hurt more (it can), or for longer (it can).

Beyond that barrier that you have placed in front of yourself, past which pain and suffering eagerly await, there is a little more pain… but mostly what you’ll find there is fear.  You’re running a race, You can handle pain, you can handle fear.

Running rewards pain.  Get over your fear.  Go faster.

Give yourself permission to go faster.

Back to intervals…

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S.A.I.D. principle.  The body Specifically Adapts to Imposed Demands.  If you task your body with performing a certain task it will adapt and improve to perform that specific task more efficiently.  So to run faster you must… run fast.

Deep.  I know.

Running intervals, or running distances shorter than your race distance, but at a faster pace, will make you faster.  So, for instance, if you were training for the mile run you might run tons of 400/800 M repeats.

Take your race, calculate your goal pace, and then design some intervals, shorter than your race distance, that will force you to adapt to running your goal pace.

Why do intervals work?

Your body has three types of muscle fibers:

To run to your potential you must use all three of these muscle fibers.  Your long runs and slow easy jogs develop type 1, Intervals develop 2A and 2B fibers as indicated (right).

A great thing happens when you start to run fast over short distances: your over all running economy improves.  I teach a running interval course.  Early in our workouts I stress going out slow, letting your body warm up and building towards top speed in the final intervals.  Running form during the early, slower intervals is usually sloppy.  These are type 1 intervals.  Spines are rounded, shoulders hunched.  Later in the workout when speed is the emphasis I see a great improvement, despite fatigue.  Digging into these type 2A and 2B fibers sharpens form.  This point is confirmed in Scott Douglas and Pete Pfitzinger’ s excellent book ‘Advanced Marathoning’.  They write ‘Running short repetitions quickly but with relaxed form… may train your muscles to eliminate unnecessary movements and maintain control at fast speeds.’

Based on what I’ve seen consistently I’ll cosign that observation.

‘Move it or lose it.’  My Mother was fond of saying that.  That’s effectively how your brain deals with muscles. If you don’t move them, you lose them.  So if you never run fast, or sprint, these muscle fibers remain undeveloped.  If you do use them your body adapts (S.A.I.D. principle).   These muscles grow stronger and your running improves.  Intervals are the best way I know to engage and recruit type 2a and 2b muscle fibers for distance running.

Pre did intervals. Girls loved Pre. Coincidence?

Your body’s ability to utilize oxygen and fuel will also improve.  When you run fast your body is deprived of oxygen (welcome to anaerobicville, population YOU).  By frequently putting your body into this oxygen deprived state you are asking it to adapt, improve and utilize oxygen and fuel more efficiently.

Simply put- intervals put your body under a certain stress and it adapts to handle that stress efficiently.  This results in faster running, personal bests, getting laid more…

How many and how fast?

That depends on you, your goals, your running age, how much free time you have.

There are so many interval programs out there… you have to read, experiment and track your results.  I’m not so arrogant as to recommend one specific program that will work best for everyone.  I know a few that work well for me.  Will they work for you?  Probably.  Why?  They all work, for about 6 weeks.  You’ll have to keep a running journal to figure which combinations work best.

And then switch up.  Pick another race, try another strategy.  Log your results.

Where can I find some sample workouts?

You can hire a coach and they’ll do all the programming for you.

Runner’s World is forever printing programs that will better your 5k, 10k, marathon.  Every issue.

You can find some really great suggestions in books like ‘The Daniel’s Running Formula‘.  I got into the best shape of my life training with one of the programs in this book.  Just remember that there is not a single interval program that works best with everyone.  Your response to intervals is yours and you should keep a running log to see which types of workouts you respond to best.

There’s any number of books out there by amazing coaches like Lydiard, Daniel’s, Coe.  To get faster is going to take some commitment, so I’d suggest you invest in a book or two and get a handle on what it takes.

Some hard earned advice

• Run intervals that are somewhat close in distance to your race. Running fast 400M repeats will probably not help your marathon time.

• Don’t overdo it. There’s a common belief amongst runners that if 1 is good, and 2 is better, 37 might be best. Stop when you feel like you could do one more really good interval.

• Embrace failure. The point is to take your body to the limit, and then adapt and create a new limit.

• Control your rest during the workout. Don’t take full recovery until you’re in your taper.

• Schedule an easy day before and after your intervals. Allow your body rest so it can adapt.

Intervals will get you faster… to a point. They have their limitations.  Thankfully they are not the only way one can increase their speed, just one of the most effective.  In the coming weeks we’ll look at a few more ways to get fast.

Next up: How I got faster.

After that: lose weight and get fast.

Stay tuned.

The price paid to run fast

‘How do I run faster?’

This is THE question.  The answer is different for everyone.  Some people need more miles, some need less, some need speed, some need strength.  Some need to get out of their head and have fun.

Here’s what I needed:

The world is always speaking to us.

I’ve noticed that the world will tell me not what I want, but exactly what I need to hear.

Over and again.

Unfortunately I’ve often been too stubborn over the years to always hear it clearly, but hindsight being what it is…

I can now not only see the message, but also that it has been consistent.   What, pray tell, does the world share with me when I am humble enough to listen?

That I am not special.

There are special people out there.  People who have been genetically blessed to sing, dance, play, think, act, run.  The LeBron James, Tom Hanks, Bill Gates, Shalane Flanagan and Michael Jacksons of the world.

I wonder what the world tells them.

I am not one of those people.  Not even close.  I’m guessing you aren’t either.

And here we are.

 It took me some time to accept it but I’ve finally heard you World.  Loud and clear.  Whatever I get I have to work for.

I’m not special.

Not even when it comes to running.

My emergence as a fast runner didn’t show up unannounced.  I didn’t outrun older bullies or win my first race; the bullies caught me; the first race was unremarkable.  There was no amazing performance that said ‘Watch out world!  We have a runner here’.  I have scattered memories of placing well in the St. Theclas 1 mile fun run as a kid, of winning the timed mile in gym when no one else was racing.

The sudden emergence of a hidden talent happens to special people, and we’ve already established that is not me.  My story is less entertaining.   I started off pretty good, learned how to get a bit better, put in the work, paid the price to run a little faster, so on, so forth.

And while my years of running and competing have taught me that I’m not special, I do/did possess one thing that can’t be taught: I’m a born runner.  That doesn’t mean I am blessed with an elite runner’s body: I’m not.  I’m too tall and too muscular.

What it means is that I’ve always wanted to run, and to run fast.  I’ve always loved it.  When I was 6 or 7 I ran around my neighborhood (1 mile) just to see if I could do it.  Somewhere in the depths of my Father’s basement you may find my 3rd grade daily journal (Ms. Kirkpatrick’s class) where one day I wrote an entry about how running was special to me.  Some people run to run, some people run because they’re pretty good at it.  I ran/run because on a fundamental level it’s always been part of who I am.

Fast runner or slow, remember this quote: ‘ the race doesn’t always go to the swift, but to those who keep on running.’  That quote explains my success as a runner.  I just keep showing up.

My first brush with running fame came when I broke the indoor mile record for my elementary school.  36 laps around the gym.  Think about that for a moment.  36 laps to a mile.  A gym so small you had to leave the room to change your mind.

I’d run pretty well in the timed mile a few weeks prior and thought my daily paper route constituted a training regimen.  So I set up an attempt at the record with my gym teacher Mr. ‘Finger Spread’ Levangie.  If you went to North Pembroke in the ’80’s you may laugh at that name.

I remember 4 things:

1. being excused from watching Johnny Tremaine on a Friday to make my record attempt.

2. Sprinting lap 36 while Mr. Levangie yelled out ‘finish strong!’

3. Returning to the classroom, holding up one index finger And nodding my head as a way of telling my friend Jason Trotta I had done it.

4. The final memory: Pain. Uncontrollable coughing and wheezing for the remainder of the day.

My reward for setting the record: burning lungs and track hack.  To this day I can still feel how badly it hurt afterward.  Every breath was agony, and I’m not complaining.

The price for being the fastest distance runner in school was easy.  A little bit of talent (nothing special) and the willingness to suffer for 36 laps.  Running is hard, boring work.  A lot of young kids don’t want anything to do with that.  I did.  It made me feel pretty good.

That record fell a year later to a kid named Michael Duclos.  I didn’t have a chance to retake it because I’d switched schools.  I was now the youngest member of varsity track at Thayer Academy as a 6th grader.  I ran the two mile in 12 flat, which was about :20 per mile faster than my record setting 1 mile performance the year before (and faster than Mike’s new record- Ha!).  I was running 4 laps to a mile now, not 36.

The Running Man in 7th grade

I LOVED being on that team.  What’s not to love?  The workouts left me bone tired, my legs were eternally sore and I felt like puking before every race.  Yet somehow, even though I was 12 and running with the high schoolers, I earned a varsity letter when our distance stud, Brian Wilson, dropped out of a race with a lap to go. Instead of coming in 4th out of 7 I squeaked out a point for coming in 3rd.  The world was telling me something that even I wasn’t too deaf to hear:

You belong here.

I dropped my baby fat, leaned up and got really fast that spring; not only over 2 miles but also in sprints.  I was never the fastest guy in Soccer or basketball practice, but after months of 200/400 meter repeats and ladder workouts I was easily winning wind sprints at the end of practice.  That spring I won the St. Theclas fun run.  I out-sprinted 2 Hanover boys over the final 20 yards for my first major victory.

Oh the sweet thrill of victory.  My reward for winning my first big race:  I vomited raisin bran all over the finish line.  The crowd went from elated cheering to disgust in a heartbeat.  In that same heartbeat I learned to never eat raisin bran, or anything with milk, before racing.

The price to win your first local road race was a little higher than the school record.  I trained all spring and ran a ton of intervals and races.  I suffered through stiff hamstrings, and legs that burned with lactic acid for weeks.

I’d gladly pay that price again.

I ran track every spring, improving a bit here and there, until my sophomore year when I fell in love with Cross Country.  Track is fine, but running lap after lap during a cold, damp New England Spring is decidedly less fun than running through the woods of autumn with Harold Hatch as your coach.  I hope that everyone on earth falls in love with someone/something the way I fell for Cross Country.  I can still vividly recall how amazing that first race felt, how fun my coaches were, how much I loved my team and our weekly team dinners and road trips.  When I wasn’t in season I was thinking of next season.

I had an OK first season: broke 17 minutes for 5k, made the All New England prep team.  I was good, but that was not enough.  I was in love.  I needed to be special.  That wasn’t happening by accident.

I laid out my athletic future.  I was going to figure out how to run faster, win my league meet, set my school cross country record and then continue to run in college.  I had 2 years to accomplish all of this.

And being the modest, self assured man you know today I was compelled to tell everyone I knew just that.  I was winning the league and setting the record.  I was quoted in the school paper saying that as a sophomore.

I even  told my coach.  A week later, during the fall awards banquet he had this to say:

‘Steve is an (pause) interesting kid.  He’s got to learn that in order to win he has to outwork everyone.’

It pissed me off to hear that.  I thought he’d mention how great I would be next year, how I have the raw talent to be special, how he was sure one day I’d make good on my promise.

Instead I’m called interesting.  And I have to out work everyone.

I’m not special?

It pissed me off enough that I still remember it.  Vividly.

Best advice I’ve ever received.

Success, you may have learned, is never a straight line.  My junior year summer I stepped up my training from the daily mountain bike trips of the previous year, to actually running.  I ignored my coach’s training plan and just went out for 4 or 5 jogs every week; the longest one was about 7 miles.  I thought this constituted enough training for me to win the league next year.  The world told me every chance that I wasn’t special, but I didn’t hear it clearly enough.

My training was haphazard and disorganized so it should come as no shock that my improvement that fall was tepid.  I made all league (top 5) and ran faster, but not by much.  I hardly improved on my home course (I was still languishing a full minute behind the school record).

If I was going to make good on my promise to win then something was gonna have to happen.

Einstein has a quote that I think is applicable here.

‘Everything is energy and that’s all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics.’

This is an intellectual way of saying that to run with the big boys you’ve got to train like them.  To run faster I had to approach training at a different frequency/energy level.  I wasn’t training to set an elementary school record, or a local fun run.  There were other kids who loved running just as much and I was not special.  I had to outwork everyone.  I didn’t exactly know what that meant yet.

My lack of a major breakthrough was partially due to me not training hard enough the previous summer, and partially because I was a late bloomer.  I was tall, skinny, and not too muscular.  That summer I filled out a bit, and even began shaving (two, sometimes three times a month!).  I was seeing results from the weight room for the first time.  My body was ready for a change.

All I cared about was getting faster.  I wasn’t dropping a minute to set the school record.  I set my eyes on cracking the top 5 of my school’s fastest times and winning my league championship.  The school record (15:45) was about a minute faster than I’d run (16:39) to that point, so I focused on getting :30 faster.  16:10 seemed unspeakably fast to me at the time, but I lied to myself every day and said I could do it.

If you sit still and watch a friend walk away for :30 seconds you’ll see your friend get pretty far away.  Now imagine they’re running.

I had my work cut out.

If I accomplished these goals I could run in college somewhere, I thought.

That summer the towns of Pembroke and Duxbury cleaned up the edges of route 53.  No more pot holes, broken crags of concrete, overgrown edges, or shards of broken glass.  They manicured that roadside into a dirt berm that was packed hard enough that I wouldn’t lose speed running on it, soft enough to save me from smashing my shins and tendons to bits as I upped my mileage.  Looking back, it was fate.  That was the summer I learned to run fast and this was the perfect surface to do it on.

I piled on the miles.  This time I memorized the simple running plan Coach Hatch had tucked into the back page of an orange fall Cross Country packet.   Increase your mileage by no more than 10% a week, make sure you ran long once a week (20-25% of weeks miles in one shot), get that long run up over 10 miles, and in August start adding a weekly monster workout.  Something like 4 x 1 mile repeats.

Build a big base for the upcoming season. Whittle it down to a sharpened peak by November.  Simple works.

I stuck to that plan.  I ran that long stretch of rt 53 so many times that I remembered every pot hole, hill, intersection, driveway and store along the way.  I did it on 90 degree days, and even a couple 100 degree days.  Neighbors and friends would constantly greet me with ‘I saw you out running.’  I ran a specially designed 12 mile course twice a week because it felt good.

August came and I started my Monster workouts.  I drove to the track behind Silver Lake high school and ran a timed mile in 5:15. It felt easy.  I rested and then ran another in 5:18.  Then 5:25, then 5:30.

‘Maybe I can run in college,’ I thought as I walked back to the car.  I hope that you, dear reader, feel that same sense of accomplishment and hope that I got from that workout.

The best coach ever. Unanimous.

That season was magic.  The training/maturity catapulted me into a different league.  I placed 5th in an early all state meet (thought I had it with a mile left), I accidentally ran a 4:25 (PR) mile in the first mile of a 5k (whoops), I won my league title, and on a perfect October day I scored a huge PR on the home course, running a school record 15:43 (almost a full minute faster).

I had the best mentor/coach you could ever ask for.  You don’t become your fastest self without someone dragging part of it out of you.  Harold Hatch was a math teacher and Cross Country/track coach.  At his retirement party, surrounded by loving students, family and appreciative parents it crossed my mind that he was the richest man I’ve ever met

The Boston Globe and Patriot Ledger were my local newspapers growing up.  Every season they’d choose their all scholastic athletes in every sport.  I dreamed one day I’d be good enough at something to be selected, but realistically, I never thought it would be me.  I’m glad I was wrong.

  I looked at those kids year after year and thoight these guys/girls were heroes.  I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve struggled with self esteem- All scholastic gave me a lot of confidence.  Still does.

The price for being a high school all star was steeper.  40 miles a week, harder workouts, running in all weather, filling out a training log and finding the right mentor.

Years later when Coach Hatch, was inducted into our High school athletic hall of fame with his son Mark (3 time league champ), someone passed me a sheet of bright orange paper.  ‘Remember this?’  On it was Coach Hatch’s summer training plan.  Holding it in my hands I was overcome.  I literally burst into tears at the sight of it.   Why?  Because I have what you can’t teach.  I define myself by how I run.

That sheet of orange paper changed the definition.

I enrolled at Bowdoin College in the fall.  I was in the top 10% of my graduating class GPA, I was captain of two teams, I was president of the student council.  In the words of Kanye West ‘Ya can’t tell me nothin’.

I thought I was hot shit that fall.  I thought maybe I was special.

I’d quickly discover how wrong I was.

There I was, sitting in an auditorium with my new classmates during freshmen orientation and the dean was giving us the rundown on our class.

• 90% of you were in the top 10% of your graduating class.

• 80% of you were a sports captain.

• 60% of you were involved in student government.

There were three other classes full of similar students enrolled already.  Translation- you’re  not special.

The same lesson was taught in running.  You think you’re hot stuff because you were all league this, or all state that?  Well, get on the start line of any collegiate race and look to your left and right.  Everybody on that line with you was all state, all league, all world.  Every one.

My freshman year I got demolished.  Sophomore year I trained I stepped up my training.  I ran hard every day, took NO days off and ran myself into the ground.  Runners knee, then shin splints, then a sprained ankle, then a cortisone shot.  It crossed my mind more than once that maybe I was just a good high school runner.  I thought about quitting.

Thankfully I have what you can’t teach: I’m a born runner.

The race doesn’t always go to the swift…

Serious injury happens to every runner.  If you can push through them you can truly say that you love running.

Training more with a vague plan wasn’t enough to win in college.  So junior year I smartly, seriously, and cautiously upped my mileage.  I ran more than ever before but was careful to schedule in rest and stretch a little.

Match the frequency of the reality you want.

I read a bunch of books about training to understand why I was training a certain way.  I took 6 months to build up my base mileage the right way.  I learned to listen to my body, had my first deep tissue sports massages (the most painful hour of my life).  I got a job at Marathon Sports and befriended a few runners who were much, much faster than I.  I learned a lot from them, more than I could share here.  I’m eternally grateful to Ashley Johnson and Dave Menoski for their mentorship.  The main thing they taught me:

• If you’re looking to improve and you’re the fastest person on your team or in your group, find a new team/group.

When I returned to college I dropped over 100 seconds off my best freshman time, won a few conference titles and even made the All American team twice.

I won the Hingham 4th of July road race (over 4,000 people) training through it.

I was named Outstanding Athlete of my graduating class.  Joan Benoit Samuelson gave me the award (Joan is special and outworks everyone.  I just outwork most people).

The price to be a collegiate star was full immersion into running as an identity.  Just running more, though crucial, will only get you so far (fast).  To get better at this level you have to be more disciplined, more intelligent, you’ve got to listen to your body, and train/learn from those who are better than you.  You have to put in 70 to 100 miles a week for most of the year.  Run in the rain, blizzards, extreme heat.  It’s more fun than it sounds.

If your ego can’t take losing, or failing then you’re running to reaffirm your idea of how good you are, not running to improve.  You won’t reach your potential without getting your ass kicked.

You’re not special.

I think you have to get seriously hurt at least once to find out if you love it enough to come back.  It’s the Running God’s way of making sure you want it.  How many faster, more gifted runners did I outlast because they were only good when it was easy?

The race doesn’t always go to the swift.

So you want to get fast? You don’t have to be especially talented.  He’ll, all it takes is one thing:

You’ve got to decide that you’re a born runner.

Call yourself a runner.  Think about it every day.  Run more miles than ever, run them faster than you thought you could, run with people who are better than you, get your ass kicked, learn in defeat, return the favor, get hurt, come back, learn from mistakes, puke at the finish line, bake on summer long runs, freeze on winter ones.

Decide you’re a born runner.  Keep on running.

Do it long enough and eventually the world will confirm it.

That (plus more) is the price you gotta pay to get fast.

It is worth every cent.

Merry Xmas

‘God has given me the ability. The rest is up to me. Believe. Believe. Believe. ‘  – Billy Mills

I’m so frustrated.  I want to grab you by the shoulders and shake you.

YOU ARE FASTER THAN YOU THINK!

You want to make this more complicated than it is.  You want to believe you need months of running splits at 80% max heart rate; that eating certain food will aid oxygen metabolization; that your training has to be perfect.

Maybe this attention to detail will be the key to a PR if you’re in the Nike project.   Otherwise SHUT UP!

Running faster is easy.  It’s simple.  But first…

And then…

YOU HAVE TO BELIEVE.

Believe in yourself.

Believe that it’s simple.

And mostly believe that you can.

For 99.9% of people here is the Running Man’s speed recipe:

Run more.

Run race appropriate intervals once or twice a week.

Run with people who are faster than you.

If you are the fastest person in your running group and are intent on improving, find a new group.

And scene…

Stop thinking it’s the shoes, or the recovery intervals, or the race day conditions.

Stop thinking that past performances predict today’s.  I’ve seen people chop minutes off a PR in a single race.

MINUTES.

Someone with less talent than you has ignored all the little details and come out on top.

GET OUT OF YOUR HEAD AND INTO YOUR HEART.

My best times came not when I hoped I would run fast, but when I refused to accept any other result.

There’s a story of an ’80’s Christmas basketball game between the Boston Celtics and Indiana Pacers.

Before the game, Larry Bird told Pacers star Chuck ‘the Rifleman’ Person he had a Christmas present for him. During the game, Bird shot a 3-pointer, turned, looked at Person (sitting on the bench) and said “Merry Fucking Christmas.” He ran back down the court as the shot went in.

That’s the attitude you need to get fast.

Get mad.

Get certain (BELIEVE).

Now get out of your head.  Do it.

This is your year.

Merry Fucking Christmas everyone.

Jesse Besset finishes his first rainy trail loop (above).  His first words to me afterward are ‘You’re gonna need trail shoes.’

His face is sober.  Serious.  His body splattered head to toe with mud.

The Ragnar trail relay was delayed 2 hours for lightning.  The accompanying rain turned the Mountain trails into mud and slush pits.  The grass is slick, the rocks are slippery and the mud will suck your shoes and socks off.  All I had to run in were two pairs of Nike frees.  Good shoes for roads or dry trails, a liability in these conditions.

Jesse’s words scared me right into the Salomon trail shoe tent.  ‘What size are you?’ the guy asked.

’13.’

You know what they say about guys with big feet?

‘Let me see what I have.’

They don’t carry much in our size.

‘All I got is this one pair.’

I try them on. The bottoms have grip, the soles are stiff.  They are a lot tougher than my Nikes.  Beggars can’t be choosers.

‘Let’s do this.’

An hour later I’m waiting in the transition area.  It’s pitch dark.  I wear a headlamp.  To my right the course cuts steeply into Ascutney’s mountain bike ridge.

New shoes, pitch black, 10 pm, mud, wind, rain, hills and trails!  This was gonna be special.

Why is that before every race, every important run I suddenly feel like I’ve never run a race before in my life, or like I’ve completely forgotten to run?

My friend Pete shuffles up the finishing chute looking like a soldier returning from the front. He’s covered in mud.  Hands covered.  Legs covered.  Arms covered.  I’m not sure what color his shirt was when he left, but now it’s mud.  He looks a little defeated.

‘Hope you’re wearing skates,’ he says and hands me our team bib.  ‘I slipped at least a dozen times.’

He waits a moment, mutters ‘Fuck,’ and then walks off to clean up.

Yep.  This was gonna be special.

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I’ve run with .5 inch spikes through the mud and muck of New England Cross Country but I’ve never seen conditions quite like this.  Only 7.5 miles to go.  Through the mountain woods.  In the dark.

I leave the transition area.  I’m following the red trail.  There are dozens of glowing red arrows lighting my way.  I’m in no rush.  Someone passes me in the first 100 yards.  This is a first for me at a Ragnar event.  I’ve never been passed.  I give chase until I see someone lose their feet and smash down into the mud.

‘Fuck it.  Let him go.’

He peels off and runs down the green trail.  I charge up the red trail, through a series of switchbacks where I see no fewer than 4 people lose their feet and fall into the mud.  There will be blood.

No more giving chase.  Just stay on your feet.

But now I’m charging along.  I’m buzzed.  I’m learning the rules.  I can spot the good footholds, the ditches, the mud pits, the ankle breaking roots.  My new Salomon shoes are a God send.  They grip the mud and dirt like fly paper but are nimble enough to step over obstacles. Everyone else is walking.

Me?  Flying.  I know I’m running too fast but it feels effortless.  I trot around switchbacks, gallop up hills and around slush filled corners.  I have never been more alive than right now.  At one point I run straight down a steep slope into a roaring stream that washes up over my shins.  My socks don’t even get wet.

Salomon trail shoes- they are the shit.

I let out a war whoop!  ‘I live for this shit.’

And then I’m running up hill. Straight up. Forever.  This hill will not stop.  Finally I reach the top and see three or four people gathered around a wounded runner.  He’s holding his ankle.  Probably a casualty of some rock, root or ditch.  Maybe all three.

A reminder- this is the real deal.  One wrong step can break an ankle.

Do I slow down?  Nope.

Why?  Because I’m stupid.

Fog comes with rain.  I’m at the halfway point.  I’ve climbed to the top of the mountain ridge.  I can hardly see three feet in front of me through the haze.  All I can control is the next step.  There’s no solid ground.  My quads are barking at me.  My back reminds me I’m not 19 anymore.  My stride is short. I have to choose between bad and worse footing.  Several times I slip, maintain my balance, and slip again.  Somehow I keep my feet.  The trail disappears, washes away off a steep incline into a roaring stream below.  I make my own trail.

All I’ve done is go up.  I’m waiting for it.  There’s going to be a huge downhill.  You know what’s worse than running up a slippery slope?  Running back down it.  When you run downhill you naturally sit back, lead with your heels, slow yourself down so you don’t lose control.

Lean too far back on slick ground and you’re gonna fall flat on your ass.  On a steep hill you’ll slide for a bit.

‘Hope you brought your skates.’  Thanks Pete.

There are perfect downhills though.  Juuuuust the right slope.  You lean into the hill then, stay on your toes, pick up speed and let gravity take you.  A controlled fall is what Ed Eyestone called it once upon a time.  Those hills are rare.  Whatever is coming will be steep and merciless on my quads.  Until I lean back too far and crash onto my ass.

I turn a corner and there’s a sign lighting my way.  ‘Look right, look left.  Enjoy the view.’  I’ve left the fog but it is still pitch black.  I’m in a meadow with a grass trail shooting down the center.  The flattened grass trail glows white under my headlamp.  I’m fairly certain that there is tall grass on either side of the trail.  Beyond that I can’t see a thing.

Just flat grass extending down… into infinity.

It’s probably 11 pm.  I’m by myself.  Middle of the mountains.  No one else is with me.

The slope of the hill is perfect.  I lean in, cautious.  I can’t build up too much steam in case the trail ends abruptly.  I know what a 6 minute mile feels like.  I’m running faster.  I could pore it on but I just know there’s a mud patch or a ditch waiting for me.  A quarter mile passes.  Nothing but smooth grass and downhill running.  I lean forward and shorten my stride.  I know what a 5 minute mile feels like.  This is faster.  I trust the hill and lean in.

The moment leaves me in awe.  I think about life.  I think about my High school Cross Country Coach.  He’s been gone for 4 years.  He would have LOVED this.  I miss him terribly in that moment but know he’s with me in spirit, racing ahead of me down the grass.  I wish I could document it.  Film it, photograph it, share it on insta.  But that would mean I have to stop and this is a moment.  I have to be present.  Drink it in.

And then the bottom.  The grass becomes a gravel driveway.  There’s another runner ahead.  I see his headlamp as I approach him, then pass him.  I’ve just run the most amazing mile of my life and I need to share it with this guy.

‘Great job,’he says.

‘When I die, I want to come back as me so I can experience that last mile again,’ I answer.

I seriously think about turning around, running back up the hill and doing it again.  But this is a moment.  Try as I might I’ll never recreate it.  All I can do is be thankful I was there in the first place.

The best mile of my life happened at Ragnar Trail Vt.  8/3/18

5 keys to great running form

How’s my running form?

Just like 12 musical notes can create an infinite number of songs, the infinite variables in your running stride (height, hip height, joint mobility, muscle length) combine to give you a stride unlike any other.

You’re unique.  You’re special.  No one runs quite like you.  Honestly.

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Thankfully though there are some commonalities to good running form; so no matter how much your stride resembles a cat playing a piano right now, we can tighten things up and get that piano in tune.  Let’s take it from The top.

First let’s establish a definition of good running form.  These are my 5 basic bullet points.

1. Around 90 strides a minute (on one leg).

2. Foot lands softly underneath you and propels you forward.

3. You run quietly.

4. Stride is basically circular (legs recreate the wheel).

5. You run tall.

Cover those bases and you’re in good shape.  Here’s why:

1- 90 strides a minute

I taught a running class at a local gym.  I’d begin each class like this:

‘Alright everybody, we’re going to do a :10 stride count.  When I say go I want you to count how many times your right foot strikes.’

Aaaaand Go.

We’d count.

I didn’t tell anyone how many strides they should be shooting for.  I wanted them to run naturally, not perform for the sake of the drill.

What did I learn?

Most people would count out about 15 strides.

15 strides in :10 (x 6)= 90 strides a minute.

90 strides a minute (one leg)= solid running form.

Wait a second!  You said earlier that people have different leg lengths…

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Different hip heights…

Some people over-pronate.  Some under-pronate…

How is 90 strides a minute going to cover all of these different body types?

Because Jack Daniel’s said so.

Not thaaaat Jack Daniels.

Legendary running coach Jack Daniels.

Who is that Jack Daniels?

Only the author of my favorite book on training runners.  The Daniel’s Running Formula is a great book that every serious/moderately serious runner should read.  I used the program in the back of this book back in college to get into the best shape of my life.

Here’s what he wrote about 90 strides a minute (It’s so good I’ll just quote it):

“During the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, my wife and I spent every day of the running events counting different runners’ stride frequency, often several times for the same runner, during prelims and finals and also early and late in the same race. In all we examined about 50 runners, both male and female and in events from the 800 to the marathon. Of all the runners evaluated, only one took fewer than 180 steps per minute…

In our lab one time, I tested an Olympic gold medalist in the marathon. At a 7-minute-per-mile pace, the rate was 184; at a 6-minute pace, it moved up to 186; and at a 5-minute pace, it moved up to 190. This represented a 16.5 percent increase in running speed and a 3 percent increase in rate. It is quite clear that runners seem most comfortable with a particular rhythm, and that rhythm varies little as they change stride length to increase speed during different races…

Solid running form means your foot strikes underneath you.  One reason I strongly emphasize trying to run with a stride rate around 180 steps per minute is to minimize the landing shock associated with running. Keep in mind that the slower the leg turnover, the more time you are spending in the air; the more time you spend in the air, the higher you are elevating your body mass; and the higher you elevate body mass, the harder you hit the ground on the next landing. Believe me, it is during the impact associated with hitting the ground that many little injuries occur.’

This is why we also want to (2) Run Softly.

The harder your feet strike the floor the louder the noise they will make.  That’s why we want to (3) Run Quietly.  2 and 3 are different sides to the same coin.

I did a whole blog (link here) on how running on the treadmill can effectively diagnose an inefficient stride.  How?  Because the treadmill will amplify a LOUD footfall.  You can hear bad running form on a treadmill.

More words from Dr. Jack on efficient strides:

‘So, how do you minimize landing shock when running? A simple way of explaining it is to pretend you are rolling over the ground rather than bounding from foot to foot. Try to avoid placing each foot out in front of yourself, which often acts as a breaking action, increasing the impact force as you go from one foot to the other. Try to have your feet land closer back, toward your center of gravity, so your body is floating (or rolling) over your feet. you and propels you forward.  Usually this happens when you run at 90 strides or more.’

 The runner on the left side is putting on the breaks.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way- there is nothing wrong with more than 90 strides a minute.

There is nothing wrong with fewer than 90 strides.

I taught this class for about 18 months, and in the time I only had 3 people who were consistently under 90.  The lowest recorded was 84, and he was arguably the 2nd fastest guy to take the class.

Like I said- you should be around 90.  A little less, a little more, you’ll be okay.

But if you’re around 90 and hitting the ground HARD.

Or LOUD.

Then shorten your stride, spend less time in the air and run lighter.  Run quieter.

I would often secretly count runner’s strides during class, when they weren’t aware that I was counting.  This would give me a more authentic stride count because the minute I tell people to count strides they focus and (I thought) performed a little.

Asking them to count, I thought, is like telling someone to act natural.

Turns out I was wrong.  If you ran 90 while you were ‘acting natural’ you usually ran 90 while just running (not overthinking it).

Moving on (4) An efficient running stride resembles a wheel.

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This is logical.  The wheel is, according to physics, the most efficient way to move forward.

I’ll never forget being in a Z Health seminar being led by Dr. Eric Cobb (he’s up there with Jack Daniels on my list of fitness giants) where he said something that has stuck with me (I’m paraphrasing below):

‘To understand great movement I studied the movement of athletes who performed at the top of their sports for over ten years.’

Why only the best athletes?  Because to play at the top level, you must move well.

Why ten years of performance?  Because longevity is further proof that they are moving efficiently.

So he only looked at the best of the best.

And what did he find?

That great athletes move in arches, not angles.

From the R phase manual:

‘look for arches vs. angles in the human body.  Curving arches or arcs of motion that engage all the joints of the moving area are efficient.  Angles, on the other hand, usually indicate a loss of mobility in a joint or in a series of joints that are important to the motion.’

Arches (like wheels and circles).  Fluid.  Efficient.  Not wearing down on the joints or muscles with injury or inefficiency.  This is how the best athletes move.

Here’s a life lesson for you: Mimic the best whenever you can.  I know I’ll never run like Bolt, or Pre, or Rupp, but I should at least aspire to run like them.  So should you.

And that brings us to (5) Run tall.

Most people run efficiently early on (hence the good stride count on just about every runner).

And then fatigue happens.

And fatigue leads to threat posture.

Threat Posture

And threat posture leads to bad form.

What’s threat posture (left)?

It starts with fatigue.  When you tire you get stressed out.  When your body experiences stress 2 things will happen:

1. Your body flexes.

2. Your body adducts.

My Dad woulda caught it.

In plain speak: your shoulders and hips round forward and in.  Your body seeks out the fetal position. Hard parts protect soft parts. the runner above illustrates threat posture, as do the fans below (except for the 2 Father of the year candidates on the bottom left) is in threat posture.

This is your body’s reaction to physical and mental stress.  Flexion (folding at the hips) and adduction (shoulders and legs round in).  You instinctively cover your most important parts (face, brain, heart) with some of your hardest parts.

You can’t run efficiently when in this posture.  The head drops, shoulders round forward, the spine sags, and the hips tighten (so you run with your butt sticking out).  You tire and you lose your powerful posture.

Let’s run tall instead.  The taller you run the less you inhibit your own stride.  Your movement is free and fluid.

This TED talk illustrates how our posture dictates our attitude.  If we create great posture then our attitude will follow suit.

Run tall.  Shoulders back, hips tucked under you.  Think positive, and when your mindset starts to slip, fix your posture.  

When your posture starts to slip, fix your mindset.

And  now that you know all of that, what next?

Alright.  It’s one of those beautiful days, not a cloud in the sky, the air is crisp, the thermometer is in the magic zone between 50 and 65.  Your gear is on.  You are swearing to yourself that today you’re going to run with the best form?  This time you’re going to do it all right.  You’re gonna run tall, and quiet, and soft.

But then you get distracted by your watch, you get thirsty, or you stop to check for traffic.

You stop thinking about your running form.

And then you remember :10 minutes later that you were going to focus on form.  Shit!  Refocus!

And then you see a cute runner, or a funny shaped cloud, or you wonder how far you’ve gone.  Another :10 goes by and you haven’t focused on your form.

I’ve forgotten more info about good running form than most people care to read and sometimes my form still sucks.  Because let’s face it: you get tired, distracted, you run on uneven surfaces, or you get a calf cramp.  All of that knowledge goes out the window because realistically you can’t focus on running form for more than 100 meters.  I’ve tried.  So what do we do then?

1- You know the basics now.  Schedule some form checks.  Every time your watch clicks off a mile focus on the 5 bullet points for as long as you can.  Then don’t worry about it.

I’ll often do a stride count when I’m struggling.

2- Run a lot.  I talk a lot about the SAID principle, i.e. the body Specifically Adapts to Imposed Demands.  By running more you force your body to adapt to running more.  You will become a more efficient runner by running more.

Rocket science this is not.

3- Run fast.  SAID principle back in action.  Fast running must be efficient.  Speed doesn’t allow for poor mechanics.  Speed streamlines everything.  Your body is pretty smart- it will iron out many of your inefficiencies when tasked with running fast.

Schedule in some interval training or hill runs.  The more you do this the more your body will adapt to make you faster (SAID principle).  These intervals don’t have to be long.

4- Mobilize your joints.  Jammed joints create global weakness and instability.  One day I’ll do an entire blog on this, but for now trust me when I say that opening your joints is important and not that difficult to do.  Most important is to open up the joints in your feet.  Here’s a short video I did on opening them up:

And finally attitude creates posture and posture creates attitude.  So…

5- RUN TALL

You know why.

When you have tall posture you feel great.

When you feel great you run great.

But seriously… sometimes running sucks.  When it sucks you’ve got to get tough.  Don’t grit your teeth or punch your chest or other stuff that is stereotypically “tough”.

The toughest thing you can do is remain upbeat and positive when you don’t want to.

Remember that life is great.

You’re not running for your life.

You’re running for a goal!  Or to keep yourself fit.  Or to manage your stress.

I know, I know, I know… running can be a challenge.

And boring.

But every now and then you take a deep breath.  Have a look around.  Enjoy the view.

You may just find yourself standing a little taller, light on your feet (quiet), with an elliptical stride (90/min).

And in that moment you may ask yourself, ‘How great is it to be me?’

Catch the Leader

One of my favorite running stories goes like this:

The setting:  a track race.  A coach watches from the infield.

His runner passes.

Something is wrong.  The runner is far off the lead.  Things aren’t going well.

‘I want to quit,’ the runner informs him.

‘That’s fine.  Catch the leader, then you can quit,’ he responds.

The runner catches the leader.

And then catches fire.  Wins the race.

The lesson: never give up.

The other lesson: sometimes a change of goals, even mid race (mid life), can drastically change your outcome.

I read that Meb Keflezghi has four tiered goals when he runs.  The first tier when you’re Meb is to win.  But hey, shit happens.  So much can go wrong in a marathon (a life).   If it doesn’t look good he adjusts expectations and focuses on the next tier.  Sometimes he catches the leader.  Sometimes he shifts to tier 3.  Or 4.

Success ain’t a straight line.  And winning all the time is fascist.

Sometimes when I run I feel like I need eight tiers (did I mention I just turned 40).

Next time you pick a race write down 4 goals.  Or 8.

Go like hell.

And when things get difficult you know what my advice is:

‘Catch the fucking leader!’

Plantar Fasciitis sucks

You remember the commercial:

‘The best part of waking up… is Folgers in your cup.’

Debatable.

I’ll tell you what the worst part of waking up is though: Waking up with plantar fasciitis.

Those first few steps out of bed are agony.  Like you are stepping on tacks.  Or glass.  Or hot coals.

That pain isn’t limited to the first steps out of bed either.  The first few steps after any extended period of time spent off your feet are pure agony.  Let’s have a look at what’s going on.

What is the plantar fascia?

A sheet of connective tissue that runs from heel to just shy of your toes.  Think of your arch as a bow.  The PF is the bow string.

What is plantar fasciitis?

PF is a condition that accounts for roughly 10% of all running injuries.  And since all runners are basically just biding time between injuries chances are you’ll eventually wake up one morning and feel like you’re walking on broken glass for about 10 steps.

From wikipedia:  Plantar fasciitis is a disorder of the insertion site of the ligament on the bone characterized by micro tears, breakdown of collagen, and scarring.

In plain English: You’ve been running a lot lately and your heel hurts like holy hell for the first 10-20 steps in the morning.

Is this you?  Sounds like you’ve got PF.

PF isn’t inflammation of the fascia but rather necrosis (tissue death).  This is caused because…

• your foot is too flexible and the PF gets overstretched.

• your foot is too rigid and the PF absorbs too much bodyweight too soon. Remember that runners land with forces off up to 6 times their bodyweight. (It’s a wonder we can run at all.)

• you have bone spurs.

• you have tight calves.

• Lots of time on your feet.

• Being overweight.

Have I ever had plantar fasciitis?

As a matter of fact I did.

I had plantar fasciitis for 3 straight summers.  It would bug me from around June until September, and then mysteriously disappear by October.  After 3 summers or waking up with intense foot pain I asked myself what was it that I was doing differently in the summer.

• Was it the heat?

• Was it more miles or time spent on my feet?

• Was I wearing something during the summer that I didn’t wear in the fall?

• Was there a moment where I injured my feet?

The good news was that the pain was in both feet which means the pain wasn’t the result of an accident or a single traumatic event.

Running injury rule of thumb:  Pain in two legs= good.  Pain in one leg= see your Doctor.

When both feet hurt equally you can breath easy.  You probably don’t need to see the Doc, just make one or two small changes and you’re good to go.

The fact that it came and went with the season suggested there was something I was doing during that time.

Like wearing sandals.

During the summer I wore sandals everywhere.  I began wearing them in June, put them away in late September.  The dates matched up with my foot pain.  I ditched the sandals (Never again!) and I have not had plantar fasciitis since.  Problem solved.

What about wearing sandals caused Plantar Fasciitis?

My theory, and I’m not a doctor, is that to keep the sandals on my feet I was curling my toes into the forefoot.  My arch was always flexed.  The fascia was under too much strain.

Hopefully we just figured out what is going on with your foot.  You just ditched an old pair of heels or a crummy pair of sandals.  Give it a few weeks.

But if you’re still in pain let’s look at three more things you can do to alleviate ‘the worst part of waking up’ and keep you moving.

Remember- I am not a doctor.  I’m just a guy who’s had every running injury ever (sometimes more than once) and I’m here to share some things that didn’t necessarily fix me, but allowed me to at least keep moving.

What I share below may fix you (no promises), but none of it will make you worse.

The best fix for any injury:  R.I.C.E.  Rest.  Ice. Compression.  Elevation.  It ain’t sexy, but start with that.

Then…

1- Get 2 or 3 golf balls- STAT!

The first thing to do when you come up against plantar fasciitis is to grab a few golf balls.

Now take one of them and put it next to your bed.

Take another and put it next to your desk at work.

Carry a third one in your purse or your backpack.

(If golf balls are too hard you can use tennis balls instead).

Your  PF usually bitches at you when you stand after having been off your feet for a while.

So let’s skip the painful steps and warm up/knead out that PF before we put any weight on the feet and get that stabbing pain sensation.

Roll the golf ball under your foot and stimulate that tissue.  Wake it up.

I’m not going to lie to you- it’s gonna hurt a bit; but nowhere near as much as those first few steps in the AM.

Why does this work?

I used to tell people that the golf ball was grinding up the scar tissue.  If that analogy works for you- cool. Keep on thinking that.  Realistically your stimulating blood flow to the affected area and are waking up the tissue around the fascia.

If you don’t feel better after doing this you may try freezing the golf ball before (cold massage).

2- Voodoo floss Baby!

Let’s stimulate some blood flow into the affected area.

Wrap your affected foot in voodoo floss, create a tourniquet, move the fascia through the tourniquet, peel  off the wrap and voila.  Instant relief.

How does voodoo floss work?

Simple.  Voodoo.  Shamans.  Hexes.

Seriously though… I did an entire blog on this.  

Here’s a short video on how to floss the plantar fascia.  Enjoy:

The bad news: Every time I’ve used voodoo floss on a chronically injured person it works GREAT in the moment.  Pain goes away, range of motion increases and people give me a ‘WOW!’ look.

Fast forward to our next appointment; I’m ready to re-apply the voodoo and their hands go up.

‘Hey, that stuff felt great in the moment, but…

‘when I got home…’ or

‘the next morning…’

‘There was pain.  Let’s hold off.’

If the injury is somewhat new I’ve never had a problem using voodoo floss.  But chronic sufferers often have an adverse reaction to the voodoo later on.

3- Warm up your feet and your calves

First things first: when I say warm up I DO NOT mean stretch.

From NSCA.com:

‘Although well-designed warm-up procedures can enhance athletic performance, reduce the risk of injury, and lessen the potential for muscle soreness after exercise (1,21,26), it is important to realize that warming up and stretching are two different activities. A warm-up consists of preparatory activities and functionally based movements that are specifically designed to prepare the body for exercise or sport. In contrast, the primary goal of stretching is to enhance flexibility.’

Running injury rule of thumb: Warm up your muscles, don’t stretch them.

Stretching before your muscles are warmed up can be harmful.  So move before, and stretch after you have a sweat going or have run a mile or two.

How many times have I come across clients/runners who ‘stretch first thing in the morning’?  This is bad.  Why?  Because in the morning your muscles are cold and brittle, like a chocolate bar you’ve kept in the fridge.  If you try to stretch it will snap.  Like in the commercials:

HuffPost is a Pulitzer Prize-winning source of breaking news, features, and entertainment, as well as a highly engaged community for opinion and conversation.

But if you leave that candy bar out in the sun, in the heat, it will warm up, get pliable and move fluidly.  Like in the commercials.

So warm up- then stretch.

Warming up can be walking, jogging, yoga, foam rolling.  A good warm up will “increase blood flow to active muscles, raising core body temperature, enhancing metabolic reactions, and improving joint range of motion. These effects can boost athletic performance by enhancing oxygen delivery, increasing the speed of nerve-impulse transmissions, improving rate of force development, and maximizing strength and power.”

In plain English: a good warm up makes your muscles like warm Lava cake.  Or at least a gooey candy bar (No gifs for that- believe me I checked).

What constitutes a warm up to help with plantar fasciitis?  I’m sensing a rant coming…

Start Rant.

We take our feet for granted.  We stand on our feet.  We run on our feet.  We shove them into sneakers, heels, sandals.

Do we ever warm them up?

One of the things I’ve learned about running injuries is that tension/pain refer out.  The pain is a symptom of something being tight or weak somewhere (usually 1 joint) higher or lower in the kinetic chain.

Running injury rule of thumb:  Tension/pain/dysfunction refer out.

For runners the problem usually lies lower.  In the feet.  The most violent thing runners do day in and day out is run.  Think about it- you’re smashing down onto your feet at several times your body weight for thousands of steps.

End rant.

But Running Man, you say, how do I warm up my feet?

Well I just so happen to have collected a few of the foot and ankle stretches that have helped me greatly over the years.  Give this video a watch.  Then try each of the drills for a week or two.  If you find your pain has abated or improved then incorporate parts of or all of this into your warm up.

With warm ups we’re searching for the minimal effective dose.  You don’t need to warm up for hours or even minutes.  No need to do every drill in the video every day (though it wouldn’t hurt).  Find the drills that warm you up best, do them and move on.

Warm ups should extend to your calves.  This DOES NOT mean immediately stretching your calves.

Remember- cold candy bars.

Foam rolling is something you can do to cold muscles.  So let’s roll out the calves.  Try this:

And this:

One more thing: your plantar fascia didn’t go from being pain free to hurting overnight.  It won’t fix itself overnight either.

And finally lets try a dynamic warm up.  Some easy drills and movements you can do to warm up the calves.

Exxagerated heel to toe walks.

Inchworms

So now that you have a long list of warm up movements try some out.  Note which ones allow you to run best and then repeat, repeat, repeat.  Do these drills until you have affected a change in your body and you no longer halve to.

Running Injury Rule of thumb: While some pain can be ‘fixed’ at the speed of the nervous system most recovery takes longer.  You are what you consistently do.

So take care of yourself.  Consistently.  Warm up.  Roll out.  Floss.  Mobilize.  and finally, at the end… stretch.  Streamline your routine.  Notice what works.  Repeat it, not just for a day but for weeks.  A friend of mine gave me a great quote about the human body:

‘Amazing design, but should come with a thirty year warranty.’

You have an amazing machine at your disposal but it is prone to break down.  Warming up is the cost to extend your warranty.

5x5x5x5x5

‘If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing every day.’

I’m getting ripped this summer.

This is the simplest exercise plan ever.  I inadvertently created it when I misread an exercise plan from another trainer.  It still worked.  And it’s easy.

Here’s the program:

Number of exercises: 5.

Sets/reps: 5 sets of 5 reps.

Days per week: 5 days.

Weeks: You guessed it: 5.

Which 5 exercises?  Well here is where you and I may differ.  I fell off my bike last week and my left leg looks like this:

Believe it or not it gets worse the farther up my leg it goes.  The leg is stiff and still hurts after a week.  I’m thinking I may have to amputate.

So while my leg heals I’m sticking with upper body exercises (not bc I’m allergic to leg day). And since I’m an in home trainer I will strictly be doing exercises that can be performed in the comfort of my own home.  I would suggest you add a squat or lunge in place of one of my chosen exercises.

So here we go.  My 5 exercises:

1. Pushups

2. Rows

3. overhead Press

4. Bird Dogs

5. Dead bugs

And that’s it.  Seems too simple to work.  Trust me.  Stick with it.

‘It’s not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives, it’s what we do consistently.’- Tony Robbins

I’m weighing in.  I’m taking photos.  This seemingly easy program makes a difference.

When my leg heals I’m going to re-incorporate cardio (running) and yoga in addition to the 5.

The beauty of the 5 is that they take very little time (typically 15 minutes).  You can do your 5 aaaaaand still do all the stuff you like to do.

And sorry, You aren’t too busy for the 5.  That excuse doesn’t hold water.

Most exercise plans and classes are needlessly complex and intimidating.  You don’t need to do an hour of yoga followed by a Barry’s boot camp class while eating only three figs to get healthy.

You don’t need to fastidiously chart your weights, sets, reps.

You do need to do something every day.

‘People overestimate what they can do in a day, underestimate what they can do in a month.’

Or 5 weeks.

I’m also aware that One cannot out-train a bad diet.  I don’t aspire to be a fitness monk, but I will cut down on crappy food.

That said it is summer and in the words of Benjamin Franklin ‘ice cream is proof that God Loves us and wants us to be happy.’

He was talking about beer actually.  But I’m allergic to beer and wine (FML) so I’m rolling with ice cream.

Pick your 5 exercises.  Weigh in.  Let’s do this.  Now.

If you need help selecting your 5 let me know.

Here’s my baseline:

Day 1:

183 lbs

In need of a tan.

40 days of no sugar???

I turned 40 about 43 days ago.  I commemorated this momentous occasion by throwing out the amazing birthday ice cream cake my girlfriend made for me.

Why?  Because I was searching for a a way to motivate myself to be better.

Eat better.

Sleep better.

Look better (difficult, I know).

Feel better.

So I challenged myself to cut out processed sugar for 40 days.

And do yoga every day for the same time frame.

And I intended to do 2 vision drills for 40 days, but I only made it 20.  I'll pick this one up again soon.

I did this because the best my body ever felt was after I completed yoga teacher training.  For about 4 months I was doing bw 3 and 10 hours of yoga every week.  It completely transformed my body.  I never woke up with aches or pains.

I moved like someone who, in the words of my wonderful friend Stephanie Greenfield, is comfortable in his body.

But wear, tear and marathons added up over a few years.   The last time I ran (before the challenge) I stopped about 2 miles in; I felt like both my achilles tendons were about to pop off.  I walked the final mile home.

I needed a course correction.

Growing old sucks.  You can accept it, or do something about it.

And you know what I did.

Starting stats:

• 191 lbs

• 13.7% body fat

• Lean body mass: 164.79

I used calipers and the Jackson/Pollock 4 site body fat calculator at http://www.linear-software.com/online.html.

(I need to mention that 0% body fat is impossible.  Men need a minimum of 5% to cover/protect organs and function.  Women need a minimum of 12%.  These aren't optimal ranges, they're just the lowest you can go before we should have a talk.  You can look at what's considered a healthy percentage on the website linked above.)

And also- have a look at this great chart that explains what you can expect to give up to get to each body fat percentage.

too thin is a thing

Back in my youth I was once 5% body fat.  I was also running 70-90 miles a week and looked skinny jacked.  Two observations:

• I dont need to run that far any longer.

• I look better at 13% body fat.

Back to day 1.  I went to work.

I think cut out somewhere between 90 and 95% of processed sugar from my diet.  Who knows how much exactly.  Sugar is everywhere.  I'm sure I had some here and there, but for the most part I behaved.  If you are inspired by this and decide to try cutting out processed sugar then my suggestion is hunt for elephants, not mice.  You're gonna take in some sugar inadvertently.  Just try to cut out 90%+.  Dont sweat it if you accidentally have 4 grams in your ketchup.

I did 30-75 minutes of yoga day.

I walked a ton.

Once my achilles tendons felt better I began running.

When I was hungry I ate.  Thirsty, I drank.  Just no processed sugar.

I posted every day on social media because I've started several of these self challenges privately and then crashed and burned.  I find the more I post the more disciplined I am.  A sample daily post would look like this:

Day 35/40: there has been a decent amount of 'work' to get my body here, but it has never felt like work.
If I can get here anyone can.

And that's the truth.  When I began taking yoga I was terrible.  I persevered.  You can read all about it here.

Once upon a time I was self conscious about posting daily updates... more on that later.

My final #'s.

• 189 lbs.

• Body fat= 11.3%

• Lean body mass= 169

I "only" lost 2 lbs.

But my body fat dropped 2.4%.  2.4% of 191 = 4.584 lbs of fat.

Here's what 5 lbs of body fat looks like:

My lean body mass increased by 4.2 lbs.  Muscle gains, WHAT? (For any ladies reading this... yoga WILL NOT MAKE YOU BIG.  To gain this kind of muscle you would need to take steroids.  Or supplement.  A LOT.  But because I'm a man, and my body produces testosterone, I gained muscle.)

The caliper measurements indicated most of my fat loss was at the waist (HOORAY!).

I'd love to say this is typical.  That if you follow what I did you'll lose weight around your waist and get ripped, but every body is different.  You may lose it in your chest and legs.  Weight loss is a riddle.  No one can guarantee how much weight you'll lose, where on your body you'll lose it, or in what amount of time.

All I can say with some degree of certainty is that people related to me will probablyhave similar results.

What about the benefits that you can't measure with a scale or a caliper.

Well this isn't my first time doing yoga every day.  Last time I documented the changes in a video.  Have a look.

Poses got deeper.  I could hold strength poses longer.

That was after 30 days.

After 40... I felt comfortable in my body again.  I'm sure a new video would look similar.  Only Ive been told I'm better looking with age.

My sleep improved.  I fell to sleep quicker, and slept deeper.

My energy level increased.  No sugar crashes.

My anxiety went waaaaay down.  Was that the yoga or the cleaner eating?  Who knows?

I'm happy to report that I'm running pain free.  My achilles tendons feel good (of course this means I'm going to start training for a race ASAP, you know, to make sure my body aches again).

And at the risk of sounding trite this challenge was fun.  How so?

I've always said if you want to get to know a place go for a run there.  I'd add take a yoga class at a local studio to that.  I had great classes at the Yoga Barn in Vt, Health Yoga life (home base!), Prana yoga in NJ and the Om center in Ct.

The friendly antagonism from my family on Halloween ('Uncle Stephen, want some of my candy? Oh wait...'), my nephews birthday ('oh my God Uncle Stephen, this is the best cake ever.  Mmmmmm') and Thanksgiving ('let's take a photo of Stephen in front of a big mound of pie and ice cream.') was... fun.  Funny.  Endearing.  It was not always easy to say no.

If you do this and give in to temptation then that is fine.  We're hunting elephants.  39 great days and one bad one is an AMAZING RESULT.

It felt good to be on a mission.  It gave me a sense of purpose and made me feel vital.

I was flattered by the encouraging comments on social media and in person.  The likes and the 'you got this' comments make a difference.

I saw two former co workers on the T on day 40 and they hugged me in congratulations.

Most amazing were the two dozen people who told me they started their own challenge.  My advice: post every day.  Keeps you accountable.

As I mentioned before I had some reservations about posting every day.  I didn't want to seem preachy or condescending in my posts.  At the risk of sounding cheesy I wanted to, in the words of Ghandi:

'Be the change you want to see in the world'.

40 snuck up on me.  I don't feel old.  I have a lot of young man goals I am chasing.  I needed to do something to remind myself that age is just a number.  You can change, you can learn, you can grow.  You can hit the reset button and feel comfortable in your body.  At any age.

What's next?  Well, I had some sugar this morning.  I got both the shits, anda headache.  Turns out my body didn't miss it that much.

What's next?

What do you think?  Another 40 days? 100? With yoga? Running? Meditation?  I'm not sure of all the details yet, just that I need a month to process everything, heal a nagging shoulder injury and then figure out the next goals.

Quick aside on the shoulder injury- it didn't happen in yoga.  It happened while sleeping.  If that ain't an old man injury then what is.  I had a client when I was like 26-27, Richard Gargiulo, he was in his 70's. He hurt his shoulder in his sleep and I think I called him a "F#<king liar".

Ahhhh karma.

Ok.  Back to what's next.  It will involve meditation, fitness and goal setting.

And it will start 1/1/19.

You in?

It took 5 minutes in 42 degree water to achieve enlightenment

I know the water in the giant tub is 42 degrees but I am heading in, up to the neck, for the next 2 minutes.

Voluntarily.

I am at a Wim Hof workshop in West Harwich, Ma.

Wim Hof, the Iceman, the inventor of a method that uses breathing exercises, and gradual exposure to cold water, has caused quite a stir in the fitness and health worlds. By using his method people have:

• lost weight

• slept better

• alleviated symptoms of auto-immune disorders (crones disease, arthritis)

• beaten depression/anxiety

• climbed mountains (Kilimanjaro, Everest) with out shoes or shirts

The list goes on. Wim is inspiring people to do some crazy shit, and it’s all good.

I’m here because I read a book, ‘What doesn’t kill Us’, and I have to find out for myself if what the book claims are true. The world is heating up and Inflammation is a killer. That soreness/stiffness you feel after you do a hard workout is inflammation. The random aches and pains that life blesses you with as you get older: inflammation. Stress: inflammation. Bad diet: inflammation.

Inflammation is silently killing us. Robbing us of vitality. I’m climbing into the ice to tone it all down. I’m taking cold showers to suppress it.

I’m breathing to drive a wedge between my somatic and autonomic nervous systems.

• Somatic nervous system- is the part of the peripheral nervous system associated with the voluntary control of body movements via skeletal muscles.

• autonomic nervous system- a control system that acts largely unconsciously and regulates bodily functions such as the heart rate, digestion, respiratory rate, pupillary response, urination, and sexual arousal.

Voluntary nervous system (SNS) vs Automatic (ANS). I am making my bodie’s involuntary responses voluntary, so I can choose to not be affected by the cold. I use my breathe because it is something our ANS controls (we breathe without thinking about it), until we decide to actively (SNS) control it (we can all change our breathing on demand). I am controlling a wedge, in the words of Patrick Carney, at the point where environmental stimulus meets innate response.

First there was a lecture about breathing. About why what we were about to do was effective. Then we circled up, laid on our back and our instructor, Sam, guided us through 5 cycles of breathing. 40 deep breaths that fill the diaphragm, then the chest, then leave without effort. As we let go of that 40th breath we hold, we stop, until our hunger for air asks for another breath (no strain), and then we take a short breath in, hold for 15 seconds, and then repeat the entire cycle.

Holding my breath for 2-3 minutes.

It is simple and deceptively powerful. By the third round I am smiling and laughing for no particular reason. I am holding my breath for long periods of time (2 to 3 minutes) and feeling absolutely no strain. By the fourth round I am hallucinating. I envision a path, and a large tree, and several paths that extend from and snake around my central path. There are some more personal details on this path, things I can’t adequately explain here.

I have tried to meditate off and on for the past 5 years with little success. I’ve never experienced the calm, or transcendent feeling that’s advertised. I’ve played soft music, I’ve relaxed, I’ve breathed and somehow I’ve missed until now. Finally. I’m transcendentally calm.

One by one we finish the breathing exercise. We come back to earth. No one seems stressed, or unhappy. There is a joviality to the group, a sense that 20 minutes before we were strangers, and now something more.

Next the cold. After a brief lunch and another lecture we are herded into the giant cold tub, four at a time. I’m not afraid of the cold. I wade in to my neck. The feeling is abrasive. Fear confronts me immediately. I want to leave. The most powerful thought I have in these moments arrives:

SOMEONE WITH MORE EXCUSES HAS MET THIS CHALLENGE AND THRIVED.

I breathe, filling my abdomen first, focusing on my exhales as I was instructed. I drive the wedge between my SNS and ANS. My innate response meets the environmental stimulus, and through my breath I control the response. This is my body and I decide to stay in the cold. I decide that ‘Pain don’t hurt.’

Someone with more excuses has met this challenge and thrived.

The first round I stay in for 2 minutes. I return later for about 3 or 4. My body, inflamed after 16 punishing miles run the day before (without enough prep) feels revived and invigorated.

A new vision arrives. I can see myself, shirt off, climbing the snowy mountains with nothing to protect me but my breath.

Thanks to Samuel Whiting (instructor), Cold Tub (Host), My Group, and Wim (Guru).

Deep breaths are… Bad?

Stressed? Take a deep breath.

Anxious? Deep breath.

Nervous? Tired? Overworked? Running? Going to yoga?

Take a deep breath.

It seems like such sound, inarguably good advice.

Well- turns out it’s not such a good idea after all.

We breathe every day/all day. on average that’s…

• 16 breaths a minute

• 960 per hour

• 23,000 a day

• 8,400,000 a year

Anything we do this often we should make sure we do it reasonably well.

DO I BREATHE WELL?

I’m here with some good news and probably with some bad. Let’s start with the bad news:

You’re probably not breathing well.

The good news: There is room for improvement. And more people than you can count have lost significant amounts of weight just by streamlining their breathing. By making some simple adjustments you can lose weight, energize your body, improve your immune system, sex life, maybe even change your life.

So let’s do a test. The BOLT (Body Oxygen Level) Test. Here’s how:

• Breath normally

• exhale all the air from your lungs. Let this be effortless, not forceful.

• Time yourself, stopping the timer when you feel the first physical impulse to breathe (chest pressure, swallowing, urge to breathe in).

• Your score is the number of seconds it took from the exhale to the first IMPULSE to breath. This is NOT a breath holding competition.

BOLT= the flat line in the middle.

Write down your score. I’ve listed what your particular BOLT score means below. If you score well then GREAT! One less thing you have to worry about. If you have a low score, GREAT, just think about how much better life will become once you learn to breath well.

<20- you are over-breathing. Your body is overly sensitive to CO2. As you improve you will notice symptoms of sleeplessness, tiredness, snoring, wheezing, & blocked nasal passages disappear.

20-40- You breathe well but can improve.

40+- Elite

HOW TO CHANGE YOUR SCORE AND BREATH BETTER

Some ideas on improving your BOLT. Hint- Breathe through your nose and ONLY your nose!

Breathing better is simple once you make a few simple adjustments. Iv’e listed three changes you can make to optimize your respiration. They are going to feel counterintuitive, but try them and see how quickly your BOLT score changes. Internalize them and watch how quickly your body and energy change:

• Breathe in/out through your nose. Only your nose.

• Breathe into your lungs, not your neck and chest. This is what’s called a ‘Belly Breath’. It earns this moniker for your belly moves during breath and the rest of your torso does not.

• Avoid taking deep breaths. If you’re sighing you’re over- breathing.

MY INITIAL SCORES WERE TERRIBLE

Time for a deep breath? Ummm…

Good read. Could change your health. Drastically.

I recently finished ‘The Oxygen Advantage’ by Patrick McKeown and found, to my horror, that I was over breathing. My initial BOLT score was around 18. I noticed I was sighing and yawning all the time, and I scored terribly on a second breathing test that involved exhaling and counting how many steps you can take before you absolutely need another breath. I barely made it to 30. According to McKeown’s book he has taught school children to reach 80.

Why is my breathing out of whack? I run a fair amount. I exercise. I’m not overweight or a smoker.

I do take deep breaths. Like DEEP deep breaths.

In yoga.

Every day.

As I teach and as I practice. I thought deep breaths are good for you. I’d cue my class to take them.

WHY THIS SUDDEN INTEREST IN BREATHING?

I was experiencing some crummy sleep, lackluster energy, and my body was stubbornly hanging onto about 10 lbs too many.

DID YOU KNOW?

The bodies main method for removing body fat is through your breath.

From an article by Jame’s Mcintosh:

“In order for 10 kg of human fat to be oxidized, the researchers calculated that 29 kg of oxygen must be inhaled. Oxidation then produces a total of 28 kg of CO2 and 11 kg of H20.”

— HTTPS://WWW.MEDICALNEWSTODAY.COM/ARTICLES/287046.PHP

So I focused on my breathing. The results have been promising.

I have been working on my breathing (and diet) since being humbled last spring. My BOLT score (taken :10 seconds ago) is 34 seconds. I have lost bw 10 and 14 lbs (varying on recent measurements) and I have made it 72 steps without passing out (though I average bw 50-60. Damn those kids!).

I have stopped taking deep breaths in yoga, instead focusing on breathing consistently in through the nose/out through the nose.

Interestingly the most challenging day of the week for me is Wednesday where I teach two separate yoga classes. That’s over 2 hours of non stop speaking, cueing and movement. It is the time I feel most out of breath, and the time I feel most zapped of energy.

I have even been able to run for 10 miles without breathing in through my mouth. There are many benefits to nasal breathing including increased oxygen absorption, calmer emotional state (mouth breathing is tied to fight or flight), better athletic performance, sexual performance, and speedier recovery from physical exertion.

You had me at sexual performance.

WHAT’S NEXT?

Well, I already where breathe right to bed sometimes.

Next up is the 10 week Wim Hof breathing technique course.

Like I said before when we are doing something this often we should do it well. I’m glad I took an interest in breathing. When done correctly it can make a huge difference in so many facets of your health.