RRCA Coaching Class

Our Northern New Jersey Head Running Coach Bill Gahwyler and myself recently took a Coaching Class with the Road Runners Club of America (RRCA). It was a pretty intensive two day class down in Maryland.

The coach was taught by Mike Broderick and Janet Hamilton of Running Strong. Mike is a coach and personal trainer with the National Strength & Conditioning Association, a member of the American College of Sports Medicine and National Strength Professionals Association. While Janet is a Registered Clinical Exercise Physiologist (RCEP) with American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) and Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS)
with the National Strength and Conditioning Association as well. So they both had lots to offer.

We went through a lot of the regular information on sports science, the basics of overloading and specificity, physiology, nutrition, injury prevention and psychology. The second day was spent putting training programs together for athletes preparing for marathons.

There were many pearls of wisdom I learned from the weekend, which I'd love to share on this blog over the next few weeks, but in summary:

• muscle, circulatory, pulmonary, skeletal and neurological systems are all trainable, but at different rates.
• you will get faster without running faster due to adaptation (at least for the first few years of your running career).
• look for the perpetrator of the injury, not the victim - e.g. IT Band trouble often caused by tight hamstrings or gluts, not by the IT band itself.
• the value of association while you are running - turn off the iPod and listen to your body every now and again.
  
• train at your current fitness level, not your target level - adaptation will help you get there.
• be wary of drugs that effect energy systems - benedryl, insulin, NSAIDs, Acetaminaphine.
  
  "Do not believe in anything simply because YOU have heard it. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. Do not believe in anything because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason... then accept it and live up to it" - The Buddha
  
  Blogging again soon.
  Coach David.

Marathoning Physiology

I was out running with a number of people in Liberty State Park today, and one of the runners said to me that her breathing had gotten a little easier over the last few weeks. This makes common sense, but actually makes a good introduction to the two major principles of endurance training.

Overload
Overload means exercising at a level which causes the body to adapt to function more efficiently. It doesn't mean overtraining. Think of a rubberband - as more pull is applied it stretches more and becomes easier to stretch, but too much pull can cause it to snap. To avoid breaking, i.e., becoming injured or ill, overload must always be used in conjunction with rest. Overload and rest form the basis for what is known as the "hard/easy" training approach. This technique uses variations in frequency, intensity and duration to achieve cycles of overload and rest. Frequency is how often you run, intensity is the pace at which the workout is conducted and duration is the time spent on any single run. In a program of increasing mileage or of building basic endurance, "hard" may be a long slow run while "easy" may be a shorter distance run at the same effort. For the experienced runner with an established mileage base, "hard" might be a shorter workout of increased intensity such as hill work, fartlek or some kind of interval training. After a hard workout, rest or an easy workout is important because it allows the muscles and other tissues a chance to rebuild and adapt to the stress. This is the basis of overload training.

Specificity
Specificity refers to adaptations of both metabolic and physiologic systems, depending on the type of overload used. Specific exercise brings about changes in those systems used in that particular exercise. Running is obviously the specific training for running. Different adaptations result from different kinds of running using variations of frequency, intensity, duration and terrain to utilize different sources of energy. This is where long term goal setting is so important: you need a running program designed for the specific type of races you want to run. This approach will assist you to maximize performance and eliminate wasted effort. Specific endurance training with its resultant physiologic adaptations is essential for marathons.

So much of your body is adaptable.... i.e. trainable.... but different systems adapt at different rates....... your circulatory system, pulmonary and neuromuscular systems may well start adapting in 4-6 weeks of training.... meaning you will be increasing your blood volume, strenghtening your heart muscle, lowering your heart rate, improving your lung volume, reducing fatigue and creating new muscle pathways.... but your skeletal system tends to lag behind in adaption, and improve only aftert 6-8 weeks of training.

As a result, we often find athletes feeling great and pushing themselves to new limits four weeks in, and then breaking down with stress fractures, and hurting joints midseason.

So..... the key is to increase your mileage slowly.... no more than 10% total miles increase each week, to allow your body to adapt fairly evenly.

"Jogging is very beneficial. It's good for your legs and your feet. It's also very good for the ground. It makes it feel needed." ~Charles Schulz, Peanuts

Have a great week.
Coach David

article thanks to Warren and Patti Finke @ Team Orgegan for the article.

Resting Heartrate

You can use your Resting Heart Rate as a good measure of your improvement and adapatation to your training.

Measure your Resting Heart Rate (RHR) every morning for a week, and take the average. It will give you a good starting fitness point.

Every four weeks or so, take it for a week again, measure the average. Hopefully, you'll find that your RHR is getting lower. This would indicate that you are getting fitter. Why? Because when you are unfit your heart has to work a lot harder which increases your heart rate. So the number of beats per minute will be higher. The best time to take your RHR is first thing in the morning when you wake up. Ideally, when you've woken without an alarm clock ( e.g. on a weekend), and you've got an empty stomach. If you've woken up with an alarm clock, wait a couple of minutes before you take the measurement.

If you find over time that you get a spike in your RHR, can be a good indication that you are overtraining, because your body is fighting too hard to adapt to the stress that you are putting on it. Or it may be a sign that you are getting a cold or stress, since an increase in Heart Rate is one of the first signs that your body is fighting off something.

Since so many factors can affect an individual reading, I recommend taking it as an average over a week. You can take an individual reading as your result if you think it is a good indication.

If anyone is getting a reading of less than 35, then give Lance Armstrong's team a call. His was 32-34!!
regards,
Coach David

Garmin Marathon

hey runners, Garmin are sponsoring a bunch of races in 2007, include Chicago and the Rock and Roll 1/2 in Virginia Beach.

Through MotionBased, they are giving runners in-depth analysis and mapping for each race. You can check out street maps, topological, elevation, finishing lines, where the cheering sections are, pot holes to watch out for, where dogs are most likely to come onto the course and chase you, how far in front of the sweeper truck you will be, when they will be running out of water, and far more completely useless, irrevelent info this far before race day.

http://www8.garmin.com/marathon/marathons/

I think it would be dead cool if somehow Garmin could get a feed from our chips during the race and post them on the website. People could then track you virtually through the city, even on webphones, know much better when you are coming around the bend.

have fun.
Coach David.

Man v Horse v Mountain

You hear of some wild and wackey stories in this Running life and Racing life. A couple I heard of this week particularly stood up. One celebrating life and competiveness, the other celebrating life and penance.

Man Versus Horse

Picked up from the BBC Website, is the story of this wonderful race in Llanwrtyd Wells, in Powys, Wales.

The race is over 22 miles of cross country terrain. A man beat all the horses for the first time ever three years ago. This year two men actually beat the horses. It has been going for 28 years, and only 3 people have beaten all the horses in that time.

I guess that as the race becomes known, it attracts a more competitive runner, and eventually Paula Radcliffe will be racing them for $100,000.

There was similar story in the US, except over a shorter distance, where Chad Johnson, the Cincinnati Bengals all-pro wide receiver raced a horse at River Downs in Cincinnati, Ohio on Belmont Stakes Day, June 9, as a fund-raiser for Feed the Children.
Johnson was given a 100 yard head start and beat Restore the Roar easily, who had to run/gallop approximately 200 yards (one-eighth-mile).

Man versus Mountain
A more humbling story this time. In Japan, Buddhist monk, Genshin Fujinami, run up a holy moutain for more than seven years.

For 1,000 days, rising well before dawn, Fujinami embarked alone, rain or shine, on his journey, running or briskly walking each day, wearing white robes, a pair of straw sandals, a long straw hat, candles, a shovel, a length of rope and a short sword.

The rope and sword weren’t for survival - if for some reason he could not complete his daily trek, he was to use them to kill himself.

Since 1885, only 48 "marathon monks" of Buddhism’s Tendai sect have accomplished the ritual. Those who do earn the title of "dai-ajari," or living saint. At least one of the monks to attempt the trial is known to have killed himself in modern times, Fujinami said.

The quest dates to the eighth century and is believed to be a path to enlightenment. Monks carry a little book of prayers and incantations, which they offer at about 300 temples and sacred spots along the way. Other than that, they don’t stop for breaks.

"You don’t go on the trails to train, you go to offer prayers," he said. "Athletes do it for awards. We do it to grow spiritually."

A strict regimen dictates that in each of the journey’s first three years, the pilgrim must rise at midnight for 100 consecutive days to pray and run along an 29-kilometre trail around Mount Hiei, on the outskirts of the ancient capital of Kyoto. Fujinami left his temple at 1 in the morning, and returned about nine hours later to spend the rest of the day praying, cleaning or doing other chores.

He slept three or four hours a night.

In the next two years, he had to extend his runs to 200 days. In the winter, the pilgrim runner gets to take a break.

Fujinami said the time spent on the trails is spread out over seven years not because of the rigours, but to allow for time to reflect.

"You learn how to see your real self," he said. "You learn to understand what is important and what isn’t."

Fujinami said his most difficult trial came during the fifth year, when he had to sit in the lotus position before a raging fire and chant mantras for nine days without food, water or sleep in an esoteric ritual called "doiri," or "entering the temple."

In the sixth year, Fujinami covered 60 kilometres every day for 100 days. And in the seventh year, he went 52½ miles for 100 days and then 29 kilometres for another 100 days.

This latter story has been published in a lot of magazines around the world. Yet I still think it may be a hoax. It seems just a tad too fanciful.

I could quite believe it if there was a little bit of Monkey Magic !

Let's Go TNT !!!
Coach David.

High Bridge run

One of my favorite places to run in Northern New Jersey is the Columbia Trails out in High Bridge. The full run is a 14 mile out and back on a nicely shaded, loose gravel path. It is so well shaded that even on a hot day like Saturday, it comfortable to run on.

It was our team's first proper run of the season, after last week's kickoff. We had a great turnout of at least 20 people, doing up to 7 miles, at all different sorts of paces. I went out with speedy Steve, and come back at a nice and easy with Cheryl and Danielle. And in between, we had plenty of runners who were going further than they had ever run before.

The Way I See It #259

Our fellow TNT Northern New Jersey Chicago team member, John Kellenyi is now quoted in the Starbucks campaign, "The Way I See It". If you are lucky enough to get cup #259, you'll see John's quote:

"People say, oh I could never do that! But when you meet cancer patients you understand the bravery and spirit those people show each and every day. Their struggles and spirit motivate you to test the limits of your endurance to cross that finish line. You'll be surprised at what you can do".

Thanks to John Kellenyi for helping inspiring others to make a difference!

Let's Go TNT.
Run Coach David.

Would I still be a Runner.....

If I had all the money I could possibly dream of..........

This Audi R10 TDI racing car that become the first ever diesel powered car to triumph at Le Mans 24-hour race, is parked in the showroom next to where I work

Or would I chose some other sport, and fight cancer through philanthropic means?

Hmmmm............ I'll ponder that as I dream tonight.

Yours,
Driving Coach David

Learning To Swim & Learning To Run

I'm going to finally learn to swim this summer.

I've never been able to feel confident and relaxed in water. As a kid, I was dead scared of going to the swimming pool. I used to bunk off Sports Class and go around my Nan's house for Baked Beans on Toast. Having to take off my glasses and not being able to see anything was my excuse for years. Another one of my excuses is my family's non-swimming gene. None I my family can swim either.

I've been trying to learn for several years now. I'm in what is probably my sixth season of classes at the YMCA. I've been going again since the Winter, and can swim up to a length, and then I get knackered. I'm in Class 2A. If it was a children's class it would probably be called the Goldfish level. But calling it that is way too embarrassing for an adult.

So... this summer... I'm going for the breakthrough. My target for the end of this year is to swim 10 lengths non-stop.

Going to classes once a week has been helpful. I've gotten instruction. I can practice for one and a half hours. But I'm really making the progress I expect. Those epiphany moments are not coming very fast.

My wife, Tricia, recommended that I have to make it a priority. I have to go more often. Go to the Adult free swim. Practice on my own what I've learned in class.

I went last Monday. I was dead scared. I was in a pool with real 'swimmers'. I was sure I was getting in their way. I was too embarrassed to use the kick-board in front of adults. And after 15 minutes, I feigned some reason for getting out of the pool, and I went and sat in the sauna instead.

Sitting in the sauna I realized how my experience compared to first time TNT runners:
- I'm an adult beginner swimmer.
- I'm embarrassed about not knowing how to swim, being too slow and making a fool of myself.
- I've signed up for a program that will help me to learn.
- I've made a commitment to myself to learn this year and reach a particular goal.

But to take that parallel further (if I may), key to making significant progress is:
- The more you go, the more comfortable you will become. Go running/swimming more often that just the one class per week.
- Practice what you've learned from the coach until you are comfortable yourself.
- Do not look at and worry about other swimmers/runners when you are training. It will only server to bring negativity into your head.

So, as we progress our running season, I'll be progressing my swimming at my local Y. I hope I'm able to see running through beginner's eyes better due to my swimming experience.

All the best,
Coach David.

Which Superhero are You?

I am The Flash



Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz

Happy Birthday Paul McClure

Thankyou Paul and Lisa Marie

There is something about the rush you get from a good run, that when you see something really nice, it seems to be as the most wonderful thing in the world.

Running home from work today, and across the Brooklyn Bridge, I was already in a great mood. And then I saw the rather cute scene of this couple sitting on a bench, surrounded by potted plants, rubber ducks, and pots of sweets and treats. It turns out that Paul McClure and Lisa Marie Palmieri (I hope I spelled your names correctly) were celebrating Paul's birthday by being giving candy away to passers-by.

It stuck me as the most generous gift imaginable. While any number of tourists and New Yorkers might have wandered by wondering who these weirdos were. I'm sure that there were many others, like me, touched by this wonderful gift to complete strangers.

Paul's fish

Now, I wonder if my reaction would have been quite as overwhelmed if I'd not already been in a fantastic mood. A bit like flying on E and suddenly everyone who smiles at you is the most beautiful creature on earth. Or my Gu rush at Mile 9 in the Vancouver Half Marathon, and suddenly seeing Bald Eagles and Forget-Me-Nots was the most wonderful manifestation of nature imaginable. If I'd been a regular New York commuter rushing to get home, would I have just considered them weird?

Anyhow, that is to take nothing away from Paul and Lisa Marie. You made my day. You made a New York story for many visitors. And I hope you both had a wonderful day. Happy Birthday.

"We cannot do great things on this Earth, only small things with great love" - Mother Teresa

TNT Northern New Jersey Summer Kicks Off

What a beautiful weekend we had in the North East, and our Summer Season started for the Northern New Jersey runners. We had 65 people out with us. Many thanks to the Mike Conforti and the Sneaker Factory in Millburn for hosting us. Mike laid on the bagels, the shade and the 10% Team In Trainin (TNT) discount in the store, and Coach Bill laid on the Powerade and water for the athletes.

It was great to put some faces to some names, but when faced with 65 new people, I'm sure I'll be asking for those names several times before they get remembered. I read once about Bill Clinton's technique, which is to write down at the end of each day, everything he can remember about a person he met. Next time he is due to meet them, he gen's up on their info, and that person is stunned that big Bill can remember not only their name, but their wife, their pet dog and their important projects.

Although our first run was primarily about getting to know each other, and running or run/walking a few miles, we had athletes that ran further than they had ever ran before. It is going to be an amazing season of accomplishment for those folk. Talk about pushing outside your comfort zone! Fantastic.

It was also great to hear so many stories of how people had gotten involved with TNT. Unfortunately many of the stories were about people who had lost loved ones to blood cancers. But all of the stories were inspiring people to push themselves beyond themselves to honor and remember.

"To run and leap, to dart about with sweat pouring from your body, to expend your last ounce of energy and afterward to stand beneath a hot shower-how few things in life can give such enjoyment."
-Yukio Mishima, novelist

Common leukaemia linked to inherited gene mutation

Blood smear showing CLL cells

As reported in New Scientist and the Daily Mail newspaper.

A gene that dramatically increases the risk of adult leukaemia has been identified. The researchers say the risk of a person with the gene getting the most common form of adult leukaemia is equivalent to that faced by those with the BRCA1 gene for breast cancer.

A close genetic analysis of one family hard-hit by adult leukaemia found that those members who carried a tiny genetic mutation all developed chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL), the most common adult form. Researchers speculate that mutations in this gene may elevate the risk of adult leukaemia by seven-fold.

CLL causes a gradual but deadly increase in immune cells in the bone marrow which become cancerous. Eventually these cancerous immune cells spread to the blood, with fatal consequences.

Christoph Plass at Ohio State University in Columbus, US, and colleagues tested one family in
which the father, four sons, a grandson and distant female relative had all developed CLL.

Researchers took blood samples from the five family members with CLL who were still alive, as well as from another five close relatives without the disorder. A genetic analysis of these samples revealed that only those suffering from CLL had a small, single-letter change in their DNA sequence.

The tiny mutation was in the gene that codes for a protein known as death-associated protein kinase 1 (DAPK1). Earlier work has shown that this protein helps cells die at the correct time. Without this type of programmed death, cells can become cancerous.

Further lab tests revealed that the mutation in DAPK1 causes it to become coated in methyl groups which switches off the gene. As a result "the cells don't know when to die", Plass says.

"The importance of this kind of discovery is huge," says Carl Alston, a spokesman for the Chicago-based Leukemia Research Foundation. "To have something this concrete is one more step closer to finding a cure."

Clear path to treatment

It is unknown how widespread the specific gene mutation found in this family might be in the general population. But Plass says there may be many other mutations in this gene which could elevate the risk of CLL.

Researchers stress the new finding will likely have a big impact on the treatment of adult leukaemia.

"It gives us a clear path to a potentially effective treatment for CLL," says Deborah Banker at the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (LLS), based just outside of New York, US.

For example, Plass suggests that drugs that remove the methyl coating of genes could switch DAPK1 back on in CLL patients, and perhaps cure their condition.

Get Free Gas and Help Save a Life

As the summer travel season approaches the skyrocketing gas prices may be putting the brakes on Americans' vacation plans. The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society is doing its part to provide some relief by offering free gas cards and a chance to win an all-expenses paid vacation.

Participants in online fundraising for Light The Night^® Walk, the Society's annual evening fundraising walk campaign, can earn $50 worth of free gas for every $500 they raise during July and August. For every $250 raised, $15 gas cards will be earned. The cards will be available while supplies last. As a bonus, the top online Light The Night fundraiser in July and August will win a special grand prize: a vacation for four at one of the luxurious Marriott Vacation Club International's Orlando Resort properties, including air transportation, courtesy of American Airlines.

"Light The Night is the nation's opportunity to pay tribute to and commemorate lives touched by blood cancer and the goal of finding cures and helping patients is a great motivator, in and of itself," said Dwayne Howell, Society president and CEO. "But with gas prices so high this summer, the Society saw this ‘Save at the Pump' promotion as a great added incentive to do something good and get something good!"

Light The Night Walk events will take place in communities around the country in the fall, with teams of co-workers, families and friends walking together in twilight holding illuminated balloons - white for survivors and red for supporters. The funds raised help the Society support leading-edge research and provide much-needed patient services.

For more information about the gas promotion or to learn more about Light The Night, contact the Society at (877) LTN-WALK or visit www.lightthenight.org/freegas.