Tag Archives: Running

Jun 03 2021
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Exercise, General health, Running, Training

The Idea of a Bad Workout

I don’t have bad workouts.

That’s definitely not because I’m perfect, or because I don’t challenge myself. And it’s not like I don’t have good workouts.

I’ve had plenty of workouts that didn’t go the way I wanted. I fail over and over again. I’ve had to cut workouts short, re-configure workouts, turn quality workouts into simple easy runs, stop the workout early and go home, etc.

But none of these workouts were bad. I didn’t screw them up… even if maybe I screwed something up (e.g. ran repeats too fast, went out too hard, didn’t bring hydration, ate or hydrated too much, etc).

I could give you a treatise on the perils of results based analysis, e.g. you ran a race and won, so you think therefore the way you ran the race was good… or you didn’t hit your goal time or finish despite following your race plan, and you decided therefore you screwed it up.

On a similar note, we as human beings often attach emotional judgment to our workouts and races. And so many have a workout not go the way they want and decide the workout was therefore bad. I see and hear this far too often.

To me, workouts are truly bad only if they set back your growth, fitness, or life… for avoidable reasons that were totally within your control.

  • Going out for a run if you’re injured and know you should rest, and aggravating the injury
  • You’re burned out and exhausted and know a run isn’t going to help you in any way, but you go and run anyway.
  • Running in a severe thunderstorm or tornado.
  • Chasing after someone while holding a knife, to try and end them.

As you can see, my threshold for labeling a bad run is somewhat higher than most people.

If I go out for a run, feel crappy the whole way, and don’t feel great when it’s done, I don’t consider that a bad run. I consider that a learning experience. Maybe I could have skipped that run. And now I know, thanks to that run, that maybe running in those circumstances isn’t the best idea or use of my energy.

Today I went out for speed intervals after yet another consecutive night of poor sleep (been having an unusual stretch of these nights recently). I was up for the run but my energy wasn’t high, and though I gave a solid 10K effort I couldn’t go as hard in the repeats as I would have liked.

I did knock out four solid repeats out of the five needed, but I knew while finishing the 4th that I was tapped and at the point where the 5th might push me too far for my good. So I stopped after that 4th and headed home.

Was it a bad workout because I never felt quite right, or because I couldn’t get myself to eke out one last repeat, or because I did them closer to threshold/10K effort than the desired 5K/mile effort?

Or was it a good workout because I made progress in my training plan, finished the needed workout minus just one repeat, didn’t lose any ground with training since I’m still in the base/foundational phase, and moderated my effort to where I felt more rewarded than worn out by a key workout in tired circumstances?

Recall I mentioned the value in giving every workout a purpose. On a similar note, if a run doesn’t go the way you want or doesn’t feel at all good, you can still take away some positive value from your workout. It’s rarely a total waste as long as you apply yourself.

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Jun 02 2021
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No easy run is a junk run if you use it well

Today I went out for a training run. Last night I watched some old Sage Canaday videos on YouTube addressing anterior pelvic tilt, and adjustments you can make in training to improve your lower body range of motion.

I run with a short stride and am not big on overstriding or butt kick drills, so my legs don’t kick particularly far back in my stride unless I’m really hoofing it (e.g. hurrying across a street or after a city bus), and then my stride kick naturally lengthens back. However, running with that kind of power is personally kind of tiring. And a good deal of that currently has to do with my hips doing the classic runner’s tilt forward, aka the anterior pelvic tilt.

I wanted yesterday to work on tipping the hips back into alignment, running taller, and seeing about generating more of a kick back on my stride. I decided to work on it in this morning’s run.

Quickly, I discovered that the kick back is a bit too contrived in my current range of motion… but that trying to do so led to a productive form improvement: My foot naturally drove back after contacting the ground, generating in turn more forward momentum in my stride.

Throughout the run I consciously made this effort to drive the foot down and push the foot back, in turn driving my momentum forward. I don’t think my leg kicked back that far, but my stride definitely got longer and more productive right off the bat.

This did shrink some as it was rather hot outside and my focus switched to just moving at a minimum of excess energy to complete the run. But Stryd showed my form power had also slightly decreased, a positive sign of efficiency. Heat aside, the run itself did feel better than previous runs.

I mention all this as an example of how I put easy runs to use.

I don’t consider my work break runs or easy runs “junk miles”. To me, junk miles are runs without a specifically beneficial purpose, that wear you out more than benefit you.

Previously, most of my Chicago miles had a practical purpose: I transported myself home at least in part by my running. So to some degree I needed to run them regardless of how I felt.

That’s not the case in Vegas, since we here drive everywhere. If I go out for a run, there’s got to be a good reason I’m doing that and not just cross training. It does wear on you to run, and I’m over 40 now, so I need to get a return on investment from my runs.

I started work break runs because a) I easily could, and b) it helped get me in condition for more serious running once I ramped up training.

Now that I’ve started Indy Marathon training, these work break runs can provide extra fitness in addition to my base training runs in the morning. But so can reducing them to a walk, especially now that it’s getting hot in Las Vegas. Why continue to run them?

Well, I’ve now gotten to the point in my experience where I put these easy runs to use as I mentioned above. These are the situations where I work on a form adjustment, on increasing my cadence, emphasizing my planted foot drive, driving my knees, etc.

If anything, the work runs are perfect for this in that they’re only 8-13 minutes long, less than a mile or only a bit more than a mile, and even if I’m having a tough time, it’s over in short order. Whether or not I’m adding fitness and chops by taking them, I am getting the practice and experience of implementing these adjustments and seeing how they work, in small doses. I have plenty of opportunities to practice plenty of adjustments, without risking or sacrificing my health or training in trying to do them in a longer training run.

Sasha Pachev may have done them to keep himself from feeling too sedentary. But I find the work break runs are useful to try and practice various adjustments in my form and practice. They’re hardly junk miles in that respect.

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Jun 02 2021
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Running, Training

Tactical pace management in an otherwise simple workout

On Monday I had a fast finish training run scheduled, 45 minutes. I usually run these with just my Garmin watch timing and monitoring stats. But this time around I decided to program the workout in and have it monitor my heart rate:

  • First 5 minutes within Zone 1 (50-60% of heart rate reserve (HRR), easy aerobic).
  • Next 30 minutes within Zone 2 (60-70% HRR, mid/high aerobic).
  • Final 10 minutes within Zone 3 (70-80% HRR, from aerobic threshold to lactate threshold).

When running a programmed workout with defined pace/HR parameters, the watch beeps at you when you’re not within them. Typically I’ll run by feel unless doing a speed or other goal-specific workout.

Monday, though, I decided I would practice staying within the zones, something I’d worked to do more in previous training plans.

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Apr 27 2021
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Exercise, General health, Recovery, Running, Training

Why Does Pachev’s Always on The Run Routine work?

I’ve talked before about Sasha Pachev, the prolific patriarch of the prolific Pachev running family in Utah. To this day, I still consider his simple advice among the most effective for marathon training. Much like Hal Higdon and John Hadd, Sasha Pachev preaches starting with a consistent diet of easy running. Then you progress to a simple but consistent variety of speed and tempo workouts.

One of Pachev’s preached staples is what he calls his Always On The Run Routine. Basically, after training in the morning, every few hours he will take a break and go jog a mile. Pachev, to paraphrase, says this is to get the body moving. We as humans were not designed to sit all day. A short run every few hours is more natural, plus adds running volume and practice.

Keep in mind Pachev at his peak trained 80-100 miles a week, and was capable of running a sub-2:30 marathon. He was an elite-caliber runner and even in his older age probably still is. Even with such a high volume it didn’t take him more 10-12 hours a week to train. So, sure, Pachev’s scheduled short jogs between workouts were probably not too taxing after 10-20 mile workouts in the morning.

Though I’m nowhere near the prolific runner Pachev is, I’ve taken inter-workout jogs during work breaks to generally positive effect. I used to occasionally do them towards the end of my time in Chicago.

I’ve been doing these short jogs during the workday, around the neighborhood during 15 minute breaks and after eating lunch. I previously walked outside during breaks, but I wanted to do more than walk. I also didn’t like being out in the Vegas sun as long as it took to take these “short walks”. I can finish jogs 5 minutes faster on breaks, well before the end of my lunch break, without being in the sun long enough to cause distress. Though sun exposure is good for your body, the decreased time in the hot sun was better for my skin.

I run up to 3-4 miles during the workday. I can also train during the morning and weekends. I have effectively, though somewhat inadvertently, adopted Pachev’s Always On The Run Routine.

Despite my current weekly mileage rocketing upward from these little runs, I don’t feel any significant signs of burnout. I have no issues other than a bit of random soreness here or there, or occasional fatigue accumulation (as you would after a few days of multiple runs).

Plus, my running has shown more substantial week over week improvement than it was during earlier conventional training. I simply took one day off this weekend, and my running improved dramatically once I returned on Monday. Bear in mind I’m not coming off a break in training: I’ve been running and endurance training for a while.

So obviously this had me considering what about this routine contributes to run development. I did land on a few ideas.

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Apr 11 2021
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Running, Training

My First Look At Stryd Footpod Data

So, my Stryd footpod arrived today. After a somewhat complicated setup process (and though cumbersome to get attached, the pod does stick perfectly fine to my front end shoelaces), I went out in the increasingly hot Vegas sun and ran a couple of brief miles around the neighborhood to give the tracker some data for me to review.

This was as standard and normal a running effort as I could get myself to do, to make sure the data had no abnormalities. Sure enough, the run (though hot and a bit arduous for that reason) felt like a typical effort, so the data should be a roughly objective view of my standard issue effort.

Sure enough, footpod IQ data showed up in Garmin Connect for the run. It’s a bit complicated to get the Garmin data uploaded to Stryd for review (I had thought it would sync automatically, but apparently not), but once I did I had dashboard data to review.

Here you see a lot of data that’s not just typical mileage, times, pace, and heart rate.

(While not pictured, the log also includes a map of my run, so Garmin’s file did port that over just fine.)

Unfamiliar items on the log include:

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Mar 17 2021
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Recovery, Running, Training

Intuitive intervals: Using a heart rate monitor to pace your run/walk intervals

If you have a Garmin watch you can set it to alert you during workouts if your heart rate goes higher or lower than a given threshold… kind of like a built in speed limit monitor for your heart rate.

I tried this feature once and quickly disabled it. I wanted to just run at my own pace and found the alarms when I reached a moderate heart rate annoying.

After a long recent layoff, as I recently started ramping up training, I found basic runs to be a bit too difficult, and sure enough my heart rate would rocket into marathon pace and the lactate threshold. It’s one reason I started doing Galloway style intervals, run/walking the workouts in 2 minute run, 1 minute walk intervals.

Galloway Intervals kept my heart rate level on-average: Even if it spiked during the runs, the minute of walking would bring it back down, the overall average more closely resembling a typical easy run. And overall the effort on these runs didn’t feel terribly difficult.

I’ve since gone on actual full-length training runs of 30+ minutes, and this past weekend I ran a 10K (albeit at closer to regular training paces), so I’m now in condition to run at distance again.

But I want to improve the usage of my natural speed. Now that I track walks on my Garmin watch, I can track paces of not just my walks, but those moments when I run across streets and the pace of those brief, hurried sprints that have always been a part of Working Class Running.

I find those easy, brief sprints vary around a 5:00-7:30 pace without much difficulty. I have speed, but it’s hard to maintain that speed over anything beyond those random little sprints. Even in 400 meter repeats and other workouts I find it very tough.

Is there a way to develop my ability to use that speed at distance in a race?

I think there’s a way, and it goes back to that once-annoying Garmin alert feature.

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Feb 23 2021
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Running, Training

Adding mileage with bookended run/walk intervals

I recently made another accidental discovery while training.

After cutting back on running for a while, leaning instead on strength and cross training, I started training seriously again after getting roped into joining a couple of spring 10K’s in the Vegas Valley. With COVID restrictions fading back, races (at least on a smaller scale) are coming back to the area.

To see where I’m at and give me an easy, productive training schedule, I had Garmin set me up on a McMillan algorithmic plan. McMillan’s easy workouts are often flexible, e.g. you can run 20 minutes at an assigned pace, or have the option to extend that paced run up to 35 minutes before the cooldown. I wanted to have that option rather than have to run 3-5 miles at pace or bust.

Previously I had been doing runs Galloway-style, with a run-walk approach. I figured out how to program my Garmin Forerunner to give me run-walk alerts on basic runs, and set it to have me run 2 minutes, walk 1 minute, repeat.

This had actually worked quite well in that my cross training helped me maintain more than enough aerobic endurance, but neuromuscularly I was still struggling to run more than 15-20 minutes without sending my heart rate towards the lactate threshold. I was able to easily extend runs beyond 15-20 minutes with the walk breaks.

Still, I figured forcing myself in the short term to combine some 20+ minute runs with some speedwork and ample nutrition/recovery in a training plan would compel my body to catch up.

On one easy training run I was laboring and decided to cut the workout short at 20 minutes, but that after the cooldown and nominal end of the training session I would “Resume” the rest of the run at an easy pace to cover the distance I wanted.

I got to end of the workout, hit “Resume”, and continued running. Within seconds I was surprised to hear my watch chime and tell me it was time to Walk 1:00, just like on my default runs.

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