No Race for Old Men - 2

Once again, similar to this Post from a year ago, I find myself the slow man on our club’s most competitive, open relay team 

-  running with 3 much, much younger teammates.

  

I am haunted by the memory of my performance at last year's rely - dropping our team from 3rd to 7th place.  In addition, my interval sessions the past few weeks have been slow and painful. I grow irrationally anxious about my readiness for the relay.  On race morning, I plead with  several of the fast runners on the club's three other teams to trade places with me - but no one was willing.

And the odd twist is that there was a Master’s Division at this event.  But the Race Organizers apparently felt that guys over 45 are just too weak and too feeble to run the open relay distance of 4 x 7.2-kilometers -- the Master's race is a mere 4 x 2.4-kilometers.   Having old guys do a shorter distance than younger guys is counter to my theme in the earlier blog where I noted that old runners gravitated to longer and longer endurance events where we are relatively more competitive.  None of my older teammates want to bother with such a short distance race  (Even though arguably we should focus on speed and strength as we get older...)  

So my club only fielded Open Division teams and here I was nervously waiting for the hand-off.   

My team is in 12th place (out of some 241 teams) when I receive the sash (baton).   I sprint off but am immediately passed by a much younger runner.  And then another.  And I fear the nightmare is repeating itself.  













However over this longer 7.2-kilomter course (versus the ultra-short 2.9-kilometers at the Shibuya Ekiden), experience and endurance play more of a factor.  I work the winding downhills and stairs midway through the course and overtake two competitors.  


Ultimately I am able to hang on to the 12th place position I inherited, and even though I record the slowest time of the team's 4 runners, I am pleased to avoid letting the team down..

Just Don't Get Injured 3 - My $175 Newton Running Shoes

The entire, multi-billion dollar industry is based on a campaign not of facts, but of fear. Fear that if you don’t buy a $175 sneaker and replace it in three months, you’ll ruin your knees. 

So why does anyone wear them? And how did the running shoe, which didn’t even exist before most of us were born, become a multi-billion dollar business and a purportedly indispensable piece of sportswear? 

-- Christopher McDougall, Author of Born to Run

During the Barefoot Running Era I was intrigued by the uprising against the supposedly evil Big Running Shoe Companies and the argument that Big Shoe was brainwashing us just like Big Pharma and Big Oil.  Was Big Shoe really conspiring with retailers, coaches, podiatrists, and journalists to spread fear and misinformation? 

I am not a “gear person’ and have lamented the expensive equipment “arms race” in triathlon, and I am cynical about the marketing surrounding running shoes -- much of the shoe reviews, and particularly salespeople going on and on about pronation and supination seemed meaningless to me (as the research in this article suggests).  

I really wanted this "shoes are bull ###" theory  to be true -- like I wrote earlier, I have a hard time budgeting for $175 shoes every three months.  

But, alas, I have personally observed a dramatic difference when switching shoes.  During the barefoot running era,  I transitioned to a mid-foot strike style of running by gradually increasing use of the Newton brand of shoes.  The Newtons models all are only 0-6mm between the height of the heel and the height of the mid-foot

Newtons were more expensive and difficult to find.  But the Newtons simply felt better on my feet, and I do find there is at least some merit to their “Action/Reaction Technology which supposedly absorbs and returns energy back to you better than other shoes and generates a boost in running efficiency 





 Nike's new shoes have created controversy recently with their even more aggressive energy-return





Even more importantly than race performance for me, the Newton shoes seemed to cause less stress. And once I had evolved into a mid-foot striking runner, switching back to any other shoes would trigger discomfort in my hips, knees and ITB

So I had  become deeply loyal to Newton (or perhaps I had become captive to Big Shoe, depending on your perspective).

Loyal or captive right up until I ordered a pair of Newton Distance last summer.  I was so pleased when they arrived, but then 2 kilometers into the first run my left Achilles protested.  Soon I switched over to an old pair of Newton Motion III which helped but did not resolve the problem.  Finally I resorted back to the classic workhorse pair of Asics DS Trainers, a 9mm drop shoe. 

Immediately the pain went away. 

Of course eventually after a few hundred miles of running with the Asics my other pains (hip, knee, ITB) begun to return.  So my running shoe section has evolved into a bit of a "whack-a-mole" dynamic as I repeatedly find myself rotating back-and-forth now between Brooks (10mm drop) and Newtons (0-6mm drop).    

Obviously then I don't agree with the real skeptics who dismiss the shoe's contribution entirely -- for me it is dramatic what a difference shoes makes.  But between this rotation among different brands and my need for both racing and training flats, I am afraid my 2017 shoe budget will be well over $600. 

Just Don't Get Injured 2

Long, long ago, back in my first running life, one of my friends took me aside and said: “Jay, you are a nice guy and all, but nobody really wants to listen to you go on and on and on about your running injuries”  It was only at this point it dawned on me why at various social gatherings people kept backing away and avoiding conversation with me, and why I couldn’t find a girlfriend    

Since that long ago time I have told myself not to torture people with the excruciating tedious accounts of all my running injuries.  

Moreover I have strived to maintain a positive mindset and tell myself I feel 100%.  Voicing complaints and dwelling on various aches and pains therefore seems counter-productive.  And anyway, I really, really don’t like to feel like I am making excuses for my lousy races.  It is tempting for me to start whining about how if only I could run as much mileage as various other guys, I could be sooooo fast. But then I remind myself that I am extremely fortunate to be able to run and enjoy the activity at all, and anyway I can think of 10 guys who would be way, way better than me if they were in turn not hampered by their injuries.  

So I go to great effort to censor myself about running injuries:   

• Every week when I arrive at my interval workout and a teammate greets me with a friendly “How are you doing?”  I reflectively start to reply: "I feel like crap - my hip and hamstring are so tight and my achilles is still in pain and my upper body is sore from the swim session”.  But as words start to come out of my mouth, I manage to catch myself and say “Great!  How are you doing?”  

• This is the 330th post in the Greater Perrinville Blog, most of them race stories, and it seems like I have started out wanting to preface each and every race story with some long, detailed account of how my training leading up to the event was compromised by some combination of hip, achilles, ITB, knee, calf, back, hamstring, heel, or foot pain. But for most part I have managed to avoid discussion of run injury.  Sometimes avoiding injury discussion to the point that it is absolutely weird - for example in the recent Angkor Wat 10k post I just ignore the central story entirely — why did I stop racing at 7k and walk the last 3k?  

• Recently a teammate commented: “Jay, it is impressive how you are never injured” – I thought this an amusing comment since I am essentially ALWAYS injured – if they would run behind me and they would notice that I essentially limp every step that I take.  

• At the Vietnam Mountain Marathon, I availed myself of the post-race therapy, and the  physical therapist asked me: “So how long has your hip being bothering you”.  “Oh, I guess since May" I replied guardedly.  "Oh, not so long then", he says. I had to admit to him:   "Well, actually when I said May, I mean May of 1980, so I guess that is a bit of a long time...."   In fact I don't know what it is like for my hip area to not feel slightly unbalanced -- it started feeling funny shortly after I first started running competitively -- back when Jimmy Carter was US president and has never really been 100% in the decades since. 

Only now, after the discouraging string of injury issues that have plagued me since last summer have I felt compelled to rant at length about these injuries and risk alienating any poor person who happens to be reading this blog.  

As I said in the last post, at my advanced age the whole game is increasingly about avoiding injury - so I have been adhering to a more steady, training routine.  But that is not the only thing I am doing to avoid injury: 

1. As always I am trying as best I can to "listen to my body
2. Do my strength sessions
3. Cross-train
4. Stretch - After all the controversy, I am back in the stretching camp 
5. Avoiding marathons -- Lately I don't dare even sign up for a HALF-marathon - let alone a full marathon - for the time being, the 10k is my longest race.  I feel I can either handle short and faster (up to 10k), or long and slower (longer trail races with a variety of terrain).  It is the combination of both fast and long that has been problematic --  blasting through a city marathon has felt simply wrong.    
6. Walking home midway through recent run when calf pain flared up 

Just Don't Get Injured

My teammates and I ran with one of America's top masters runners last week.  The guy has been strong year after year at different distances while maintaining a busy professional schedule.   So we ask the enlightened one – "Oh oracle of the ancient, master of the marathon, sage of the serious runners, what is the secret to your long success in the sport?"

The enlightened one was silent for a long time.  He stared into space with deep, mystic contemplation.  Finally he responded: "I have just one piece of advice".  We all leaned in closely, holding our breath, waiting for the secret to be revealed to us.  Finally he said: 

“Don’t get injured”

 Huh? We looked at each other with a mixture of surprise and disappointment after hearing this simple response.  I guess like many sacred revealed truths, at first it seems disappointingly obvious. Rather banal actually.  I mean, duh, of course we will try to avoid running injuries.

  

But on reflection , I find the words of the guru strangely useful, and consistent with my increasing focus on maintaining consistent mileage -- and not slowing down as I move into even older age groups.  As I noted in my previous blog post my focus in 2017 is on maintaining a sustainable, repetitive weekly routine (essentially 2 quality sessions plus 80% of mileage easy, volume runs), and avoiding any shock to the system.  Not sure yet if this is enough to avoid injury and achieve decent race performance, but so far I have felt better in the first two months of 2017 after struggling through all of the latter half of last year...