Stretching a Point

(This is 50^th anniversary of my first article in Runner’s World magazine. All year I post excerpts from my book, This Runner’s World.)

May 2003 (retitled in the magazine). I came into running at a time when the only stretches that distance runners did were the backstretch and homestretch of a track. Stretching of the standing-still variety? I never did any; never thought a runner needed any.

This all changed in the 1970s, for me and for the sport. A doctor giving treatment for a stubborn injury asked me to bend over and touch my toes. I strained to graze my shins just below the knees. I’ve stretched ever since, with varying degrees of commitment and success.

Also in the 1970s, the decade that changed running more than any other, a new body of information declared that runners were too tight and needed to add flexibility exercises to our routine. We were told that the best corrective stretches aren’t the “ballistic” type – the quick, bouncy, repeated calisthenics we’d known from high school sports – but the “static” stretches that hold a position at the high edge of the comfort zone.

Static stretching became the standard in running. It remains so.

Thirty years later, this practice is having its worth questioned. A recent study in a British medical journal stated that stretching does little if any good in preventing injury, easing soreness or improving performance. Those are the very reasons we’ve stretched all this time.

Runners asked me, “Should I stop stretching?” (or said, “I was right all along not to stretch”). I noted that the practice would have faded away long ago if it had been identified as worthless or harmful. Yet these exercises have been a mainstay of training for the past 30 years.

Runners won’t suddenly stop stretching now, any more than we would stop running on hearing one negative report of its effects. But the questioning of stretching does lead us to take a close look at how and when we stretch, and what it might and might not do for us.

I still stretch, regularly if minimally. Each run ends with a few minutes of bending and reaching because I perceive benefits that are subtle but real.

Stretching is neither a panacea nor a pain. The bad press it has received lately hasn’t changed my practice of it or my views on the subject, which are:

Stretching is an overrated requirement. Runners become tight-muscled as a normal and necessary adaptation to the activity. Otherwise why would running do this to us? Tightness is a training effect, making for a springy stride. A certain degree of inflexibility is to be expected and accepted, but “tight enough” can lead to “too tight” without some corrective action.

Stretching isn’t just for running. What’s good for running might not be right for overall fitness. Flexibility is a piece in the fitness puzzle. Anyone seeking balanced fitness needs to counteract the super-tightening of running with some exercise giving the opposite result.

Stretching doesn’t eliminate injuries. Done wrong – too aggressively and too much – stretches cause more problems than they prevent. Done right – gently and in small doses – these exercises still don’t promise pain-free running. The Big Three – too much running, too fast, too often – cause most of our injuries.

Stretching isn’t a warmup. It doesn’t start you sweating or raise your heart rate. Done before running, it delays the true warmup. You warm up by moving – first by running slowly or walking, then by easing into the full pace of the day.

Stretching is a cooldown. Warm muscles respond best to these exercises. Run first, then stretch. Saving the stretching until the afterward has added benefits beyond flexibility. It gives you a few extra minutes to cool down before you sit down. And it gives you the option of dropping the stretches instead of cutting short the run when time is tight.

Stretching is a sign of maturity. The youthful new runner is naturally more flexible than the older longtime one. Put another way, the more years you have in life and in running, the more that stretching might help you.

Stretching started for me at age 30. It continues at 60. I don’t give this practice full credit for the past 30 mostly healthy years in between, but it hasn’t hurt.

2018 Update. At almost 75, I still stretch almost daily… but only after putting in the miles. They always come first, both physically and in priority.

[Many books of mine, old and recent, are now available in two different formats: in print and as ebooks from Amazon.com. The titles: Going Far, Home Runs, Joe’s Team, Learning to Walk, Long Run Solution, Long Slow Distance, Miles to Go, Pacesetters, Run Right Now, Run Right Now Training Log, See How We Run, Starting Lines, and This Runner’s World, plus Rich Englehart’s book about me, Slow Joe.]

Watch It

(This is 50^th anniversary of my first article in Runner’s World magazine. All year I post excerpts from my book, This Runner’s World.)

May 2002 (retitled in the magazine). Return with me now to the not-too-distant past when watches still had hands. Timing our runs was an inexact act as recently as the 1970s.

We would point the watch’s hours and minutes to 12, wait for the second hand to reach the top, then start running. Later we would grab a finish time within a minute or so from accurate.

Sometimes a passerby would ask, “Can you tell me what time it is?” We’d shrug, leaving the asker to wonder why anyone would wear a watch but not know what time it was.

Only once did my race time come close to matching the time of day. That happened at the Boston Marathon, which began at noon.

Even there, timing was an estimate. Did the hands read 2:48-something, 2:49-plus or 2:50-and-change? I waited hours for the official verdict.

Our old wristwatches weren’t just inexact; they were unreliable. “Waterproof” didn’t mean sweatproof. The stem gummed up with salt until it froze, leaving the watch to die from no rewinding.

Leaping ahead 25 years, we now wear five-function digital watches while running – and still fumble and shrug when asked the time of day. This hasn’t changed, but almost everything else in timekeeping has.

The digital wrist-stopwatch was one of running’s greatest inventions. It gave runners instant and precise race results. These watches created the PR – the precious personal record – by tuning us in to our own times.

These watches have reversed normal economic trends. As they’ve gotten better, they’ve also grown cheaper.

My first digital watch cost about $200, came cased in heavy metal and had a nasty habit of going blank at the worst times. Much better watches now sell for as little as $5.

Top-of-the-line models, still costing less than my original digital, have become onboard mini-computers. They stop time to the hundredth of a second. They count time either up or down, and sound multiple alarms.

Watches memorize dozens or even hundreds of splits. The latest models act as speedometers, calculating distance and pace.

With progress can come problems. Modern watches can make time too important by splitting it too finely and in too many ways. Time can put so much pressure on runners that they escape by going watchless, thereby missing the good a watch can give them.

Like the car and the television, the watch begs us to overuse it. The TV is not to blame for someone sitting in front of it all evening every night, and the car is not to blame for someone driving it on any trip longer than a quarter-mile. The user controls the remote and the keys.

And the watch is not to blame for messing with a runner’s mind. You control time. You decide when to turn the watch on and off, or when to leave it home.

Here are four ways I’ve made friends with the watch to keep time from running me:

Limit the risky combination of known time and known distance to races and a very few extra-special training runs. Knowing exactly how far and how fast you go tempts you to turn even the easier days into races against time. Either run the distance without timing yourself most days, or run for a time period without checking the distance.

Turn the watch on at the first running step, off at the last. Don’t touch it and seldom look at it in between. This extends to checking splits on daily runs, when thinking you’re “too fast” or “too slow” could spoil an otherwise just-right effort. Let whatever happens happen between punching in and punching out.

Run silently. Today’s watches can be programmed to beep at selected intervals. Keep them quiet. Listen to voices inside, not to signals from your wrist, that tell you how you feel, and when to speed up, slow down or stop.

Start over every day. Keep the latest run’s time on your watch until the next one starts. Zeroing the watch at that time is a vital and visible reminder that yesterday’s run is done and gone, and you’re only as good as what you do today.

2018 Update. Okay, I caved. Couldn’t resist the modern GPS measurers/timers that have traveled with me for more than a decade. Now it’s an Apple Watch. But I still try not to take too seriously everything it could possibly tell me. The age-old question remains: Do you run the watch, or does the watch run you?

[Many books of mine, old and recent, are now available in two different formats: in print and as ebooks from Amazon.com. The titles: Going Far, Home Runs, Joe’s Team, Learning to Walk, Long Run Solution, Long Slow Distance, Miles to Go, Pacesetters, Run Right Now, Run Right Now Training Log, See How We Run, Starting Lines, and This Runner’s World, plus Rich Englehart’s book about me, Slow Joe.]

Making Memories, the Hard Way

(This is 50^th anniversary of my first article in Runner’s World magazine. All year I post excerpts from my book, This Runner’s World.)

May 2000 (retitled in the magazine). A run is such a nice way to start a day that I’ve started nearly 15,000 days like this. Most of these routine runs were worth repeating, but few are memorable.

Already I can barely recall where this morning’s run took me. It was too easy and pleasant to remember for long. Like footsteps on a dry road, it left behind a nothing to distinguish it from thousands of other runs.

Of all the days the days in a career, a tiny percentage go into the mental video library, Here the pictures and words forever stay as clear as the day they went onto tape.

My most memorable days are all race days. What I remember first about them is that they were no fun until they were done. Racing at its best never is.

Please don’t misread me here. Running can be great fun in ways that runners define the word.

Fun is running through the woods on an October afternoon, hearing leaves crunch underfoot. Fun is leaving the first footsteps in new snow on a January morning. Fun is the first stripping to shorts in spring or the first baring of shoulders to the sun in summer.

Fun is joining a partner or a group and easing the miles with your conversation. Fun is going into a run or race with no goal, thereby leaving yourself open to surprises and immune to disappointments.

Everyday runs can be joyful in and of themselves. But memories so easily and often won are short-lived.

The race, if run with great effort and high expectations, is no fun before or little fun during. It is a beast to be fought.

You hate the thought of going into battle, but you must. If you retreat, the beast wins by default because your nerve has failed before your strength is tested. This battle brings moments of panic and pain, but not to try would feel worse.

I’ve found no cure for these feelings. They stretch from my earliest track races to my latest marathons.

Recently I uncovered an almost-40-year-old newspaper clip. Now yellowed and brittle, its headline and byline are missing, and the years have washed away many of the words. Little more than the molecules of memory hold the story together, but they preserve the finest details of from that day.

Before the race the reporter had asked, “How do you feel?” That old story has me saying, “Terrible. I don’t know how I’ll do.” I feared not doing what had to be done that day.

Little is at stake in my current marathons. I’ve run this far dozens of times before, and much faster than now. Still, I never fail to suffer from advanced pre-marathon syndrome – PMS.

In the last week before a race each little tweak in my legs, tickle in my throat or twinge in my gut threatens to blow up into a major illness or injury. This magnification of symptoms defines PMS.

Doubts peak in the last hour before a big race. You have a big job to do, and are as likely to fail as succeed at it.

You can’t know in advance how the race will end, which is why racing is both fascinating and fearsome. This fear, unpleasant as it feels at the time, is good for you because it brings out your best efforts.

In my present-day marathons PMS is still necessary part of the experience – the mind’s way of readying the body for the hard work ahead. The imagined maladies nearly always melt away in the first half-hour, leaving me to worry about the normal challenges of the marathon that are tall enough.

A race well run brings instant relief from all the work and worry. That’s when fun of racing begins, at the finish line.

The old news story tells of me “looking fresh... bouncing around congratulating the other runners.” The fun had already started and would never stop.

Taking on this beast and fighting the good fight pushes the after-joy to a level no routine run can leave behind. You suffer for this joy, and it stays with you long after the wounds of extreme effort heal. The mental videotapes from your scariest, hardest and best days are indestructible.

2018 Update. Memory-making comes seldom these days. My race entries total fewer than a dozen since this column appeared. But in some ways the very rarity makes these events all the more memorable.

[Many books of mine, old and recent, are now available in two different formats: in print and as ebooks from Amazon.com. The titles: Going Far, Home Runs, Joe’s Team, Learning to Walk, Long Run Solution, Long Slow Distance, Miles to Go, Pacesetters, Run Right Now, Run Right Now Training Log, See How We Run, Starting Lines, and This Runner’s World, plus Rich Englehart’s book about me, Slow Joe.]

Meet and Greet

(This is 50^th anniversary of my first article in Runner’s World magazine. All year I post excerpts from my book, This Runner’s World.)

May 1999 (retitled in the magazine). We met as runners do on a sidewalk, passing briefly within arm’s length of each other. As is my habit, I greeted her with the single word, “Morning.”

She looked back at me, from the corners of her eyes and without turning her head, and said nothing in return. This was the look she might have given a homeless drifter gone too long between washings and coming too close as he bummed spare change. It was a don’t-bother-me look.

This isn’t the way one runner greets another. Or it wasn’t how we used to signal such meetings in a more innocent era.

The custom of greeting every runner who passes, just because he or she happens to run, is obsolete. If not gone, the brief but friendly exchange between runners is fading. And that’s too bad.

When runners were few, we all knew each other — if not by name then by our reasons for running and our approaches to it.

But we didn’t stop to talk. That too was part of the custom — not to interrupt anyone’s run for extended chit-chat. A simple word or two in passing — or just an unspoken smile, wave or nod of recognition — would do. A small gesture was enough to say we weren’t alone, but shared experiences and secrets with a wider community of runners.

Then the running population exploded. The streets and sidewalks grew more crowded with us, and the runners more diverse in background and purpose. Running now looks more like a city than a community.

Much has improved with the sport’s growth. But one unfortunate casualty has been the sense of connection between runners who don’t know each other.

Rarely these days does another runner initiate a greeting. Eye contact even comes grudgingly.

I’m a creature of old habit, though, and still greet every runner I meet. Nine in 10 respond, most with a surprised look of: Who’s that, and how does he know me?

The woman who touched off this story, the one who refused to acknowledge me, is the exception. She and a few others like her cast looks of irritation (usually by men who don’t want their run interfered with) or suspicion (usually by women who wonder why a strange man would speak to them). To give a greeting and receive nothing in return is discouraging and a little embarrassing.

I respond with another comment — louder than before in case the first went unheard and because I’m now shouting back over my shoulder. It’s along the lines of: “And you have a nice day too.”

This seldom has any effect on the reluctant. But it lets me feel I’m doing my part to keep alive one of the finer old customs of running.

The greeting of one runner meeting another makes our world a warmer place. It keeps our sense of community intact. It says to each other: I know why you’re here, and I’m happy that you are.

2018. So what if this labels me as odd, old and old school? I still greet every runner I meet, even when I’m walking.

[Many books of mine, old and recent, are now available in two different formats: in print and as ebooks from Amazon.com. The titles: Going Far, Home Runs, Joe’s Team, Learning to Walk, Long Run Solution, Long Slow Distance, Miles to Go, Pacesetters, Run Right Now, Run Right Now Training Log, See How We Run, Starting Lines, and This Runner’s World, plus Rich Englehart’s book about me, Slow Joe.]