Hurrying Home

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

August 2003 (retitled in the magazine). To find one of the great misnomers of our sport, look no further than “negative split.” The term is mathematically correct, in that a faster second half of a run takes less time than a slower first half.

But to call finishing faster than you start a “negative” is wrong psychologically. This is one of the most positive experiences a runner can have, and you can have it often. It can happen in your everyday runs, in races and in speed training designed specifically to teach faster finishes.

Normal runs. Almost all daily runs can be positively “negative.” This happens naturally if you let it. You ease into the run, bumping up the pace as you warm up.

I’ve long since stopped measuring my runs and checking their mile splits. But I know they end faster (or less slow!) than they start.

The proof is on the watch, which is my only way of telling the length of most runs. I often run out-and-back courses, going out for 20 to 30 minutes and noting the turnaround time.

The return trip of equal distances usually takes a few minutes less – with no apparent increase in effort. Any run that ends better than it had started is a good one.

Races. Alone on a weekday run, your natural tendency is to start slowly and build into your pace of the day. On race day, however, you naturally try to do the opposite. Mass adrenaline poisoning urges you to join the crowd that’s starting unwisely.

Your race will end better if you resist that urge and smooth out your efforts, keeping your head while others around you are losing theirs. It’s depressing to slow down steadily (with “positive” splits). It’s uplifting to hold or increase your pace, and to pass the unwise toward the end.

All my PRs, over a wide range of distances and a long span of time, were set while running the halves of those races close to equal or with a somewhat faster ending. Those PRs are ancient for me now, but the pacing rule still applies. To guard against a too-fast opening act, I warm up little and start far back in the field.

Fast-finish training. You can practice fast finishes by mimicking race speed and effort for part of a day’s run. This can aid your final kick, which lasts for a hundred meters or so. But its greater value is in teaching you to make a longer, sustained, more controlled push for home.

A favorite session of mine goes like this: Run three miles nonstop. Use the first mile as a warmup, easing into the run as on any other day.

Then run the second mile about one minute faster than the warmup. This still isn’t much of a stretch. The real effort comes on the final mile, where the pace jumps by other minute (to what I’d expect to hold for an entire 5K).

To avoid time pressure, I ignore splits, only checking them afterward from the watch’s memory bank. Sometimes I even ignore distances, either partial or full, and simply run out easily for 15 minutes, hurry back the same way and take a final time. It usually falls in the 27s.

You might call this “negative-split” training. I think of it “half-fast,” with the last half being the faster one by far.

2018 Update. I make no mention in this reprinted column of the athlete Runner’s World originally chose to illustrate it. Her long and apparently brilliant career ended amid drug charges and penalties.

[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, Next Steps, 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.]

Weighting Games

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

August 2002 (retitled in the magazine). I’m much less of a runner than I used to be, and at the same time there’s more of me running. Those two facts are intimately linked.

The length of my runs has slipped, settling at about half of the peak amount. My diet didn’t change, so my weight crept up by a pound a year while it went unwatched. When I finally noticed what had happened, the imperceptible gain for a single year had multiplied over two decades into an impressive total.

I’d become heavy only by the skewed standards of this sport, but was heavier than I cared to be. Which is to say: Finally I’d come back around to thinking as most runners do about our weight.

Being super-skinny doesn’t always make a runner better; we’re not promoting eating disorders or obsessions here. But most adult runners could profit from losing some pounds, or think we could.

If you have something to lose, as I do, decide what your ideal weight is, realize how much better you can run at that weight, and judge how you compare to other runners pound-for-pound.

What should you weigh? Please don’t look at the tiny 120-pound frontrunners (and those are the men) in bigtime races and think, “I’m too fat.” You haven’t looked like them since you passed puberty.

And please don’t listen to your mother or other well-meaning kinfolk who say, “You’re too thin.” If you look healthy by the standards of people who don’t run, you’re almost surely overweight for a runner.

Don’t trust the standard charts, which don’t account for differences in your frame size and muscle mass. Body-fat readings are better but inconvenient to check regularly.

The scales give you a daily figure, but only what you do weigh and not what you should. So what should it be?

For longtime runners, the guideline is what you weighed when you ran your best. For newer runners, it might be your weight when you stopped growing up. Or it could simply be the highest number we’ll accept before vowing, This must go.

What difference does it make? One of my all-time favorite teachers is Tom Osler. In his Serious Runner’s Handbook he wrote, “Every pound of unneeded weight has a measurable effect on a runner’s final time. From my own experience I estimate that I lose two seconds per mile for each excess pound of body fat.”

This is only Tom’s experience, but he’s one of the wisest and most analytical runners I’ve ever known. His formula means that a 10-pound gain would slow a runner’s times by 20 seconds per mile – which becomes a full minute in a 5K or four-plus minutes in a half-marathon.

If statistical results don’t concern you, then maybe physiological ones do. Each added pound adds about three extra pounds of force to the feet and legs.

Running “heavy” feels tighter and less fluid. It’s less efficient aerobically, since the VO2-max formula has weight as one of its components.

How fast do you carry your weight? Size, or lack of it, matters in our sport. The best athletes are small and light.

Very few runners ever beat their weight in a marathon. That is, run fewer minutes than their weight in pounds – which requires a 130-pounder to break 2:10 and a 200-pounder to run sub-3:20.

This formula discriminates against women, the best of whom seldom run within 30 minutes of their poundage. The fastest woman for her size appears to be Marian Sutton of Britain, who weighed about 140 pounds when she ran 2:28 (a weight-to-time factor of plus-eight).

The greatest man, pound for pound, probably was Derek Clayton. The Australian set a world record of 2:08:34 while weighing about 160 – an amazing minus-31 factor. Much more typical is Bill Rodgers, who PRed at 129 minutes and 128 pounds.

How close have you come to “running your weight?” My best was plus-22, and that was a long time and a lot of pounds ago.

I’m less of a runner now, but there’s also less of me running than when this year began. I picked an acceptable weight, midway between my old low and recent high, ran a little more and ate a little less, and have reached that new level.

Running far more and eating much less might take off even more weight. But I enjoy both activities too much to make grim work of them.

2018 Update. Full disclosure: I’ve never been heavier. It’s easy to blame treatment for prostate cancer, which resulted a dozen extra pounds that have stubbornly stuck around for 10 years. But shorter and slower runs, which evolved into mostly walks, surely contributed also to the added poundage.

[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, Next Steps, 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.]

Exceeding Expectations

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

August 2001. Here are tales of two runners who show that a practice I’m about to propose isn’t as weird as it might seem. Neither runner is an underachiever, athletically or professionally. Christine Clark is a pathologist in Alaska, Jeff Hagen a dentist in Washington state.

Many American marathoners aimed higher in 2000 than Dr. Clark. None achieved more internationally.

When first spotted during U.S. television coverage from the Sydney Olympics, she lagged near the back. She might have appeared overwhelmed to be in this company.

But no, Clark calmly climbed into the top 20. Set a PR too, on a windy day and hilly course that worked against such times.

She was as surprised as anyone that she even reached Sydney. Winning the U.S. Trials didn’t figure into her prerace plans. She didn’t aim low, but realistically said she hoped to break into the top 20.

Before the race she had told an Anchorage reporter, “If you train really hard, you’re going to have a good day. And sometimes, for no reason you can account for, you have a great day.”

You can’t will such days to happen. You do the training, then take your chances on what kind of race day it will be.

Jeff Hagen takes a similar view on goals, though he too is no slacker. Few ultrarunners have won more often while aiming lower. In his 50s he does especially well in track races that last a day or more.

“I have always steered clear of setting lofty race goals,” he wrote in his club newsletter. “With them comes pressure, and if any little thing goes wrong – which is almost a certainty in any ultra event – I can easily become demoralized and perform poorly. By setting goals that are more achievable, if things happen to be going well, I sometimes adjust my goal upward during the second half of the event.”

Like many runners, I’ve never lacked motivation but am more likely to trip over the high hurdles of ambition. I caved in to the pressure of such goals from the start – two starts, in fact.

Here are tales of two miles. Race one was my first high school mile, where I aimed to beat the big boys. The only one beaten up by a too-fast start and quitting the race after little more than a lap was me.

Race two was my first college mile. I set as a goal breaking 4:20, though I’d never gone that fast and this event followed a season of slow training. The time fell short by a dozen seconds and left me despondent.

My best times nearly always have come as surprises, not as a result of hitting lofty targets. “Goals are stopping places,” I once wrote. You either reach them and stop because you’re satisfied, or you don’t reach them and stop out of frustration.

By setting high goals, you set yourself up for high pressure and a high probability of failure. Lower goals lead to lower pressure and surprising results.

Case in point: Boston 1967 was my marathon debut, and the longest training run had been 20 miles at eight-minute pace. A reasonable goal seemed to be holding that same pace for the extra 10K.

I started as planned but steadily nudged up the pace. To my shocked delight I averaged 6:30 miles in that marathon. The new goal became that pace or better, which I never averaged again.

If high goals become hurdles that trip you up, try this: Set “at-least” goals that are the least you will accept instead of the most you might achieve – goals that are floors to spring from instead of ceilings to bump into.

Divide the race into two parts, equal in size but very different in style. Run the first half like a scientist, with planning and restraint. Then switch in the second half to running like an artist, creatively and emotionally.

Starting cautiously will often lead to finishing with a rush. Running the second half of a race faster than the first is misleadingly called “negative splits.” In fact, few feelings in running are more positive than a strong finish with an outcome that far exceeds expectations.

2019 Update. My “at least” goal now is to enter at least one race a year, there to go faster (or less slow) than I’d do the same distance alone. I still can trust the race-day magic to shave at least one minute per mile.

[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, Next Steps, 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.]

Aging Agendas

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

August 1999 (retitled in the magazine). Nothing illustrates the rush of years more than a long-delayed visit to an old hometown. Seeing friends again after all this time puts a face on our aging.

For about a decade in the 1960s and 1970s I lived on the outskirts of the Stanford University campus in northern California. Two of my children were born here, and so was my career. I worked first for Track & Field News in Los Altos, then for Runner’s World in Mountain View.

These might also have been my best years as a racer, and not by chance. Races abounded in the Bay Area at a time when they still were scarce most other places.

Runners were abundant too. Here’s where I really got to know the friendliness of the long-distance runner. Groups of us took long runs together on Saturdays, then met again the next morning in friendly competition.

About 20 years ago I left this area and these friends. Since then I’d seen too little of this place and these people. Many of us had completely fallen out of touch.

In March I went back for the first time in eight years. The Fifty-Plus Fitness Association invited me back to speak at its race.

Fifty-Plus promotes active aging. Its events at Stanford included a day of workshops, an awards banquet and an 8K run. I can’t recall spending many better weekends as the gap between past and present closed here.

The surface changes in some old friends were startling, as I’m sure mine were to them. But we quickly looked past this as we rediscovered the same person we’d known before.

Inevitably some stories were sad. My longest-time friend in this area now cared for his wife with advanced Alzheimer’s... a former ultrarunner now wore a pacemaker and defibrillator in his chest... an 87-year-old lay critically ill in Stanford Hospital.

But good news and positive views far outweighed the bad. This started with my closest friend here this weekend.

I’ve edited three books for Paul Reese, but we hadn’t seen each other in six years. He said in his talk that a key to aging well is “always have an agenda.” His is to write a fourth book at age 82.

Jim O’Neil and Ruth Anderson are longtime friends of mine. Jim is into his 70s, and Ruth soon will be. Both have on their agendas trips to England, where they’ll extend streaks of competing in every World Veterans Championships.

The most gratifying meeting was with Bob Anderson. We hadn’t seen each other, or even connected by phone or mail, since he sold Runner’s World magazine in 1985.

I’d heard that Bob still raced well, and now saw him finish fifth in the Fifty-Plus 8K. He runs better times now, at 51, than he did when we worked together at his magazine.

“Working in the sport worked against my own running,” he said. “I didn’t have enough time to train or, frankly, all that much interest in doing it. Now I’m free to do what I couldn’t do back then.”

Bob stated his agenda numerically. He still wants to break 17 minutes for 5K and 35 for 10K (after running 17:18 and 35:50 in March).

He and many others I saw at Fifty-Plus illustrate the best way of aging. That’s to keep looking forward, not gazing increasingly backward.

2018 Update. One of the two main characters in this book, Paul Reese, has passed on – in 2004 at age 87. He left behind three books about his runs across every U.S. state. Bob Anderson continues racing strongly in his 70s. He promotes and publicizes running in several innovative ways.

[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.]