Book learning

I was perusing my old edition of Arthur Lydiard’s book—my running bible—this morning. I wanted a refresher on a particular style of shoe-lacing (sometimes called “Lydiard Lacing,”) but wound up reading whole sections of running gospel. The great Arthur—who coached Snell, Halberg, and other gods of my youth—was very much opposed to the type of training I (and most young runners of my time) did most of during high school and college—so-called interval training. (Technically, the running parts are repeats…the intervals are the jogs in between.) Lydiard maintained that repeats are good primarily for gaining a sense of pace, but that the basis for all successful training should be high-mileage weeks full of long running at what he called the “aerobic threshold”—a good strong pace just a tick slower than a speed that would put you in oxygen debt.

This hadn’t yet penetrated our understandings. We seldom ran long, and did intervals largely, I think, because they seemed like the toughest way to train (we weren’t lazy, just ignorant). At college three or four of us at a time would run a dozen or so quarters at perhaps 61 or 62 seconds. One of us would use a little rubber finger loop to carry the stopwatch—the old fashioned kind, with the face and moving arm—and set the pace. The others would tuck in closely and offer occasional advice— “too quick,” or “too slow”—until we were headed down the straight to the line, when we would fan out across the track, even with the pacemaker. The etiquette was that we would honor his pace except in the very rare cases we thought he was way slow. So we’d all come across the line together, the pacemaker would click the watch, and as we began our interval jog around the track, he’d announce the time before handing the responsibility off to the next guy. Training this way does automatically develop a good sense of pace. We were seldom off by more than a few tenths. This didn’t make us great runners, of course, just another bunch of guys who could run a training quarter mile accurately at any given pace between, say, 58 and 66. (Faster added too much stress after a few repeats, and slower…why bother?) This skill sometimes translated to racing, and sometimes got lost in the heat of the moment. (At that age, I was truly lousy at running steady-paced races. Too undisciplined and too stupid.)

It was a decade later that I came to understand that repeats are far less important than building an aerobic base by going long strong. Learned it from the Lydiard bible. I learned that pacing trick, too, and that running hills is a sort of magic, and that you can’t train hard and race hard in the same period. The result was that I was a much, much better runner and racer at 30 than I’d been at 20.

Now, of course, I’m thrilled if I can go short weak.

Peeved am I

Listening to the Maraniss book over the last few days I was thinking, “Boy, he’s leaving a lot of the good stuff out. Probably because he’s making a point that doesn’t require him to cover all the athletic high spots.” At the end this morning, the voice reading the credits announced the name of the person who abridged the book for audio. Abridged? The packaging makes no mention of it. If I’d wanted an abridged account, I’d have consulted my own memory with the occasional Wikipedia touch-up. I don’t feel exactly cheated. I don’t feel as if I’ve completely wasted my time. But I’m pretty sure I feel a moderately grouchy half hour coming on.

On the other hand, the reader—who is also the author—does pronounce “Cerutty” correctly. As the man himself said, “sincerity without the sin.”

Stotan!

Of course, I’m a Lydiard man, myself.

It wasn’t all plodding along

Around the first of December, I was sidelined (from running, not walking) by a not very painful left metatarsal stress fracture (or maybe a stress reaction), a pretty common injury among runners, but the first one I’d ever had. I got it by feeling my oats and running too many miles beyond normal one day. A classic. A stupid. Unfortunately, a typical for me.

But walking, which I limited myself to, was no problem. No pain, no issues, no concerns. I might have had a problem if I’d followed Googled advice to wear grotesque protective footwear: “a stiff-soled shoe, a wooden-soled sandal, or a removable short-leg fracture brace shoe.” (On the other hand, I had been looking for the right pair of boots.) Tramping in New Zealand was fine, and I’m about to try to start my sun-up staggers again, gasping and moaning and once again bitterly envying that corps of ladies elegantly gliding their way along the roads while I look at months and months to get  back up to speed. (Well, not speed, but....)

All this is to explain why I didn’t run a mile at Wanganui, as I had at Oxford. I did, though, make a pilgrimage.

I wanted to pay my respects to Peter Snell, whose statue went up at Cook’s Gardens, I think at the same time the old grass track was replaced by a modern all-weather surface. Doing this was harder than I’d expected. I couldn’t find Pete. I wandered down along one grandstand, watched some young people playing soccer on the infield, exited the grounds thinking perhaps the statue was just out front, and decided to start asking around.

A lovely retired plumber who had emigrated from Nottingham in the early 1950s had a foggy general memory that such a statue existed, but was eventually forced to refer me to the good people at the St. Paul’s Church Community Centre Citizen’s Advice Bureau (otherwise wonderfully known as Te Pokapū Whakahiki Pātai mai i te Iwi Whānui). They, just across the street from the park, had not the foggiest clue, and sent me along the road to the Wanganui District Council, where, thankfully, explicit directions included everything but a GPS coordinate. Unfortunately, I still couldn’t find Pete (bodes well for walking across Scotland, eh?). Scannings, wanderings, wonderings. Finally, there he was, tucked in halfway up the stands at the end of the back straight.

Here I am, explaining to Sir Peter that his arm action could use a little work. He hardly blinked an eye. I think he was chuffed to learn that a young Wellington bartender and I had several days earlier agreed that he (Snell, not the bartender) was the greatest miler of all time.

(I also went to the Waitakeres, north of Auckland, where Arthur Lydiard trained Snell, Halberg, Barry Magee and others on the hilly winding roads and trails. It was easy to see what wonderful and challenging training terrain this is. And there were lots of runners and cyclists out doing their things.)

Lots of dissolute living during these second two weeks. There were palm trees. (Here at Rotarua).

There was good food in lovely places, as here in Blenheim at the lovely outdoor bistro at the Hans Herzog winery.

And there was utter dissipation, here with a nice Sauvignon Blanc in the spa at  Blenheim’s terrific Argrove Lodge.

And, as the ads say, MUCH, MUCH more!

I loved New Zealand. I’d go back in a flash. Or on Air New Zealand. Either way. But soon, please.

News flash!

According to the New York Times, a study has just demonstrated the obvious ...  that the “talk test” is not for people who are training, as opposed to out-of-shape people looking for basic fitness (like me). The talk test is fine for warming up, cooling down, or a long, slow recovery run after a tough race, but it’s not going to get anyone into good shape or keep anyone there. This is a concept known to every runner. To get better and stay good, you have to work up against your lactate threshold, which happens to be pretty much the same thing as Arthur Lydiard’s aerobic threshold. Very old news. Why does the Times treat it as a surprise, a turning over of established beliefs?

Of course, these days, I do try to shuffle along with the talk test in mind because I want to complete my tours of the cemetery without actually requiring space there. But I run alone, so I wind up gasping my little mantra over and over: “Jeez. How did you. Ever. Get so fat and. Slow.”

It was probably because I stopped running at my lactate threshold.

Shuffling along

I had my first decent run this morning since I got back to it last week. It was one of those days when I really, really, really didn’t feel like doing it at all, but the body parts worked together smoothly enough to make it, if not delightful, at least encouraging. This going well when you feel like not going at all happens so often, to me and to others, that there must be something physiological to it.

My base-line run for years was 4 miles. Anything less didn’t count. When I came back from injuries or simple layoffs, I’d get back to 4 miles as quickly as possible, usually immediately, then work toward 6, which I long considered the shortest run that did me any real good. Once I got there, I’d begin a standard runner’s program, building base mileage up, with hills (runners’ Miracle-Gro), long days, quick days, and easy days mixed in.

This is NOT what I’m doing to get ready for the TGO Challenge. Instead, I’m walking every morning, running afterward three days a week, now at about 3 miles, looking forward to no more than 4. And these “runs” are, in fact, the slo-mo shuffles I’ve described before—nowhere near Arthur Lydiard’s “steady state,” the aerobic-anaerobic threshold where I used to try to live. I’m also doing simple strength and flexibility exercises three days a week, primarily to make sure my back and other creaky parts don’t betray me inconveniently. In April, I’ll start wearing my pack on our morning walks, and will probably extend some of those strolls to 6-8 miles.

I have some real concerns about the Challenge, primarily navigating over open terrain in bad weather, something I’ve seldom had to do. I want to remove fitness from my worries and make sure that if I do manage to point my body in the right direction, it can get me to the next waymark.

Running shoes

I just broke out a new pair of training flats. Big news, huh?

I used to use up a pair of these every six or seven weeks, when they wore down and out after about 400 miles. Now I just wear them and wear them and wear them, since mileage is hardly an issue. I left a pair in Minnesota, though, so I could use them when I go back in a few weeks, and I had to break out some new ones.

For a long time, I’ve been running in Asics GTs. (The numbers change—I think they’re up to GT-2130s now—but the shoe, thankfully, remains essentially the same. Slightly clunky, but not too heavy, not overly “controlled,” not overly “stable,” not overly cushioned.) I buy them by the half-dozen pairs (old models when the new models are introduced) in the certain knowledge that they will be, as I heard it put lately, “obsoleted” some day when I’m not looking. I ritualistically pull out the cheap supplied innersoles, slip in a set of simple green Spencos and my own inserts, and there we are.

I began running cross-country in Puma racing flats (size 8-1/2), which would now be seen as closer to running barefoot than to any modern shoe, before switching to the original red-and-white, ripple-soled New Balances (size 7-1/2). I raced on the track in the blue Adidas Tokyos (size 9-1/2) that were probably the most popular spikes of that late-cinder-track era. And I trained mostly in green-striped white Adidas Italias (size 9). (Or were they Romas? How odd I can’t be sure.) [Much later: Italias.] These shoes, all of them among the best available in the mid-to-late ’60s, were necessary evils for me, and I spent a lot of time not running. Our trainer labored heroically on arch cookies and all sorts of tape jobs, but in vain. I was eventually diagnosed with anterior compartment syndrome.

(Time out: This reminds me of something amusing. I had to shave my legs below the knees to be taped, and the trainer would spray on Cramer Tuf-Skin to make the tape really adhere. Tuf-Skin over time would turn your leg green unless you scrubbed it off with rubbing alcohol (surgical meths), which I naturally considered a waste of time. So I spent my late teens and early twenties with stubbly green legs. I looked like a diseased tomato vine.)

For a few years I puttered around in very light Tigers (now Asics), which were cheap and not bad. In the mid-’70s, I discovered orthotics and Lydiard-style long-distance training. I also discovered that shoes were vastly improved. And vastly more expensive. Why, some cost more than $30!

Starting with some blue New Balance 320s, I moved to yellow waffle-soled Nike LDVs for training, and Nike Elites for road racing (all size 9—amazing standardization!). Nike design and my needs diverged somewhere back in the ’80s, and I’ve been in Asics ever since (though I still sometimes call them Tigers). My racing shoes these days? Surely you jest.

Last year, I was given several sets of Lock Laces, which you might be able to make out in the photo. I never would have bought these for myself, because they seemed like gimmicks. But I love them. Essentially, they are small-diameter shock cord and special two-hole cord locks. They let you lever yourself quickly into the shoe, which I really like, but best, their stretchy nature keeps pressure off my very high instep while keeping the shoe on snugly. Nifty.