Think Fast

[Jeff Linger]

There's a great, and short, article in this months Runner's World under the Mind+Body section entitled "Think Fast" on page 47. I think it gets to the heart of a few issues that have come up in the last month or so, mainly pacing(negative v. positive splitting), neurological fatigue, and perhaps even quality X. The article has to do with the science of pacing and dealing with fatigue. The article suggests that most people think the best way to finish a given distance in the shortest amount of time without falling apart is to run by feel. "We decide whether to speed up, slow down, or hold steady based on how much discomfort we think we can handle. . . If you petered out midway through a run, most experts would say your body temperature go too high or there was too much lactate circulating in your blood." However, a growing number of experts seem to be hinting that there is something more complex going on. In short, they say when you get into a race your brain is monitoring different systems, calculating the race distance, and then working backwards to where you are in the race and then recalculating what your body can handle for the remainder of the race, either slowing you down, holding you steady, or speeding you up accordingly ... and that this is an almost subconscious process. They coin this 'anticipatory regulation'. The summation of the article suggests that you can over-ride such brain mechanisms by utilizing a couple different training techniques. Three primary suggestions: 1. Run often at race pace, even if for short distance to teach your body the pace, 2. run race pace at/near the end of your training runs to teach your body to deal with fatigue ... frequent experiences of fatigue get your body more in tune with its true limits, and 3. do negative split training runs where you run the 2nd half of your run faster than the first, this will train you to override your mind when it starts to slow down during the 2nd half of a race.

For those of you who don't get Runner's World you can view the article here http://www.runnersworld.com/article/0,7120,s6-238-244--12848-0,00.html

[Tom]

Jeff from your description even before I looked at the article I figured this had to be written by Matt Fitzgerald, author of "Brain Training for Runners".  For anyone interested in a more in-depth read on this topic I would highly recommend getting the book.

However one caveat on the training routine suggestions that take up the last half of the book....I believe Sasha is of the opinion that although Fitzgerald is onto something here, his ideas on how we should be training to take advantage of what our brains can do for us are still in the very early stages, and the suggested training schedules are speculative and perhaps just there to help sell more books.

I'm not sure if I'm in complete agreement with Sasha on this point, Kim and I have been following the "spirit" of Fitzgerald training schedules most of this year. I had great results early in the year but have since hit a plateau and have been fighting lingering pains/injury/burnout all summer, while Kim has improved dramatically and doesn't appear to have reached any plateau just yet. But maybe what we've experienced is just the normal result of running 6 days a week, rarely if ever missing days (40-50 miles for Kim, 60-75 for me), being lucky enough to avoid injury, and just getting it done consistently over days, weeks, months and years.

I do think his regiment of 3 hard workouts a week is too much for many runners and we've had better success with 2 hard days a week. Maybe younger runners could handle the 3. He also suggests doing a bunch of drills (what we call the "dork" drills as they look a little silly and take some courage to do in public), various workouts and proprioceptive cues that all adds up to too much to have to think and worry about for most runners in my opinion.

But in Fitzgeralds defense I will mention that he does say the suggested workouts in the back of the book are just that..."suggestions" to help runners get started, and that the overiding training principle should be to listen very closely every day to what your body tells you, run fast when you feel like running fast, run slower when the body/brain says to,  take what your body is willing/able to give each day and don't force workouts. Problem is many runners (me included oftentimes) want everything spelled out for them and tend to want to follow a schedule to the letter-of-the-law, come heck or high water.

Anyways it's an interesting topic and always fun to hear everyone's thoughts and ideas.

[Dale]

Matt Fitzgerald also has a blog at http://community.active.com/blogs/MattFitzgerald.  If you read back several entries, you'll see that he struggles just like we do at times so the training schedules in his "Brain Training for Runners" book definitely isn't a panacea. 

Interestingly enough, he's also recently teamed with Brad Hudson on a new book just recently released: "Run faster from the 5K to the Marathon".  From the parts I've read so far, it seems to contain more Hudson philosophy than Fitzgerald (although that's just my gut feeling) and shies away from "cast in stone" training plans, including some only reluctantly.  Instead, they focus on Adaptive Training, which means you modify your training plan as you go along to shore up weak areas and reinforce strengths.  A pretty good read so far...

[Sasha Pachev]

Good ideas. However, what I've found most productive for me to overcome brain limits has not been much related to running:

* avoid thinking too hard during the day (this one is tough because if I do not think my family does not eat)
* sleep more
* laugh hard
* talk to friends
* cross-train in a certain way (cross-country skiing has been the best)