Run Stories

(I dug this out from 2001.  I will be aggregating stories and building a new page to support items not specific to training and physiology.  This was an excerpt from a training week in Tucson with Jimmy Riccitello.  Jimmy was one of the first athletes I worked with at HIND and Saucony in the 90’s.  I never laughed more than when Jimmy called in those days and, along with Mike Pigg, the most genuinely normal/cool/interesting professional athlete you will ever meet.  Anyway, besides his attempted carbon monoxide poisoning of me in his guest room, me almost being chomped by a rattler, and at least three climbs up Lemmon in a week, most of my Jimmy stories are pretty funny…)

May 2001

Jimmy Riccitello, you’re my hero…

We had just finished a desert run; nothing too crazy. After deciding not to ride the shootout as it looked like rain, the storm never materialized and we hit the trail. “We’ll get enough miles in this week anyway,” was his rationale. Fine with me.
Read more…

Avoid “Hitting the Wall”

How Specificity in your Training and Careful Planning can Result in Success at Longer Distances

We have had a lot of requests recently about the topic of “hitting the wall” or “bonking”. Whatever you want to call it, we have all experienced it at some point. Essentially, it is the point during training or competition when you have exhausted or depleted your glycogen stores. It usually is described as a sharp drop in energy and sharp rise in fatigue. It is also more likely to occur during a bout of exercise that is of longer duration, like a marathon, that takes over 2 hours to complete. It is also less likely to happen during shorter events like 5 and 10K events, but can if these events follow tough weeks of training where the athlete is already depleted and not adequately refueled.

So why do we hit the wall?

Glycogen is stored in muscles and the liver as well as floating around in the blood and as intensity or duration rises, the body consumes these stores, mixes them with a little oxygen and…Read On

Running with Consistency

Recently, I emailed a buddy of mine to see if he wanted to get a run or ride in together during the work week. He is an accomplished athlete and, like me, works a full-time job. His response caught me a little off-guard as I expected a resounding “yes!” Instead he replied with a list of his workouts and the rather cryptic message “I am not doing many filler miles.” I wanted to reply, “Well, there’s your problem,” as I had always thought he hadn’t reached his potential as a runner, but then I drew a distinction between consistency and mileage. He was trying to tell me that he was getting all his workouts in, but he wasn’t a slave to the mileage as he once was, perhaps. Read on…

Running Shoes

You’ve decided you are going to start a running program or it’s at least time to update your running shoes.  Those with the luxury of a specialty running shop in the neighborhood are likely to come away from the experience without a scratch.  The rest of us must weather the big box sporting good warehouse at the local strip mall.  Regardless, what you’ll likely find is a wall full of styles and brands and what seemed like a simple task just turned into a lot of second-guessing.  But you can go into the purchase armed with a little more information and walk or run out feeling a little better.
 All running shoes essentially fall into one of three categories: lightweight training/performance, neutral training, or stable training.  For the sake of simplicity we are going to remove the outliers like racing flats or spikes (used for sprinting or cross-country racing) and focus on the shoes you’ll likely need.  Read on

Running Two Week Rule

When I started running competitively thirty years ago I had no plans and no
real coaching.  It was simply that I could run.  I was built for it.  The
town of Cumberland, RI had a pretty good summer track program and neighboring towns would get together for weekly track meets and as a six year old kid, I would jump into any race the “coach” said to and try to get to the finish
line first.  It seemed to work for this wiry young kid and I would take my
finisher ribbons and tack them to a cork board in my room when I got home.  By
the time I was nine, they had to stick me in the teenage girls events because
there weren’t any distance races for the little guys.   Growing up, my
father used to call me “the squirrel” as I seemed to always be dashing here
or there and I think my parents needed me to burn off  all that energy before
dinner.

Competition seemed to be the only thing that fueled my desire to run. Read more about the two-week rule.

Trail Running

Get out of the road!

About three years ago I made a fundamental switch in my running routine and started training almost entirely on trails. Part of the change was an effort to recapture the spirit of my cross-country days and part of it was an effort to improve my efficiency as I got older. Most of all, I was trying to reduce the likelihood of an injury while maintaining a busy travel and racing schedule.

In previous postings I put forth two rules that I follow when starting or maintaining a routine, The Two Week Rule for Running and Running with Consistency.  Trail running is my third rule: do as much of your running volume as possible on trails.  You’ll get faster and reduce the likelihood of injury. Read on about trail running…

Demystify all that is running…

After working in the running business, working in technology and program mangement, running my tail off, coaching and racing, I thought now would be a good time to get some of this stuff on paper. Or, on a server somewhere… So this will be a place to answer some running questions, direct to my articles and talk about all those things that people ask about or otherwise pay oodles of money to get from a coach. Don’t get me wrong, getting a coach may be the best thing for you, but demystifying it shouldn’t cost you a fortune. So read on and let me know what you think…