Flexibility – keys to agility and speed

Do I have your attention now? Most people would like to go faster I’m sure, so let’s get down to it.

Almost every book on sport, whether its running, swimming, cycling, hockey, etc, will talk about the importance of stretching. It’s usually one of the first chapters with some guides and visuals to help you along. Stretching certainly does make a difference as it helps the muscles and body stay looser, move blood, and get us ready to run (or swim or ..) or helps us recovery. There’s also plenty of scientific evidence to back this up as well.

I have to admit I rarely stretch. I walk out the front door and usually run right from the front step. If I have to wait for my Garmin to locate satellites I’ll do a little, but only a minute or so. I’m just anxious to get to the main event. I will also freely admit that when I do stretch and do it consciously it feels really good to slow down and feel the body. It’s another great feedback mechanism. Even better for me is going to a yoga session where there’s a combination of listening, stretching, strength, and focus.

What about speed you’re asking …

When I ran the Tunnel Marathon a few weeks ago I felt great until the last four miles when both calves and my right hamstring cramped up. In a matter of seconds my form went all to hell. I went to a nearly straight legged run (which for me is hard to do) to keep my legs from bending and cramping worse. With a straight legged run, my hips twisted in weird ways and that cascaded up my back to tight shoulders, a stiff neck, and a rough armswing. Not only was this very uncomfortable, but my speed dropped as well. For almost two weeks after the marathon my legs were still very sore and I could feel the residual nature of the cramps. My form wasn’t as bad, but it was similar.

What occurred to me while in this awkward form was how limited my range of motion was and how severely that affected my form, and therefore my speed. When I can bend my legs, extend them back, and lean forward with my upper body, my form is quite natural and I can almost pick almost speed I want. If I can’t bend my legs, or push off, or have limited upper body motion, my stride can only be short, and that’s never good for speed.

As I’ve loosened up and recovered from the marathon, the looseness has come back. And just as easily the ease of running is back in place. And while I’m still tired, it’s somewhat fluid to find a good speed.

The other part of this is agility and this is more aimed as trail running. On a trail, it necessary to watch the trail and constantly adjust stride for rocks, roots, puddles, or whatever else is in the trail. If you’re loose, your agility is much greater and it’s much easier to bound around to find good foot placement. I accidentally took a trail in the first two weeks after the marathon that had lots of rocks and really needed that ability to bound around. Being still sore and tight, the trail was very difficult even to the point of walking at some points. So again it comes back to looseness in the body.

Off to stretch – after all I like running fast, especially down fun trails. After all this is about Dancing with the Dirt!

Thrilled

This weekend I raced the Boulder Distance Classic 15k. Initially this wasn’t on my race plans for the years, but I heard about it two weeks ago and thought it would be fun. I had decided to switch my 50k the first weekend of May to a 25k after feeling like I wasn’t quite ready. After hearing about the 15k, I thought that would be a perfect pre-race race – run a hard run the week before a taper!

The Boulder Distance Classic is a new (2 year old), small event – and I really liked it! Nice t-shirts, easy registration, plenty of food afterwards, and fairly inexpensive. Saturday morning turned out to be awesome for running – about 45 degrees at the start, the sun was shining bright and no clouds. The wind was blowing all over and it probably affected the race somewhat, still it didn’t bother me. I’d had a good week of mix of rest and running and felt good.

For this race I wasn’t sure what to expect for pacing since I hadn’t raced since February – a half marathon – with no speedwork in between. My hope was to hold the same pace I held for the half marathon which was about 7:15/mile. This race was going to be a good gauge of what I’m at.

So, first the numbers and stats: 19^th place overall, 15^th place among men, 3^rd place in my age group (40-44). 6:10 first mile, 12:30 for two miles, 19:40 for 5k, 40:40 for 10k, 1 hour at 9.15 miles, finish at 1:01.50. Three watches at the finish had the course closer to 9.5 miles than 9.3. I finished with a 6:32/mile average pace, which would be a 1:00.40 15k. That’s a lifetime PR for the 15k and a 40+ PR for the 10k and 5k (best time over age 40). Wow! The race went much better than I had hoped!

As I thought about the numbers, I remembered something my friend Marty had talked about with races. That is, past the numbers, what he really wanted to know was “how did the run feel? How do I feel? Did I have fun and enjoy myself?” Well Marty – absolutely I was happy with the numbers, but thrilled with the race. I’m going to enjoy those PRs, who knows how many are left. And I just had fun pushing my body. The race is past already, even as I write this. I’ll enjoy it for another day or two. Then the next run will be here and that will be fun too! Thanks Marty for being the voice in my head reminding me of what’s really important.

So here’s a race report to finish this off …

The first mile was fast – a loop around the Boulder Reservoir parking lot and then heading towards the dam, including a slight rise. After seeing the first mile I thought I was in trouble – that’s a fast pace even for me. I just keep going with the pace (not sure about the intelligence or lack of intelligence at this point), so the first two miles was still fast, partly because of a good tailwind. Still concerned at this point and yet feeling good, I kept going since I generally trust my body to find a good rhythm.

Around mile 2 ½ I started to notice my breathing a lot – I was pushing it. It was all in my chest – legs felt great and forms felt good. For a bit I had recollections of a 5k last summer where I blew up after about 2 miles. I slowed just a little to settle in. At this point we entered the uphill grade following a water ditch with the water going the other way. I definitely need to push a little harder, but couldn’t tell how much with such a slight grade. Even through mile 4 I was feeling the effort and the discomfort still.

I mentioned the wind earlier. It didn’t seem to have a consistent direction. Every time we changed direction, I used the wind to help find my new pace. I never let it be a nuisance, just a guide on what was needed.

At this point we turned off the ditch to do an out-and-back on a road to make the distance. The out was a slight downhill with a tailwind so I ‘rested’ a little with some long strides. It wasn’t long after I turned onto the road that the leader was coming back which surprised me. I thought he would have been on the ditch again already. So I started counting – I was somewhere past the 15^th male. That was a shocker! Then the turn around and back to the ditch. Just before turning onto the ditch again I suddenly felt another energy – like another cylinder started to fire, or I had another gear, but suddenly I felt pretty good. Maybe it was past halfway, maybe it was knowing my place, I don’t know. I remember a similar feeling around mile 5 on the half marathon in February. My pace was still under 6:30/mile and only just past halfway – this was new territory for me so I didn’t want to push too hard, but I started to open up a little.

The end of the water ditch was the farther point north – time to head back south. As we headed south, I passed a large group on a training run. I was wishing them all well inside my head – no breath to spare here. The 10k went by at 40:40 – another surprise – that’s a minute and a half faster than a 10k a did last summer at the reservoir. Still 5k to go – well at more than 5k since my watch was never quite in sync with the mile markers. Around this time I could also hear breathing and footsteps behind me – two I think – and I was slowly catching someone. We had a good little pack to push each other.

I just kept flying along and feeling good. That extra gear was still running strong. Every once in a while I’d push it just a little to see what else I had, but I was at the limit. With a mile to go, the guy behind me came alongside and started to pass. Then we hit the little rise coming off the dam and back onto the road. At last year’s 10k this about did me in, not this time, I put in a burst with short steps and was through it easily and back in front of my chaser. Now just a half mile to go and a  nice little downhill to finish it off!

I can’t say I noticed much on the course, I was paying attention internally to my body – legs, breathing, arms. Keeping a good rhythm in the effort.

Running Downhill - Fast!

In a previous about Jerry Lynch, I briefly described a day about 6 months ago when I followed Jerry and several others downhill from Green Mountain in Boulder. As I talked with Jerry about that day as we celebrated his birthday I was reminded of what a unique and remarkable run that was.

For that run, about 15 of us started at the Red Lion restaurant in Boulder Canyon and headed up to the top of Green Mountain. It was a tough uphill run with the awesome reward of standing on top of Green Mountain on a beautiful fall day overlooking Boulder Valley and farther east. As they say what goes up must come down, and from where we were it was almost all down back to the start. I was having a good run uphill mostly able to keep up with Jerry and a few others. Feeling good I thought I’d try to continue that on the way down. Little did I know what I was in for!

Jerry, his son, and two women started down from Green with me behind them. I had only ever run with Jerry before, and only knew the strength of the other three from the run up. It turns out all of them are fantastic descenders as well. The first part was fairly steep and rocky and I managed to hang on to the back of the foursome. From there the trail continues as single track with a significant pitch downhill, plenty of rocks and roots to watch out for, and switchbacks thrown in to mix it all up. The other four were suddenly bombing downhill! I was actually astonished – how could they run so fast downhill. Still I was determined to keep up so I set about putting myself in learning mode, and making it quick.

They say the quickest way to learn how to descend on a bike is to follow someone downhill who is an excellent descender. I’ve heard the same for skiing. And I was going to experience this directly on a run without really even realizing what I was doing. I quickly learned long strides don’t work – too much effort on the quads, too hard to get adjust quickly as the terrain changes. So it was quick, short strides – and keeping my legs underneath my hips so there was plenty of balance. I also learned to stay loose. It’s also helpful to lean into the hill, like skiing, though quite the opposite of what we might normally think of. With the speed and terrain, you have to be able to respond and react quickly.

If I was going to keep up I had to put these new ideas into play quickly. Even as I did so, it was a challenge to keep up. I clearly remember being totally present and aware of what I was doing, if I wasn’t it was going to be a hard, uncomfortable landing somewhere. I also clearly remember having fun – I’d never run so fast downhill before! What stood out most though was feeling the edge. Even doing something I’d never done before, learning along the way, I didn’t feel like I was near an edge of what I could possibly do. It was more than I had ever done before, and still completely manageable.  

So it was, I kept up the entire way down – and what a blast! My legs were sore after that and it was all worth it to discover a new depth of what’s possible and to learn how to run downhill fast. I really liked what Jerry said though – “You kept up all the way, blasting all the way down, out of your mind and when it was all finished I saw in your face the grin of a 7 year old boy who had just been given his first new shiny red bike.” That was indeed it.

Thanks Jerry, Brennan, and the other two (sorry names escape me 6 months later) for a spectacular run!

Practicing Speed

I believe that almost everyone would love to run faster. Each person is different with different muscle strength, aerobic capacity, age, and genes which put a reasonable upper limit on how fast we can go. Still we try.

We build our aerobic base and then we do our speedwork – fartleks, intervals, hill repeats, tempo runs, and so on. These most certainly are needed and help the body to adjust our uptake of oxygen and to pushing ourselves.

There’s three other components to speed that occur to me

1. Lean – if you lean forward, most likely you’ll go faster. Gravity is a good running aid.
2. Cadence – most of the time we have a steady pace on a run, but a faster cadence means more steps per minute.
3. Stride length – the longer out stride is, the more ground we’re going to cover

There’s one other small trick which is kick or pushoff. That is at the end of each stride, push off with the toes that are still on the ground. This really helps, but takes concentration and muscle. I’d probably only use this for shorter races.

I think there’s another great way to help get to speed – run downhill. Find a gentle downhill and then flow with that downhill. Keep your heartrate in a normal zone and enjoy the feeling of going fast! I can easily run downhill at 30-45 seconds faster than flats without any increase in effort. By running downhill you will help the body and legs to know what fast feels like. It’s also a time when you can practice lean, higer cadence, and increasing stride length while going fast – without having to push our heart rate up.

Give it a try – see if it helps your running. And enjoy it.