My Track Record

Ever since incurring extensive muscle damage at the Mad City 100K, I've been wondering why my training didn't protect me from this trauma. My tentative conclusion is that I may not have allowed my muscles to heal completely in between my long-and-hard runs, meaning that I may have gone into Mad City with a bit of residual damage that was exacerbated by the race itself.

So how did I arrive at this conclusion? Basically, I looked at a bunch of scientific journal articles concerning muscle damage and tried to relate their findings to my own situation (a general approach I call Research-Based Coaching).

The most interesting point I noticed in the research literature was that both recovery from and protection from muscle damage can occur over surprisingly long time scales. One study found microscopic evidence of incomplete healing in calf muscles 3 to 4 weeks after a marathon race (Warhol et al., American Journal of Pathology 118: 331-9, 1985). Another reported exaggerated heart rates while running and impaired jumping ability -- most likely due to muscle damage -- that persisted for 2.5 to 3.5 weeks after a 90K race (Chambers et al., Journal of Sports Science 16: 645-51, 1998). A third showed that as little as 25 minutes of downhill running can elevate markers of muscle damage for ten days or longer (Koller et al., Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness 38: 10-7, 1998). But what really amazed me was that, once muscles recover from a single bout of eccentric exercise (in which the muscle fibers lengthen while attempting to shorten -- a normal consequence of running, but especially downhill running), the damage is reduced after a similar bout 6 weeks later (Byrnes et al., Journal of Applied Physiology 59: 710-5, 1985) and in some cases up to 6-9 months later (Nosaka et al., Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise 33:1490-5, 2001), although the protective effect does gradually taper off during this multi-month period (Nosaka et al., Canadian Journal of Applied Physiology 30: 529-42, 2005).

While the last two studies focused on the biceps rather than leg muscles, the overall picture that emerges from articles like those cited above is the following. Muscles may take several weeks to recover fully from intense, damaging exercise, but this recovery process includes adaptations (the specifics of which I haven't researched) that then help protect the muscles for additional weeks or months afterwards.

The implication for marathon and ultramarathon training is that extremely hard, muscle-shredding workouts and races should be separated by at least several weeks. Undertaking these efforts infrequently should allow complete recovery between them while still stimulating adaptation and enhancing protection during subsequent workouts/races.

Unfortunately, my schedule leading up to the Mad City 100K included a very hard, long road run every 2-3 weeks. On January 27th, I did 36.6 miles at a pace of 6:23 per mile; 3 weeks later, I did 41.5 miles at 6:22/mile; 2 weeks after that, I raced the Caumsett Park 50K at 5:57/mile; 3 weeks later; I did 29.3 miles at 6:24/mile; and 2 weeks after that came Mad City, where my pace was 6:20/mile at the start ... and 8:20/mile by the end.

So I guess I should try trashing my muscles less frequently -- perhaps by spreading my mileage over a greater number of runs and/or taking it easy on some of my long runs. That idea seems particularly appealing right now, as I sit here rubbing my quads -- which are still sore from last Saturday's trail run with Jurek -- and looking ahead to the Miwok 100K on May 5th. After Miwok, let the slacking begin!

Posted by crowther at 12:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (18)

On Friday evening we enjoyed a trip to Husky Ballpark to watch our Dawgs take on the Trojans of USC. Music is such an integral part of these games that each Husky player has his own theme song that is played as he steps up to bat. This got me thinking about how ultramarathon races could likewise be infused with song excerpts to make them more "fan-friendly." Imagine this: about 50 meters before each aid station, a runner passes over one of those mats used for electronic timing purposes. The sensing of the runner's chip by the mat then causes that runner's theme song to be played automatically as he/she approaches the aid station, thus building excitement in a semi-informative way (e.g., "It's that Guns N' Roses song again -- it must be Meghan!").

The system would need to be set up to handle packs of runners in a reasonable way, rather than switching songs every second. Perhaps the arrival of the leader would trigger 30 seconds of music for that person, after which the system would reset and wait for the next arrival.

So what would my theme be? I'm not sure, but maybe "St. Elmo's Fire (Man in Motion)" by John Parr, or "Running Down a Dream" by Tom Petty. Or "Climb Every Mountain" by that nun from The Sound of Music. Or....

Posted by crowther at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Every month my wife takes a new photo of Phil in his crib with Teddy (a gift from his Great Grandmother Jane). Here is his six-months-old shot from yesterday.

He doesn't usually sport this "I've been sniffing stimulants" look but is generally happy -- except when we try to feed him solid food, which makes him constipated. No teeth yet. He can't really crawl or sit up, either, but is making progress on both fronts.

Posted by crowther at 6:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

This past week was a big one for Crowther family news.

First, my sister's boyfriend proposed to her while vacationing in Italy. We're all very happy for them. (As articulate as ever, I reacted to the phoned-in news with, "Oh, goody!") Fred is a very likeable and impressive person in many respects. The only questionable behavior I've noticed is that he runs marathons without really training for them. Despite this unorthodox approach, he managed to complete the New York City Marathon in 3:51 in 2005 and in 3:35 last year. I suppose there's something to be said for taking full advantage of one's genetic gifts and youthful resilience.

Second, I secured a new postdoctoral position in the lab of Wes Van Voorhis, a University of Washington professor who studies tropical diseases such as malaria and African sleeping sickness. For me, this is a "lateral" move rather than a promotion, but I'm excited to be joining a group whose explicit goal is to develop drugs that will alleviate suffering in the developing world. I'll be starting in about five weeks.

Posted by crowther at 3:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

To understand how the Mad City 100K (link to results; select "show all results" to see splits) unfolded for me, you only have to look at my 10K split times: 40:09, 40:29, 40:17, 40:20, 41:13, 41:09, 42:06, 45:59, 51:16, 51:33.

Those last 30 kilometers were truly awful. While my legs slowly crumbled beneath me, so did my hopes of a sub-6:50 time and then, a bit later, of salvaging a personal record.

As demoralizing as this experience was, it was also achingly familiar. I've now run a total of four 100K road races, and three of them have reduced me to a slow shuffle by the end. The exception was at Houston in February of 2006. In the months leading up to that race, I began doing my long runs at 100K race pace; when I set a 21-minute PR there and then finished strongly at Sunmart later in the year, I assumed I had figured out how to approach these types of races.

I guess I'm not as smart as I thought I was.

Some people familiar with the Mad City course and race-day conditions -- temperatures in the 20s, brisk winds, three hills per 10K loop -- might think I'm being too hard on myself. But those conditions didn't prevent the top two women (Julie Udchachon and Devon Crosby-Helms) from posting impressive times (8:09 and 8:16, respectively). The main lesson I'm taking away from Mad City is that I need to do more in my training to prepare my muscles for the pounding they face during long races.

So which training stimuli would be most effective in minimizing muscle damage during these races? More mileage? Lunging and bounding drills? Squats and weight training? Downhill running?

I don't know. I need to read, talk, and think about this some more.

Anyway, aside from all of the above, at least a couple other things need to be said about Mad City. One is that, from the course markings to the prize money, it was a first-class event, thanks to race director Timo Yanacheck and the local organizing committee, volunteers, and sponsors. Another is that the 10K loop course, which winds around Lake Wingra through the University of Wisconsin arboretum and a few low-traffic neighborhoods, has plenty of local flavor. My favorite aspect of it was the permanent mile markers, each bearing the name of a legendary runner from Wisconsin: Suzy Favor Hamilton (mile 1), Rod DeHaven (mile 2), Gabriel Jennings (mile 3), Pascal Dobert (mile 4), Cindy Bremser (mile 5), and Steve Lacy (mile 6). As the race progressed, I maintained a running dialogue with these markers, pleading for fast split times (e.g., "Low numbers, Gabe! Low numbers!"), berating them when they didn't appear soon enough ("C'mon, Rod, this is no time to be shy!"), and complaining about the many challenges of the day ("More wind, Cindy? That's just not fair!").

Maybe I should have asked them for tips on how to keep the muscle damage under control.

Posted by crowther at 12:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (32)

Either the city of Madison, Wisconsin has caught a serious case of ultramarathon fever, or else Mad City 100K race director Tim Yanacheck has gone to great lengths to create that illusion. Consider the following:

(1) Governor Jim Doyle has declared the week of April 1-7 to be Mad City 100K National Championship Week in the state of Wisconsin.

(2) The official race starter will be none other than Suzy Favor Hamilton, probably the greatest runner Wisconsin has ever produced.

(3) Some reporter from Madison called me on Tuesday, wanting to talk about the 100K. His first question was something like, are you excited that there's a national 100K championship for the first time in several years? I wanted to say, "Yes I am, but why are you so excited about it? Shouldn't you be covering a high school golf tournament or something?"

For additional hype, see the pre-race press release. (Since that was written, Nikki Kimball has withdrawn due to illness, but Connie Gardner has been added as a late entry.) And for heart-pounding race-day excitement, be sure to tune into the race webcast on Saturday.

Posted by crowther at 12:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)