Successful Behavor

The following video is exactly how the relay brings out the best in GGRC. Look at how Scott is relentless in making the kill even though it's a chick. He shows no mercy.

Enterprise Rent-A-Car you have screwed us for the last time

As usual months prior to the Relay, two 12 person passenger vans were reserved with the Van Ness location of Enterprise Rental Cars. Everything seemed hunky dory until this week when Jeff from Enterprise got in touch with us and informed us that they could not fill our reservation. After numerous phone calls with Enterprise, we were informed that yes they did find vans for us and we were going to have them for the Friday pickup as originally planned.

Then this morning Jeff called again saying we were not going to get the vans. After circles in conversation he said he’d do what he could and get back to us. In the meantime I called the corporate number only to be told they could do nothing and it was up to Jeff. Why do they have the corporate number if they can’t do anything?

Later in the morning, about 10:30am, we spoke to Jeff again and he told me that he could get large SUV’s and that it would be free for the weekend and that he’d call back by noon to confirm. After there was no call by noon we called and then got a response saying he didn’t have the SUV’s and that we might have to take minivans even though we have told him repeatedly that minivans were not acceptable as they are too small. Now we’re waiting for a 4pm call to resolve this once again.

Every year this event happens and every year they claim that they tried to meet demand but they never do. This morning Jeff told me that it was only a couple weeks ago they realized they needed all these vans. He also said they were filling them in the order they were reserved. If that was the case, how did they only know that they needed them a couple weeks ago? We reserved our vans months ago? Something doesn’t fly. Something stinks.

The moral here is that we, as a club, should never rent vans for the relay from Enterprise again. They’ve screwed us in the past, though never this badly, and as a club we should wash our hands of them and use anyone else. No other rental company could be this bad.

Periodization, part 1

About a week ago I posted on what the purpose of threshold running is. After that post I got a bunch of follow ups on things like where to fit it in to training, how it fits in, when to do other workouts, etc. Over the next few weeks I am going to post a series on periodization as it relates to running. First things first, what is periodization?

Elite runners (and especially their coaches) have known for quite some time that a runner cannot be in their tip top shape all the time. Unfortunately, most recreational runners (all of us) have typically not followed the lead of elites. We try to always be in PR shape.

While some people may set PRs often, what this does is cause runners to never hit their potential and it also makes one more injury prone. The human body craves peaks and valleys. It desires up times and down times. We can learn how to use the down times to create up times, and how to space everything so that the up times can be higher and higher.

Elites will typically try to peak for big races (ie, championships or olympics, etc). They will not be in their best shape early in the season, or really in the middle. They will even have multi-year peaking schedules. Marathoners have an easier job of peaking than most as they get one shot at their race and then are forced to do some relaxing as they are too sore to go right back to it. But many recreatonal marathoners don't give themselves the proper recovery or build afterward, thus making their peak lower than it should be.

Generally it's thought that 2 peaks a year is about what most people can do for their best performances. There are some people who can do more, some cannot do 2. If you're trying to peak more than this, there's a good chance you're getting uneven performances and you can't figure out why one race is good and another is bad. It's because your body is ready for a break.

Coming in the weeks ahead, I'll write about periodization. Here's a syllabus:
1) Components of Periodization
2) How to set a periodized plan
3) Volume and strngth
4) Speed
5) Sharpening/taper
6) Rest and recovery

Wednesday Track Workout, Feb 11

This week's workout will be the first where we start concentrating on getting everyone ready for the different May Relays. If you aren't running one of those but are still planning on doing some racing this spring, these workouts will be good for you as well. And as always, people out for general running fun will benefit too.

At Kezar starting at 7pm
4 laps easy warm up jogging
2 laps accelerations

3 X 10 minutes @ tempo effort, think half marathon pace
2 minutes recovery

10 minutes easy warm down jogging

Taper question

I got a question recently about running during the taper. I’m not going to claim to have a secret taper that works 100% of the time, but I’ll list some different types of tapers and I’ll also say what I do.

Why taper?

This is always a good question to ask; we get faster by training so why would we take time to purposely reduce training? Runners have found, through trial and error that performance can be increased (exercise physiologists claim by as much as 3%) by a proper taper. That is much higher than one can improve performance by training heavily until the race. Marathoners require a longer taper than a miler, but even a miler who is looking for a peak period will taper some, though they might call it sharpening instead.

How long should a taper be?

This is a question that is subject to many variables, not least of which is how long the race is. Since most people in the club are focused on longer distance races I’ll leave out the taper/sharpening for 5 and 10ks and shorter.

For the marathon most people will do a taper of 2-3 weeks. Half marathoners may do a 10-14 day taper. There are people who do shorter or longer tapers, but those time frames are most common.

What do I do during taper?

Typically you’ll want to reduce your workload gradually during the taper. The entire taper is not a time of little running, but a gradual drawdown of workload in order to allow the body to heal those little niggles we get during heavy training and allow it to begin to store the fuel we’ll need for the race.

What are the types of taper?

This is where things get interesting. No one taper is right for everyone. That said, there seem to be a few different types of taper.

• Drop intensity and drop volume: Some people will nearly cut out all hard training and even most of their volume. To be honest I don’t know too many good runners who do this.
• Drop intensity and maintain volume: There are many who follow this approach, and it seems to work well for some.
• Keep intensity and reduce volume: This seems to be the current favored approach by the majority of elites. Leading up to the race they will drop their volume but keep the intensity as a ratio of volume. If they did 10% of their miles at tempo pace, they will keep doing that in taper. It’s just less miles.

What’s an example of a taper?

Like I said, there’s no right way for everyone. This is my approach to the taper, and it follows the 3^rd bullet point. For a marathon I’ll do a 3 week taper where the first week I’ll drop my volume to 75-80% of my previous mileage. So if I was running 50 miles a week, I’d do 40 in week one. In week two I drop to about 75% of that mileage. So in the previous example in week 2 I’d do 30 miles. In week 3 I follow a specific plan of running a little bit each day with the exception of 2 days before the race. Besides the race I might do about 15 miles that week from the previous example.

The structure of the taper for me would be like this: Week 1 of taper I do a mile repeat threshold session and a marathon pace run. During week 2, 10 days pre marathon I do a marathon pace run. During the race week I will do a light marathon pace run 5 days before the race. All other runs are easy with strides a couple times a week. I usually don’t run 2 days before the race if it’s a marathon. I just find it better for me, you might not. The day before the race I jog a very light 15 minutes. By very light I mean 3 minutes or more per mile slower than my race pace. I feel this keeps me from feeling lethargic on race day.

Like I said, everyone’s taper is different. Some people will take many days before a race completely off. I think their shortchanging themselves by doing that, but everyone’s different. It takes some experimentation to get a taper right, I am still searching for what will optimize my race performance.

First February Track Workout

Workout
4 laps easy warm up jog
2 laps accelerations

10-15 X 200 meters @ roughly 1 mile race effort
200 meters 15 seconds slower

10 minutes easy warm down jog

For the 200 repeats: If you did the 200 meters in 60 seconds you would jog the next 200 meters in 75 seconds and alternate 60/75 the whole way. If you did the 200 metes in 45 seconds you would do the next one in 60 and then rotate 45/60. Do 10-15 fast ones, you decide exactly how many based on how much you run.

If you're doing the Austin Marathon and are tapering, this is not a workout for you. I can give you an alternate tomorrow if you'd like.

This week's track workout

Just like normal at Kezar on Wednesday night at 7pm.

4 laps easy warm up jog
2 laps accelerations

6-8 X 400 meters @ 1 mile effort
90 seconds recovery between

10 minutes easy warmdown jog



The point of the workout is to do what Daniels calls "repetition" pace which helps get your legs used to running fast, brings neuromuscular adaptations, and increases economy.