Autumn Marathon
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Friday, Aug 19th, 2011 ↓“
You can maintain your cardiovascular capacity by cross-training, but it is extremely difficult to maintain your performance when you rely on cross-training,” Dr. Tanaka said. “This is because you are violating the principle of the specificity of training.”
Anyone who has been injured and forced to do an alternate sport knows this already. If you cannot run and end up substituting workouts on a bicycle for running, almost invariably you will end up losing running speed and endurance.
But if an alternate sport doesn’t help endurance athletes, resistance training might. It’s a bit counterintuitive — if you are training for an endurance sport like running, your workouts increase your ability to perform the same motion over and over again but do not markedly increase your muscle strength. Lifting weights is just the opposite — you do a few repetitions with the goal of increasing muscle strength and size. Yet in a review of published studies, Dr. Tanaka found that resistance training improved endurance in running and cycling. The effect occurred both in experienced athletes and in novices.
A more recent study of experienced runners by a group of Norwegian researchers confirmed that weight lifting could increase performance. One group did half squats with heavy weights three times a week while continuing a running program. The other group just ran. Those who did the squats improved their running efficiency and improved the length of time they could run before exhaustion set in.
”Something old, something new
After completing a hard tempo workout on Sunday, I wasn’t expecting to run again until mid-week, but with CrossFit part of the deal is that never know what to expect. This morning’s WOD at CFSBK included 6x400m with equal rest. I concentrated on my form and surprised myself by running the pieces from 1:33-1:42, “fast” by my recent standards.
Got an unpleasant surprise yesterday evening when I learned that the Binghamton Half, which I had been planning to run next Sunday, is sold out. Instead, I’m going to point for the Brooklyn Half the following Saturday and will run 5k in Binghamton (while visiting friends and their new baby). It feels like my fitness level is strong: I’m going to shoot for a solid time in Brooklyn and be prepared for good things to happen.
The other part of today’s CFSBK WOD was handstand pushup practice. Since I cannot do a handstand yet, my practice consisted of trying to get to an inverted position with the coach’s help and then against a wall. It’s going to take me a while to make it happen, but part of what makes CrossFit so great, is striving for unimaginable goals while improving at old skills (like running) that you never knew were “skills.”
Train less, go faster!
…is the motto of NYC Endurance, whose regular class/workout I joined for the first time Tuesday evening. The group’s approach is to combine a holistic, functional fitness regimen like CrossFit with limited, targeted endurance workouts in order to prepare an athlete to excel in marathons, triathalons and even ultras. The endurance workouts, no more than three per week, include sprints, longer intervals and tempo runs of not longer than 90 minutes.
Tuesday’s workout consisted of six 200m sprints with 90 seconds rest between them. In aggregate, that’s six minutes of work broken up by ten minutes of rest. When Brian, the NYC Endurance Coach described the workout, I wondered why I had bothered riding the subway all the way from Brooklyn just to exercise for 15 minutes! As it happened, most of the hour was occupied with drills to reinforce proper running technique. CrossFit endurance advocates rapid stride cadence, striking the ground with your forefoot, and leaning forward to maximize straight-ahead propulsion. You never think that you to study how to run, yet it turns out to be hard work.
My own training log for the first part of the year reveals mileage of not more than 11 or 12 miles per week which most of my running friends would consider crazy for someone preparing for a couple half marathons in the spring and the NYC Marathon in November. There are also tough CrossFit workouts which I have been doing 3-4 times/week. Results so far have been mixed: generally, my running times are slower than when I was running 35 miles/week two years ago. However, there have been some promising races and I haven’t yet completely absorbed the new technique.
Winter Season
Walking across Gowanus last week with A, we passed my favorite urban garden in NYC. I remarked how pathetic the garden looked (pointing at the wilted sunflower stalks). My wife, who prefers winter said, “You don’t get it! The garden is working hard now gathering strength for the spring growing season.” Or words to that effect.
It wasn’t so cold that evening and gazing around at the austere beauty of that industrial neighborhood, her words made sense to me. You could say the same thing about my current training cycle. New York is still over nine months away. I’m running very little, but doing work at CrossFit, building strength, learning new skills and laying the foundation for an ambitious racing season ahead. This is the year my blog tells the truth: I am running an actual Autumn Marathon, my first. It’s very exciting!
I still don’t care for winter (at least not in the northeast US) and am writing this en route to a week in Florida. Still, seasonality is a very important concept in sports as in life. It’s one of my core training principles. I will post further updates in spring, summer and fall.
