May 2, 1988
Fitness: THE BEST PRE-RACE WORKOUT?—A WEEK OF NON-WORKOUTS
Summer in the Bay Area is ripe with opportunities for amateur aerobic athletes to compete in their respective sports. There are bicycle centuries, 10K road races, masters’ swim competitions, short and long course triathlons, and fitness walking contests.
All of those provide opportunities to make use of those long hours of spring training you’ve been going through.
Whether it’s a competition as light-hearted as next weekend’s Bay-to-Breakers or as serious as the Alcatraz Challenge Triathlon in August, certain rules apply.
One of the most forgotten rules of aerobic competition is: During the week leading up to a competition, there are many things you can do in training, and most of them are bad.
In any aerobic training program, the week leading up to the competition should be one of tapering.
The training that has gone on for weeks and months before the event is the training that will determine the outcome of the event. The only training you can do the last week is to undermine the previous training.
That is exactly what happens to many amateur athletes.
After spending months of difficult workouts aimed toward a specific competition, a certain pattern of increasing quality and quantity sets in. One must work hard and build toward one’s ultimate goal.
After spending months of preparation, some athletes find it difficult to reverse that trend in the final week. There is an inability to suddenly take hold of the shift lever and slap it into neutral.
The week leading up to a competition is the week and athlete should rest, and allow the body to recharge its batteries.
Training in the final week should be modest and gentle—more to remind the body’s muscles how to move through the training motions and to relieve increasing nervous tension than to add any real training effect. The training effect should have been maximized during the second to last week before the race, when the last hard, long workout was scheduled.
A surprising number of experienced athletes block their best performances on race day by giving in to nervous tension, a feeling of physical elation, paranoia, or all three during the days leading up to the race.
A week without training seems so alien to athletes, they feel compelled to fill it with something, even a dangerously hard workout.
In a similar way, the feeling of strength and power that comes on during the final week often leads the athlete into giving in to the body’s urge to move faster, harder.
Or, pre-race paranoia arrives three days before the race and the athlete feels compelled to get in the speed workout that was missed six weeks before.
The above scenarios can only lead to a poor performance. Even a short, 30-minute workout can sap the body of about 15 percent of its accumulated energy.
The best thing to do during that final week?
Rest, train sparingly and gently, and wallow in a week that you’ve worked long and hard to reach. Fill the time with pursuits you’ve had to deny yourself for the sake of the race goals. Allow the body’s batteries to become charged, spend the final day before the competition as horizontal as possible for as long as possible. And on race day, go confidently into your race with the knowledge that your best possible performance is about to be realized.
May 16, 1988
Fitness: SMART ATHLETES KNOW WHEN TO RACE FOR SIDELINES
Attaining and then maintaining a basic state of fitness does not call for a tremendous commitment. Three or four aerobic workouts per week, each about 20 minutes long, provides good cardiovascular fitness.
The commitment escalates when a person goes beyond a level that simply provides fitness for good health, and begins pursuing fitness for its own sake. Typically this leads to involvement in amateur competitions, such as running races, citizens’ cross-country ski racing, fitness walking, and striding races.
There are three goals a person picks from when embarking on a fitness routine that extends to organized races:
- To take part in the event and in the process to share the camaraderie. (An example: Bay-to-Breakers.)
- To begin collecting racing scalps on a belt.
- To attempt to record a certain time or performance goal at a set distance.
The amateur athlete entering a race for the fun of it adds a healthy and fulfilling dimension to the daily fitness workout.
Amateur athletes who engage in racing events for the second or third reason are typically of a more serious bent—although of a very different bent from each other.
Dick Collins, the ultrarunner from Oakland who has run more than 100 ultra events without ever having dropped out of a race, falls in the second category.
Marcie Trent of Anchorage, who at age 70 ran a 4:11 marathon at Napa in March, falls into the third category. She indicated on her entry form that she hope to break four hours.
Both of these athletes have reached—and surpassed—some very noteworthy milestones in their amateur careers.
Collins and Trent have different goals when they approach a race. Collins’ goal of successfully finishing another endurance event is a worthy one. As is Trent’s goal of training with a certain performance in mind.
Not everyone who sets a performance goal and trains for it attains that goal, however. In any endurance event, there is a long list of circumstances that can undermine a planned performance.
The training may have gone well until the last long workout and then faltered. The athlete may be carrying residual fatigue into the race, or may be overcoming a cold or some other minor physical irritant. Also, an injury that seemed minor during training can worsen near race time.
There is a tendency among many amateur athletes to line up at the starting line of a race no matter what their physical or mental state. Some athletes push through to the finish line even if they have no hope of attaining their pre-race foal, or if a minor injury escalates to a major one.
This is understandable. A marathoner will typically train at a high level for three or four months before an event. The athlete doesn’t want to admit defeat before the race begins, or even halfway through the event.
Yet frequently the athlete would show more commitment to his long-term goals by passing up a planned race or by dropping out of a race if he’s injured.
Amateurs would do well to use certain professional athletes as inspiration and models. Joan Benoit Samuelson didn’t take part in this year’s Olympic Marathon Trials because of injuries. Bill Rodgers dropped out of the 1977 Boston Marathon at mile 17 because of a deteriorating performance.
Rodgers came back to win the 1978 Boston Marathon.
May 23, 1988
Running Roundup: OLYMPIC HOPEFULS, LOCAL DUELS HIGHLIGHT RACES
Olympic qualifiers and hopefuls scorched the local roads during the fifth annual Houlihan’s to Houlihan’s Celebration of Running 12K last month.
Of the top 20 male finishers, 17 had already qualified for the Olympic Trials. The race was won not by an American Olympian, but by Domingo Tibaduiza, 38, a four-time Olympian from Columbia, who lives in Reno. Tibaduiza’s younger brother, Miguel, 31, finished behind his brother in the 30-39 age group, and took fifth overall. Domingo’s winning time was 37:13.
Domingo was chased to the finish line by Jeffrey Adkins of Martinez and Thomas Wood of Menlo Park. The finish was close, with Adkins five seconds behind Tibaduiza and Wood three seconds behind Adkins.
In the women’s competition, the battle up front was fierce, with the top two finishers breaking the course record of 42:45. Barbara Myers-Acosta, 30, of Santa Cruz won in 42:21; with Jani Johnson, 32, of Atascadero eight seconds behind.
Masters’ mile whiz (4:15) Steve Ferraz, 40, took the over-40 title with 39:43. The battle between local standouts Sal Vasquez and Bill Sevald filled the second and third finishing spots, as Vasquez beat Sevald, 39:59 to 40:44. Women’s masters winner was Joyce Rankin, 40, who turned in a 46:19. More than 5,000 runners participated in the race.
The following week, the seventh annual Cherry Blossom Run took runners on a five-mile tour from Golden Gate Park to the heart of Japantown. Ron Gee, 37, took first place with a 24:27 (4:53 pace), followed four seconds later by Lovrival Sampaio of Brazil.
In the women’s division, Heidi Mooney, 30, ran away from the competition, finishing in 28:37. Top female masters runner was Elain Pierce with a 33:38. The winning over-40 male was Bill Sevald, who clocked at 25:48.
In series competition, Mark Richtman, 32, of Novato won the California Coastal Challenge Series, while Irene McAuliffe, 28, of San Francisco, swept the women’s division. The three races included the Limantour Split 10 miles; the John Muir Monumental 7.2 miles, and the Tennessee Valley waltz 10 miles.
Upcoming races include the four-mile Memorial Cross-Country run this Saturday at 8 a.m. Sponsored by Runner’s Inn, the trail race is filled with hills and is scenic as all get-out. It starts at the city park by the War Memorial Gym in San Bruno. Entry fee is $5. Call Mike Sullivan at 415-964-2172.
Also on the agenda is the Pacific Sun 10K at 8 a.m. on Monday, May 30. The course is flat and fast. Starts at the College of Marin in Kentfield. Entry fee is $12; call 415-479-3839.
The Dolphin South End’s Practice Dipsea is Sunday, June 5, at 10 a.m. The race starts in Old Mill Park at Mill Valley. Entry fee is $1.
And finally, for those who don’t want to believe the spring marathon season is over, relax. Sunday, June 5, offers two local marathons. The Sri Chimnoy Marathon will be held at 7 a.m. in Foster City (information at 415-964-6372), and the Russian River Marathon runs from Ukiah to Hopland and back on the same day (contact is 707-462-8879).
May 30, 1988
Fitness: WHEN SPORTS ARE TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING
There is a TV commercial pushing men’s deodorant that opens with a fellow hustling into a locker room with a basketball in his hand. He stuffs the basketball into a wire basket holding other basketballs and he starts talking about how you’ve got to give 110 percent in life.
Every time I hear the phrase “give 110 percent” I gnash a few teeth, which makes my dentist very happy.
The phrase “give 110 percent” probably started with the great football coach Vince Lombardi, who was always saying things like that as a way of inspiring his players. It’s in the same book of inspiration as “Win one for the Gipper!”
Unfortunately, the phrase “give 110 percent” has been taken out of the football locker room and is showing up just about everywhere. It even lifts its 10 percent-above-normal head at meetings of CPAs, which should automatically disqualify them from doing federal tax returns.
In discussing this topic, we should first establish the fact that it is physically impossible to give 110 percent.
If you give your all, you’ve given 100 percent. There is no such thing as 110 percent. And, at least when dealing with fitness or sports, it is dangerous to participants to promote such faulty mathematics.
Stanford track coach Brooks Johnson contends that a runner should not give even 100 percent. “As soon as you give 100 percent,” he said, speaking of sprinting, “you’ve pulled a muscle. The challenge for top athletes is to get near 100 percent without pushing into injury. If an experienced sprinter pushes that little extra beyond biomechanical limitations, he tears something.”
Unfortunately, many aerobic athletes coming to fitness and competition later in life bring with them the idiotic admonition to “give 110 percent.”
A surprising number of people who take up aerobic activities drop out because they do too much too soon. They attempt to give the mythical 110 percent every day when 60 percent would get them farther in the long run.
Aerobic activities should be regulated by the participant’s heart beat.
The gauge for heart beat is the pulse. World-class marathoners do their long runs at a 60-70 percent effort; they do their speed workouts at the track at 90 percent effort; and they race at 80 percent effort.
Those of us who are far removed from world-class status should be training similarly.
The human pulse rate is very much like an automobile’s tachometer. It dictates safe limits in which the body can function.
The formula for determining your training pulse rate is simple—subtract your age from 220 and then compute the numbers for 60, 70, and 80 percent of that figure. For example, I’m 42 years old, and my three numbers are 107, 125, and 142.
The pulse rate is monitored at either the wrist or the neck.
If you cycle, run, or walk, it is easy to take a reading while halted at a red light; an aerobic dancer can take the pulse between songs, a swimmer between laps.
Most long aerobic workouts should be conducted at 60 percent of maximum heart rate. All aerobic workouts, even hard efforts, should start at 60 percent in order to gradually warm up the body. Aerobic race efforts should come in around 80 percent. If an aerobic athlete goes much higher, the anaerobic threshold is crossed and we’re into a whole other realm.
If you think of the pulse rate as a tachometer, think of 90 percent as the redline.
Beyond the redline an automobile engine undergoes tremendous counterproductive forces. It winds into a region of diminishing returns and potential destruction.
The goal of an aerobic fitness program is to gradually strengthen the heart so that a year down the road, your 60 percent of maximum heart rate is more, relatively speaking, than it was last year.
Would-be aerobic athletes who push for 110 percent this year will be on the trash heap by next year.