Yoga-sized

For the past three years I’ve been dealing off and on with hamstring issues.  One side would resolve and then the other would act up.  It has resulted in fairly long stretches of having to rely on deep water running and StairMaster to stay in shape.  During this time, I’ve been limited to 1,200 to 1,300 miles of running per year – not enough to be in top racing shape. At various times I’ve done PT, massage, and dry-needling to work through these bouts.  Eventually, I’d get to the point where I can train and race but in time the hamstrings start talking.  It’s getting old!  My PTs regularly advised me tight hamstrings were a likely culprit though I’ve consistently stretched before and after runs and felt I was reasonably flexible, at least for a runner.    I belong to the local Y and they have free 60-minute yoga classes for members. I’ve known of yoga for many years and had seen plenty of pictures of those deep into the practice, twisted like pretzels.  I wasn’t interested.  I just wanted to be flexible enough to run.  But having noticed an increasing stiffness in my gait along with these hamstring issues, I figured I’d give yoga a try. The classes allow … Continue reading

Inching Along

I tweaked my right hamstring last October 27th.  It didn’t seem that serious.  I stopped immediately, then took it easy for two weeks leading up to the Grand Prix 5K, on November 13 which I essentially did at a fast jog.  I have a great PT and working together we’ve seen the recovery progress, then regress, then progress again.  At a fundamental level, it’s frustrating. But it serves to bring home the fact that with age recovery happens in new and mysterious ways.  As is important at any age, we go one step at a time and take what the body gives us. I had no idea three and half months later I’d still be dealing with this issue.  My training runs are slow, yet I feel the hamstring with every step.  Some days it’s better than others but always there.  Now, I’m looking at the first 2023 Grand Prix race this Super Sunday, a 5K in Cambridge, knowing I am not at my best.  It will once again be akin to a fast jog.  But I decided to go ahead.  It’s always good to see the array of club colors and catch up with folks who live four hours away from the reaches of northern Vermont.  I’m better understanding the adage … Continue reading

Give It a Rest (Blog Post #100!)

It’s no secret that as we age it takes longer to recover from races and intense workouts.  While the science clearly tells us that, the proof is in the pudding — we feel it! There is a fine line, sometimes a very fine line, between pushing it and giving ourselves a breather, to take the foot off the pedal for a few days or longer.  Doesn’t mean we’re comatose.  In fact, it’s good to do something aerobic everyday. It’s a good habit to have.  And something to look forward to and plan the day around.   Two weeks ago I ran a half marathon.  I was somewhat undertrained – averaging only 25 miles a week with just one 12-mile run and a couple of 10s in the prior three months.  But I thought I could maintain a pretty steady pace and maybe pick it up at the end.  I made some dumb mistakes: overdressed, didn’t take nutrition on the course, and wore new shoes.  Anyhow, at 11 miles I bonked – a strange feeling I hadn’t had in years.  Simply no energy or drive.  Flat out dead in my tracks!  I might have stopped, but the only way back was to the finish area. So, I walked, then jogged, walked some more, etc., only picking it up … Continue reading

Ascension!

In Again to Carthage, the sequel to John Parker’s Once a Runner, Quentin Cassidy, the fictional Olympic Silver Medalist miler turned marathoner, suggests the allure to racing is “when you’re a competitive runner in training, you are constantly in a process of ascending.”   He muses this is true in various endeavors as we age, including running prowess, but eventually things level off – and then decline.  Moving “up” to the marathon gave Cassidy another chance to ascend and a driving force in his obsessive training regimen.  Parker is a compelling author, who draws on his own experiences as a competitive runner and the last couple of chapters of Carthage are riveting. Unless we change sports, the time will come when we run (literally!) out of options to move up.  For any given distance, our times will erode.  Assuming running is an important part of our lives, this is the masters runner’s dilemma. Our success and happiness in life depends upon finding ways to accept declines in those things we love to do and feel competent doing. In The Master’s Athlete, Peter Reaburn suggests age-grading (AG), developed by Alan Jones and adopted by World Master’s Athletics (WMA), serves to provide such an opportunity.   An AG% is the ratio of one’s time compared to the … Continue reading

Attrition

Over the years, we get used to going to key races, such as the regional USATF Grand Prix Series, and seeing our friends and rivals there.  That’s a big reason why we travel to these races.  Many of us keep track of our times and places at these events and maybe note who we beat or beat us.  Yes, this can be obsessive, but it’s also part of the fun! Yet, as we age, we see fewer of our cohort showing up.  We invariably hear directly or through the pipeline about the reasons why: an acute or chronic injury; a serious debilitating illness; an unwillingness to train as workouts feel harder and less fulfilling; less motivation due to slowing times; and even death.  The data bears this out.  Results from the 2019 BAA Distance Medley Races (5K, 10K, Half Marathon) with over 23,000 finishers, showed that 80% of the field was under age 50; 14% were 50-59 and just 6% over 60.  Last Saturday’s New Hampshire 10 Miler, a tough, hilly Grand Prix race that weeded out some younger casual runners, drew 1,088 finishers.  Of those 33% were over 50 and 11% over 60, with just 23 runners 70 and older.  It would be an interesting longitudinal study to … Continue reading

The Morning Shakeout

The Internet is a crowded place.  Depending on your interests, there is a myriad of topics and themes to choose from.  The running space is no different.  I Googled “running-related podcasts” and came up with a list of 19 compiled by Run to the Finish.  There’s only so much time and attention in the day and week.  So, how to choose? Recently, Kevin, a member of my running club, suggested I listen to an interview with Pete Magill on The Morning Shakeout,  a weekly podcast hosted by Mario Fraioli since December 2017.  Kevin knew as a coach I recommend Magill’s book, Build Your Running Body.  After listening to Mario’s conversation with Pete, I scrolled through the archive and saw and listened to conversations with Alex Hutchinson, author of Endure, George Hirsch, founder of the New York City Marathon and former editor of Runner’s World, Amby Burfoot, and Bill Rodgers.  It didn’t take long to conclude TMS was a mother-lode of great stories about everything running on roads and trails.  Now 40, Mario has spent most of his adult life involved with the sport.  Through writing, editing, coaching, his own running, and an outgoing personality that enables him to easily connect with folks, he has a deep e-rolodex to draw on.   TMS now has an archive … Continue reading

Goals for Senior Runners

In my Sports Psychology class at UVM this fall, we were able to choose a topic for a research project on goal setting.  Of course, I jumped at the chance to do this for senior runners!  And for this post, I’m drawing from my project write-up.  Goal setting theory (GST) is used to improve performance in many endeavors.  In sport, GST has been applied to both teams and individuals, with clear links to building skills and task achievement.  Goals have been broadly grouped as subjective or objective.  Subjective goals could include “I want to keep running” while an objective goal might be “I want to run competitively until age 80 and maintain a 70% age-grade standard”.  Objective goals can be subdivided into process, performance, and outcome goals. In sport, objective goals should be: (1) moderately difficult to achieve; (2) both short and long term; (3) specific; (4) feedback looped.  An oft-used acronym to critique goals is SMART, which stands for Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, and Timebound.  It’s no secret we senior runners encounter constraints not faced by younger runners. These include various physiological changes that begin to appear in our 30s but accelerate with aging.  These include changes in: (1) … Continue reading

Prehab

We all know the word rehab.  Whether it’s a house or our running body, it’s working with something that has fallen apart, or at least not functioning properly, and making it whole or materially better – restoration!  Prehab is something of a contraction of preventative rehab.  Meaning, if we do things to ward off injury, we may avoid the need for rehab.  Makes sense, of course, and we could agree nobody wants to deal with an injury.  We just want to run!  So, what to do? First, there are some pretty basic exercises that can/should be done on a near-daily basis.  They include eccentric heel dips — (see November 10, 2015 blog post), against-the-wall calf stretches, standing quad stretches — pulling your bent leg back from the ankle and feeling the stretch in the hip flexors, rope pulls – lying on your back and pulling your leg up with three progressive 15-20 second pulls, weighted knee extensions – most easily done on the leg extension machine, and goblet or wall squats.  See the Runner Resources – Resistance Exercises section on my website for descriptions of several of these. Nothing really fancy with this battery, but they strengthen and stretch multiple … Continue reading

Hamstrings and Balance

Most runners have frequent and recurring hamstring problems.  It seems endemic to the sport.  And it’s debilitating – if your hamstring is talking to you, then in Bob Dylan’s words, “You Ain’t Going Nowhere.” The anatomy and biomechanics of the lower extremity is complicated.  A chart noting interrelated muscular actions in Joseph Hamill’s Biomechanical Basis of Human Movement  provides a clear picture of how each muscle, joint, and tendon plays a role in proper movement in running gait.  The three hamstring muscles (semimembranosus, biceps femoris, and semitendinosus) form the “meat” of the posterior (backside) thigh.  And attached to these three, either directly or indirectly, are about a dozen muscles attaching to the hip and knee.  If that isn’t involved enough there are the anterior (frontside) muscles that serve as antagonists to the posterior muscles.  For example, the four quadriceps flex the hip while the hamstrings extend it.  It’s a beautiful system when it works as designed! But few of us have perfect biomechanics and things happen, the most noteworthy being imbalances. These may be minor, for which we tend to compensate without notice.  But over time these imbalances build up and result in some muscles having to work harder than … Continue reading

Slingshot Form

This week I finished my graduate program in clinical and translational science at UVM and last week presented at the department’s weekly seminar, summarizing my research interests in runner biomechanics, which I explored during my program.  Suffice it to say, at this point I thought I’d have a clear idea of next steps.  Not so!  However, in preparing for the presentation, I leafed through three running books in my library: Running Anatomy by Joe Puleo and Patrick Milroy, Running Form by Owen Anderson, and Anatomy for Runners by Jay Dicharry.  They deliver the same message in different ways: to run fast and avoid injury, you need a strong chassis and you’ve got to be efficient in how you use your energy.  I looked through my blog posts and saw one from June 25th, 2019 drawing from Dicharry’s book that I entitled Gait Keeping.  I’m going to expand on this here, but recommend looking at that prior post too.   Dicharry suggests thinking about a slingshot, as we probably played with as kids.  You pull it back and there’s tension.  Depending on the thickness of the band and how far you pull it back, the projectile shoots out.  To maximize distance, … Continue reading