Low Hanging Fruit
I’ve spoken to a lot of athletes in the last few weeks about low hanging fruit. The easy things you can manage in training and racing that can make a huge difference in speed, efficiency and, therefore, fun. The most commonly discussed between me and my athletes this week are as follows:
Nutrition: When I first started running half marathons I thought fueling during runs was for the “out of shape” people, not for the current DIII varsity athlete that I was. I finished most races deep in the well and thought that was the point; spending all of your energy on the race and finishing on empty. One day I found out I ‘d gotten into the NYC Half with about 4 weeks notice. Coming out of winter living in Washington, D.C., I had not been running a ton. I think I got one 8-mile long run in before race day. I was excited to go see friends in NYC and run around the city but I was not thinking the running part would go that well. I went out with pals for St. Patrick’s Day the night before and chugged an entire pedialyte before bed. Downed another one with a banana and toast for breakfast and headed out to Brooklyn. I told myself to alternate water and Gatorade at every aid station (I was going to need it!) and take a gel at 35-minutes in and another one about 30 min later. I was grasping at straws to compensate for my horrible race prep. Even severely undertrained, I only missed my PR by 4 minutes. I had a come-to-jesus moment about fueling after that but didn’t get good at it until I trained for my first marathon a year later. I’ve been on so many runs with friends where they go quiet the last hour and a half or start talking about cramping when we have 8 miles to go. It also turns out they have only brought one gel with them for an 18-mile trail run. Resupplying your body with carbs and electrolytes is paramount to performance. Recently, Rod Farvard (winner of the 2024 Canyons 100k) told media that he was taking in ~120g of carbs an hour! Carbs are your quick-use energy and it doesn’t matter how fit you are, you will always need them to keep going. While I am not a dietician or nutritionist, in-race fueling is my pet project with all of my athletes (and myself). It is amazing how much more fun you can have when you don’t bonk on every long run ◡̈
Heart Rate: We’ve all heard it a million times. “Easy runs need to be easy!”. But that’s where our egos get in the way. How many of you have felt good on a given day (maybe its a perfect 50 degrees with the sun shining and you got plenty of sleep the night before) and you run your easy run at a pace equivalent to your HMP? You can’t tell, but I’m raising my hand. “Easy” is not just a perception. It is also very much a heart rate zone. Training, pacing, fitness is all science. Either calculate your assumed heart rate zones via an age-predicted scale or perform a threshold or VO2 max test to find more specific heart rate zones. These will assure that you are actually running easy (per what your cardiovascular system says and not your ego) on easy days and are actually running at threshold on threshold days. To be truely efficient and effective with our training we need to know our zones and feel comfortable performing our reps inside of these zones. Fitness it just time-under-tension. Keeping our CV system in specific zones for specific amounts of time given specific variables. It’s science ◡̈
Shoes: Do you have shin splints because you don’t strength train, are running too many miles, have to long of a cadence or because your Brooks Ghost’s are 9-months and 500 miles old? Log your shoe mileage!! It will save you a ton of stress (and probably also money) if you know that your sudden onset of calf pain is likely secondary to old shoes and not a soon-to-be debilitating case of achilles tendonitis. I get into more specifics with my athletes in a 1:1 setting, but if you are constantly battling plantar fasciitis or achilles tendonitis, please please please find a shoe that isn’t 0mm drop. I know Altras have a wide toe box, but other shoe brands do as well and your posterior chain will finally be able to cool down. We can train our bodies to withstand low-drop footwear, but while managing chronic foot and calf pain is not the time to be dogmatic about groundfeel and “minimalism”.
Sleep: Ok, ok. Maybe getting enough sleep isn’t easy/low hanging fruit. I know that having kids and a demanding job and a need for a social life are all things standing in the way of getting your 8-9 hours a night. But! As I recently discussed with an athlete, trying to get into bed 15-30 min earlier some nights is probably in the cards for all of us. Especially in peak weeks of training, sleep is paramount to recovery (and the will to live/ever run another step). One of my athletes told me about a habit she and her husband (also and athlete of mine) are trying to implement with their kids. One the weekends (read: post parental long runs) they have one hour in the afternoon of quiet time. She says she tries to nap, but sometimes just lays in bed or on the couch and reads or scrolls on her phone for dinner recipes. Her kids are generally good resters during this time but sometimes she takes half the quiet time to calm them down. In society in which we are constantly pressured to be productive, fight the power and schedule in some time in your day (15-min? 60-min?) to boost the productivity of your body systems, recover from training and prep for your next run.
