Summer is finally here (it would seem)

I was just thinking the other day about how I have improved in running over the last couple of years - not so much in terms of times (which have indeed improved) but more in terms of adaptations my body has made.

- The maximum heart rate I reach in the final straight of a competition - be it 5K, 10K or a Marathon  - is significantly lower than it used to be. Only 4 to 5 years ago I would regularly see numbers in the range of 189-192 bpm on my heart rate monitor. Now I finish a 5K race (which is supposedly the most intense) at a maximum of around 182 bpm. I expect that this also has something to do with the relatively cool temperatures I have been competing in lately.

- My feet and legs feel much more rigid and "springy" and I feel like I bounce much more with every stride, especially when I am running at speeds which I consider to be fast.

- My weight seems to be hovering around 80-85 kilos for the most part, rather than the 85-90 kilos I was seeing even when I was training hard for the Ironman.

- I think my posture is much better and my core muscles much stronger even though I don't train them specifically and I certainly don't have a visible six pack.

- I need to drink far less water than I used to both in training and in competition. I think that the need to drink is somewhat psychological and so that when you are starting to suffer you think that a glass of water will solve all your problems. Now I tend to think that I'd rather not have that extra weight sloshing round in my stomach, unless it is really necessary.

It's quite ironic, then, that today should be the first time that I really needed a drink (of water) while I was running since last August. I went for a run around a nature reserve near my work that has a perimeter of about 3.6 kilometers and started to sweat profusely under the relentless 30 degree sun. At one point I asked a gardener to spray me with his hose - which he was initially reluctant to do, saying that the water was dirty, but I didn't care. Then I ran without a t-shirt for a bit before finally succumbing and ducking into a smal cabin where there was the holy grail of a water cooler with ice cold water. I drank a couple of cups and poured a third over my head. Considering that only yesterday I had done a demanding but very acheivable set of 15 minutes at 15 kph, 15 minutes at 16 kph and 10 minutes at 16.5 kph - all on my fan-cooled treadmill - it was quite a comedown.

As our summer holidays are going to be in Morocco in August, I'd better start getting used to the heat again...

My Altum Barefoot Dress Shoes have arrived!!!

Back in November I was very excited to have "kick-started" my first ever project, the Altum Dress Shoes. I had been looking for some time for some shoes that would go under the radar of what is or is not considered acceptable footwear in the office especially since the dog ate my last pair of normal work shoes. I had discovered several options, such as the Ra from Vivobarefoot, but none of them would have avoided attracting attention for the wrong reasons.

Why should I even care about a "barefoot" or "minimalist" dress shoe if I am not planning to go running in them? Firstly, I can't stand shoes with a heel counter. I'm not really sure what the point of a heel counter is other than to allow and to encourage you to slouch when standing or walking. In my case, I quickly find that my knee with the torn meniscus starts to play up and my posture worsens, possibly contributing to back pain. The other thing I can't stand about conventional shoes is the narrow toe box which crams all my toes together: just as well I was not born female otherwise I would probably have to put up with far more severe footwear. I am currently particularly worried about an emerging bunion (more on this soon) which is aggravated by narrow shoes.

Unboxing

The shoes finally arrived yesterday - just in time for the conference I am speaking at in Boston next week - after a longer than predicted wait, although something to be expected for a start up company that is yet to get its teeth. They came in wrapped in a fabric shoe bag (which will no doubt come in handy) inside a standard cardboard shoebox. I don't know what you think but the shoes are very stylish and it is quite difficult to spot anything unusual about them unless you get a good side view - even then, they don't look too weird.

The shoes fit perfectly (just as well!) and have a fairly generous toe box. It could probably be wider but then I think they would start to look too weird, unfortunately. It is wide enough, however, to be able to wear my Correct Toes toe spacers (but only just)*. These arrived very promptly from The Emperor's New Shoes in the UK, courtesy of Jeff who was extremely helpful on email. He explained to me that, contrary to what I had supposed on my blog - that they might act as some kind of "crutch", thereby weakening the very muscles I needed to strengthen - they were specifically designed to be worn while load bearing (i.e., walking, standing and even running) because their function is to put the toes in the correct place, not to stretch them.

In terms of flexibility, they are less flexible than my minimalist running shoes tend to be, but more flexible than any work shoes that I have ever had. The leather seems to be of the usual stiffness which contributes to their deceptively normal appearance and, I suspect, will help them last longer, so the added flexibility is entirely due to the thin rubber Vibram sole.

The only downside (literally) is that I immediately lose about 3 centimetre's of height after stepping down from the MBT shoes I have been wearing lately in lieu of traditional footwear. Being an Englishman in Madrid makes me eccentric by definition and gives me certain license to be unconventional but I was getting a little tired of the friendly but amused comments about my weeble-like shoes; the loss in stature is a small price to pay for a bit of peace.

If you can't tell, I am absolutely delighted with my new shoes. I just need to do my bit now, to make sure the word gets out so that this fledgling company can really spread its wings. I'll certainly be going back for more once they have finished with their kickstarter phase.

* UPDATE: Actually, they are not really wide enough to accomodate the Correct Toe spacers although they do feel comfortably wide when the spacers are not in place. After a couple of hours the slight pressure on my "pinky" becomes intolerable and, according to the Correct Toes people, it is probably going to do more harm than good to have my toes being both stretched and squashed at the same time. One option would be to lop off one of the segements of the Correct Toes but, before I take that radical step (because they are not terribly cheap), I'll try just wearing them without my shoes on. It does mean that I often leave the Correct Toes spacers on my desk, something I have to be careful of because, for some inexplicable reason, everyone who comes to visit me has an urge to pick them up and play with them. "DON'T TOUCH THEM! For your own good! They've been between my toes!!"

Inverse periodization

Every now and again there seems to be a buzz about "inverse periodization" or "inverted periodisation" - this time it has been the success of the British Cycling team in the London Olympics and, in particular, that of Bradley Wiggins, together with their philosophy of "marginal gains" that has brought the subject once more to the fore. While it is interesting to see how top athletes train, I am always wary about applying the same ideas to myself in just the same way as I wouldn't attempt to train at the very same speeds that they do.

The traditional concept of periodization is credited to Tudor Bompa, a Soviet coach and author of "Theory and Methodology of Training". For political reasons, his teachings took some time to cross the ocean to reach the shores of the US but they have, since then, been established so firmly in the minds of most coaches that they are no longer questioned. A season is broken down into macrocycles, mesocycles and microcycles with a particular emphasis on different aspects of training in each cycle. The fundamental assumption is that volume is key and so the first phase is an aerobic base phase of relatively low intensity. Then, to this base threshold work is added, next, speed intervals and, lastly, a competition specific phase. It can be injurious to add volume at the same time that the athlete is engaging in high intensity training.

When training for an ultra distance event, it doesn't make a great deal of sense to be doing high speed interval training just weeks before an event the whole of which is going to be run at a much slower speed. Intuitively, many athletes move their interval training to the beginning of the training cycle as a result. A common misconception seems to be that this practice is all there is to inverse periodization.

As Nick Grantham explains in his excellent article, the concept behind inverse periodization is slightly different. Rather than the focus being on building up a base of high volume on which to stack intensity, the idea is deceptively simple: to train at race pace for increasing periods of time until it can be sustained for the length of the race itself. For example, if the target is to run 100m in 10 seconds, you might have an athlete run as far as they can in 10 seconds until they are finally able to run the full 100m.

In terms of preparing for a longer distance event, this means that instead of the conventional aerobic-threshold-speed progression, the initial cycles are more like speed work as they are relatively short and relatively fast sessions, while the later cycles are more like threshold sessions as they become longer and longer. In the meantime, the athlete will have adapted to the training in such a way that a speed that was preceived as an interval intensity is now more of a threshold intensity. At least, this is my understanding of the principle.

I also think that this method might be particularly suited to running as the mechanics involved in running at 12-15 kph are quite different from 16-18 kph and 18-20 kph etc. I would have thought that the more practice your body gets at running at race pace, the more efficient your biomechanics. Contrast this with cycling, for which the technique doesn't change quite so radically thanks to gears and the non-ballistic motion.

I'm not entirely sure how these ideas which seem to have had a fair amount of success in events lasting a few minutes can be translated into training for longer distance events. I don't think running an ever increasing distance at Marathon pace would be very effective, for example. Having said that, something that I have found works for me is to prepare 10K races, then Half Marathons before finally progressing onto the Marathon: I find that my speed seems to stay with me inspite of the longer more aerobic training. As Nick Grantham quite rightly points out, for those of us living in the Northern Hemisphere, it may be impractical to train outside in the winter months and I can certainly atest to it being much easier to do a short, sharp workout on a treadmill than to run for an hour or more indoors, even at a low intensity. The training plan I drew up for the Seville Marathon based largely on ideas from Brad Hudson's book seems to my mind very similar in spirit in that it starts off with short, high intensity intervals that gradually blur into longer threshold runs, which then become long runs with sections run at Marathon pace. It's always tempting when one sees a new, revolutionary idea (actually, this one is not so new) to say "Oh, I do that already" without taking the trouble to fully understand all the subtle differences and implications.

The way I see it is that this is basically the same debate I have had since I started to train properly, the two extremes being: train fast to race fast or high volume equals high performance. I think that the answer to this depends on several factors:

1) How many years you have been training for. If you have several years of interrupted, injury free, training in your legs then you can probably tollerate more high intensity training safely

2) The number of hours you need to / can train a week and the distance you are training for. If you can only train 5 hours a week, it can hardly be considered "high volume" and you can probably condition your body (and mind) to be able to do much of that at a relatively high intensity. On the other hand, if you plan to train more than 20 hours a week at the peak, you may find it difficult to sustain all year round and you will probably need to build up slowly every season.

3) Your physiology. Mark Allen and Chrissie Wellington have both been repeat Ironman World Champions and yet their approaches were complete opposites: Mark did most of his training at very low, controlled heart rates and Chrissie always went out hard. Do what works for you!

5K Carrera Solidaria Santander III

It may be the only chance I get of getting on the podium these days, but a podium is still a podium and this year I shared it with none other than Chema Martínez...

Shame we both had our eyes closed. (Thanks to Sandra for the photo)

Ask any Madrileñan, the weather has been completely random lately and summer has yet to poke its head around the corner of spring. I'm not complaining though, as the cooler weather is much more conducive to running, and today was no exception.

As in previous editions, 6 races take part in parallel, a 5K and a 10K in each of Madrid, Santander and - this year, instead of Valencia - Seville. I opted for the 5K race as it was the more gentle one in terms of hills and, if I am going to go to the trouble of running a 10K, I'd rather it was a flat course so I'd have a crack at beating my best time; I haven't got to that stage yet in the 5K distance. Today my objective was to get under 18 minutes - something that, given my performances lately in 5 and 10K, seemed a reasonable goal. And, of course, to defend my title of "fastest employee".

While we were lining up I looked left and right at the usual suspects, those short, wiry men with hunger etched into their cheeks but it was hard to spot who would be the ones to emerge first from the pack. I started to fantasise about being able to make the overall podium and not just the "special one" but just then Chema Martínez turned up with his winning smile and slotted in a couple of people to the left of me as if to remind me of my place. During the countdown I found myself thinking "what am I doing here, this is going to hurt" but the pressure of 3,000 people - many of whom were fellow work colleagues - about to trample over me snapped me out of my reverie. The gun went off and I found myself completely out on my own, leading the whole race. I started to panic, "Where's Chema? I shouldn't be first, I must be going too fast". I remembering thinking at this point "Whatever you do, don't look back!". I was soon overtaken by someone for whom I was happy to take the lead. A minute or two later and Chema sprung past probably having held himself back somewhat, not wanting to be seen to win too easily.

Chema making it look easy

After a couple of kilometres I became aware of some runners creeping up on the inside. They appeared to be running in another lane so I asked them if they were running in the 5K. No answer, so I asked again and saw an almost imperceptible nod from one of them before I spotted the motorbike in front with the "5K" label which I had somehow not noticed before. At one point we were a group of about 7 or 8 (not counting Chema who was by now somewhere off in the distance). Eventually, the 10K runners peeled off leaving me in 4th place in the 5K race.

I managed to conserve my position for the last two kilometres and then started to think about my other goal - that of breaking 18 minutes. I decided not to even look at my watch, knowing that I had knocked out some pretty decent splits and that it was just a question of finishing as best as I could. Into the final straight the forty seconds past the minute that were showing on the clock made me realise I was going to have to push right until the end. As I was approaching the line, there was a tentative attempt to erect a finishing tape but then there appeared to be a change of heart. Either they mistook me for a woman (which I doubt) or they were about to bestow the honour of breaking the tape on the first employee, something which I realised I had never done (in rowing, there is no tape at the finish line, needless to say). I did it: 17 minutes and 54 seconds, a Personal Best by 11 seconds.

I went to lie down for a bit on a wall overlooking the river and the risk that I might topple in was not lost on me. When I finally got up somebody asked me if I had recovered, telling me that I had looked as though I was suffering a lot. I was very happy with my overall 4th position (out of 1,110 people running the 5K, so well in the top 1% this time) although I got my first bitter sweet taste of realising that I was close to making the overall podium. Never mind, I got my prize for being first employee as well as being the first "veteran" (35-45) in the 5K, which I was awarded in parallel to Chema Martínez, who was the fastest veteran in the 10K distance, as well as being the fastest overall, of course. His brother, David Martínez, was the overall winner of the 5K in the "senior" category.

When I got home, the first thing my eldest son said to me as I was opening the door was "Dad, did you get on the podium?" so I was pleased to be able to say "yes, twice actually". What was even better than the award ceremony was my son's little dance of joy that my success earned me.

"You again?"

"If you don't move soon I'm going to have to push you off..."

So, after breaking my Personal Best times in all distances from 5K to the Marathon this year, the scores currently look like this:

Where's the limit? Where's my pants?

It was that time of the year again to wear a "Holter" device - a small, portable Electro Cardiagram - for 24 hours, so that it wasn't really practicable to do any training on Monday. The reason for the Holter is that I am having a heart condition that has developed over the last 5 years checked out. It is a side effect of a fairly common adaptation that the heart makes to the simulus of exercise but, all the same, it is worth investigating in case it is masking something else more sinister.

I decided to do some interval training on Tuesday. This consisted of 4 x 200m @ 19 kph, 3 x 1k @ 17.5 kph, 2 x 400m @ 19 kph. Afterwards I couldn't find my pants or socks. I figured that I must have chucked them into a neighbouring locker but - unlike my locker - all the other ones were locked. As I was standing around with only a towel to protect my modesty, and after explaining my predicament to some amusement, I asked a colleague if he wouldn't mind fetching the skeleton key. My pants and socks were nowhere to be seen so I had to execute plan B: I put on my swimming trunks and a pair of flight socks that had been lurking at the botttom of my bag for who knows how long and started to put my suit on over the top. It was at this point that I realized that this wasn't my suit either! What was going on? No pants, no socks and no suit? Had someone stolen all my clothes for a laugh? Then it dawned on me, I was looking in the wrong locker altogether. Eventually, I found my suit and, of course, my pants and socks were there as they had been all along. A case of a lack of blood to the brain after a relatively hard workout.

I cycled into work the next day, as did Tony, so we arranged to go back together along the "scenic route" which passes through the Casa de Campo. With a short stop for a caña on the way, we covered some 26 kms, virtually all of which was either cross country or along cycle paths. We could see a black cloud with the tell tale streaks of rain below but, miraculously, our route avoided it completely.

I opted for another hard workout on Thursday, mainly to get my legs for the 5K race on Sunday. Last year I managed a rare appearance on the podium as the fastest employee; this year will be somewhat harder after absorbing the 10,000 or so employees of Banesto. This time I repeated another workout I did in preparation for San Silvestre of 4 x 1k @ 16 kph, 6 x 200m @ 19 kph and an acceleration run of 3,200m @ 15-17.5 kph. This last section I did at home because I got too hot and my shoes too sweaty and slippery to be able to finish it in the gym at work.

In the evening I attended an event held by Santander in which José Luis Alciturri - the Head of Human Resources of Santander - and Josef Ajram ("Where's The Limit?") talked about their expreiences in extreme endurance events such as the Sables Marathon, their links to corporate values and the role of brands and marketing in sport. José Luis, for being a General Director of a company with 190,000 employees, evidently dressed in such a way to make Josef Ajram feel comfortable (although it was probably unnecessary as he said that this was the only place where he didn't feel criticised for being a "trader"). Apart from having shared a jaima in the 2010 edition of the Sables, they have in common an interest in finance, ultra-distance and tattoos. In spite of aiming to be an equal opportunity employer, there is undoubtably a bias in the male-female ratio although you wouldn't have known it had you been in the audience last night. I suspect it had more to do with the presence of Josef than José Luis (sorry).

Unsung heroes: Charlie Spedding

You might be forgiven for not knowing who Charlie Spedding is if you are not English or, for that matter British. By the same token, you might be forgiven for not knowing who holds the English record for the Marathon, unbroken for the last 28 years. You can probably guess that I am talking about the same person.

What is interesting about Charlie Spedding, as he recounts in his autobiography "From Last to First", is that his talent almost went by undiscovered. He was the typical bespectacled boy who came last in every race until one day he decided to try. From there on in it is a pretty remarkable story of how he found himself running on the shoulder of John Treacy in the last few meters of the 1984 Olympic Marathon in Los Angeles, where he won a bronze medal. This was to be first medal in the Marathon for England in 20 years and, so far, is the last one.

Although he concedes that natural talent is an important part of the equation, his message is basically that, if you put your mind to it, you can (and should) fulfill your potential. The book is well written and an enjoyable read but one of the chapters comes across as a bit of a rant. If you look at the British all-time rankings in the Marathon today, you can see his point: there has been a dearth of progress since his day and that is supposedly with all the advantages of modern training (and funding) that top athlete's have at their disposal. I think that this view is a little one dimensional because this ignores the improvements that British athletes have made in other disciplines such as cycling and rowing coupled with (and probably related to) the relatively recent emergence of African athletes as the dominating force in distance running.

His other rant is about the recent fad of "non-competitive sports days". I have to say I agree with him on this one. Real life is one big competition and so to try to hide this from kids seems to me a great cruelty. Better that they get their first taste of disappointment by coming 4th in the egg and spoon race aged 8½ than by being fired from their first job. It reminds me a bit of what a head teacher at my son's school told me at a parent's meeting: "We don't have any bullying at this school", to which I said that even if I could believe it were true, I wouldn't want my kids to go to a bully-free school because again, in real life, bullies are everywhere.

However, I felt that the rant went a little too far when he started to criticise "fun runners" and people who ran road races in "fancy dress" saying that it was shameful for their kids to see their parents doing something badly. I tend to subscribe to the idea of doing something as well as you can if you are going to do it, but even this is open to interpretation. Am I running my races as well as I possibly can? It is certainly true that, more than from the result itself, my satisfaction is derived from knowing that I have pushed myself to the limit. On the other hand, I can always ask myself the question - had I trained harder, longer or better, could I have done any better? In any case, you cannot do absolutely everything in life to the best of your abilities by definition - you could always do one thing better by sacrificing another. So it is a tradeoff and those "fun runners" have their priorities elsewhere. At least they are doing some exercise which is definitely more healthy than doing none at all and arguably more healthy than the training regime Spedding subjected himself to (his accounts of the operations he had done to his Achilles tendons are gruesome). I would go on futher to say that those fun-runners might just make running seem more accessable to the bespectacled little boys who are currently coming in last at their school, than the elite runners who must seem completely out of their reach.

It does still beg the question why the strength in depth of talent at road races is not what it used to be. These days it seems like a sub 30 minute 10K time will give you a pretty good shot at a podium place; in many of the races Spedding competed in, you wouldn't even have finished in the top 10.

I would be interested to know what Spedding thinks of the whole mimimalist running shoe movement. As someone whose running career started before the Nike revolution and who even worked for Nike as a representative, I expect he would find it baffling. I think the jury is still out as to whether standard running shoes are better or worse for Achilles injures amongst elite runners who presumably have good running technique and are covering hundreds of kilometers a week. I can only speak from my experiment of one: my Achilles tendons have never been stronger than since I made the switch.

Family cycle ride

To be honest I can't really remember too well what training I did this week, which I guess is a good sign in that it means that I am starting to relax about what I do without relaxing what I do. I do remember doing an interval session of some sort but most of the other days involved going for a 40 minute run with work colleagues at lunch time.

Perhaps in preparation for the influx of new members due to the recent absorption of Banesto by my bank, the gym has added several new cardiovascular machines. In particular, my eye was caught by a very fancy looking running machine which, as well as reaching speeds of 24 kph, has a touch screen with TV and internet connection. Also, as it is in a part of the gym away from all the other machines, I thought that it might be cool enough to try a hard workout. First of all, the TV wasn't connected and the internet didn't work so I had to content myself with watching the time tick by second by second while I attempted to run 3 x 15 minutes at 15 kph, 16 kph and 16.5 kph - a workout I have done on my home treadmill several times without any problems. Whether it was the boredom, the heat or the tiredness from the intervals from the day before, I didn't feel up to finishing so ended up running 15 minutes at 15 kph, 5 at 16 kph and then, after a fairly long break, 20 minutes at 15 kph. I would like to be able to do my interval and quality sessions at lunchtime because I don't like them "hanging over me" during the day or having to take time out of the family to do them. Maybe I'll try taking a film in on my computer (although it will have to be a much tamer one than the sort I tend to put on in my basement to run to).

It took a bit of convincing but I managed to get the whole family on their bikes on Saturday afternoon for a 14 kilometer ride along pavements, bike paths and fields down to the Casa de Campo and back. The only hitch was that Adrian, my youngest, started to cough and I had to race back to the house to get a Ventolin inhaler, adding another 8 km to my ride which was probably a good thing. Once we got to the Casa de Campo, the kids loved it and raced off along the undulating sandy paths.

Some of the hills were really quite challenging for them, especially considering that their combined weight with their bikes almost doubled their body weight. As a special treat, we stopped off at a restuarant near home and they got to eat pizza...

Crashing out