Big 12 Championships Pre Meet Thoughts

It's blizzarding here in Ames, where Iowa state is hosting the 2013 Big Twelve Indoor Track and Field Championships this weekend.  Being from Wisconsin, I'm supposed to be used to the cold and snow, but the Texas 'winter' has spoiled me and I've lost my supernatural powers.  So I'll just cower in my hotel room and blog alongside the obnoxiously noisy heater.  

I'm pretty sure the Oklahoma State team was eaten by the
Abominable Snowman, since they're not here yet.

The meet has been delayed a day because Oklahoma State's bus got stranded by winter storm Q in Topeka, Kansas.  Next time, OSU, try this new device for getting to faraway meets.  Jokes aside, the meet wouldn't be the same without the Cowboy's distance runners in the mix.  We want to win the team championship fair and square and it would be easier for us Longhorns to score points in the longer events without them here.  In that scenario a conference title wouldn't be as sweet.

This weekend is special for me since it's the last conference meet I get to run in as a collegiate.  Warming up on the track yesterday for my mile prelim tomorrow the day after tomorrow, I felt the buzz that surrounds a championship meet.  Teams nervously eye each other up.  Occasionally the tension is broken by old friends (or rivals) from high school reuniting and maybe jogging a lap together (There was a lot of schmoozing like that in the Ivy League.)  A certain mutual respect exists between track and field athletes, even in intensely competitive situations.  It's because everyone knows and appreciates the work the other has put in - since they have too.  That said, no one will be taking any step, jump, or throw lightly the next two days.  Some of the best athletes in the country and world are here competing, and they'll take advantage of the tiniest mistake you make.  It's exciting, it's stressful, I love it.

Before arriving at Texas in the fall, I didn't know how invested in the program or how loyal to the school and team I would become.  I felt like a mercenary, trained to kill (run) and hired out by a foreign entity.  I had built up so much love for Princeton and so many memories of running and living in New Jersey that there seemed little room for this totally new place in my heart.  I'm glad that my mindset has changed since.  I've run the metaphorical trails of Austin many times now.  I know where I'm going and how to get there.  And I've enjoyed the process because my team mates and coaches have made it easy to adjust.  That's really all I can ask for, except of course a conference title.

Quick Summary of the Situation:

The Big Twelve makes a good case for being the best distance running conference in the country this year.  Nationally, it has the second best 800 performance,  nine of the top 25 performances in the mile (all under four minutes), eight of the top 25 in the 3000, and four of the top 20 in the 5000 (including #1).  Kansas state is really strong in the field events and will be our main team competition.  Oklahoma won't be far behind with their strong middle distance/distance and good jumps athletes.  One advantage for us over Kansas State indoors is the number of middle distance/distance races contested - the 600y, 800, 1000, mile, 3k, and 5k all favor teams with good lungs.  Our distance unit needs to take advantage of that fact  by getting around the Oklahoma schools.  If we can do that, we'll be in good shape.

TexasSports Big Twelve Preview

Letsrun.com Preview

Live Results

What 9000?

I hope to keep blogging about the weekends events from an individual and team standpoint!

Smileage Addiction

Being a relatively injury resistant runner, (always knock on wood when you say something like that) I've had the ability to run "pretty high volume" (mileage per week) throughout my career.  Injury  proneness places a definite upper bound on volume depending on the person, but there's a gray area just underneath where an athlete is made or betrayed.  By themselves.

For me, volume has always been somewhat of a question mark - I'm still experimenting with how much feels best.  And when you try to isolate variables for results that take seasons and years to produce, the process is not simple.

Sometimes you just gotta do less, Pepiopi.

One problem with running high volume is that it can be addicting.  Finishing a 100+ smile week makes you feel badass when you write those three digits in your running log.  But when it comes time to reduce volume during race season, the heavy volume mindset can be difficult to get out of. There's a temptation to lose confidence in training while lowering mileage.  When you rely on confirmation of your fitness through training benchmarks like weekly mileage, the lengths of your long run, and paces you are able to sustain on hard runs, finding it in other ways can be difficult.

It was during my senior year at Princeton (2011 - 2012) that I really started taking advantage of my potential by being smarter with smileage.  During the summer prior to cross country, I trained hard at altitude in Park City, Utah, running hundred mile weeks beginning in late July.  During the season I ran three awful races, barely breaking 26:00 for 8k in each and finishing far back in the field.  I didn't change anything, believing that a breakthrough was around the corner.  It wasn't.  In late October, when we found that I was anemic, I finally gave my body a chance.  I took a few days off, began taking iron, and decided my mileage would not exceed 80 mpw for the rest of the season.

This is Smileage.

Some combination of the iron, the smileage, and most importantly the refreshed mindset I had after learning there was a reason for my struggles jump started my running.  Just three weeks after slugging through a 25:53 for 8k at the Princeton Invite, I ran a personal best 14:13 5000 in an intersquad time trial on the track, closing in 4:20 over the final mile.  Two weeks later, I won the IC4A meet at Van Cortlandt in the Bronx.   Although my health during the season forced me to watch from the sidelines in Terre Haute at nationals later that weekend, I was riding a huge wave of confidence and momentum into the new year.

I had a lot of fun during the next track season.  Non stop personal bests, tapping into speed in the 1500, breaking school and Ivy records, winning two Penn Relays wheels, qualifying for outdoor nationals and nearly the Olympic trials all indicated that I had figured something out.  The increased amount of iron in my diet probably played a substantial role, but being more savvy with when to train hard and when to recover is what I think really caused the breakthrough.

Nigel knows about volume

When it comes time, I let myself just run, doing what feels natural.  Lifting the burden of having to maintain a certain amount of smiles every day is enormously relieving.  I put the displaced effort into workouts and races, using distance runs for recovery more than for aerobic benefit, their purpose in the base phase.  I forget about mileage goals - the miles runs themselves and just add up appropriately.  I do everything with the singular goal of feeling good.

I think some people forget that the point of competitive running is racing.  They focus so intently on training that they eventually prefer it to competition, in the worst cases developing a fear of racing because they feel more in control while training.  The worst thing to do after a poor race performance is go home and amp up the volume or intensity in an attempt to 'get better'.  The instinct should be the opposite.  Amongst athletes who naturally harbor extremely hard work ethics and competitive tendencies, freshness is totally underrated.  Smile : )

The term "smileage" copyright Tommy D., 2009

Bittersweet

I thought I'd catch up on a few thoughts from the past week today, picking up from where I left off last Saturday.

Mile from last weekend

I broke four minutes in the mile for the second time in my life at Arkansas, running 3:58.66 against a field that had six go under the barrier.  Breaking four and Leo Manzano's school record was awesome, but these days in the NCAA, you aren't totally happy unless you've run around 3:58.0 or better.  This year's top - 16 qualifying procedure hardens up the number going to nationals but introduces uncertainty into the time required, making the whole thing a little stressful.  Last year, 33 broke four minutes in the mile (I was the 33rd on the list) and I think just as many or more will by the end of last chance weekend in late February.

Speaking of being on the bubble, our DMR ran a nice time of 9:31.82 that would make it to NCAAs every year since the dinosaurs went extinct, but you just can't trust things anymore.  Wait, dinosaurs are still around?  No - I mean our DMR making it with that time.  Anchoring the relay, I saw 5:32 on the clock when I got the baton.  I looked every lap, needing to run 30 second 200s with a fast close... at one point I had about 1.5 seconds on the goal of 9:31, but running alone I faded slightly and ran 3:59 for 1600.  Good, but maybe not good enough.

So the weekend was bittersweet.  Like 72% cacao.

Last week saw some other great stuff happen.  Saturday, January 26 was perhaps the greatest day for US indoor track and field ever.  Watching Galen Rupp almost break the American indoor mile record in front of a packed track at Boston University was incredible, especially combined with his post race workout.  Then there was Mary Cain running 4:32 for the National High School Record.  She's awesome, just watch this interview.  Meanwhile, Duane Solomon broke the American 600m record in Glasgow, and Cas Loxsom nearly re-broke it hours later at Penn State.

For a track athlete and fan, the tidal wave of results every weekend is overwhelming.  More importantly, it's exciting.  And makes me want to race.  This year there's a special kind of energy surrounding the indoor season.  It seems there are crazy things are happening every weekend, all over the country and planet.  I hope the buzz is contagious.  It's a fun time to be involved in it all!

Back to Texas: yesterday we ran the six mile cutdown workout that I blogged about a few weeks ago again.  Let me just say this: racing gets you in shape.  Across the team, guys felt smoother and stronger running times well ahead of where we were before.  The workout atmosphere was unbelievable between the great weather and amount of people out on the track watching and hanging out.

Next weekend we're headed to Seattle for the Husky Invite.  I'll be racing the 3k, going for a nationals time.  It'll also be a little Princeton reunion, as my former team mates Donn Cabral and Brian Leung are entered in races, along with current team mate Trevor Vanackeran entered in the mile.  Will be a lot of fun and good material for a later post.

Calling out Flotrack

As an athlete in a sport that doesn't experience the level of cashflow that football, basketball, etc. enjoy, I love seeing progress being made in track and field media coverage that successfully cultivates new interest from the public.  Unfortunately, the sport's everyday coverage in the US outside the Olympics and a few major Championship meets is still unconventional and somewhat spotty.  It's been left to grassroots internet sites to boil down the myriad of constant worldwide track and field news for their small but loyal followers (mostly runners).  The founders of two of the most popular sites, letsrun.com and flotrack.org recently got into a heated online argument about Flotrack's new FlotrackPro subscription system.

In this video, Flotrack founder Mark Floreani "calls out" LetsRun cofounder Weldon Johnson ('Wejo') for questioning the new monthly subscription rate of $20 that Flotrack is now asking for their Flotrack Pro content.  While Floreani brazenly challenged him to a Skype duel for the world to see, Wejo simply brushed the situation aside on a since deleted message board thread, and it seems to have ended at that.  Except that the rate is still $20/month.  The complaints don't stop with Wejo; they go all the way down through the mass of Flotrack users who are so used to great free content from the site.  With enticing new content like the Driven series on mileage god Cam Levins, Bernard Lagat, and others, people don't want to suddenly start shelling out mulah for their track coverage fix.

But we're going to have to, sooner or later.  The call out video explains that Flotrack's goal is to bring our 'fringe sport' into the spot light.  That can't be done without money.  Today at breakfast someone asked "so how does Flotrack make money?"  "Page advertisements, obviously."  I want Flotrack to grow, everybody wants Flotrack to grow.  Apparently they can't turn a profit on ads anymore.  But I havent committed $20 this month or $150 for the year... I think it's too much.  Did Flotrack do any kind of research into their pricing?  I live and run with 20 other avid Flotrack users in the very city Flotrack is headquartered in, and none of them are ready to pay up.  Look at the commenters below the video - neither do they.

It's necessary that Flotrack starts charging for their content.  Where there's money, things get done.  But the current rates are just too high.  I'd gladly sacrifice $75 a year to watch all the great Flotrack coverage, pro videos, and athlete/coach features.  If even a quarter of their current 27.7k followers on Twitter  payed that much, they'd have over half a million in revenue on the year.  As it stands now I bet less than two thousand people will go for $150 a year.  They'd make less than half that.  I'm not an economist, but I hope that the big hand will bring these rates down to a reasonable level in the near future.  I for one want to know how Cam Levins runs so many damn miles.

Binary Sunset

Today I would like to share the most important movie scene of all time and why it relates precisely to what running means.  It is the binary sunset scene from Star Wars a New Hope.

Why is this the most important scene in all of cinematic history?  Luke Skywalker looks to the unknown, to the future, feeling he must leave the confines of sandy Tatooine to complete his destiny.  Yes, the eventual destruction of the Empire is the ultimate climactic event in the Star Wars saga, but it's this moment that touches me the most.  Luke.  Alone, full of teenage angst, energy, Hope.  (Now that I've proven that this is the number one moment in Star Wars, it follows by the triangle inequality that it's the best moment in cinematic history. Q.E.D.)

No girl who's read this far will ever talk to me again, so I may as well continue.  Runners face the unknown all the time.  We have some control over our destiny through training and experience, but a lot of the time we're making big sacrifices for goals that only might be reached.  We look out like Luke does from our current position, knowing we have the potential to end up in one of a million different places at the end of the season, the year, our running careers.  You have to have some kind of weird motivation that allows you to keep working hard knowing you could fail.  To be good, you must tip toe the line between injury and health.  You have to spend years and years doing it.

Most of the miles I run strengthen me physically.  But I'll never forget the lessons I've learned from the many miles I shouldn't have run, when I should've rested or run slower.  I value those just as much. A perfect training program doesn't exist because everyone is different:  the athlete is responsible for finding out who he or she is.  I've learned a lot.  Every time I set out on a run or a week or a season, I feel myself staring at the Binary Sunset, unsure of what's ahead.  But every time I'm just a little more prepared to handle it.

Learn from Han Solo: Distance running doesn't
have to be a lonely endeavor.

Six Mile Cutdowns

Had a great workout today.

We woke up to 50 degrees and a light rain.  (A day not unlike workout days back in New Jersey that I remember fondly)  Nothing and no one out there but the red wet track and twenty guys nervously jogging and stretching.  The Texas state capital and Austin skyline are just visible through the mist.  As I do strides during the warmup, I can see myself in long puddles of water that have filled the lanes.

I'm wearing a team issued baseball cap.  Usually I wear it backwards, but today it's forward to keep the rain out of my eyes.  The sound of my footfalls change as my Nike streak flats gradually saturate with water.  They eventually make a deep, mushy, squelching sound.

The workout is six mile repetitions, each run faster than the one before it by eight seconds.  Each mile is run starting every eight minutes, and everyone has a prescribed start time depending on their fitness.  The session is team oriented.  On several of the reps, all twenty of us run in a pack at once, as  many as four or five seconds separating the leader and the end of the line.

The 5:20 mile begins exactly at noon.  As I watch this and the next two groups, I'm anxious to begin.  I know this workout will be a game of anticipation: relatively manageable for the first three to four reps and quickly getting tough near the end.

Craig, Pat, and I on the fifth mile.

I come in with Pat McGregor on the 4:56 rep.  We use this one just to get the blood flowing.  Going on eight minutes yields just over three minutes of rest, a gratuitous amount at threshold pace.  I cross the line at 4:55.

By the end of the 4:48 rep my flats are properly soaked.  I'm glad I've worn half tights in these moist conditions: less chafing.  Looking down, little bits of track are stuck to my slicked down leg hairs.  They've been kicked up from runners ahead of me.  For the early reps I've chosen to hang quietly in the back, letting others practice leading and pack running.  I've run 4:47 for this mile.

Several guys begin their final mile on the 4:40 rep.  Mid way through, coach yells for them to move to the front, shaking up the pace a bit as others are tempted to follow.  I'm having fun encouraging the younger guys around me as they surge ahead to finish their workout.  I run this one in 4:39.

The fourth lap of the 4:32 rep brings the first signs of fatigue.  My hands and thighs are cold, but this doesn't seem to be affecting my running.  I've run 4:31.  During the recovery period, which by this point has increased to about three and a half minutes, I work on focusing up.  I'll feel the two second per lap decrease from 68 to 66 seconds much more than any of the others before.  66 seconds is familiar territory for me: for the past year it's been a staple interval pace.  Today I want to begin pushing my comfort zone faster than 66 seconds.  65 seconds per lap gets a 13:32 5k, good enough to qualify for the US Championships.  Just under 64 seconds per lap is knocking on the World Championships A standard of 13:15.

The group on the fifth rep is McGregor, Craig Lutz, Rory Tunningly and I.  I sense a slight slack in the pace on the second lap, and coming through 800 in 2:14, we'll need to negative split a little to make the time.  It's Craig's last rep, and that helps as he closes hard to finish.  I follow him around and cross the line in 4:23.  I keep running, going straight inside the field house for my spikes.  Lacing them up on the bench outside, I clear my mind and get ready for the sixth mile.  I've never broken 4:20 in practice before.

It's just McGregor and I now.  We come through 400 in 64, right on pace.  Pat speeds up, having decided to stop halfway.  Through 800 we're at 2:09, and even though I'm working harder and harder, I know the pace is slowing.  The third lap is the toughest part of this workout.  I focus on my breathing and form, trying to relax.  These are the moments that hone mid race instincts: the natural impulse to stay on pace, to close gaps.  At 1200 I see 3:15.  I'm three seconds slow but feel that I have some power left in my legs.  I don't want to race the final lap, but I'm prepared to build the final 300 to make up that time.  After taking a lap off, Pat comes back in ahead of me.  I'm grateful for the help.  The final 200 is tough but I make sure not to strain.  Guys cooling down on the infield are reminding me to pick my knees up, to get to the line.  I cross it, stopping my watch in 4:17.9 .

Pat and I finishing the final mile in 4:17

Workouts like today's mean big things for where I am and where I'm going.  It's only January 8th and most runners don't want to be in super shape right now.  But I feel strong.  Base strong.  This fitness isn't derived from a bunch of intervals I've done in the past three weeks.  It's the fitness accumulated over years of nearly uninterrupted training.  I believe I can only go up from here.

Friday is a mile at the Arkansas(#1) vs. Texas (#3) Duel.  It'll be a fun one.

Interview with Derek Rubis

My first face in the hole by Derek.

I recently sat down (over the internet) for an interview with fellow Wisconsinite Derek Rubis, who in the past couple years has singlehandedly changed the landscape of running superfandom.  You may know him as @djsjeffer on Twitter or from his blog entitled The Hub Of Distance Running, or from meeting him at the many track meets he makes it to.  I wanted to find out what drives his love for running and what he thinks needs to be done to improve involvement in and attention to running from Americans.






Derek, in the past few years you've become a top fan of collegiate and professional US distance running. It's clear you have a true love for the sport. Who or what got you so interested in running, and when did you begin running yourself?

I got started running for the 6th grade run but I was never a fan of distance running until I was a Freshman in High School. Nobody got me interested in Distance Running but myself and I thought it was sport that I could do that not a lot people could do.

Getting face in the holed has become a prestigious honor in the collegiate circuit. Last year, amongst the running goals I had listed on a sheet of paper above my bed, getting face in the holed was one of the top entries. What are your criteria for bestowing that honor upon a runner?

The only criteria is that if the photo was good enough for my pic to fit in the Face In The Hole

You tweet often. Actually, by my calculations, your current rate of tweeting will bring you to two million tweets by the year 2050 with room to spare. Do you think social media (Facebook, twitter, instagram, etc) is a good thing for the sport of running in terms of following the action, or is there need for a more organized, larger form of coverage?

I think so but as of right now we are still low on the ladder of sports and that is what I am trying to change to make our sport climb that ladder faster and be cared about like Football & Basketball in College & Pro

I think I speak for a lot of runners out there when I say that your support for us really is appreciated. You have found a way to connect with your favorite sport's athletes in a personal way, something that can't be done in many other sports. Do you have any words about what can be done to bring running's fan base closer to it's athletes? Or perhaps an idea for how to make the sport more interesting for a larger American audience?

More media attention, college ADs doing more for our sport & getting more money to our sport so that College & Pro Athlete can promote the sport more to get more people to our sport. An idea I have is that if Title IX wants to put sport in cause of they need a women's sport to compliant the men's sports & cut a sport to do it then why cut Men's XC/Track when they don't have Women's Football. Just cut Men's Football and put that money into the other sport that need that money and I don't mean Basketball, I mean sports like XC/Track, Soccer, Volleyball Swimming & others

Where is your favorite place (or favorite city) to run in?

I loved running in Eugene, Oregon when I was out there for The Olympic Trials

What do you hope to see out of both collegiate and professional US running in 2013? Any NCAA , US or World championship predictions?

In 2013, I would like to see that the CEO of Track & Field get Distance Events in the media and sho the whole events, ie Steeplechase 3K 5K & 10K without ads, going to another event in the middle of a distance event

What are some of your favorite running related moments, both on and off the track?

Moments off the track: Nick Symmonds wanting a pic with me at Olympic Track Trials, being made a third Heath & Jefferson brother, Meeting my running idols A.J. Acosta, Jordan McNamara, Nick Symmonds & John Jefferson & running with my steeplechase coach Billy Nelson aka Coach Yelawolf

Moments On The Track: Getting to run an All Comers Meet on Hayward Field Track, getting my prs in the 3K, 5K & 10K this year & getting to run a shakeout 3K with Nick Symmonds in Milwaukee, WI

What are your personal running goals for 2013?

My running goals in the 3K-11:00 or under, 5K-19:00 or under, 10K-under 40 mins on the track, Steeplechase-12:30 or under. Also, another running goal off the track is to grow a sweet beard like A.J. Acosta & John Jefferson