Another race day today. I ran in the Asheville Citizen Times Half Marathon. The week immediately following my 10K Trail Championship race I ran easy but hilly runs and then, since these two races were only two weeks apart, stepped right back into resuming by training for this race. In order to do race specific training, I did most of my training runs on the half marathon course, which is an extremely hilly course meandering through the neighborhoods on the north side of the city. I basically trained right up to the race, doing 6-7 mile runs every day (with the exception of a bike day) until the Friday before the race, when I “tapered.”

My strategy during my training runs and during the race was to use my legs as little as possible on all the uphill sections, while at the same time exaggerating the use of my upper body (forward armswing and increased lean). On the downhill sections my objective was to lean into the downhills and allow my stride to lengthen as much as possible. I was basically trying to run as fast as I could safely manage on all the downhills by cooperating with the pull of gravity.

On the uphills and flats I was also toying with a new concept I’m working on with my stride where I’m using my obliques to drive my pelvis (the active use of pelvic rotation) which in turn drives my legs. Running this way allows me to hold a good pace on the uphills without using any leg muscle per se because my legs become simply an extension of my pelvis. It is proving to work incredibly well, and tonight as I’m writing this blog I don’t sense even a smidgeon of fatigue or soreness in my legs. For those of you just learning the ChiRunning technique, I don’t advise attempting this technique until you are at the point with your running where you are adept at neutralizing your legs, using them strictly for momentary support between strides and never for propulsion. I’ll talk more about this technique in future blogs and I hope to incorporate it into future “advanced” ChiRunning courses. Let me know if you’d be interested in hearing more.

The physical details: I finished first in my age group with a chip time of 1:37:38, an average pace of 7:27/mile. I’m guessing the course had a total elevation gain of over 1000′. I ran the race in a pair of the new Newton shoe called the Isaac. We had absolutely perfect race weather with heavy cloud cover and temperatures in the 60’s-low 70’s. The race was extremely well organized and supported with aid stations about every mile and a half! The volunteers were fabulous.

If you’d ever like to run a challenging but beautiful 13-mile tour of Asheville I highly suggest training for this one. It’s right up there in my list of the most beautiful race courses.

Katherine and Journey and I were out on a run today around the lake near our house when we ran into a neighbor. As she stopped to say hi, she said, “I promised myself that the next time I saw you I’d tell you what has happened to me since you told me something at a neighborhood party last year. You told me to take it easy running the uphills and to let myself fly on the downhills. I always thought I had to work really hard to get up the hills so I wouldn’t lose any time in my races. But, you know what, since I’ve been following your advice and going easier on the uphills, I’ve actually been doing much better in my hill running. I’m not so tired at the top of the hill that I have to spend most of the downhill recovering my strength. Now I just treat the uphills like they’re the resting phase of my runs and I can blaze down all the hills and more than make up for any lost time.”

Then she continued, “I was in a leadership class last week and they were telling us all of the same principles… like, ‘maximize your strengths’ and ‘treat your weaknesses with respect.’ It’s all the same stuff that I’ve been practicing in my hill running and I find it working well in the rest of my life.”

It was so nice to hear her story and how she’s been using her ChiRunning practice to teach herself great principles to live by. For myself, the longer I practice ChiRunning, the more I find out that it’s not about the running. It always comes down to what I come away with, that I can then apply somewhere else in my life.

Let us know what transferable knowledge you’ve come across in your running practice. I’m sure everyone following this blog would love to hear your story.

All the best,
Danny

View looking uphill and south along the Matt Davis Trail - Marin County, CA

Funny you should ask that. I was just out running this morning and came up with the answer.

Since I moved here to Western North Carolina almost three years ago, I’ve been learning how to play the fiddle (when in Rome…). I have a great fiddle teacher named Jamie Laval and I highly suggest you check out his website if you’re interested in any form of Celtic or Scottish music. He’s one of the best around.

I’m still very much a beginning fiddle student and so Jamie has me do these great warm-up exercises where I’m learning finger placement. I begin by playing one note at a time with my first finger, and then matching it with an accompanying string so that I get the right pitch. Then I do the same thing with my second finger and so on until a four fingers of my left hand have practiced their respective positions on all four strings. When I can hit a good pitch with all 16 notes I get to move onto playing the songs I’m learning. What this does is get my fingers to always land on the right spot on the finger board so that playing the song is much more fluid and  accurate. I’ve already noticed a huge difference in my playing when I do these warm-up exercises.

So, I was out on my run this morning doing my 1-minute intervals on the trail. It was a one-hour run and I started out the first five minutes pretty easy and then got into alternating one minute of race pace focuses with one minute of easy resting pace. As I progressed through my workout, I noticed that my body was feeling more and more relaxed and the speed intervals were feeling easier and easier. So, I started doing 2-minute race focus intervals with one minute of rest. Throughout my run I gradually increased the length of the fast intervals and kept the resting intervals at one minute. By the end of my run I finished the last ten minutes at race pace feeling very little effort because I’d spent the better part of the run warming up and working on focuses.

My goal is to get to the point where I can run at race pace for an hour without stopping for a rest break. My race is at the end of August, so I don’t see any problem with working my way up to that. And, as you can see, it is absolutely the same thing I’m doing with my fiddle practice. It’s built on the premise that if you do your technique work up front, the rest just falls into place. I meet many people who think that speed comes strictly from strength and I couldn’t disagree more. Speed with running, just like speed with the fiddle, comes with efficiency, accuracy, and most of all relaxation. If you don’t have all three, you’re going to have to work harder to get that speed you’re looking for. It doesn’t matter whether you’re watching Salina Kosgei (the Kenyan woman who won this year’s Boston Marathon) or Itzak Perlman, they’re both doing the same thing underneath it all.

Here’s an add-on to my last blog about running one-minute intervals. In the last half of this workout, depending on how I feel, I’ll begin extending the “racing” intervals to two minutes instead of one. I still keep the “resting” intervals by running in 1st gear for a minute. (Just as a side note, I avoid walking during my rest breaks. It does nothing for my conditioning or my psychology to be giving myself an “out” unless I absolutely need it.) Lengthening the time of the racing intervals, especially once I’m well warmed up, is fun and it stretches the conditioning phase of the workout. My goal is to very gradually increase the length of the conditioning intervals over the next few months until I can comfortably run at race pace for an hour, taking “rest” breaks only when I absolutely need them.

When I transition into running the “race” pace intervals during these trail runs, I’m not focusing on speed per se, but on the running form required to run the fastest through whatever section of trail I happen to be passing through. Then, instead of working harder and harder, I’m actually making it a fun game. I’ve only played a few video games, but approaching my runs in this way feel much like playing a video game where you’re working through different levels of difficulty and developing new skills in the process. I would have to say that this is a far cry from a video game because it’s in real time and it has a direct influence on my mind/body connection in ways no virtual reality could possibly do.

Happy Trails,
Danny

In preparation for the 10K trail race I plan to run in August, I’ve started my race-specific training by doing hill intervals on the trails above my house. I have a half mile loop that is just about exactly half uphill and half downhill. I began with six repeats of this loop with no rest in between loops. I use the downhill section to recover from the uphill section and to work on lengthening my stride.

Here’s how I run hill intervals.
I start at the top of the loop and begin by running down to the halfway mark. In this section I’m trying keep my upper body as far forward as I can while at the same time allowing my pelvis to rotate as much as possible to absorb the shock of running downhill at a fast pace. If I do it right, I don’t feel like I’m expending any energy. In fact, I feel like I’m resting even though I’m going at a very fast pace.

Then, when I hit the halfway mark and begin running the uphill section back to the top, I change a number of things. The first thing I do is shorten my stride so I’m running in a lower gear. This saves me a ton of energy without sacrificing a lot of speed. Next, I pull my hands in closer to my chest and swing my arms with a powerful forward/upward motion. Believe it or not, this helps my obliques to drive my pelvis which then drives my legs in the most efficient way. This feels like “whole-body” running, and it should, because I don’t want to rely solely on my legs to get me up the hills…especially those long, steep ones.

Another thing I do on the uphills is lean my column into the hill so that I feel as though I’m falling up the hill. This saves my hamstrings from having to work to “pull” me up the hill.

The most important thing to me when running hill intervals is to keep my perceived rate of exertion (PRE) as consistent as possible on the uphill sections. I’m trying to maintain a PRE of about 7 (on a scale of 1 to 10) on each of the six uphill sections.

Here are my chronological split times for each of the six intervals:
1. 4:27
2. 4:30
3. 4:26
4. 4:18
5. 4:11
6. 4:03

As you can see, each interval with the exception of the second one was faster than the one preceding it. I lost focus on the second one, which is why I lost 3 seconds. The idea is to have each progressive interval just slightly faster than the one before it…without increasing your PRE to get the job done. By maintaining a very consistent sense of energy expenditure my body will learn to run more efficiently which should always be way at the top of your list if you want to do well in your event.

To keep my energy expenditure constant and my PRE constant I use all the uphill focuses I mentioned above in varying degrees depending on which one I feel will help me most to accomplish that consistency.

Play with this on your own runs or walks, and challenge yourself to run or walk hills faster without changing your effort level. It sort of forces you to practice your focuses…and that’s always a good thing.

For some additional suggestions on how to run hills click here.

Happy Hills,
Danny