Make 2022 Awesome

The sun is starting to come out from behind the clouds. Just a month ago I shared my feeling that 2022 was not going to be much better than 2021. Since then the Covid-19 situation has improved dramatically. Sadly the death rate is higher, which can be attributed to the Delta variant, but new cases have been decreasing significantly and there is no reason to think this trend should not continue.

One thing I said earlier is still true. I really want to complete an Ironman, and I feel like I won’t get too many more chances. There is a fitness aspect, and a financial aspect. These are the kinds of challenges that every athlete faces. A big part of a coach's work is to help their athletes deal with such issues. Being self coached means I get to help myself. 

What I decided to do is to start planning 2022 with the goal of doing an Ironman. First I developed some basic criteria.

1. Moderate temperature.

2. Not too hilly.

3. Nice local.

4. Good accommodations.

5. Not in a red state.

When Ironman announcement IM Alaska I was intrigued by criteria #3, a great looking location. The more I thought about it the more I realized it fell short of the other four.

It did not take me very long to settle on Cozumel. It is in a foreign country, but it’s Mexico. Should not be a problem. On the plus side, the swim is in a river that flows from the start to the finish, which makes it just a bit easier than a lake or ocean swim, and the water is warm enough that a wet suit is not necessary. Living in Hawaii, a wetsuit presents significant additional expense and will take some getting used to. And I will confess that I asked some old friends who have done it.

There are many possible criteria that an athlete might use in choosing a race. They may prefer to drive to their venue (not an option in Hawaii!). They may prefer to camp for the week. They may prefer something closer to home, so that more friends and family can come and celebrate the experience. They may prefer something more exotic. Maybe they have already done Florida, or Texas, or Arizona, and are looking for something more challenging. It is not uncommon for an experienced athlete to pick an easy course looking to get a Kona slot. 

It helps to have someone to talk to. Choosing an “A” race, building a training plan to get you there in the best possible shape, monitoring progress, and making all of the small adjustments that reflect the individual’s adaptations and disruptions. Life will get in the way. Success means dealing with whatever happens as best you can. No book or canned training plan can do that.

Now that I have decided to aim for an Ironman in 2022, and have settled on Cozumel, the next step is commitment. I am still at "I want to." I'll be sure and let you know when I reach "I am."

Hungry? Ask yourself these two questions

Like so many other athletes, I gained a few pounds during the pandemic. More than a few. Way too many. Worse still, at least in my opinion, it all went on my belly. I think of someone with excess belly fat as someone who is not active. It certainly does not look athletic. 

I love science, and what is referred to as evidence based training. “Evidence” is not the same as doing something that worked for a friend. It means making decisions based on published, peer reviewed studies along with commentary from world class sports scientists who are using those same resources. 

Science tells us that our bodies are designed to store excess fuel as fat. It is a survival mechanism, in case our three hour boat tour ends up stranded on an island. From adolescence to roughly fifty, give or take ten years, that fat is distributed first throughout our muscles. It’s what you look for when choosing a streak, lots of marbling. When there is plenty of excess it gets stored throughout our body between our skin and muscles. Flabby arms, flabby thighs.

As we age that distribution plan changes. The mechanism that assigns fat storage reverses those priorities. Less fat is stored in our muscles, arms, and legs, while more goes on our belly. Yes, a beer belly is not about beer as much as aging.

Is this inevitable? Yes and no. To some extent we must accept the changes. Gray hair, hair loss, wrinkles. Those things happen as we age. One very important change takes place out of sight. A reduction in reproductive hormones. Apparently it is those hormones that signal fat distribution. 

What can we do about it? As it turns out there is one simple activity that can boost production of those hormones, and that is lifting heavy weights. Not the usual five pound barbell and twenty bicep curls. It takes really heavy lifting. Four reps and you are done. Running won’t help. Cycling won’t help. Standard gym workouts won’t help. Heavy stuff. One light set to practice the motion, then pile it on for three to four reps. By the last rep your muscles should be shaking.

What about the question I opened with? The one about what to ask when you are hungry? Even if we can’t hold onto our youthful body shape, we can make nutrition choices that minimize the damage. Nutrition is a complex topic and I will share some thoughts in future posts. For now, here are two questions you should ask yourself before you eat.

1. Do I need this?

2. What will this do for me?

Context matters. Ask these questions as an athlete preparing for a race. Watch out for traps, like saying yes to the first question when contemplating a chocolate and sea salt bar after a hard yoga session. As for the second question, try expanding on it. Will it help me run faster? Will it improve my endurance?

The sensation of hunger is another challenging subject. What has worked for me in the past is to remind myself that feeling hungry is a reward associated with losing weight, similar to how sore muscles are a reward for hard work. Being active adds an extra dimension. As athletes we must put enough fuel in our tanks to make it through our workout plan without compromising performance. There is a before, during, and after aspect. I, like many athletes, tend to under fuel before and during, then overeat as recovery. That’s because when we are active our hunger signals are suppressed, and after activity they spring up like dandelions. 

Now, whenever I feel hungry I ask myself those two questions and remind myself that losing some of this pandemic belly fat will help me perform better and live longer.

Time is always slipping away

I have a lot to be thankful for. A wonderful wife. Two wonderful boys. Two, well, let’s just say odd, cats. Excellent health, especially for someone my age. I do like our house. Convenient, a patio for grilling and eating, a million dollar view. It does lack two things, a place to use as a yoga wall, and a place where I could set up one of those fancy indoor trainers that let you ride online -- Swift, Rouvy, etc. Of course Mike would like a bigger kitchen and a huge refrigerator, but then I need to stop eating his wonderful desserts. (I wrote “so much of” but deleted it.)

What is bugging me right now is the sad feeling of knowing that 2021 will probably go by with no racing for me. I did manage to get in a virtual half marathon back in April. Three laps of Elepaio to the Aloha gas station and a loop around Diamond Head. But, all alone, no cheering crowds, no aid stations, no celebration at the finish line. That was how 2020 went, even up to a full Ironman in October. So, yeah, I did a full marathon back then. Do I really want to do another one now? Last year the idea of going virtual was novel. That shine is wearing thin.

It helps to think of what I do as a healthy lifestyle. It is, and I have no intention of becoming a couch potato. I continue to be a devotee of Joe Friel and Dr. Stacy Sims. I have been messing up my diet, but I am on the road to improvement there. Dr. Sims’ book Roar has some terrific meal planning suggestions, and I just bought a copy of Feed Zone Portables by Biju Thomas and Allen Lim. Good stuff to eat on the bike. Now all I need is for the hospitals to get back to normal so I can get back to riding on the road.

What is really getting me down is the idea -- call it a realization -- that I may not get the chance to do another Ironman race. I signed up for Honu 2022, but with Kona postponed and no end in sight to this pandemic, well, I have doubts. This year’s race, which I did not even consider doing, was severely curtailed. That is not the race I want to do. If it is on, I’ll go, but if it is on this year’s course I doubt I will feel satisfied.

Then there is the goal of doing a full Ironman. Besides all the training, which I did last year, it requires a lot of travel. To be honest, I still have concerns about my back. I know that is normal. The memory of one's frailty remains long after the body has healed. Will my body get me to that level again?

Last of all, there is that relentlessly ticking clock. I am already 71. I feel like 40, maybe 45, and my sexy side still thinks I’m young and attractive. There was a time when I would not hit on that pretty barista because I was married. Now, well, that too, but also because I would look pathetic. There is still a part of me that wags its tail, and I have to remind it to sit and behave. 

Which part of my brain is so infatuated with triathlon? Is it that young guy who wants to hit on the barista? Nobody wants to be that pathetic old guy way off the back. At what age will I be satisfied saying “I always wanted to do an Ironman?”

I’ll start by reminding myself that age is just a number. But, no hitting on baristas!

How to coach and how to run, lessons from Bobby McGee

On many afternoons when Pattie and I go for a swim we watch a swim instructor working with beginners. He has to be the world’s worst coach. Nothing but negative comments. I have never seen him demonstrate anything. He just stands there in the water and yells. 

“No no, what did I tell you?”

“Where is your head?”

“Why are your arms going all over the place?”

You have probably heard of the complement sandwich. Say something nice, then criticize, then finish by saying something nice. I prefer to express it as a percentage, as in eighty percent of what you say is supportive, and only twenty percent is negative. Ninety/ten would be even better. Just as important, if not more so, is tone. The goal should be to sound supportive even while pointing out mistakes and shortcomings.

There is no better example of how to talk to athletes than Bobby McGee, the famous running coach. Here are two short videos in which he coaches a pair of runners on how to do some running drills. Pay attention to how positive he is. Quick to make corrections, but never mean or angry.

https://youtu.be/5ZKA2-Sb0Tk

https://youtu.be/6f6zWwW4kJA

While I was gathering videos for this post I came across this instructional video, in which Bobby does an excellent job of explaining how triathletes should run. Most importantly, the role of the tendons in storing and releasing energy. This is of utmost importance to endurance athletes. This is not as clear of an example in how to work with athletes, but even here you get a sense of his positive style

https://youtu.be/Xnsii2H-HxM

A little something every day

If you have been around the sport of triathlon very long you have probably heard this phrase many times: "Listen to your body." It's good advice, especially since our sport attracts high achievers who would rather push through a fog of fatigue than cut a workout short. Training while seriously fatigued can lead to repetitive stress injury and burn out. 

I happen to like a companion expression, which is "A little something every day." The reason I like this phrase is that I know too many athletes, myself included, who overcompensate when they feel fatigued. It’s as if we listen to our bodies with a stethoscope. 

This is not to say we should go all in every day. Far from it. The way I design a training plan for senior athletes is to place three "must do" hard activities in a week. Two of those are high intensity, the other long and slow. Everything else is easy peasy. 

Easy does not mean optional. It means to keep the intensity and duration low. Of course those are relative terms. I mean low for you. At the end of the workout you should feel all warmed up and ready for more. If you feel more fatigued than you did at the start, you went too hard.

Senior runners may find it difficult to run slow enough. In that case, a brisk walk is all you need. In triathlon, especially, there is no such thing as a recovery run. 

The one exception to the easy peasey rule is strength training. Early in the season senior athletes should schedule two or three hard strength training workouts per week. As the season progresses that should be cut to two, with shorter duration, then one, and finally none during the taper for an “A” race. I am not going to go into detail here about what to do, only to say that reps should be fewer than normal gym sessions, with high loads. The goal is not so much increased muscle mass as improvements in hormone levels and bone density.

Back - to Normal

 What Fun!

 

If you have been following my blog you know that last April I put my back out of kilter. Not a fall. Not from over training. All it took was a return to sitting cross-legged on the floor after a year of sitting exclusively in chairs and sofas, while maintaining a normal training load. My hip flexors did not like it and pulled my sacrum out of position.

This type of injury takes a long time to heal. At first I tried training through it with very easy bike and swim activity, and while at first there was improvement, it all went south again. After that I went to see my acupuncture guy, Mike Zanoni, and just did the morning flex routine my physical therapist Sonya at FluidBody Training prescribed. That continued until the last week of May, when I began to water jog and do thirty minutes slow cruising on the bike. 

From mid-July on I have gradually gone back to normal training. The big thing I noticed was a lack of endurance. Even a thirty minute run felt hard. But I could feel my strength returning. Last Sunday I rode for 2:30 including the Makapu’u lookout, and it didn’t kill me. This past Sunday I ran for 1:30 and felt fine.

Besides feeling weak, the other thing I noticed was that my training zones are off. Way off. On the bike and run I am going easy just like always, and feel like I should be in low zone 2, but my Garmin says I am in zone 4, which would be going flat out. This means my heart is beating faster than it used to for the same effort. Could be lack of fitness. Could be SVC.

So, in light of that I have scheduled my standard run and bike zone setting workouts for this week. The first test will be if I have enough stamina to get through them. If I do, well, I will have to wait and see what the data says.

 

The rush to race

 In just the last couple of months I have seen a surge of races and the desire to race, no doubt an expression of a year’s worth of frustration. As vaccination rates move past 50% racing becomes viable, aided by the fact that we do it all outdoors and without bleachers packed with drunk, cheering fans.

This is having a direct impact on Hawaii. Specifically, Ironman 70.3 Hawaii, a.k.a. Honu. Registration for the 2022 race opened even before this year’s race. For some reason the Ironman organization thought people needed encouragement so they threw in a free hat. I don’t think the hat was necessary, as Tier I closed soon after this year’s race ended and Tier II is almost full. 

In the past I would wait until late in the year to make plans for the following year. The last time I did Honu in 2019 (see pic above) I must have waited until maybe March to decide. When I saw a note a few days ago that Tier II was almost full I decided I had better act now, so I fought my way through the complex sign-up process and got a spot. But no hat.

If you have any thought of doing Honu next year, act now or you may not get the chance. If you think you could do better with a coach, drop me a line at windsofhawi@gmail.com. I specialize in senior athletes and am happy to provide whatever level of support you need.

Polishing up my first IM training plan

Or is it my second?

Ok, to be fair, this is my second Ironman distance training plan. I got through -- as in doing -- most of the base portion of my first attempt when my back went out. I was not very pleased with it anyway -- too much activity for a senior athlete -- so I chucked it and started over. This one covers twenty-four weeks. Twelve base, nine build, two peak, and race.

I find much in common with writing training plans and composing music for ensembles. There are myriad details to keep track of. I have to use my imagination a lot, holding a bunch of stuff in my head as I imagine how it will progress, aided by scribbled notes and cross-checks. I feel like this one is almost done. Will it ever be done? I think not. Like a score, it is the starting point for a new round of exploration.

This plan follows advice from Joe Friel in his book Fast After 50. For example, a typical week is built around this framework:

Monday - Strength Training

Tuesday - Aerobic Capacity Intervals

Thursday - Lactate Threshold Intervals

Sunday - Aerobic Threshold (long, slow, distance)

Throughout the plan the relative strength of these workout types varies. For example, at the start of the plan strength training is maximal while aerobic capacity work is minimal. By around nine weeks in these are reversed. The framework stays the same, but the relative intensity changes.

Everything else is low intensity, and when in doubt, rest. As we age our bodies require more recovery time. There will be times when you can recover on the bike or in the water, but if you feel bushed, take a break. Listen to your body, and when you do, park your ego.

I made it a point to include regular, short flexibility workouts. For these I use a YouTube video channel called Yoga by Adriene, who happens to be the most popular yogi on YouTube. A weekly yoga class is great, but not enough to offset twelve hours of triathlon work. Better to spread a little bit out over multiple sessions per week.

Another important piece missing from most training plans is core flexibility work. Strength training can cover some of this, and so can yoga. What works best is a simple daily routine that takes no more than thirty minutes, done first thing in the morning, every morning. I see no point in adding it to this plan as it will just clutter up the calendar. Every day is every day. If is isn't short and simple it won't get done.

Friel's book feels like it was written for cyclists. He does mention triathlon, but leaves it to the reader to work out how to distribute the three activities -- swim, bike, and run -- across that framework. My solution is to alternate focus between run and bike in the first two weeks of each three week mesocycle, and to alternate the testing the same way. Swimming gets treated mostly as recovery time, with one lactate threshold swim per week. Let's be real, for age group athletes the goal is to swim efficiently, and what is needed most is time in the water with a focus on technique.

In my first plan I tried inserting race-like activities on some of the weekends during the build phase. I think I'll do a version of this new plan that uses that format. Should be fun.

Striving for balance

There is a training concept so fundamentally true it deserves to be a law, which is this: There is a limit to how much stress a human body can absorb. When that limit is exceeded, breakdown increases to the point of damage. There are also these corollaries: 1) The breakdown limit varies significantly between individuals. 2) The limit is not a sharply defined point.

Note that I said stress, and not training stress. I am focused here on training, but stress is stress. When we train we aim to create manageable amounts of tissue damage, which gets repaired when we rest. Our body overbuilds the repair, which makes us stronger. It is our immune system that responds to the damage by creating chemical markers that signal cell building factories to repair the damage. The same immune system that fights off viruses and other nasty stuff. Emotional stress also places demands on our immune system. Stress is stress, and when our immune system become overloaded, bad things happen.

That first corollary includes a twist. We often compare ourselves with other athletes and admire those who can train more without breaking down, but we also compete with our younger selves.

The second corollary should appear self-evident, as it applies to everything about our bodies. If we exercise lightly we do not create enough stress to trigger tissue improvement. As we increase the training load, by increasing intensity or duration, we gradually enter a dark zone in which the repairs are never complete – we are not fully recovered. Eventually we reach a point at which the inflammation is noticeably painful. This is not acute injury, like a bike crash or stepping in a rabbit hole on a run. The unchecked buildup of damage typically occurs over weeks, yet the pain comes on suddenly. We want to avoid getting anywhere near that point. The way to avoid it is to get enough recovery.

Getting the stress/recovery cycle correct is a good example of how tricky the balance thing is. Too much recovery and we lose the improvements we are working for. Too much stress and we end up with an overuse injury, and very likely lose much of what we gained. We can choose to do a little something every day, or one massive workout on the weekend that requires a week of recovery. Somewhere in there is a sweet spot. To complicate matters further, the older we are, the more recovery we require.

If you are a triathlete you are undoubtedly pressed for time. You may want your day to be all about training, but there is work time, family time, house cleaning time, marketing time. You get the idea. It is all about balance.

Even if you hit the training/recovery sweet spot and do a great job balancing your schedule, there is more that can go out of balance. As a triathlete you prefer to spend the limited training time available working in one of the sport’s three disciplines, swimming, biking, and running. Oh, and getting those balanced is another thing – I’ll skip that for now. The danger inherent in this approach is that we train primarily in the sagittal plane, which is to say our principle muscle movements are fore and aft. This results in some muscles getting strong, and others, not so much. Why is that a problem? Because when we are called upon to move in ways other than how we train, our powerful, agile muscles will overpower our weak, untrained muscles and pull joints out of alignment, straining the connecting tendons and ligaments. The places most at risk are the lower back, the knees, and the shoulders. Some would include the upper back in this list.

Like all overuse injuries, the onset will build slowly, over days or weeks. The resulting pain can start as a nagging ache, or come on all at once. In any case, the solution will take time and should include working with experts.

The best approach is to ensure these muscle imbalances never happen. How? By exercising the muscles that are not getting enough attention.

Remember what I said about the time crunched triathlete? We want to fill every available workout opportunity with a swim, bike, or run. How do we find the time to do core and flexibility work? You say you do yoga? Like, one night a week? Ok, that’s ninety minutes a week of core and flexibility, going up against maybe twelve to fifteen hours a week of sagittal plane work. Does that sound balanced to you?

The good news is we do not need to spend as much time on flexibility work as we do developing our major movers. What we should aim for is a little bit every day.

My turn to struggle with injury

As part of my coaching education I have been reading books on a variety of subjects that I believe are important for a coach to know something about. One of my favorites is The Brave Athlete, by Simon Marshall, PhD and Lesley Paterson, a must read for every athlete. Another is Roar, by Dr. Stacy Sims, PhD, a book every female athlete should read and highly recommended to anyone coaching women. And of course there is my bible, Joe Friel’s Fast After 50.

There is one book I struggled with, Rebound, by Carrie Jackson Cheadle and Cindy Kuzma. It is full of useful and informed information, but it is all about recovering from injury. It begins, “We’re sorry you’re here, but we’re glad you’re with us.” I was not injured and I found this second person voice (you can do this, you should watch out for that) hard to relate to.

Not anymore. 

I have been training as if my year consisted of Ironman 70.3 Hawaii (“Honu”) in June, and The full Ironman in October, planning to do both virtually like I did last year. For me the primary goal is staying active and healthy. Racing is fun, but the logistics and expense are challenges I don’t need right now. 

A big part of what I have been doing is refining how to put together a training plan for senior athletes, which I consider my specialty. For Honu I decided to give reverse polarization a try. I followed the example from Friel’s Triathlete’s Training Bible with an eye to the advice he gives in Fast After 50. The hardest part is getting in enough work in three disciplines while allowing adequate recovery time.

I was doing fine until the transition into the build period. Normally that would be where the focus shifts from long and slow to short and high intensity. With reverse polarization it is the other way around. I was starting to go long on the run and bike when along came the virtual Hapalua Half Marathon. No problem, I ran it the same way I did this kind of thing last year, a one hour out and back from my car as a refill station. A long training day. I gave myself the rest of that week off and aimed to settle back into my training plan with a two hour run on Sunday.

Here comes the monkey wrench. Pattie and I have enjoyed playing in the University of Hawaii Gamelan for over forty years. The group meets for several hours every Saturday afternoon, which pushed my long runs and bikes to Sunday. To play gamelan we sit cross-legged on the floor.

About a year ago rehearsals came to a sudden stop as Covid-19 restrictions took hold. We returned to greatly modified rehearsals on February 27. After every session Pattie and I hobbled around like old folks. I even felt the effects through Sundays. 

On April 11 I ran the half marathon. The following week was a regular R&R week, very short, easy efforts. On Saturday when I sat down to play my right hip flexor was stuck. I could not get my knee down to the floor, and it hurt. I waited, I coaxed, I said nice things about my muscles, and eventually it got down, but it was never happy. The next day I returned to normal training with a two hour run. As I sat down to eat my pre-workout snack I felt a sharp pain in my lower back. A spasm. Hmm. When I got to the start of my run I told myself to warm up extra and if it hurt to run, stop. I was fine. That afternoon I was less than fine. On Monday morning I crawled out of bed and could not stand up straight. My back was, as they say in aspirin commercials, killing me. That was April 19.

I have used Mike Zanoni before. He is a master at acupuncture and many of his clients are athletes. I called him right away and got an appointment on the 22nd. The next day, a Friday, I felt so good I wrote in my log “return to training.” Actually what I meant was I would abandon my training plan and follow a simple rehab routine, a short, easy bike ride every morning and a swim every afternoon. The only problems were getting there. Once I was on the bike or in the water I was fine.

One nice consequence of this plan was that Pattie decided to accompany me on the afternoon swims. It was great to finish up the day’s work, drive down to Ala Moana, swim for thirty minutes, and make it back for dinner before the sun went down. Mike even pitched in, doing some of the meal prep, and he joined us on Fridays for a gourmet picnic.

I thought I was doing great and was looking forward to returning to my full schedule, up until Sunday, May 2nd when things came undone. I did my planned hour and a half ride, but only managed it after taking a couple of Advil. After that, it was a repeat of April 19. I already had a Monday morning follow up appointment with Mike, but when I walked in all bent he looked at me like ‘Oh man, what did you do?’ 

Mike did some deeper work and ordered two days rest and only light exercise after that for the remainder of the week. He also agreed with my decision to bring in Sonya Weiser-Souza, my old masseuse now living in Reno. We did a Zoom session Tuesday morning where she gave me a set of exercises aimed at relieving the immediate stress and developing new movement patterns to allow the range of motion I need to do all the things I want to do, without injury.

To summarize, for anyone acclimated to chairs to suddenly start sitting cross-legged on the floor for two or three hours at a time, there are going to be problems. Painful problems. The older we get, the harder it is for our bodies to accommodate such changes. In my case, add to that a set of leg muscles developed to work in a single fore and aft motion (the sagittal plane for those taking notes). Asking them to move into a very different position, and stay there, is bound to cause trouble. I appear to have some tears in my right gluteus minimus and the locked up muscles along the right side of my lumbar spine have displaced my sacrum. The good news is that this should be repaired rather quickly, as long as I do not go back to long sessions of sitting on the floor. That remains something to train for, and Sonya’s daily routine is designed to do just that.

A major theme of Cheadle and Kuzma is expressed in the title, Rebound. Look upon injury as a way to improve, to bounce back and end up better than you were. With a little help from Mike and Sonya I have set my goal to enjoy freedom of motion in all directions so that I can do everything that comes along without limits.

My run warmup routine

The other day a Facebook group I follow exploded with a discussion about what to do before a run workout. I was not surprised at the variety of what people shared, or that much of what was described does little to help and could even be harmful. I have witnessed the same kind of thing where runners gather. The two most egregious mistakes I see amateur runners make are to just start running cold, or a warmup consisting of a series of quad stretches, grabbing their shoe and yanking it up to their buttocks. No wonder their knees hurt!

There is an opposite extreme, warmup routines that take as much time as the run itself. Maybe you have all the time in the world, but I don’t. I need time to warm up, but it needs to be quick. One more dislike: I do not like laying on the ground, especially before a run.

The goal of a run warmup is to activate the nerve and energy systems that will be used during the exercise. There are a number of chemical processes that take place to fuel the muscles. Some work in parallel, some in series. There are nerve synapses that need to fire with precisely controlled timing, thousands if not millions of signals set off by your thought “Let’s go!” It takes time to get all this working smoothly. Running places extremely high loads on our bodies, notably the knees, ankles, and metatarsal bones. When we take off running without waking up the associated energy systems and nerve pathways we run the risk of injury. Pun intended.

Here is how I warm up for a run. Exercise descriptions follow. I begin before I push the start button on my watch, but the much of the routine happens during the workout's warmup period. That way I feel like I am saving time.

Before start

1. Leg Swings
2. Ankle Lifts and Heel Drops

After start, during first five minutes on the clock

1. March Drill
2. March Drill with Ankle Lifts
3. Sky Reach
4. Side Bend
5. Brisk 1Z walk for balance of 5 minutes

For long runs I use a 9/1 run/walk (creates ten minute blocks). I complete the above exercises during the first five minutes, then run for the balance of first nine minute minute interval (roughly walk 5 run 4). No strides here, the goal is to focus on fat burning for long duration fuel efficiency. We want to avoid activating the high energy systems.

For quality workouts (LTHR intervals, hill repeats, etc.) five minutes as above followed by ten minutes 2Z with two or three strides near the end to kick start high energy systems.

Exercise descriptions

Begin by finding a spot on the sidewalk with a pole you can hold. Avoid mud, broken glass, etc.

Leg Swings

1. Stand facing and to the right of the pole.
2. Grasp pole lightly with left hand.
3. Lift left (inside) knee so that foot 6-12 inches off ground.
4. Gently lift the knee a little, then push the leg back behind you.
5. Continue for 6-12 reps gradually increasing force and speed. Use more energy to throw your leg back, just enough to recover forward.
6. Repeat on the opposite side.

Do not lock your knees. Do not think about swinging your foot. Muscle activation is above the knee, primarily hamstrings and glutes. Do not go for maximum range of motion.

Ankle Lifts and Heel Drops

1. Walk around to the curb side of the pole.
2. Place balls of both feet on the curb so that both heels are hanging over the edge. Grasp the pole lightly to steady yourself.
3. Slowly lift with feet (calves) as high as you can go, hold, then down slowly and hold.
4. Repeat 6-12 reps.

Watch out that shoes do not suddenly slip off the curb, stop and adjust as required.

March Drill

1. Set left foot on ground.
2. Lift the right knee so that the thigh is parallel to ground.
3. Pause for one second (balance!).
4. Step out with your right foot and repeat on the opposite side.

It helps to hold the opposite arm straight out in front.

March Drill with Ankle Lifts

Same as plain March Drill except lift heel of planted foot as lifting knees rises. Pause one second (freeze) standing on the ball of the foot. Balance is tricky. Exaggerated arm swings help.

Sky Reach

While walking, reach one arm up and stretch as if to touch the sky. Alternate arms. No special coordination with feet.

Side Bend

While walking, reach both arms up then slowly rock from side to side. Focus on lengthening rather than compressing.

Conclusion

I learned these drills from Bobby McGee. It can take a little time to get comfortable with these. No problem, just start with leg swings and add the next exercise when you are ready. Follow the order presented here. Eventually this will be such a habit that you won’t have to think about it.

The biggest obstacle to doing these is when you run with a group. See if you can lead the rest of the group into doing them together.