Marathoning Matters

Personal Training My Wife: The Cardio Adaptation, Starvation, and Internet Research Effects

My wife Sylvia is getting serious about shaping up. She’s a bit past the point where the mirror and cholesterol levels tell her she needs to lose weight, but BMI says she can gain 8 pounds and still be healthy (another example of BMI being brain dead).

I think she looks great, but I offered to be Sylvia’s personal trainer. Given how much I know about running and weight’s impact on running performance I was an excelle … er ...  interesting choice. But at least I was well within her price range given my hourly rate of “free.” (If you can’t afford “free,” let’s discuss it and I’ll see what I can do.) When she accepted, I knew I had some research to do.

As a delaying tactic, I started Sylvia on regular runs and a Billy Blanks Advanced Taebo workout tape we bought for a quarter at a garage sale. I also set her up on www.livestrong.com’s free “Daily Plate,” a great calorie accounting package that works on a PC and an iPhone or iPod Touch. When calories burned exceed calories consumed by 3500 you’re supposed to lose a pound.  We’ll see.

As it happens, my first Google research took me deep into the mind-bending world of weight loss,  where I discovered the Cardio Adaptation Effect:

• Only do the minimum cardio that you need in order to lose weight. Otherwise your body will adapt, and what cardio you do today you will need to do tomorrow, just to maintain your weight.

The flip side of that disheartening coin is the Starvation Effect:

• When the human body experiences low calorie consumption, it becomes more efficient to prevent starvation.  Eat less and your body burns less.

Rather than telling Sylvia that my Internet research had just proven that cutting 3500 calories and running a marathon a week was just as likely to make her gain weight as to lose, I decided to continue researching until I found answers I liked better.  This is called the Internet Research Effect.

I knew Twitter was an excellent research tool for such things. A 140-character-or-less question you see a lot on Twitter is:

•  "Where do you find a personal trainer? Personal referrals? On GNC bulletin boards? Randomly at the gym?"

Driving by dimly lit street corners in the hood late at night? I’ve noticed that no one ever replies “I’m using my underemployed husband,” but I decide my sample must simply be too small.

When it comes to tweeting about their personal trainers on Twitter, people work various forms of pain into the 140 characters.

• "My personal trainer at gym today squeezed the blood out of me"

How in the world can I squeeze the blood out of Sylvia?  Is there some kind of Yoga position? Pilates technique?  I make a note to myself to do further research.

• "Yesterday I had my first session with my personal trainer, today I can barely walk. I guess that means he is pretty good.

Barely walk? I can do that! I’ll plaster of Paris her socks before the run. Sort of like how Dempsey took out Jess Willard.

• "aching all over. stupid personal trainer"

Aching all over? Stupid? Stupid I can do, but I can’t do ALL over.  How about just a major muscle group at a time?

• "really think my gym "boyfriend" aka trainer is trying to kill me....3rd workout way harder then first two...felt like tossing my cookies"

Right, try to kill her, I can do that! And if I can get her to toss her cookies I bet I can also have Sylvia throw out her crackers and the yogurt she dips them into.

• "Another near vomiting experience with the personal trainer this morning. Hoooyah." -- Andy Wang

Wait, was the cookies tweet about vomiting? Since when does an Eeeyoou become a Hooyah? I must do more research.

• "just got back from 1st meeting w/new personal trainer. she told me I have 40% body fat."

I noted that exaggeration was going to be an important tactic.

But apparently the use of simple techniques that always work isn’t enough. A quick scan of the Personal Fitness blogs taught me that you need a variety of amazing esoteric techniques:

6 Keys To Building Muscle
19 Push-up Variations
Is 'Platelet-Rich Plasma Therapy' the Real Deal?”
Lose 10 Pounds Just by Sleeping
You Need Just 7 Minutes Exercise a Week
Renee Zellweger Runs 3 Miles Daily. No Wonder she's Super Skinny!

Those last three were from Glamour.com’s online personal trainer. I figure that if I can combine the last two (Run 21 miles in Just 7 Minutes a Week!) I’ll really be onto something. Or if I can reduce the number of unbroken consecutive weeks you need to sleep without waking to lose 10 pounds ... wow, that's bound to be a winner.

Okay, I was getting an idea of the impact my workouts needed to have. And I was learning how they might achieve the necessary levels of pain while sounding effortless in my pitch.  “Don’t worry Sylv.  It’s only 3 miles at 14,000 feet with an 80 pound backpack. We call it ‘Hiaerobics.’”

But what about me?  How do I play the part convincingly? More Twitter research cleared that up.

• "I use to be a fitness coach and personal trainer for gyms but now I am a full-time Beach Body Coach & Xango advocate."

Clearly I was going to need a better title than Personal Trainer to differentiate myself. SkinnyJeans! Nope, taken. DropAndDoTenForMe! Nope, taken. I'd have to work on that. And I might have to look into a multi-level-marketing organizational structure and maybe even do commercials.

• "the personal trainer commercial looked like a blimp in an XXXXL polo shirt."

I can do that! Maybe even one better, since I manage to look like a blimp in a small polo shirt. There were lots of other marketing avenues open to me as well.

Your 12-Week Daily Video Trainer
Express Lane: A personal trainer takes you through 8 stations and tracks your progress
Max Muscle Mass In Minutes without Moving

I think we can do the same kind of things remotely once I get the foundations of the business in place.

But then I realize that the real advantage I offered Sylvia was the personal touch.  I could grab her hand as it guides a cracker dipped in yogurt towards her mouth and remind her to resist.  Gently urge her on as she runs. I see examples on Twitter of this personal touch working for celebrities.

• "Just interviewed Julie Imperiali. She's lovely, very gentle. Not how you'd imagine a personal trainer to a President to be."

On the other hand, maybe I should look for a personal trainer more like the one John McCain would hire:

• "Personal training is so new-age & feely. My 1st trainer was a Drill Instructor who called me maggot! Heading out now to my yuppie-pussy gym"

I’ll experiment, starting with a little gentle encouragement modeled after the Twitter advice I just found on how to be an effective Personal Trainer.

• "All you have to do is yell "HOW BAD DO YOU WANT IT?" and "GIVE ME TEN MORE."

Clearly, the main thing I need to do is be there for Sylvia.  To tell her “don’t eat that leftover mac and cheese, dear.”  Or “Run all the way up the steps. There are only five, babe.”

Fortunately, Sylvia has tempered expectations. A couple of years ago she won a “Personal Trainer for a Year” promotion at her gym. As part of the deal, they took a “Before” photo with Sylvia holding a medicine ball and looking a little bloated, her hair matted and her sweats soaked through.  She showed up a year later for the “After” photo looking just the same. The gym dropped the idea of a promotional follow-up poster, although I think it would have been a collector’s item.

How can I do worse than that?

On today’s run, Sylvia did 4 miles in 45:27. (Note to self: take picture of Sylvia after her next workout with her hair matted and sweats soaked through.)

Sign up for a feed if you want to see how we do all the way to Sylvia’s “After” photo.  I promised I won’t let her Photoshop it.

Training My Wife to Run and Myself to be Flexible

This is the first entry about my very personal foray into personal training. I’m training my wife.

Er, to run. Not to do anything else I say.

Actually, I expect even training Sylvia to run will be a challenge. Don’t get me wrong. I mean, she already knows how to run. She just doesn’t like it. It’s almost as if I have to train her to like something she’s allergic to, and repeated exposures seem to just make it worse. Not quite anaphylactic. Although sometimes, when she gets to the top of a hill …

Most of the issue is mine. While training Sylvia for a marathon would be a natural for me, I don’t quite know what to do about training someone for shorter distances where the goal doesn’t involve a PR (personal record). Since Sylvia just wants to lose weight and work on her cholesterol levels, my role is really more of motivation than instruction.

The situation is complicated by the fact that we’re on a strict budget after I was laid off and thus Sylvia doesn’t belong to a gym right now. Many of the alternate activities that she loves (classes in kick boxing, aerobic salsa dancing, aerobic anything really) are out. Also many of the classes I’d recommend that she just tolerates (spin class). The best activity available to burn calories, speed her metabolism, clear out mental cobwebs, and drive her HDL up and LDL down is running.

It’s not as bad as when I first took our dog out for runs. When Tyler realized we were out to trot a couple of miles (not for a leisurely walk to sniff things), he dropped to his belly and went slack. I dragged him a few feet before I realized my mistake. No such problem with Sylvia. She would never let me leash her.

The difference is that Tyler recognizes me as pack leader. I can exhort him to run. At best, I can cajole Sylvia. She responds to wheedling.

Another thing we’ve got going for us is that Sylvia is competitive. Not that she’s going to compete directly with someone who loves to run and has done it regularly for years. But she will try to beat her own time on the hilly 3.4 mile loop we run from our house. And I’ve even figured out that if I run ahead of her hard up a hill and down the other side, then turn around and head back up the hill to meet her, she does her best to beat me to the crest. It’s great. We both end up with hearts pounding 160 beats per minute.

The other thing I think I’ve figured out is that if I have some skin in the game too, she’ll push harder.

So we’ve set a goal for both of us. She is going to run a 10k with me in April. And I’m going to work on flexibility and my core. Fortunately, I have years left on a ridiculously cheap long-term gym membership, so I can do some yoga or Pilates or whatever it takes to get me to be able to move easily in any way other than straight forward at approximately 8 miles an hour. And yes, I'll also add some of the many core and flexibility exercises I can do at home.Mental and physical.

How bad is it going to be for Sylvia?

Honestly, she’s doing pretty well. She’s whittled her 42:30 hill loop time to 41:05 in a week. And she’s responding well to my attempts at motivation. And not only when it comes to running. Also to eating. She puts it back if I ask her if she really wants that handful of Cheetos or the macaroni and pesto our six year old didn’t finish. And I try to keep her focused on basics. No magic cleansing or miracle Kangen water. We'll add Fartleks later. Just keep track of what you eat and how much exercise you get. Decrease eating slightly while increasing exercise and you win.

How bad is it going to be for me?

Well, put it this way. If I’m about to begin slowly crossing a street diagonally while running, I have trouble turning my head far enough to see that the road is clear behind me for a hundred yards. I also anticipate difficulty in remaining patient while trying to teach Sylvia how to use a heart rate monitor or iPod and Nike+ all by herself.

I hope we’re both going to learn a bit about motivation and flexibility. Stay tuned and see.

Rules of Thumb for Running a Marathon

Race pace.  Training pace. Calories per mile. How much hot days slow you down.

Over the years I've learned a number of rules of thumb about running marathons, covering everything from the impact of weight on performance to how running marathons impacts age and how age impacts running marathons.  What follows are the rules of thumb that seem to matter most and ring most true. 

Taper and Race Day Rules of Thumb

• Taper your training so that you run no more than 85, 75, and 50 percent of your maximum mileage the three weeks before the marathon, respectively
• Never try anything during a marathon that you haven't tried in practice runs (eating Gu, drinking a sports drink, wearing different socks, shoes or shirts, etc.)
• Drink about 4 ounces of fluid per mile

Basic Race Pace

• Calculate marathon finishing time as 2x a recent half marathon race + 6 to 10 minutes, go here for a simple minutes per mile pace calculator or use these rules of thumb

• A 7 minute mile pace puts you just above 3 hours (6:51 to break 3 hours)
• An 8 minute mile pace gets you under 3:30 for the marathon (8:00 to break 3:30)
• A 9 minute mile pace puts you comfortably under 4 hours (9:09 to break 4 hours)
• A 10 minute mile pace gets you in under 4:30 (10:17 to break 4:30)

• Run an all-out mile after a warmup and multiple by 1.3 to get your minutes per mile pace

• When you're within a month of the race, enter ANY race time to see a better approximation of your expected marathon time than any rule of thumb provides using the fabulous McMillan race calculator

Environmental Factors That Impact Race Pace

Many factors will impact the above calculations, including going out too fast, heat, and humidity

• Always run the first half a little slower than the second (negative spits) 

Running negative splits doesn't mean your pace won't still hurt at the end, but it hurts a lot less than going out too fast with splits like the 1:40/2:13 I ran at the 2007 LA Marathon, which leads to this rule of thumb:

• Each minute too fast in the first half will cost you four minutes in the second half

Based on this rule of thumb, I should have gone out 7 minutes slower (1:47) to gain 28 minutes in the second half split (i.e., 1:45) for a 3:32, a net improvement of 21 minutes.

• Add 2% to your time for every 5 degrees warmer between 60 and 75F, then double that impact for each additional 5 degrees up to 85. Running guru Jeff Galloway puts it this way:

• 55-60 degrees - 1% - 8:00 becomes 8:05
• 60-65 degrees - 3% - 8:00 becomes 8:15
• 65-70 degrees - 5% - 8:00 becomes 8:25
• 70-75 degrees - 7% - 8:00 becomes 8:35
• 75-80 degrees - 12% - 8:00 becomes 8:58
• 80-85 degrees - 20% - 8:00 becomes 9:35
• Above 85 degrees - Forget it ... run for fun and not time

• Add 1 second per mile for every percentage point the relative humidity exceeds 65%

• Follow this link to the full-blown Max Jones formula for calculation of marathon finish time based on weight, age, temperature, and 7 other factors

Training Pace

I like the Furman plan for marathon training because it is based on doing each run for a purpose, running fewer miles faster, and cross-training for greater fitness and lower incidence of injury. Rather than the long-slow run regiment that advocates running everything at a pace 1 minutes 30 seconds slower than your marathon goal pace, Furman has you mix things up with longs runs (faster than most plans suggest), tempo runs, and speed work. The basic purposes and training paces according to Furman are:

• Long Run at 10-K pace + 60 to 75 seconds/mile
• 7 to 10 mile tempo runs at 10-K + 30 to 35 seconds
• 4 to 6 mile tempo runs at 10-K + 15 to 20 seconds
• 3 mile temp0 runs at 10-K pace
• 1600m repeats at 10-K - 35 to 40 seconds
• 1200m repeats  10-K - 40 to 45 seconds
• 800m repeats  10-K - 45 to 50 seconds
• 400m Repeats  10-K - 55 to 60 seconds

Weight

Many people run to control their weight.  The rules of thumb that matter are:

• You burn roughly 100 calories per mile
• You must burn 3500 calories to lose a pound

Thus if you run 35 miles a week without consuming more calories than you did when you weren't running, you'll lose a pound a week. 

To maintain energy available to your muscles while training, follow this rule of thumb:

• Consume about 300 carbohydrate calories immediately after running to replenish glycogen stores.

We could argue for awhile about the actual calories burned per mile, which is impacted about 20 percent based on speed, but the really important thing about weight and running marathons is this:

• You'll add 2 seconds a mile or 1 minute a marathon for every pound over your ideal weight

Some misguided souls (and the Nintendo Wii Fit) point you to BMI as a measure of ideal weight, which you can actually calculate by yourself with this formula

• BMI = ([weight in pounds x 703] divided by [your height in inches squared])

although most people use online calculators (or a Wii Fit).  I won't point you to such calculators so you'll keep reading and use something better than BMI.

For reasons I explain in BMI is Brain Dead, use this Ideal Weight Calculator instead. The calculation is difficult to melt down into a rule of thumb, but the bottom line is that the Ideal Weight Calculator is better than BMI because it considers your gender and frame types to more accurately calculate ideal weight. The rule of thumb for frame types is:

• Wrap your thumb and major fingers around the smallest part of your wrist and you have a:

• Small Frame if the fingers overlap
• Medium Frame if the fingers barely touch
• Large Frame if the fingers don't touch

Age

Age and Marathon Performance. There is no doubt that age impacts marathon performance.  Lots of reasons for this, including a steady decrease in VO2Max, flexibility, and susceptibility to injury.  Here are some basic rules of thumb:

• Your maximum heart rate slows about 1 beat per year (causing commensurate decrease in VO2Max)
• Best marathon times slow 1 minute or more a year past your mid- to late thirties.

This rule of thumb does not hold for people who take up running seriously later in life, who will find that they'll improve during their first few years of running marathons as progressively better conditioning masks the effects of aging.  Eventually, everyone faces the following:

• Runners who remain highly fit can expect a decrease in performance of 1/2 to 1 percent a year (with 1/2 percent corresponding to roughly 1 minute for a 3-hour marathoner)

Fighting off the Impact of Age. There are two ways to look at the subject of age: how you can beat the impact of age on your general well being by running, or what you can do to minimize the impact of age on your marathon times. 

I'll start with running and well being which come from this study by Stanford.

• Runner's initial inability to fully care for themselves comes 16 years later than non-runners
• Elderly runners do not have higher rates of osteoarthritis or knee replacements than non-runners
• In a 20 year study of people over 50, more than twice as many non-runners had died (34 percent) than runners (15 percent)

While it's fabulous that running fights off the effects of aging, what can you do to minimize the impact of aging on marathon times?  Few can maintain the same level of training after 50, so consider:

• Less frequent training with lower volume, but maintain intensity
• Cross training
• Weight training
• Careful stretching to maintain flexibility and reduce incidence of injury
• Maintaining your ideal body weight
• Shifting the way you judge your marathon times to age-graded time calculations and achievement percentiles

While the calculation is hard to put into a rule of thumb, it's essentially seeing where you stand against others your age. For example, my 3:20 at age 54 was an age-graded 2:56 based on a 71.75 percentile ranking against my age group's record.

Recovery

• Take 1 day off to recover for each mile you race, or roughly 4 weeks after a marathon
• Alternatively, run easily as it feels okay to do so, putting in roughly 10 miles of easy running for each mile raced before you're fully recovered

I'm sure there are other rules of thumb covering different aspects of marathoning that I've not learned, plus some that deal better with various concerns than the rules of thumbs I've learned do, and I'd love to hear about them.  Please comment below.

 

Top Ten Reasons to use Wii Fit to Train for a Marathon

1. Because Super Mario Bros marathon training involves stomping too many Goombas and rescuing Princess Toadstool.
2. Running in place is closer biomechanically to real running than, uh, not running.
3. Swimming and cycling in place are still in beta so you can't train for a triathlon yet.
4. You can jump and hit the bottom of the bricks with your head to get minutes taken off your time.
5. Rumor has it Boston will certify the Wii Fit Island course for qualifying.
6. Wii Fit Hula Hoop provides perfect cross training.
7. Wii Fit is a good marathon training combo with the "Eat all Day and Lose Weight Diet."
8. Wii Fit balance board work ensures you're unlikely to fall down when you actually venture outside to run.
9. Being close to the living room wet bar makes it easy to stay hydrated.
10. Get enough credits in your Wii Fit Bank and you can train for Wii Fit Ironman.

Woody Allen is Right: 80 Percent of Marathoning Success is Just Showing Up

Why is Woody Allen my role model for marathons?  Certainly not for his marathon times. Rather, it is because Woody tries things and then spins charmingly neurotic tales about his failures. Ahh! Now there’s a role model! I just have to work on the charming part.

Woody Allen is also skinny, one more thing to which I aspire. But most impor­tant, Woody Allen has a motto that fits me better than Lance Armstrong's clan motto. Instead of “I remain unvanquished,” Allen’s words of inspiration are “80 percent of success is showing up.”

Now, you may think that I juxtapose the Allen and Armstrong mottos for comic effect. Wrong: I’m completely serious. Woody Allen is my marathon man, no matter how admirable Armstrong. My personal running goals have nothing to do with remaining unvanquished, and showing up is the key (or, in the case of the feed trough, to not show up, at least not so regularly). My normal work ethic should be plenty to get me to the three-hour time I’m after (or at least the long, long run of life with Sylvia and Theo and Zane I’m after). I just have to keep showing up.