Last Year's Camp Video

Those of you not going to camp this year can enjoy last year's video instead.

A Weighty Issue

I've talked to you a bit about VO2 max in the past.  I've told you that VO2 max is a good indicator of how well you will race for distances such as 2 miles or 5 kilometers.  Let me explain what VO2 max is:

Simply put, stands for the maximum amount of oxygen our hearts can deliver to our working muscles. Our bodies require oxygen in order to generate the energy that keeps us running down the road.  When we exceed our bodies' ability to supply oxygen to our working muscles, we fatigue very quickly.  We can then say that, the more oxygen we can deliver to our muscles, the less likely we are to become fatigued during a race.

So, what does a VO2 max number mean? I mean, how does a VO2 of 43 (what I currently have) compare to a VO2 of 69 (which I had when I was in my best shape ever).  The number, in VO2 stands for:

milliliters of oxygen per minute per kilogram of body weight

To concretely measure VO2 max, a physiologist would put me on a treadmill, stick a hose in my mouth to capture all of the air I breath out, start the treadmill and keep making it faster and steeper until I could no longer keep running.  The physiologist would then measure the air I breathed out, and determine how much oxygen I used per minute of work.  The physiologist would then divide the amount of oxygen I used per minute by my body weight in kilograms.  The number he came up with (43 for me currently), would mean that I used 43 milliliters of oxygen per minute for every kilogram of body weight.

You can estimate your VO2 max based on your current race times if you Use This VO2 max calculator.  A brief note, often the VO2 max predictor tables are referred to as "VDOT" tables.  I don't want to explain why right now, because it is not important for you at this time.

So, I plug my 2 mile time in from the July 4th race and the calculator tells me that my VO2 max is 43 milliliters of oxygen, per minute, per kilogram of body weight.

I currently weigh 81 kilograms, I've been eating and lifting a bit more during this summer, plus, I've noticed a little more than the usual pudge around my edges lately.  During the school year I was pretty consistently in the 78 kilogram range.  This raises the question, how much time, in a 2 mile race, does the extra 3 kilograms cost me?  I mean, it must cost me something, right?  If I were to strap on a pack with 3 kilos (about 6.6 pounds) on my back, I certainly couldn't run as fast as I could without the backpack.  So, how much do the extra 3 kilos cost me?

A little simple arithmetic can answer that question. This is how to do it

1. Find your current VDOT estimate using the above calculator
2. Multiply that number by your body weight in kilograms (a kilogram = 2.2 pounds).  This will give you the total amount of oxygen your body can use per minute.
3. Now, divide that number by the total weight in kilograms of a hypothetical lighter you (I can use my 78 kilos from before my trip to Iceland, for example.  This will give you a bigger VDOT number.
4. Plug that bigger VDOT back into the calculator and check your new, faster race times.

This is what it looks like for me.

1. VDOT = 43 ml of oxygen per minute per kilogram of body weight. (ml/kg/min)
2. 43 ml/kg/min x 81 kg = 3,483 ml of oxygen used per minute.
3. Divide 3,483 ml/min by 78 kg = 44.65 VDOT.
4. If I plug that number back into the calculator, I see that my 14:01 2 mile suddenly drops to 13:40.

I suddenly improved 21 seconds by shedding 3 kilograms.  I recently heard our #1 runner laughing about the belly he is developing this summer.  I'm looking at the results from this years section 3200m final and can see exactly what 21 seconds would do for him.

Next topic....How to shed the weight safely (if you have any to lose in the first place).

edit: This Link allows you to enter a VDOT number directly into the calculator to get your projected race times.

July....It's time to grind.

July is a huge month for any team that has aspirations to be great.  It has to be.  We are close enough to the season where we cannot afford to waste time, but we are still far enough away from the season that, if we overcook training a bit, we still have time for a few down weeks to recover for the start of the official CIF start date of August 12th.

We are 3 weeks away from the beginning of camp and 5 weeks away from the beginning of after school practice.  We NEED to be aggressive with our training during this time, while at the same time, being as smart about it as possible.  Now is the time to either leapfrog forward and become the best D4 team in the Sac Joaquin Section, or to stagnate and remain good, but not great.  Let's be Great!!!

Thankfully, normal summer weather has returned for us.  This will make it easier to do normal training at our evening practices.  However, for those of you who are experienced and want to have a break out season, just doing the 3 evening practices and filling in the rest of the week with easy runs will not be enough.  You need to force yourself to do a little extra during this time.  The best way to do this is to DOUBLE ON THE DAYS WE HAVE PRACTICE.  This means that you will need to go out and get an easy run of 4-5 miles on the mornings we meet for evening practice.  It is that simple.  By doing this, you will add an additional 12-15 miles to your weekly total, and help yourself leapfrog forward to better fitness.

Your weeks should look something like this:
Monday: AM 4-5 miles easy, PM Short run + drills and speed mechanics (5-6 miles total) + Core
Tuesday: AM 4-5 miles easy, PM Longish run of 8-10 miles + Core
Wednesday: 3-6 miles easy (depending on how you feel)  if you are feeling good, do strides as well.
Thursday: AM 4-5 miles easy, PM Warm Up, strides + core + 3.5-5 miles tempo + cool down (6-8 miles total)
Friday: 3-6 miles easy (depending on how you feel) + strides if you feel good
Saturday: Long run of 8-12 miles
Sunday: Off or cross train or run very easy 2-4 miles

Totals for the week: 45-65 miles.  This range should accommodate anyone on this team who has aspirations of cracking into our boys top 7.

HELPFUL HINTS
After 1 week of bumping up your training, you will probably feel really good.  This is the body's normal reaction to increased stress.  After the second week, you will begin to feel pretty fatigued. At this point, you will have one of 2 options.  A. Press on with what you are doing.  or B. Back off the training a little bit.

Option B is the better option here, because in the final week of July, we will be heading up to camp and we will be pushing pretty hard while we are there.  So, taking an easier week after 2 hard weeks, will allow your bodies to catch up a bit before we hit them hard again at camp.

Now, lets look at option B a bit.  In backing off the training, I believe that it would be better to do so in this order

#1 shorten your long runs.  If you are doing 12, drop to 9-10.  If you are doing 10, drop to 7-8.  The fatigue that is the hardest from which to recover usually happens in the last few miles of long days.
#2 If shortening your long days isn't enough, drop the mileage of a few other runs.  If you are doing 5 in the morning, cut to 4, if you are doing 4 in the morning, cut to 3.
#3 As a last resort, if you get to the end of the recovery week and you are not feeling good, drop one run.

I discourage you from dropping runs unless you absolutely have to.  One of the things we are trying to accomplish during the summer is to develop good work habits.  We are trying to make daily running (and sometimes doubling) something your body expects to do. Once your bodies have adapted to the frequency of the running we are doing you will have established the springboard from which to launch forward into the harder training that will allow you to perform at your top levels during October and November.

Training To Be Mentally Tough

Suddenly, I was 14 again....a freshman in my first track season at Westmont High School.  I'm not sure what caused the very real and very vivid memory to surface, but it goes something like this.

My team was practicing out at Steven's Canyon.  The run that I and my teammates were doing was a 8.5 mile out and back run.  On the way out, the road traveled gradually upward and on the way back, the road descended gently back to the start.  I, a scrawny little kid with a 5:48 mile PR and a 2 mile best which was well slower than 12 minutes at the time, was hammering away back toward the finish of the run.

The instructions from our coach had been simple "Hard run to the log and back".  Our coach wasn't really big on terms like tempo, VO2 max, or all of the different pace variations about which I try to teach you guys.   It was very common for the workout sheet to read something to the effect of "10 miles, Hard".  These runs formed the backbone of our hard training and in all likely hood, they were too hard for most of us.  There are many times that I can recall that an 8, 9, or 10 mile run would start off at a pace that felt almost like 2 mile race pace.  Coach would say "go", start the watch, and we'd all fly away from campus.  Once we spread out, with the fastest runners up front and the stragglers hanging on toward the back, each of us would proceed to run just about as hard as we could for whichever course we had been assigned for that day.  Each of our runs were timed: easy days, medium days, hard days.  However on the hard days, nobody wanted to be beaten by someone who was "slower" than himself and everyone would generally try to beat the guys ahead.  Essentially, the days that I'm describing were long, hard races.

I had been one of the last runners on this day to make the turnaround at the log.  As a freshman, with a relatively slow PR for the mile, there weren't many people on my team I was expected to beat in practice.  However, I was faster than Dan Bassoni.  I would usually beat Dan on the training runs and in races.  However, on this day, Dan was having the run of his life.  4.5 miles into a hard run, I could usually count on being at least 400 meters ahead of Dan.  This day, Dan was right on  my butt.  We were going downhill now, and Bassoni's long legs ate up twice as much ground per stride as mine did.  Down through Stevens Canyon we raced, far behind our teammates, a light rain falling on our heads.  I would open up a little gap on Dan, then as the road would tilt steeper downward, he would catch and pass me.  This continued until just before the finish line.

We rounded the bend, Dan and I, locked in a dual to the death.  I began to kick towards the parking lot, where our cars were waiting to take us back to school.  I had a 5 yard lead on Dan. I heard my coach yell, "Come on, Joel.  You can do it."  Just as Coach yelled his encouragement, I began to puke.  The next words out of Coach's mouth were "Maybe not".  I finished puking, jogged to the cars and sat down, exhausted.

The point of this story here is not for me to relive my glory. I certainly didn't experience much running glory for my first 2 years of high school.  The point is this.  Later that spring, despite the fact that my mile PR had only come down to 5:42, and my 2 mile best had only dropped to 11:57, I was able to run 39:20 for 10k.  That is two 5ks of 19:40, back to back. Some of you, with far better PRs than me, will not be able to run 5k in 19:40 when we open our season in 2 months.  Some of you, whose PR's suggest that they should be well under 18 minutes by our first race will be hovering in the mid 19:00 range. Why is that?  

I have a hypothesis.

My coach's training probably wasn't the best.  For the strongest and most talented, it was great.  For those of us struggling to keep up with them, it was way too tough.  But, what we (or at least I) learned from those long, hard training runs was this:  I learned how to go out hard, to the point that I was hurting, and then hold on for a long, long, time without giving up.  

I believe that some of you give up way too easily and that you could take a lesson from the training of Coach Vargas. 

Here is my challenge to you:  Pick a day, soon.  Find a course for which you know the distance.  Pick a fairly long route....7,8,9 miles.  Run that route as hard as  you can.  Find a pace that you know you can keep, and keep it, no matter what.  When you are hurting, imagine Dan Bassoni is chasing you and that he will catch you on the next downhill unless you run absolutely, positively as hard as you can.  Force yourself to keep pushing, don't give up.  Once you finish, record your time and write it down.  2 weeks later, repeat that run.  After we return from camp, repeat it again.  Check your progress.  I can almost assure you that you will improve dramatically over the course of the summer.  You will improve a little bit as your fitness increases, but mostly, you will improve because you will have developed some mental toughness.

Atwater "Run For Independence."

For those of you planning on going to the race in Atwater, meet at the school parking lot at 5:45.  Remember to bring water and some dry clothes for after the race.

As an added bonus, I'll buy breakfast for the athlete that best predicts my time in the 2 mile race.

See you tomorrow morning.