Personal Note Regarding Our Running

March 3, 2009 (Personal note regarding our running.)

In trying to define how high aerobic running should be performed, we have come with a few key words for the sake of association with the proper level of effort expenditure.

Fast and comfortable; 1-sentence talking pace; stay in the comfort zone; relaxed; find and stay in the zone; let everything “click” and function in harmony (breathing, stride, cadence, rhythm); train don’t strain; should not experience negative thoughts, back off or bail if you do; don’t leave it on the road; breathing good but never hard; think “moderate effort”; invigorate the runner and kill the jogger; never bog the “governor”;

Piloting a Distance Revolution. Rob Conner's Portland Pilots Get Faster by Running Slower By Chris Lear

Piloting a Distance Revolution

Rob Conner's Portland Pilots Get Faster by Running Slower

By Chris Lear
As featured in the March 2009 issue of Running Times Magazine

Three years ago, David Kinsella and his freshman classmates at the University of Portland began their collegiate careers by running among themselves so they could gingerly adjust to collegiate training. One week in, longtime Portland mentor Rob Conner let 'em loose to run with the varsity.

Their guide for their trial by fire was Michael Kilburg, a man who would explode as a Pilot senior in 2008 after an otherwise undistinguished career to run a school-record 28:20 for 10,000m. Kilburg proceeded to haul ass through the Oregon forest at such a clip that Kinsella and crew remember not how far or fast they went -- Kinsella is fairly certain it was 10 miles in 57 minutes -- only that they had to hang on for dear life.

Welcome to college, fellas. "It was this attitude of just go out and blast it," says Kinsella, who quickly discovered that everyday runs like that were the norm. He knew if he was to make it as a collegiate runner, he would have to survive a training regimen that typically consisted of 60 to 80 miles a week, blazing 6-mile tempo runs and intense sessions of repeat miles, and 60-minute "recovery" day efforts routinely run at a 6-minute-per-mile clip. The Portland training program, as then constituted, resembled what you'll find on many campuses around the nation, and, like many others, its components developed organically from within.

An athlete-led revolution

Since Pete Julian put Portland distance running on the national map back in 1993, Conner's blue-collar Pilots -- with nary a Foot Locker finalist in the bunch -- have perennially ground out West Coast Conference championships, NCAA cross country appearances and even a few All-Americans. And as the mantle of leadership passed through the years from Julian to guys like Uli Steidl and Ryan Grote to Todd Davis and Joe Driscoll, the Pilots progressively trained farther and faster than their predecessors while Conner incorporated pieces of the regimens of the most successful Pilots into his subsequent training plans.

Julian, for example, succeeded with hard 4-mile tempo runs, so that became a staple. Steidl did better on more mileage; recovery days for the group soon evolved from 7- to 10-mile runs. The one constant throughout was that all of that running was done at a very quick clip. Grote, a star on Portland's 10th-place NCAA cross country squad in 1996, remembers hammering 15-mile Sunday runs at 5:20 pace. "We would load up and get after it," recalls Grote. "We were not shy about that."

The regimen helped Grote run 29:35 and earn All-American honors in the 10K. Yet, many others wilted under such a tough regimen, and understandably so. "A guy would totally bonk, and it was like, 'Come on, man, get tough!' There was no sympathy," Conner says. "You think a guy is soft. Well, he's probably soft for a reason. Or you'd hear, 'He got burned out.'" Now, says Conner, "I don't believe in getting 'burned out' anymore."

Conner audibly winces when recalling the yeoman efforts of teams of yore.

"Those poor guys!" Conner laughs. "Every time I talk to an alum, I apologize. I'm like, 'If you were doing what these guys were doing … I'm sorry.' We just weren't training then as we are now."

What they are doing is producing top-shelf distance runners. Consider this: In 2007, three Pilots ran under 29 minutes for 10K, and two more ran under 29:20. Last year, the top two marks were under 28:30. None of the aforementioned athletes was a blue-chip Foot Locker finalist, and all accomplished their marks by employing a training methodology that sprang not from the stars but from the shadows. And last fall, led by Kinsella's fourth-place individual effort, the Pilots finished seventh in NCAA cross country championships, matching the 2001 team for the best in school history.
90 is the new 60

The revolution began three years ago with a book and a gaggle of fringe athletes. First, Conner spied a copy of Jack Daniels' book of training on Pilot women's coach Ian Solof's desk. He asked Solof what Daniels recommended for a 29-flat 10K guy. "And voila," says Conner, "my eyes were opened."

Conner explained his new approach to training to his guys in layman's terms. "How many of you guys played soccer?" he asked. Everyone's hand shot up. "How long is soccer practice?" he asked. "About two hours," they responded. "Exactly," he said. "An hour's worth of practice doesn't do anything for anybody."

There was, he says, a collective epiphany. So 60-minute 10-mile "recovery" runs quickly evolved into gentle 90-minute runs. And Wednesday and Sunday long runs became relaxed efforts at 6:30 to 6:45 mile pace instead of the hammerfests of yore.

The transition to this more deliberate training was facilitated by a mix of athletes who decided to make 13- to 14-mile runs routine in an effort to make the jump to varsity.

"And at first," says Kinsella, "I wasn't part of this movement. These were like the three crazy guys. We were always pissed off after workouts because we had to wait in the van while they were out doing their thing." Yet eventually, says Kinsella, "It forced everyone to re-examine what they were doing."

A seed had been planted and the idea of training longer and slower began to spread among the team as the trailblazers matured and the accumulation of miles manifested itself into giant PRs. In turn, the Portland program shifted from a program, says Kinsella, "where 8-10 miles was the norm, it felt cutthroat, and egos came out a lot on runs," to a program where the collective attitude became, "let's just get the miles in and be nice to each other five days a week and put in a good long workout the other two days.

"I think that idea has been perfected over the past two years," says Kinsella, who finished eighth at the NCAA cross country meet in 2007. "There's a very conscious understanding of what we're doing, and why we're doing it, and the guys are aware that if they do it, results will come."

Now, for every athlete like Kinsella or Kilburg who makes headlines, there is a lesser light like Colin Harris making massive strides and fanning the flames of the movement. Harris, a sophomore from Colorado, finished his 2008 freshman track campaign with modest 16:02 5K credentials. He returned this fall having completed a summer of monstrous 130-mile weeks, promptly ran 24:51 for 8K at the Willamette Invitational under muddy conditions and placed eighth in the West Coast Conference meet before finishing the fall campaign as the alternate on the NCAA squad.

"The breakthroughs we've made," Conner says unequivocally, "have been based on slowing down." Tempo runs are 10 miles and 90 percent of their workouts are 10 miles in duration. "It used to be we'd run [four to six] 4:50 to 4:30 mile repeats with a 400 jog," he says. "Now we're at 10 x 1 mile in 4:50 with a minute rest. And now we got Kilburg dropping 40 seconds [in the 10K] as a fifth-year senior."

No doubt, Conner's emphasis on mileage and aerobic development to the near exclusion of all else is taking Daniels' thinking to the extreme. Conner's extremist bent doesn't stop there. You just may see Kinsella piloting a Portland charge in the Boston or London marathon this spring. Such a race would be a litmus test for Kinsella to determine whether he wants to run professionally or hang 'em up while he goes to law school. And with so many JV guys running 100-plus miles a week, why not have 'em give it a go? Says Conner, "Galen [Rupp] and Alberto [Salazar] are thinking wild and crazy, why aren't we?"

Portland's David Kinsella, the fourth-place finisher at last fall's NCAA Division I cross country championships, offers his take on three of the staples that have piloted the Portland program to the upper echelon of the collegiate distance running ranks. Take heed on how to do them correctly.

10 x 1 mile with one minute rest

Kinsella: I love that workout. You should just be "breathing"; it should never be hard. They're run at a moderate threshold effort. To run this right you should never leave anything out there, or run so fast as to impinge on your form or anything like that.

You are doing it wrong if: you are getting worried at No. 5 that you can't finish; at no point should it cross your mind you can't do all 10.

. . .

10-mile tempo runs

Kinsella: This run distinguishes itself by not allowing the rest you get with the cruise miles, though the biggest distinction is a mental one: A lot of improvement is born out of the mental toughness that you acquire, that you can put that kind of work in for that long, when you become used to putting out effort like that. That carries over a lot to a 10K; there is almost something consoling about toeing the line for a 10K knowing, "I've done work way longer than that."

You're doing it wrong if: you're running with someone and you can't maintain a conversation; not an extended conversation but you should be able to talk without feeling like you're jeopardizing anything.

. . .

90 is the new 60

In recent years the Pilots have significantly upped their collective mileage by habitually running at least 90 minutes on the five days a week they don't run hard workouts, instead of the hour they ran in years past. The key here, says Kinsella, is to run these days, including a Wednesday moderate distance day and Sunday long run, "gently." It's not unusual for Kinsella to run his Wednesday 15-milers in a pedestrian 1:45. "I'm not being self-deprecating when I say that," he says. "It's a very conscious decision. When we started training this way, it took some getting used to running 7-minute pace. But now we realize: Why do anything else to beat yourself up before Friday?"

You're doing it wrong if: you're running too fast. There's a group consciousness here now. Everyone is aware of the system and what needs to get done, so everyone holds each other accountable. It's rare for runs to go beyond the 6:30 to 6:40 range because everyone keeps each other honest.

Run Downtown 5k. 2/3/2009

Hello Aaron,

I had intended to drop or at least write before but at least here I am,.... finally.

I wanted to give you an update on how we did in Greenville SC on January 24 at the Run Downtown 5k.

First of all, Greenville SC is a beautiful town that has a very nice feel to it.  You could not help but like the place and we really enjoyed our day there.  People were extremely friendly and there was a lot to see and do after the race.

Almost 2,000 finished the Run Downtown 5K.  Good size field.  The course is advertised as flat and fast.  There is nothing flat about the course!  It is hilly from start to finish!  What makes it a fast course is the runners!  There are a lot of lean, mean, fast runners in the Greenville area and the excitement of it all pulls you along.  The group I was with went through the first mile at 5:45 and we stayed pretty much together until the last mile and then greater part of our group went out the back.  I stayed with this one guy and we kind of went back and forth through the last 3/4 mile until pulled he away about 200 m from the finish.  Some young guy about 35 or so.  Smart ass!   He did a great job of pulling me along though and I thanked him as best I could between gasps for air after the finish.  I came in at 19:04 chip, which is the best 5K I have had in years.  I ran 18:58 a couple of years ago on a flat course (one little down and up hill before the finish) in downtown Las Vegas (Race of the Cure).  This run far exceeded that effort.  I placed second in the Grand Master division and won a bottle of wine.  Dennis Funk from Reidville ran 18:05.  Dennis is 53 so he has few years on me but he ran a tremendous race.  Super nice guy and we enjoyed talking to him for few minutes after the awards.

Eve ran 23:55 which is okay.  She did not have her best day and we discovered the reason why a couple days later when she developed a cold.  So she was most likely on her way down with that bug.   The girls in the Master's division were tough.  The top three were within a few seconds of each and all of them were under 21 minutes.

So, what do you think of the 60 year guy from Japan who ran 2:36 this past Sunday at the Beppu Marathon!  Is that awesome or what?  From what little I have heard he runs pretty much 30K each day and he has run over 70 marathons!  According to the experts it sounds like he should be really burned out, right? Not!  I will have to email Nobby Hashizuma and see if he knows anything about this 60 year old Nippon wonder boy.

Please say hello Scott, Mark, Kristie and your better half.  Oh, by the way please tell your wife about the following....last week I was running at Biltmore Forest and plugging along at a pretty good pace, when all of a sudden something went "pop" in my left foot right smack dab in the middle of that spot that has been hurting for the past 6 months.  Hurt like the dickens for about 2 seconds, followed by a tingling sensation.  Since then it has not hurt a bit.  Go figure!

Take care,
Bart

Letter to a frend 1 year after moving to Asheville

Jannuary 28, 2009 

Hello Chris,

It is really nice to hear from you.  We are doing great, thanks.  I am not working much other than putting in about 4-5 hours a day for the community Board of Directors.  I am running quite a bit and getting in really good shape for the 2009 road season which officially started last Saturday.  We did a 5K in Greenville, SC that had almost 2,000 finishers.   I got second in Grand Master and almost got under 19 minutes, 19:03 on a hilly course.  I was pretty happy with that.  Eve did well but man, she had some tough competition down there.  There are some FAST runners in Greenville!

We are adapting slowly but surely.  It is an interesting area and has it's own unique quirks like any other place.  Instead of panhandlers and stressed out pit bosses we have lot of people here that like to plaster bumper stickers all over their cars.  You will see a $70K Volvo with a shit load of bumper stickers expressing their concerns for the environment, being a vegetarian, what Cheney does at night under the covers, Mama's for Obama, Mother's for a Brother, Life is Good, Life Sucks, Dog is Love, Dog is My Co-Pilot, etc..  Obviously some people with a definite identity crisis in full bloom.  It is a slower pace here and many people are still struggling to emerge from the 1970's.  Probably something that has to do with the regular use cannabis and the effects it has on personality development.  But there are some really sharp people that we have become gradually acquainted with and we now consider our friends.  The running community is very strong here as is almost every outdoor pursuit you can imagine.  It is a wonderful area for outdoor activities and sports, along with the arts, and gourmet restaurants every where you look.  The economy has slowed considerably of course, like everywhere, but not near the gloom and doom I hear from Las Vegas.  It is really bad there.


I guess you probably know already that Nick Braybrook retired last fall.  Jerry Stueve put in for his position and the entire Construction Division was hoping he would get the job and the entire Resource Department was praying to God he would not.  Because of the slow down the District did away with Nick's old position and the divisions were re-assigned under Tom Minwegen and Shawn Mollus.  I have to wonder if Jerry went home and threw his own personal phone into a wall.  I always imagined that guy in black uniform with red and white trim, black riding boots, a monocle in his right eye, and German Sheppard at his left heel.  I always worked well together with Jerry because I knew how to handle him and he was a great antagonist when it came to dealing with details.  Whatever we did together I knew it was bullet proof when we got done. But he was one weird psycho if I ever met one.  I hope he stays on his medication and doesn't make any more kids.

Groaners

The roundest knight at King Arthur's round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi.
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> The butcher backed into the meat grinder and got a little behind in his work.
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> No matter how much you push the envelope, it'll still be stationery.
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> A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering.
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> A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.
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> Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.
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> Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
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> A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it.
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> Atheism is a non-prophet organization.
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> Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. One hat said to the other, 'You stay here, I'll go on a-head.'
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> I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.
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> A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: 'Keep off the Grass.'
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> A small boy swallowed some coins and was taken to a hospital. When his grandmother telephoned to ask how he was, a nurse said, 'No change yet.'
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> A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.
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> The short fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium, at large.
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> The man who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran.
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> A backward poet writes in-verse.
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> In democracy it's your vote that counts. In feudalism it's your count that votes.
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> When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion.
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> Don't join dangerous cults, practice safe sects!
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Ernst Van Aaken Endurance Training Examples

Ernst Van Aaken endurance training examples:

1)    10 x 350 m at easy effort with 50 m jog/walk; 2,000 m two minutes Slower than Best Effort (SBE); 5 x 350 with 50 m jog/walk; 2,000 m 1 ½ m SBE; 500 m tempo run.

2)    10 X 350 m at easy effort with 50 m jog/walk; 5,000 m four minutes SBE; 500 m tempo run.

3)    Multiple 2,000 m at two minutes SBE or 3,000 m at 3 – 4 minutes SBE, both with 3 – 5 minutes walking or exercises between.   Keep this up for 10 – 30 K.   Include 1 – 2 x 500 m tempo run with 3 – 5 minute walking or exercise between.

4)    Continuous steady run over varied terrain for 10 – 20 K.

5)    Mixed run as you feel and include either 2 x 500 m tempo runs or a time trial of 3 – 10 K.

6)    Recovery run: 25 – 50 x 350 m with 50 m walk between performed on flat soft surface.

7)    Weekly long run of 20 – 40K at easy pace with 3 – 5 minute walk/exercise breaks every 2 – 5K.

8)    Marathon specific training:

a)    5 – 10 x 2,000 – 3,000m at 1 ½ - 2 minutes SBE with 3 – 5 minute walk/exercise between each; 6 – 8 x 60 – 80 strides at end of run.

b)    20 – 42 x 1,000 m at MRP with 3 – 5 minute walk/exercise between each.

c)    5 – 10 x 1,000 at 10K race pace with 5 – 10 minute jog/walk/exercise between each.

Mike Schramm: 2008 St. George Marathon Recap

While going through some old scrap books, we came across a great marathon recap from a good friend of ours, Mike Schramm.  He has run for many years and a variety of distances.  This recap is from the 2008 St. George Marathon in Utah.  In the 37 year history of this event,  it's only rained twice.  This was one of those years. What a crazy wild adventure for Mike.  Hope you enjoy it as much as we did...

"Tough race, which is too bad, as I felt OK, well sort of anyway...here is a recap

We have been staying the night in Pine Valley the last few years, which is the way to go.  I woke up Saturday morning and thought someone was taking a shower in the cabin.  I went outside to take a walk and assess the conditions, and realized no one was showering, it was RAIN!!!!! Ugh....And to top it off, a wind from the south at about 15 mph!!! It hasn't rained at the marathon in St George for 25 years.

We got to the start line about 6:36 am.  I started with a garbage bag for the rain, but took it off quickly as the wind made it feel like a parachute.  I decided this wasn't a race for time, just survival.  I heard my first mile split of 6:24.  I didn't know what I was doing again until 5 miles, when they had a clock that said 32:34, not bad for conditions.  I started to make a move up the Veyo Hill at mile seven, passing runners, but not looking at my watch.

Now the bad...  I went past 10 miles feeling OK, then about 10.5, I started smelling fuel...weird...a strong sense of fuel, but no motorcycles around, no ambulance, no truck, but the smell was strong.  I was getting nauseous, really bad, and I thought, I am going to lose it....I stopped on the side of the road, and lost everything I had eaten that morning.  That has never, ever happened before in a race.  I then thought, well, this is over, where is the van to take me to the finish. I am sick, the wind is blowing, it is raining, and everyone is passing me....

Well, then, I just literally got mad, thinking everyone that passed me figured I was DONE, and it just ticked me off (anything for motivation!) I started running again, and felt OK, and started to run a bit more aggressively.

At the half, I passed the clock in 1:28:20, probably had 150 runners ahead of me, and I couldn't believe it.  I thought on a normal day, I would be 1:23, but with the conditions, even with the stop, I would be 1:26 (remember, I wasn't looking at my watch).  Man I was ticked!!  I still felt good, and I started hammering the course as hard as I could, passing people like crazy.  I came to mile 15, and there was a big group of runners, all together, about 10, running in the wind and rain, staying in a pack.  There was no one in front of them that you could see.  The SMART thing would have been to tuck in behind them, and run with them for awhile, especially with the wind.  But, I blew right by them as hard as I could, and in my mind I was thinking. "you can all go to hell thinking I am crazy, I dare you to stay with me", I quickly gapped them (I looked later, the leader of that group finished 10 minutes behind me), and just started pushing it hard through miles 16 and 17 (Erica was waiting on the bike).

I looked later and did miles 16 and 17 in 11:18, which was good with the wind.  I was still ticked!!! I was cruising, just picking off runners every 45 seconds or so.  Erica was really pushing me from the bike trail.  At about 19 miles, my shirt weighed about 10 pounds from the rain, so I took it off, pinned my number to my shorts (with only one pin), and threw my shirt to Erica.  So now, I am shirtless in the freezing rain and wind, must of looked like an idiot.

You should have seen it Bart, the runners I came up on were totally wiped out.  A good runner that I know, I whacked him at about mile 18, and finished 10 minutes behind me in the end.  The conditions were just killing everyone.  Erica started saying, OK, next runner about 200 meters ahead...and in a normal marathon at 20 miles, I wouldn't catch no one 200 meters ahead, unless they were walking, but today, I would get them after about .75 of a mile.  I was running my miles about 5:55 or so, and that is with the wind.  I came up on the Women's leader around 22, and when I passed her, I noticed that she was CRYING!!! Wow, it was a weird race.

At mile 24, I started to hurt a tad, but I was still knocking others out.  I then saw another St. George masters runner, Ken Carlson, that has been training 90 mile weeks, and wanted to break 2:40 (probably would have in good conditions), and I just had another adrenaline surge, and flew by him, he finished about 2 minutes back in the end.  I caught two more, between mile 25 and 26, and finally the last mile from 25.2 to 26.2, I didn't see anyone else, my adrenaline was running out, and I ran a 6:45 mile.  I came into the finish, shoes and socks soaking wet, no shirt, my shorts were falling down (soaked with rain), and I kept having to push up my shorts for the last 10 miles, it was quite a sight...

So, I went 1:28:20 in the first half, then lowered it to 1:19:13 in the 2nd half.  I ran just over 37 minutes for the last 10k, finished in 34th place, passing at least 100 runners in the 2nd half.  It was crazy.  Not that it matters, but the good runners were commenting on 6-8 minutes was the penalty for the weather.  It also mentioned in the paper that it was between 8-10 minutes because of the weather.  It just makes me wonder if I would have cracked the 2:40 barrier in good weather.

Well, that was long, I hope you made it through it. It was just such a weird experience"

Mike