What is the best Fartlek?

RE: what is the best fartlek? 6/30/2009 10:24AM - in reply to OrvilleAtkins Reply | Return to Index | Report Post

When I lived in Norway I was taught that fartlek was totally intuitive or instinctive. There was no set schedule other than starting off easier and picking up the pace with shorter quicker distances as you went. The determining factors were how you felt at the time along with the terrain and footing. The way I was coached you would determine the success of a particular fartlek training session by how you felt at the completion. You should feel invigorated and not exhausted. Obviously this is not something you learn overnight and I believe some people never learn how to take full advantage of what fartlek has to offer. As a sidebar, I believe there is something lost in the English translation. In Norway and Sweden there was as much emphasis on "lek" or play, as there was on "fart", speed or motion. In Norwegian or Swedish, fart is a word used to describe motion, and it can be either slow, fast or any velocity in between. The word for "speed" in Norwegian is "hurtig" or "hurtighet". So to be correctly translated, from a running perspective, the English term should actually be "motion" or "velocity variation" play. Hope this helps you discover a very enjoyable and beneficial way to train. All the best. - Bartman

Efforts, Achievements, and Perspective

(email June 26, 2009)

Mark,

In the early 1990's a friend of mine from Utah was involved in an expedition to Mt. Everest.  John made it as far as the "Hillary Step" and had to turn back because of the deteriorating weather and fatigue.  You might say he made it to the 23 mile mark of a marathon.  As the month of May developed it turn out that this was the only chance he was to be allowed before the team was required to leave Base Camp.  Because he "went for it", John's life was changed for the better.  He has since become a very successful business man and motivational speaker.

I know how you feel about the marathon experience. It can be devastating, if we allow it to be.  I had a similar situation years ago getting ready for the speed skating season and the Olympics trials.  Sometimes things happen completely beyond our control and all we can do is make the best of it.  But it is never wasted.   The total experience, the training, the mental prep, the constant self analysis, the commitment and effort, all these things change us; and change us for the better.  Life has a slightly different trajectory after such a commitment than it did before.

That aside, we are extremely proud of you that you "went for it" and did not let the weather force you off track.  Some might say you should have altered your plans, but your goal was to PR, not just run another marathon.  As one friend of mine once said, "it is not fail to try and fail, and try and fail again; we fail when we try and fail, and fail to try again."  Once you are fully recovered, I have this strange gut feeling that you are going to be a total pain the ass to beat this summer and through the fall.  Be kind to yourself and make sure it happens.

We are really sorry to hear about Julie.  Please send her our most heartfelt best wishes for her complete and speedy recovery.   Surgery can really take a lot out of a person, but fortunately in her favor she was in very good condition going into this.  Patience is rarely a strong point for most runners, and this will take time to bounce back from.  She needs to listen to her body, and you can help her with this, and not demand more of it than it is able to handle.   The last thing she needs is an injury on top of all this. As a follow up quote to my article "The Art of Running", Mark Wetmore once stated, "We try to learn to pay attention to sensory data.  There is no machine or device that is as accurate as that, if you learn how to read it.  It's hard to learn how to read it; some people never learn."   In the context of what he was talking about at the time, some runners are living so far in the future with regards to what they hope and dream to achieve, that they are never in the 'now time' long enough to pay attention what their body is telling them today.  Again, I think you are well qualified to give some excellent advice to her in expediting the process.

Stay in touch.

All the best,

Bart and Eve

Personal Entry: Becoming a Better Person

Personal entry June 22, 2009

Whether it be the sport of running or living the precepts of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the goal of all my efforts are directed towards the same end.  No matter the circumstances or abilities I might possess, or particular station in life that I may be at this moment or the next, the effort and struggle are the same; strive to be better, seek knowledge and truth, and carry on the effort until the very last breath of life leaves my body, I will seek to become a better person.

Reviews, Updates, and Scandals

email  to Joe and Judy Pawlick June 22, 2009)

Hello Joe and Judy,

Busy weekend it has been it has.  Where do we start?  At the beginning I suppose.

No wait, let’s start at the end: 

We got your package already this morning.  The apron is absolutely fantastic! I love it.  I know Eve will be thrilled this afternoon when she gets home.  “Marathon Girl” “Eve”, that was good.  The caramels are tasty, but don’t tell anyone I already had one.   The sand dollars are beautiful.  What wonderful, fascinating creations of nature.

Poirot Review:

It had us on the edge of our seats the entire way.  We loved it.  As usual Mr. Poirot “tormented his mind by agitating his little gray cells unmercifully” and exposed the evil Angel agent.  You have to admit though she, the evil Angel, exhibited great form with the javelin.   It is too bad that OU didn’t have her on the track team last week and maybe they would have won the national championships.  And let’s face it, until she got the point across, the Pokemon gal was bad news on her own by tormenting every person she came in contact with.  I can think of a few people I have worked with at one time or another, who you could visualize on the business end of a spear, maybe in a different location, but on the end of a spear all the same.   So the equation is balanced as far as I can see; “evil – evil = good” and Hercule came through as always.  Like fine wine, even Poirot gets better with age.

Bug and Critter Update:

Yesterday we saw our first black bear at about 30 yards up yonder trail we were running on along Bent Creek.  He was about 3 foot high across the shoulders and as fat as the piggy that went to market.   He walked out on the trail right in front of us, stopped, looked and took off down the other side of the trail.   The best part was, Eve didn’t panic, didn’t mess her shorts and remained perfectly calm.  I was proud of her.  With warm rain falling during most of our 13 mile run, the fog, the bear and the little turtle we saw along the trail, the day in the forest was almost magical.

Racing Update:

We ran the Rhododendron 10K on Saturday.  It was pretty warm; in the 70’s even at 8:30 am.  But we had a good run on a beautiful course.  Eve won 1^st place Women’s Masters, and the Bartman won 1^st place in Men’s Grand masters.  Nice plaques, no cash, great friendly folks taking care of the officiating.

Deerwood Scandals:

Nothing to report. 

Oh, one thing maybe.  The large juniper bush in front of 101 Deerlake that was providing an excellent safety hazard to anyone walking up Deerlake and meeting an oncoming vehicle driven by someone who can barely see over the steering wheel while exceeding the posted speed limit by 15 mph, is now gone.  We asked the landscapers to trim it to back a couple of feet behind the curb and trim the height so a pedestrian and driver could see over it.  They trimmed it alright!  The area looks much better.  But still, since I started the ball rolling leading to the demise of this ugly, out of control bush, I feel like I might have painted a bulls-eye on my back.  In the mean time the Grounds Committee continues to approve the installation of ornamental do-dingies in common grounds without consulting with the Board.  Last week this finally resulted in a special hearing of the Board to resolve a complaint by a neighbor who did not behold the beauty of an illegal installation, that was, of course, beholden by the installer and approver.  Like the Board doesn’t have enough to do as it is.  I hope this will be the end of it but after hearing the evidence provided at the hearing by the Chairman of the Grounds Committee, I am not overly optimistic.  Evidently this has been going on for some time.  I just don’t understand why it is so difficult to live by the rules we all agreed on when we moved in here.  Stay tuned.

The Art of Running

The Art of Running

by Bart Smith

In conjunction with a recent Asheville (North Carolina) Track Club meeting I was asked to participate on a panel of accomplished master runners (ages 40 to 70) where the audience was invited to pose questions regarding our training and racing.  One of the questions posed to the panel was: “What is the pace and duration of your fast, high end runs?”  Each of us took a stab at answering the question as best we could, but one panel member, Mark Ledyard, brought the issue into perspective when he said the mile splits and pace charts were irrelevant to a given day: “I run by how I feel and make the most of whatever the day offers.” 

This indeed, I thought, is what the art of running is all about. The ongoing balancing act performed on the three legged stool of duration, intensity and frequency, leads me to believe that running, and the coaching of runners, is truly, more of an art than a science.

John Kellogg’s Precepts

Several years ago, John Kellogg wrote an essay, “Progressing to Peak Fitness.”  This essay is the best I have ever read addressing progressive running, because this piece gives the most accurate description of what most runners ignore and what all should attempt to achieve. Here is how Mr. Kellogg introduces the concept of intuitive running:

“The science of running has come a long way, but it has an even longer way to go before it replaces the art of running.  This is analogous to listening to a mechanized ‘player piano’ versus listening to a professional musician.  The machine relies on notes only, with at best minimal attention to dynamics...Consequently, there are many people who can play all the right notes but still miss the music.” (http://www.letsrun.com/2005/jkfitness.php)

According to Mr. Kellogg, every runner is equipped with the ultimate lactate analyzer and the necessary sensory devices that will provide the bio feedback required to properly adjust pace and effort suitable to the conditions of a given day.  The operative word here, of course, is “effort.” I believe a recent quote by Ryan Hall illustrates this point: 

“I was always fascinated at Stanford by the fact that we would have a group of eight guys who would train together for every workout and yet when race day came the difference between those eight guys could be as much as a minute, showing that it is not necessarily what you are able to do in practice but was it done at the right effort level. Even though those eight guys were all running the same pace for the workouts, maybe it was only the right pace and the most beneficial pace for two or three of them.“

Guidelines for Self Discovery

So, where does one begin on this odyssey to self discovery of what works and what does not?  Here are a few guidelines that I have gathered through the years and seemed to have worked well for me.

1)      Each and every daily run MUST begin slowly.  When I say slowly, I mean as slow as a walk.  In fact, Eve and I call this pace a "wog"—half walk, half jog. This slow, easy start of each run is where all the systems of the body are given time to come into harmony.

2)      With the help of Danny Dryer (author of Chi Running) I have learned to use this slow start to wisely focus on my posture, relaxation, leaning from the ankles, lifting my feet, and getting the feel of rolling down the road rather than bounding down the road, along with proper deliberate breathing.  The slow start of every run is probably one of the foremost injury preventers for a runner.

3)      Let the pace come to you.  Do not force the effort, but rather allow yourself to gradually get a little faster—over one, two, or more miles. There is no defining point of increase between walking pace at the beginning of the run, and the high-end aerobic pace nearing the completion of a good hard run. 

4)      No part of the run should be labored.  Again, let the pace come to you.  Strive to achieve a feeling of free, effortless running, where once you hit that sweet spot with all systems in sync, you almost have a feeling of floating over the ground.

5)      Strive to learn the difference between smart training, that invigorates and conditions, and hyper training, that takes you over the top and leaves you injury prone.

6)      Please read John Kellogg’s essay.  A good grasp of his precepts will do more to assist you with an understanding of how to best go about performing the type of conditioning, “one that will relax and train a runner (you) but kill a jogger (someone a few seconds per mile slower than you!)”

If you apply these principles to your training, you might allow yourself to discover the runner within you, or as Mark would say, “I run by how I feel and make the most of whatever the day offers.”

End

Post Script:

To all our friends in Las Vegas, we extend our very best wishes, and please know that we miss you all dearly. 

Sincerely,

Bart and Eve.

Random thoughts about the Birkebeiner With Jack and Grete Waitz

(email April 19, 2009 to Jack and Grete Waitz)

Heisan,

Random thoughts about the Birkebeiner: I have wondered what the "real" traditional route would have been when they transported Haakon to Trondelag.  Based on my scant knowledge of Norwegian history I gathered that they were escaping from an area near the present Swedish border and heading to the Birkebeinar strong hold in Trondelag.  In any case the downhill from Sjusjoen to Lillehammer is no joke (ikke til aa spoeke med).  I skied it once and that was enough.  It was nice at the top and got more icy as I neared Lillehammer, until finally I was skiing over blaabaer lyngen.  Interesting trip, cold and clear at Sjusjoen and raining in Lillehammer.  Universal Klister worked very good on skara, ice, korn snow, slush and moose poop.

One more random thought of no consequence: If the Viking Berzerkers were actually using flue sopp in their pre-combat soup brew, should they not be disqualified from Viking history since they used performance enhancing drugs?  At least anything they won (stole) should be returned and slaves and concubines should be immediately conficasted.  Seems logical since the French are still agonizing over a bottle of 10 year old Lance Armstrong pee for the sake of correctness and fair play.  On second thought maybe Fluesopp is not on the WADA list of banned substances, so then, I guess, it would be okay.

The tulips started blooming here about two weeks and the Biltmore Estate had a beautiful display at the Winery.  You guys have got to come visit us sometime and see the Estate. 

Be good and enjoy the spring.

Bart

AP – Runners make their way past Zojoji temple in the Tokyo Marathon in Tokyo, Japan, Sunday, March 22, 2009. … Dan Peterson

AP – Runners make their way past Zojoji temple in the Tokyo Marathon in Tokyo, Japan, Sunday, March 22, 2009. …

Dan Peterson                                                                                
LiveScience's Sports Columnist
LiveScience.com dan Peterson
livescience's Sports Columnist
livescience.com – Sun Mar 29, 10:15 am ET

Most regular runners can tell you when they reach that perfect equilibrium of speed and comfort. The legs are loose, the heart is pumping and it feels like you could run at this pace forever.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison now have an explanation for this state of running nirvana, and we can thank our ancestors and some evolutionary biology for it.

For years, it has been thought that humans have a constant metabolic energy rate. It was assumed that you would require the same total energy to run one mile, no matter if you ran it in 5 minutes or 10 minutes. Even though your energy burn rate would be higher at faster speeds, you would get there in half the time.

Turns out, however, that each person has an optimal running pace that uses the least amount of oxygen to cover a given distance. The findings, by Karen Steudel, a zoology professor at Wisconsin, and Cara Wall-Scheffler of Seattle Pacific University, are detailed in latest online edition of the Journal of Human Evolution.

Steudel's team tested both male and female runners at six different speeds on a treadmill while measuring their oxygen intake and carbon dioxide output. As expected, each runner had different levels of fitness and oxygen use but there were ideal speeds for each runner that required the least amount of energy.

Overall, the optimal speeds for the group were about 8.3 mph (about a 7:13 minutes per mile) for males and 6.5 mph (9:08 min/mile) for females.

The most interesting finding: At slower speeds, about 4.5 mph (13 min/mile), the metabolic efficiency was at its lowest. Steudel explains that at this speed, halfway between a walk and a jog, the runner's gait can be awkward and unnatural.

"What that means is that there is an optimal speed that will get you there the cheapest," Steudel says.

So, why is a zoology professor studying running efficiency? Steudel's previous work has tried to build a theory of why our early ancestors evolved from moving on four limbs to two limbs, also known as bipedalism. She has found that human walking is a more efficient method of getting from point A to point B than on all fours. It might also have been an advantage for hunting.

This latest research could offer some more clues of how we moved on to running. Steudel explains, "This is a piece in the question of whether walking or running was more important in the evolution of the body form of the genus Homo."