Too many notes

Most runners don't see the sheer possibilities inside a training schedule.

Consider a weekly training block, one which the runner is going about 80 miles per week. This leaves plenty of room to play. Here's a theoretical week for such a runner broken into mornings and evenings:

You can see the running is semi-distributed, with chunks of big miles followed by rest days. But let's change things a little, moving miles here and there, and modifying workouts a little to spread the miles even more:

And again let's return to lumpier mileage, but still different from the first:

Or for that matter let's try having only single-run days

Cortisone injections in athletes

It is a well-known fact that many injured athletes get cortisone shots when joint inflammation becomes too painful to play (translation: I'm too lazy to provide a bunch of references).

What's less well-known is that repeated injections lead to no good. Clearly inflammation occurs in joints and other parts of our body for good reason. Except for critical cases like swelling of the brain, one should hesitate alleviating such inflammation, which usually is a sign of bodily repair underway. It's important to know exactly what you're doing and why.

The following two papers are concerning back pain but this is as good a place to start as any since back pain can be crippling, hence the solutions sought provide immediate relief. Let's combine the quest of athletes and back pain in one fell swoop. Browsing Google Scholar I came across an old-ish (1980) paper that stated

Thirty-two young athletes (ages ranging from 17 to 30 years) with a clinical diagnosis of a symptomatic lumbar disc and sciatica [read: back pain] were treated with lumbar epidural cortisone injections. All had had disabling symptoms persisting for a minimum of 2 weeks, with an average duration of 3.6 months. Dramatic abatement of symptoms and a significantly hastened return to competition (a positive response) was seen in 14 (44%) of the 32 athletes following injection.

Weekly training

Though I'd start a weekly training log. I haven't done one in a while. Problem is I don't really write down the miles I run. So here goes

Monday: Might have take this day off.  Can't remember. I dunno.

Tuesday: Think I ran twice this time. Once in morning, once in evening. The second time I did some intervals. Was it 5x800m in 2:20-something? Probably.

Wednesday:  Guess I ran for an hour. Sound about right.

Thursday: More running. Nine or ten by 200m. Didn't bring a watch so no idea how fast they were. Felt nice though.

Friday: Some pool and regular running.

Saturday: Ran a 5k in 15:30. Didn't feel very fast. Would someday like to do one in 14:30.

Sunday: Two hours, more or less. Didn't time it exactly. How many miles? Don't care.

That's all! I imagine other weeks will be the same, so I won't do this again. TTFN.

Hey, I won a race (and other observations)

So I won the Halifax bluenose half marathon and got a new PB of 1:09:44. This is not the fastest time in world, I know, but the race felt great, I knew lots of people on and off course, and surprised a few co-workers that didn't know I was racing (or that I did any road races period). I guess what got people talking was that I beat one of three visiting Kenyans. The other two set course records (2:36 and 2:27, respectively) but these were slow times compared to their personal bests because the course was hilly. Knowing that, plus runner-up Ewoi's half PB of 1:07 some years ago gave me added satisfaction that my sub 70 was not a fluke.

Me at the finish line

Why were Kenyans at the Bluenose race? It's an interesting story since BN does not give out prize money. Usually money is the only reason an elite runner comes to any non-hometown race. In this case Ethan Michaels brought the trio to Canada on his own dime, having travelled to Kenya on numerous occasions for, what I understand have been, running-themed vacations.

Tidbits and updates and thoughts of stuff

Where does the time go? I was surprised to realize my last post was in March, not April. This when I'm supposed to say I've been busy with other things blah blah, but truth be told there were plenty of chances to sit down and write. I have the curious habit of not writing about the thing I do while doing it. For instance during April and early May I ran three races and did a lot more actual training intervals, tempo, strength. Next week I'll run in the Bluenose half marathon. It may go well, or not. I cannot say.

The past, however, is safely behind me so I can talk about that. The training went well, hence so did the races. In the last two weeks I had the good fortune to set two bests. April 27th was a trip to Montreal for a half marathon, running in 70:15, beating my 2008 time of 70:27. Last week I ran 15:15, which beat my old 2009 time of 15:27. Neither are huge improvements, but significantly (to me, at least) they were done on few, if any, intervals. They were build on a foundation of tempo, strength, and easy stuff. I have learned a ton about training since my mid 20s. And perhaps equally as important I've learned to unlearn things, namely that a massive warmup routine is mostly BS, strides are overrated, intervals are best used in very small quantities (imagine them as a powerful spice), and finally run easy. If I could go back in time to days I ran 'easy' while still keeping my 7min/mi pace I'd tackle me to the ground while yelling 'slow the f*** down'.

Arches: a new conceptual model for running

I don't like pyramid models. Although a well-built pyramid certainly looks nice, they rarely provide a good model for a healthy system. Think Ponzi schemes: a strict hierarchy where only the topmost members benefit. Pyramids are a great analogy for dictatorships, kingdoms, or the catholic church. None of these things are something you'd aspire to mimic for a system that benefits most through cooperation.

Before I get to running, consider one other bad pyramid model: food. For some reason pyramids are used in nutrition. The food pyramid clearly makes no sense. How is it that vegetables are supporting fish and oils, and not the other way around? Why are eggs and sweets near the top? What if you are vegetarian? Do you want to place the most important food items on top, or the least? Why are calorie-rich foods scattered so randomly? For any practical purposes the food pyramid is confusing. More to the point it's just a bad model for something so intricate.

Which country 'won' Sochi?

There's always some debate about how to rank the medal tally of all the countries. Some news outlets  rank by number of gold. The second option is to tally the total bronze, silver, and gold. CBC chose to rank by pure gold, which puts Canada in third and USA fourth, while NBC took the total count, which places USA second and Canada fourth. Hmmm. How about we try a points system, where Gold = 3 points, Silver = 2, and Bronze = 1. This takes a middle ground where runner-up performances still count while admitting gold ought to be worth more than bronze. In this case here's the Sochi 2014 medal table:

Russia is the clear winner with 70 points, while Canada's 55 points edges out Norway and the United States who are tied third with 53. The overall rankings are only tweaked a little, which is good not to upset the apple cart entirely.  One modification I could suggest is to count team sports for more points since it's impossible for a given country to sweep the medals (i.e. Canada's men's hockey team can win at most one gold while the Netherlands can, and have, won multiple medals per event). Then again sweeping the podium is an equal opportunity event hence I'm not going to change the table.

I forgot to mention a third way people rank the olympics, which is dividing that countries' population by the metal count to 'normalize' the rankings. You could do that here too, but with points instead of using the (oversimplified) medal count. Here's the rankings again with a points per capita:

No surprise that Norway is the clear winner with 10.3 points per million people; on average every 100,000, or a tiny city in Norway, generates an Olympic point. Slovenia and Switzerland rank in second and third, which I would not have considered intuitive choices. Meanwhile Canada and Russia slip all the way down to ninth and 14th, respectively (I kept the original rank numeration so you can see how much shifting there is). No surprise that China sits in dead last for winter, but maybe if we tried doing this with London 2012 something interesting could emerge. But that's for another post.