David L. Costill, PhD, the legendary Ball State sports physiologist, had a grad student who insisted that an average neighborhood jogger could run a world-class marathon, if only he/she would train hard enough.
Costill flatly disagreed. After studying a broad range of runners, the student was forced to concede that great athletes are born, not made, and that there’s no way we can get around this sad fact.
The differences between the elites and the rest of us are so extraordinary that Costill believed the elites were almost a separate physiological species.
Not many of us can run 30 minutes on a treadmill at sub-5-minute mile pace while carrying on a relaxed conversation with the lab techs, as former marathon world record holder Derek Clayton (2:08:33.6) was able to do.
Knowing that we aren’t going to be winning an Olympic medal anytime soon, what can we do to make our running meaningful and worthwhile?
Runners sooner or later generally discover the answer: we can gain tremendous satisfaction from exploring our own potential.
Anything we do, at our level, that brings us more health, love, strength, and wisdom will give us a corresponding little extra shot of joy. This is an immutable law of the universe, and the foundation of all of the world’s wisdom teachings.
Joe Henderson, the first editor of Runner’s World, wrote about this often. It was Joe, more than anyone, who democratized distance running in the late 1960s and 1970s.
Joe preached a vision of sport where an 80-year-old 8-hour marathon finisher deserved to take as much happiness from his accomplishment as the 2:10 stud who won the race and was probably back home napping when the ancient runner finally crossed the line.
Runner’s World was wonderful in the early days. It was written by runners, for runners. Staples of the magazine were Dr. George Sheehan and Hal Higdon, people we felt we could approach as friends. The pages were filled with wonderful stories that we could relate to from the heart.
It was only later, when RW was sold to Rodale and the offices were transferred to New York, that it became self-consciously concerned with demonstrating that it was the one and only true bible of the sport.
Faced with competition from Running Times and other startup magazines, the publishers were increasingly concerned to fill the pages with medical minutiae and training advice written by people with PhDs. By then, the fresh, relatable grassroots feel was gone.
I recently watched a jaw-dropping video of the training of elite NFL running back Christian McCaffery. It shows McCaffery deadlifting gargantuan weights and dropping the bar, a practice known to increase “power to the ground,” which is a critical component of speed. More here.
(I can’t cite research for this, but I suspect that “power to the ground” has a genetic component, too.)
McCaffery’s training resembles Tony Holler’s revolutionary ideas for training sprinters. This isn’t surprising, since Holler and Brian Kula, McCaffery’s strength and speed coach, are good friends.
I’ll talk more about Tony later. I mention him because, like Joe Henderson, he’s the voice of a movement that has brought joy to the training of athletes in sports where speed, acceleration, and athleticism are critical separators.
Although I only ever ran long distances, the Coach Tony Holler YouTube channel makes me smile. That’s because Tony and his guests are devoted to helping young people be successful and happy regardless of their genetic gifts – and that’s always noble, heartwarming, and inspiring.
I recently turned 83, which means that I’ve had lots of time to reflect on my former career as a grossly defective distance plodder (best 10-mile time 70 minutes at age 53).
Nevertheless, as I ponder the kinds of running that gave me the greatest joy, I find that there’s a common thread: I was always happiest when I was pushing my edges, never when I was just dragging along.
I thoroughly enjoyed the eighteen months I spent doing weekly speedwork on the local high school track with a group of fellow over-40 runners.
Not all of our group were untalented. We included a judge who had run on a relay team that set a world over-40 record for the 4 x 1 mile. In college, he had run 4:04, even though he was hampered by asthma.
Our leader, Carl Ellsworth, was 63. Carl had won the northern California over-60 road race series three straight years. At 63 he could still run a sub-3:00 marathon
Our speedwork formula was simple: we always ran 3 miles in combinations of halves, quarters, and miles.
None of us wore heart monitors. We simply ran everything hell-for-leather, as hard as we could.
I was equally happy while blasting off the 50-60 yards from the hippie organic market where I worked, to the mail room on my lunch break.
I loved speed. Still, if I could go back in time or plan my next incarnation, I reckon I would again be a distance runner, not a sprinter. But I would never do anything that would interfere with my joy.
I’m not saying I wouldn’t do anything painful. Sometimes the joy justifies the suffering.
I would probably do the searing track repeats again. I got lots of joy from developing the ability to run faster. It was more fun to cruise at 7:00 pace than to cover the same mile three minutes slower.
In my dream training, my goal will be to prepare my body to make a respectable effort at 5K to 50 miles.
For endurance, I’ll run long every other week. I’ll run the first 18-22 miles at an easy pace, then walk 10-12 miles to cover 30 miles total.
That’s because “time on the feet” has a positive influence on survivability at the marathon and longer distances.
When I’m reborn, I will tinker with weekly 20-minute tempo runs at 88-95% MHR, but I’ll only do them for 4-6 weeks, once or twice a year.
I’ll do the tempo runs because they will enable me to run for 30-35 minutes at up to 95% of my maximum heart rate, without discomfort, after a long (30- to 90-minute) warmup. I actually achieved this in my mid-sixties, and I’m pretty sure it’ll work again.
(I had prayed to know how the elites are able to run long distances at a high percent of their max heart rate, without labored breathing. That’s when I got the idea for doing tempo runs.)
By the way, the tempo runs were painful, but they were worthwhile. I would gladly do them again, because it’s big fun to whizz along at a high slice of top heart rate without breathing hard.
I will include two weekly Atomic Workouts year-round, with perhaps a weekly X-Factor day. These Tony Holler sessions will improve my access to the central nervous system. In plain English, they’ll prepare the body to run like blazes for short distances at its personal all-out maximum sprint speed.
This is useful for distance runners, since it means we can dial up our max sprint speed at the end of a race. A well-tuned central nervous system makes us feel quick, bouncy, and athletic. It meets the joy test.
The Atomic Workout and X-factor days take just 16 minutes, and they’re a hoot. Also, they don’t steal energy from the next day’s run.
Of course, I will adjust the schedule in response to how my body can handle it. If the joy level dips, I will rest until I feel like running again.
The rest of my training will be just puttering to calm my nerves if they’re jangly from too little running. (We can get the same effect from dark chocolate.)
Too much of my training in the early years was recto-cranially inverted, to borrow a phrase from author Fred Reed. In plain English, I had my head up my butt and didn’t actually understand what I ought to be doing.
In my experience, the training that achieves the best results is always fun and energizing. It’s never destructively depleting, even though it may entail pain.
Additionally, I would get plenty of sleep and sunlight, because they increase dopamine, the “pleasure hormone” that makes us feel happy and invincible. There’s a reason the best sprint times are run in the sunshine states: Georgia, Florida, Texas, and California.