Loose Lips Sink Ships, Loose Hips Win Marathons

As promised, this is all about my speed lecture. Last Sunday, I drove to the West Hartford Fleet Feet Sports Store, for a clinic by Coach Al with the promising title of "LEARN THE SECRETS TO RUNNING EASIER AND FASTER! " Al has run a 2:39 Boston without ever running more than 40 miles in a week, because his body would break down. Quoting from his web site, "His approach to coaching revolves around a more holistic, balanced approach that includes Yoga, flexibility and mobility training, and smart functional strength training. Most importantly, he advocates a balanced approach that blends training and racing goals within the context of the “triangle of life,” which is family, work, and sport. "

Since his body would not support more than 40 miles per week, he analyzed running form and the body and adopted a workout program to address what the body is doing during a run. For instance, he told us about the difference between concentric (contracting) muscle motion, and eccentric (elongating) muscle motion. When you are running, your quads are generally in an eccentric motion, so a runner wants to be building strength in your quads while they are enlongating. That machine in the gym you sit in with your knees starting at perpendicular, and pushing your ankles up to parallel, is a concentric motion, and thus not helping you with running. Of course, he has lots of exercises, some using balls and the bosu, that build up your strength for running, especially your inner core strength. Of course my wife Jane has been telling me for quite some time that I need to be working with the ball and the bosu, and she was so happy that someone else told me about it that she didn't even gloat when I told her she was right.

The first thing we did was go into the parking lot of Fleet Feet and run in the cold while he videotaped us. He will use software to analyze our running and send us the video. We then watched video of the men's Olympic marathon leaders running and we were able to see several things of importance. What makes up speed is stride length and pace of leg turnover. What helps both those items is strength and flexibility in the hips, thus the title of this post. We could see in the video how fluid their hip motion was, and with their strength, how their stride length and pace did not lessen after mile 20, like mine always has done. While we got a DVD of some of the exercises that Al prescribes, I bought the full DVD for Runners. I also hope to go to some lectures he is giving at the Mystic Y on Tuesday nights in January.

Al had a lot of other interesting ideas, including doing some of the exercises immediately before running, to train you body to use what it has just had strengthened in your running. It was interesting that he had not heard of my 3 day a week Furman university marathon training program, and was a little sceptical that you could train for a marathon on only 3 days of running, but I really didn't get to explain how the thoughts behind that program and his are very similar, that cross training can take the place of more running.

I also want to give a shout out to Stephanie, the owner of Fleet Feet in West Hartford for hosting this and many other useful programs for runners. Since we had about a dozen of us in the front of the store, there were a lot of potential customers who wondered if the store was even open. If you look at her interesting biography, you will see she took her diagnosis of Lupus and fought back by running marathons.

And I do want to reiterate about how friendly and supportive Al is as a coach. One of the things that I love about running and triathlons is that the vast majority of elite athletes are welcoming and supportive of us everyday competitors who aren't ever going to be at their level. I have met many of the elites, including Boston Marathoner winners Johnny Kelley, Jack Fultz, , Joan Benoit, Bill Rogers, and Utta Pippig, as well as Grete Waitz and Dick Beardsely, and they all just are happy that we are out there doing the sport they love to the best of our abilities. I will never forget a 5k in Providence where the Ethiopian contingent was relaxing at the post race party and talking to anyone who approached them with huge smiles on their faces. While I have met one or two very good runners who are a little condescending, they are such a small minority that I wonder why I ever thought Al would be anything but down to earth. The only thing that I can say in my defense is that his accomplishments are amazing. Again from his website, Al "is a 25-time marathon finisher with a Personal Best of 2:39 at the Boston Marathon, as well as being a 9-time Ironman Triathlon finisher, including having qualified for and finished 3-times at the Ironman World Championships in Kona, Hawaii. His other Personal Best’s range from 16:30 for 5K, to 7 hours 19 minutes for a 50 mile run, and 4 hours 29 minutes for the Half Ironman/70.3 distance. " So who would have thought he would be so helpful to someone like me.