It has been a while since I have put up a new blog post, but I forgot how chaotic life can be with a new baby.  Our son Jude was born on July 23rd and thank God he was healthy.   (continue reading…)

I am very happy to announce that I will be making my return to the marathon on November 7th at the ING New York City Marathon. (continue reading…)

So I am now the “former” American Record holder in the 5000m.  It was great while it lasted even though it was just a short nine months.  I knew last weekend that my reign as American Record holder was about to come to an end.  With Bernard and Chris both running great, and the huge upswing in American distance running, there was no way my record of 12:56 was going to last the summer.  The previous record by Bob Kennedy of 12:58 stood for an amazing 13 years I believe.  For so long that time was almost an abstract thought-unattainable.  When I ran 12:56 last year in Zurich I knew within a week that I had opened the flood gates when Matt ran 12:58 in Brussels only seven days later.  It makes me very proud of the huge gains we have made in American distance running to know that we now have four guys who have ran sub 13 in the last nine months.  I think of all the great athletes we have getting ready to breakthrough and it is so exciting.  I have no doubt that Galen will join the list this summer as well as some other great young runners.  I was running loops last week around the grass field on Nike campus and I realized that the only three people running around the loop were sub 13 minute runners.  It was an amazing feeling to think that in this small area we have three American guys who have run 12:56, 12:56 and 12:58! I think the progression that has happened since that magical night in Zurich last year just shows that 12:58 was just a mental barrier.  We now have broken through that one thing that has been holding us back; and the future is bright!

Thanks everyone for your suggestions. I will have plenty to keep me busy for the next few blogs.  I started with the one thing that got the most suggestions, nutrition.  There are a couple different approaches that I have taken over the course of my career for fueling the body, and they are total opposites.  I always heard early on that if the furnace is hot enough it will burn anything.  Unfortunately it took me a long time to figure out that is not true.  Now I think of my body as a race car that needs premium fuel.  When I was younger, high school and college, my diet was not good.  I use to live on cereal, meat, and a multivitamin.  I first got turned onto a well balanced diet when I met my wife.  I was a bachelor, and I lived with a bunch of other guys so it was quick and easy but my diet now is so much better.  I try to stay away from most processed foods and I am lucky to have someone who makes amazing and healthy meals.  One huge mistake I use to make as well, was poor nutrition planning.  When you are running 100+ miles a week, a constant energy intake is essential.  I use to eat most of my calories at night which is the opposite of what is ideal.  When you start your day by running 12-20 miles before noon, you are putting your body into a huge calorie deficit right away.  If I go out and run that much on an empty stomach, I would not only be running a risk of running low on fuel, but also increase an injury risk.  It took me a long time to build up to this.  I use to go out the door with nothing in my stomach but over time I have built up to the point where I can get in maybe 600 calories before I run.  If I am going to do a hard workout or long run I will wake up a little earlier even just to get a little more in me.

Another huge part of nutrition for me is, I never go more than three hours without some type of fuel.  The only time I might not do this, is if I have a really long workout, but even then, I will take Powerbar Endurance formula, Power gels, or Powerbars.  I just signed up with Powerbar which is great since I have always preferred their products.  It can be difficult for anyone who is constantly on the go to keep a steady stream of caloric intake, but for me it is very difficult because my mornings can often go from breakfast until 1-2 in the afternoon by the time I finish running, lifting, drills, stretching, and massage.  During that time it is important for me to keep something coming in all the time.  I usually go home, get some lunch and take a nap.  I basically wake up from the nap and get a light snack and coffee and do my second run which is shorter but even on an easy day that will usually be 15 miles total for the day.

After a second run I come home and my wife typically has dinner ready.  We try to eat a lot of vegetables, and lean meats and we always try to have some fruit afterwards.  I try to cut the snacking out after this as much as possible after this but usually end up making a pot of popcorn for me and my daughter.  As you can see the life of a professional distance runner is pretty standard.  The hardest part is when I travel.  I travel quite often and sometimes for long periods, and that can be the hardest time to keep the diet constant, but keeping it as similar to at home is the key.

As I change my training schedule my diet adapts to it.  The marathon has been the most difficult because I think in the past I have over thought it.  I went into my first marathon overweight because I was so paranoid about running low on energy that I ate whatever I saw.  So I showed up at 130 lbs which for me is almost 10 pounds heavier than usual.  I haven’t made that mistake again, but in order to do that I have to be aware of what I eat daily, including weighing myself each morning and trying to lose those last few training pounds a few weeks before my taper so that I feel great each day in the last few weeks before the big race.  The key for me to do this right is to plan it out and roughly count the calories I eat each day, leaving me a few hundred calories below each day, that way I never feel tired.  A big workout will always take priority though, so if I have a 12 mile tempo the next morning I throw that day out the window.

Many of you were interested in marathon nutrition in particular.  Even though I went into my first marathon heavy, I actually ran out of fuel.  Just because you have plenty of fat stores, doesn’t mean you will have enough energy.  Now I probably take in more fuel than most elites.  In professional marathoning they have bottle stations at each 5k in addition to the general gatorade, water, and Powergel stations.  In each station I try to take in 6 oz of a mixture of Powerbar Endurance Formula and Powergels.  I will dissolve the gel right in water to get a little high carbohydrate content and some caffeine as well.  It is something I have had to work up to in training and I think I have found the highest amount of calories, probably around 1000, that my stomach will handle.  One other big issue I have been getting some help on is sodium intake.  I have taken salt stick tablets but I will try taking them earlier in the future instead of at 20 miles when any cramping starts.

After years in a sport that avoids talking about nutrition in a helpful manner, I hope this opinion helps to show a helpful model that works for me but and has taken years of mistakes to learn but understand, this approach may not be the best for everyone.

Hey Everyone.  I am struggling for an idea this week for a blog.  What do you guys want to read about?  Throw me some suggestions and I will work on one for tomorrow.  Thanks…

In the wake of the past four weeks of amazing performances, I find myself with new goals.  Starting back a few weeks ago with the Boston Marathon, I realize that I have to skip the goal of 2:06.  It seems now that even the hard marathon courses and the second tier marathons are won in 2:05 or better.  2:05 is the new standard now for being one of the best marathoners in the world, so I have to change my focus to being that good.  When I saw the clock at the finish line in Boston, and it read 2:05.52 I was shocked, but shock gives way to inspiration.  The same goes for Chris Solinsky running an amazing 26:59 10,000m down in Stanford ten days ago.  My first thought was, “I should have been there”, but that is what has driven the rise in American distance running for the past few years.  Breaking those mental barriers are like opening a flood gate.  It is not a coincidence that Matt ran 12:58 a week after I ran 12:56.  For years that record was the golden mark of American distance running, and the talent was there, just breaking the wall down was what needed to happen.  Chris’ race in Stanford will be the first in the long list of huge performances this year because the momentum has been building and that race will serve as the opening act of breakthroughs this year.  One thing I have learned over this last year is that having confidence and belief is the biggest difference between good performances and great performances.  Americans are on fire right now because we are starting to believe, and the storm is still building.  In the horizon I see 2:05 and 2:04, and as Boston showed, it doesn’t have to be in rabbited flat races.  If I want to win major marathons I have to believe I can run those times on any course, even if it is NYC, Boston or in the Olympics.

I am sitting here at 11:30 PM, well past my usual bedtime because we bought a house and tomorrow is moving day.  I figured that I would not have regular access to the internet for the next few days, so I better put up a post.  It is a great feeling to finally make the full move into our place here.  I think knowing that the apartment we have been staying at  was just temporary made it feel like we were still just living in a hotel.  We had been in on the move so much last summer and fall that it didn’t feel like it stopped until we finally had a place to say “this is our home for the next 10 years”.  There are quite a few things that I am really excited about.  I can’t wait to get my Alter-G treadmill back.  It has been down at our place in Eugene and I will look forward to being able to workout at home.  I don’t mind going to the Nike House or the Campus, but it is always nicer when you can just jump on it at home.  We were also luck that there ended up being a nice nature park with some 3+ miles of trails right down the road.  That was a huge perk and we didn’t even know about it until now.  With the 2nd baby on the way it will be a huge weight off my shoulders knowing that my family will be all set when I am on the road for racing and training.  Ok, time to sleep!

I was having a little difficulty figuring out what to write about this week.  My good friend Jason Hartmann sent me a text message saying, “Where’s your latest blog? You’re getting lazy!” I guess I have to keep on track a little better. He also gave me a couple things to write about. He suggested I write on what I thought were my hardest workout, hardest race, and greatest accomplishment in running.

Surprisingly, my hardest workouts corresponded with some of my hardest races but not necessarily my greatest accomplishments. Many of my greatest accomplishments happened when everything was clicking.  Sometimes your best races and workouts are the ones that feel easy. For some reason you just could not reproduce those times no matter how hard you try. I think that sometimes that is a trap that people fall into. You have to have benchmark workouts that you can use to judge your fitness. For example, I know that mile repeats are a workout that you cannot fake. They are hard and long intervals, and you must have some snap in your legs, but if you do 6-10 of them you need the aerobic training to back it up. Those are the workouts that have given me confidence going into big races.

I think one of my best workouts was probably doing 9 x 1600m with 400m recovery in 4:21 average. I did this workout a week before I did my semi-famous 10-mile tempo run in 45:03 around the Nike campus. Those were both pretty amazing workouts, but they just happened. I think I was able to run these workouts because of something I learned last summer and fall from Alberto: you can’t have an A+ workout every time.  Between those workouts were B and C type workouts that allowed me to hit it out of the park.  Before, going all the way back to middle school, I use to try and hit it out of the park every time I did a workout. It was not any specific coaching philosophy that held me back the most, but more my thinking that I needed to kill it every time. I think killing it every time was what led me to some of my hardest races.

I’ve learned that if you hit it hard every workout, there is an accumulated fatigue that sets in. You never fully recover from the previous workout. One big problem I had when I trained with Brad Hudson is that I always had to beat the workout. If he gave me a threshold run, and I could run faster than that, I did. But that might not have been the point of the workout and the next workout I would do the the same and by the time I got to the race, I was stale. I can think of doing some amazing workouts that were very hard but then I followed them up with very flat races.

The hardest race I have ever had came not because I was working so hard, but because I completely lacked any base fitness. When I won the 2003 NCAA Cross Country Championship I was destroyed for a couple months after. I had come off a full year of injury, and I did not do nearly the cross-training that I have done in every injury since. If that race had one week earlier, I think it would not have been the hardest race I have ever run. I was more tired by the day leading up to the race, and I had to muster everything I had to beat Ryan Hall. I probably gave Coach Wetmore a good scare in the months after because it took me a long time to get back to my old self.

I can contrast the 2003 NCAA XC Championships, however, with my greatest accomplishment, and that has to be running the American 5000m record in 12:56. I have had some amazing races outside this, but this is the one that changed my perspective on what I am capable of. It brought me to a level I did not think was possible after so many years. I brought that attitude into my training and racing since then, and it is completely different from where I was. Leading up to that race was the exact opposite of what I did for the 2003 NCAA XC Championships. I had a full year of great training with only minor interruptions, and I was finally listening to my coach and my body, hitting some workouts out of the park, and being content to have average workouts in between those super-hard efforts.

As an athlete it can be difficult to bury your pride and listen to what your coach and you body are telling you. If you have an amazing workout your natural inclination is to keep pushing and to do even better the next time. That is the American dream being shoved in your face since you were a little kid. “The harder you work the better you’ll be.”  There are times to have your greatest workouts, but you don’t want those workouts to also become your greatest accomplishments. Save them for race day!

It is always hard to watch from the sidelines. This past weekend was the World Cross Country Championships and waking up to the results on Sunday was a tough pill to swallow. As I was looking through the results all I could think was “I could have won this race”! Looking through the top guys in the field I know knew that I had beaten all of them in my previous races, and I am a great XC runner to go along with it. But it is always easy to say “I could have” or “I would have”. Running is not theory and that is the beauty of competition. You find out who is the best on that day. I wanted to be there and it was difficult to put that behind me, but Joesph Ebuya was the best man on the day. (continue reading…)