Run On

There comes a time in the life of every marathoner wanna-be when she has to put up or shut up: she has to get out there and race.

Not a marathon, mind you. Not off the bat. A smaller, more manageable race, just to see what it’s all about.

Coach Scott thoughtfully steered his team of APLA trainees toward such a race—the Brea 8K, also called (by those of us in the know) the Coach Scott Classic.

I don’t like to compete in things I’m not good at, like sports. But I knew this day would come. I would have to put on my game face and lose gracefully.

As Coach Scott told us, the point was not to win, or to even try to win. The point was to get a sense of what a race feels like. To practice.

Coach Scott explained that he chose this race because Brea, which means tar in Spanish, is his home town. Since he schleps 80 miles round-trip to Griffith Park every Saturday to train us, he wanted us to come to his tar pit for once. Also, as he told us, “they have the best post-run food court of any race I’ve seen.”

After the race, local vendors set up shop and offer copious amounts of something edible. The theory being, I imagine, that ravenous runners will become lifelong patrons of whatever establishment is at hand.

On the morning of the race, which was hosted by the local mall, my co-runners and I regressed to deviant high-schooler behavior, trampling the landscaping as we scrambled up a hill to the start line while being scolded through a bullhorn by mall security.

The start line was more of an extended start area, with sections marked “6-minute mile” “7-minute mile” and on down. I led my pace group (there were six of us) to the back. Winning was not the point, right?

Coach Scott had advised us to employ a method he called a “negative split” which meant start slow and speed up gradually. This is counter-intuitive, because the impulse at the start of a race is to bolt. But he warned us that if we did this, even on a five-mile run, we would lose steam quickly and risk crashing before the finish.

That made sense, but once the race started, the block of “runners” in front of us was barely moving at all. It was not for lack of space. We were so far back that we were well removed from the crush of front-runners. Instead we were stuck behind the zombie shufflers.

We began working our way forward and got into a grove. Our regular pace is a 14-minute, 30-second mile. We were running at 13:30, which I thought was a decent clip until we were overtaken by kids, dogs, senior citizens and a man pushing a stroller.

We sped up a bit, to 13:00, made the loop and headed back toward the start line, increasing our speed with each passing mile.

I knew there were lots of people ahead of us, but as we approached the finish line I was surprised to see just how many. The post-race party was in full-swing, with food, giveaways and a live band belting out “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.”

So many runners had already hit the party that Jamba Juice was out of straws and Peet’s was out of cream and had started serving coffee in lemonade cups from Hot Dog On A Stick. Ralph’s, which had been providing bottled water, was closing up shop.

However, as Coach Scott promised, there was plenty of food: lasagna, spaghetti, tacos, pizza, Cinnabons and Thai chicken salad. There were grapes, oranges, bananas, carrot cakes, cookies and chocolate fondue. All this before 10 a.m.

“This is the most messed up food combination I’ve ever seen,” my co-runner Rachel said, regarding her extremely full plate. “I might have to puke.”

All I really wanted was a slice or three of banana-nut bread home-made by Ray and Pat Bolivar, Coach Scott’s parents. They’d baked it for our 18-mile run and it was the absolute perfect antidote to post-run hunger – carbs, protein, potassium and just sweet enough.

Scott himself was feeling pretty good. He’d persuaded 74 of us to register for the race as a team, and we’d won the Team Spirit trophy.

As for me, my final time was an hour and five seconds. That’s an average of about 12 minutes per mile, a full 2 ½ minutes ahead of my training pace. I came in 1,611th out of 2,304 runners.

I was 734th among 1,245 women, and 103rd among 157 women in my so-called “Master Class” of women, ages 40-44.

Not a winner, but not bad for a non-competitive non-runner.

*See my op-ed in the Sunday LA Times on the wrongheaded thinking that pushed the LA Marathon from early March to late May.

Posted by Sara Catania at 3:32 PM | Permalink

Way back in September when I had never run before in my life and didn’t know any better, I started preparing for the marathon by running on my own.

By running I mean the dictionary definition of running, as articulated by the online Merriam-Webster: “to go faster than a walk; to go steadily by springing steps so that both feet leave the ground for an instant in each step.”

That’s pretty clear, and that’s what I was attempting to do, though I never got very far before having to stop and take a break.

Once I started the formal training program set up by AIDS Project Los Angeles, I learned that we would be following a “run-walk” method devised by Jeff Galloway, a former Olympic athlete and lifelong runner who has gone on to write many extremely popular books about running, including “Marathon: You Can Do It!”

Using the “Galloway method,” all participants were placed into pace groups based on their speed traversing a three-mile test course. Each group was then assigned a “run-walk ratio,” meaning the number of minutes we would run, alternated with the number we would walk.

For someone like me, this was welcome news. I could not imagine running five miles straight, as we were expected to do on our first group run, but I could easily run for three minutes. Who couldn’t?

And therein lies the genius of the Galloway approach. By breaking down a grueling, hours-long endurance test into easily digestible micro-thons, he was helping us overcome our fear of collapse and physical ruin.

Better yet, it worked. Week after week I’ve added miles to my run and week after week I’ve completed on pace and energized.

The walk breaks hadn’t diminished my sense of accomplishment. I used them to drink water, take a deep breath and regain that aforementioned spring in my step.

But once we hit the 16-mile mark, Coach Scott informed us that our ratio on the long runs was going to change. My group was told to switch from 3:1 to 2:2. Now our time would be split equally between running and walking.

This slight alteration was intended to keep us safe from injury and on course in our training. But for me, it heightened what had been a slight nagging question into a full-blown conundrum.

My friend Amy, who is also training for the marathon, had earlier asked me if, when telling people about my training mileage I felt a need to add a qualifier, as in: “I ran 14 miles today, but I walked part of it, too.”

No way, had been my response. It was plenty hard to cross the finish and it felt like running even when I wasn’t.

But that was back in the good old 3:1 days, where the majority of minutes and miles were in reality spent running.

Now that we were reduced to a 2:2, I felt more than a little equivocal making the running claim. Shouldn’t what I was doing have its own name, like walnning? Or rulking?

I decided to take my concerns to the source. I got in touch with Jeff Galloway through his website and arranged for a chat.

Speaking by phone from his home base in Georgia, Galloway explained --in the same easy manner that makes his books so appealing --that running is defined not by some rigid dictate, but by the do-er.

“I’ve been running now for 50 years and what I’ve discovered is that everybody who runs has an opinion on what running is all about,” he said. “It really doesn’t matter. Running empowers us to give opinions. It’s a free-form activity that unleashes a lot of positive things psychologically in us.”

Free-form? I'd never thought of it that way, though it's true that there are as many different running gaits as there are runners -- I recently spotted a woman running entirely on her toes.

The act of running itself, whether interspersed with bouts of walking or not, has proven health benefits that you can’t get from walking alone, Galloway told me. Physiologically, he said, the body interprets and benefits from run-walking in the same way as running. I can see the truth in that-- even when I walk half the time I still get the thrilling endorphin surge known as "runner's high."

Which takes care of inner space, but what about the outside world?

If it’s a test of macho-ness, or as Galloway put it, the “run ‘til you puke” crowd, walking will never be part of the program. But, he said, if you want to get in shape, run a marathon, limit your risk of injury and still have enough energy to hang out with the kids, the run-walk method is the way to go.

Galloway told me that he himself usually runs in alternating 30-second run-walk intervals. So he only runs half the time, too, and he's an actual, real-life, serious runner.

In addition to writing books about running, Galloway operates training programs for runners. Each year he takes a group to Greece, to the land of the original marathon. On one of his very first annual trips, he came upon a museum exhibit that included a newspaper clipping from one of the first modern marathons, held in 1896.

A reporter covering the event got himself a donkey cart and followed along with the runners, charting their course. The reporter's account describes nearly all of the runners taking significant walking breaks.

“I’ll bet the finishers of that marathon considered themselves runners,” Galloway said.

If it’s good enough for Galloway -- and the Greeks -- I guess it’s good enough for me.

Posted by Sara Catania at 4:21 PM | Permalink

Saturday’s forecast called for wind, rain and “a chance of small hail,” nearly sending me back to bed for the first time in five months of early-morning marathon training.

We were scheduled for 18 miles, our longest foray yet (nearly all of them are, when you’re a novice).

A couple of weeks earlier we’d done 16 miles. Though I was getting over a cold, so eager was I for that double-digit boost to my marathon odometer that I ventured forth, suffering through rain and cold and general misery.

Besides, I’d bought into the claim that you can “run through” illness, that even if you feel lousy at the beginning, you’ll feel better by the end.

Except when you don’t.

I completed the run feeling triumphant, but the euphoria lasted all of about two hours, at which point I developed a fever and chills and my throat began to swell. By the following morning my neck resembled a puffed-up bullfrog. Turns out I had an abscess in my throat -- a “big, infected hole,” as my co-runner Andrea put it.

I lost days of work, couldn’t talk or swallow and was generally a wreck for nearly a week. I’d been told that recovery from a long run can involve flu-like symptoms. Is this what I was in for after every long run? I vowed to be more sensible from here on out.

So here it was, the 18-miler, with wrathful weather looming. What was a recovering run junkie to do?

I’m a pathological completer. Once I start something I find it very hard, if not impossible, to stop, consequences be damned. The only movie I’ve ever walked out of in my entire life was Geronimo (the New York Times called it an "earnest, leaden epic"), and even then my husband had to drag me out.

When the training program started with AIDS Project Los Angeles back in early October, as many as 200 people or more would run on any given Saturday. We’re at the point in our training now, between injuries, fundraising shortfalls and general malaise, where we’re lucky if 80 people show.

Each person starts to feel the pressure to keep his or her pace group together. If it’s rain one week, it’ll be mudslides the next, and before you know it you’ll have dropped out and reverted to life as a couch potato.

On the other hand, there’s the question of recovery. During each long run, according to Coach Scott, the muscles sustain hundreds of micro-tears that can take as long as three weeks to heal. It had been only two weeks since our 16-mile run, so my muscles surely were not completely healed.

Throw in an abscess and a chance of small hail, and I had a darn good excuse to stay home.

“I’m staying home,” I told my friend Sara Stein, who is also training for the marathon, on Friday afternoon.

“Okay,” she said. “Feel better.”

“I’m staying home,” I told my husband Friday night.

“Good,” he said. “You should take care of yourself.”

“If it’s raining when I wake up, I’m staying home,” I told myself before I went to sleep Friday night.

And yet, come Saturday morning, with overcast skies, I found myself eating oatmeal, filling my water bottle and packing energy snacks.

On the way to Griffith Park, a fat smear of rainbow -- purple, blue and yellow -- glowed over the 5 Freeway.

Shortly after that the sun came out, and stayed out, for the entire 18 miles. It was cool, brisk and sunny. The best running weather yet.

“I was going to stay home,” I told my co-runners as we crossed the finish line. They didn’t believe me. They never do.

Posted by Sara Catania at 1:24 PM | Permalink

Depending on where you’re standing, February is the month of presidents, valentines, or black history. Or perhaps just the gloomy bridge between winter and spring.

For those of us training with AIDS Project Los Angeles to run the LA marathon in May, February is the month of shoes. Not sneakers, not gym shoes, but running shoes.

The name itself reeks of the monied class. These are not all-purpose kicks that one can wear in normal life, but dedicated footwear whose sole purpose and destiny is to carry one along while in the sacred act of running.

I heard about the running-only rule from my friend Sara, a longtime runner who is also training for the marathon. “You can not, under any circumstances, wear them for anything else,” she told me. “Not until they’re dead.”

Dead meaning old and smelly and worn out and no longer any good for running. Only then may running shoes be put out to pasture, left for gardening, grocery shopping and other mundane chores, far from the glamour of relentless hours of pounding.

I first learned of the central role shoes play in the deep mythology of running back when I enlisted in this marathon experiment. I was instructed that, especially as a beginning runner, I needed to get myself to a specialty store so that my feet could be observed, measured and fitted with the shoes that were meant for me, and me alone.

These shoes, I was told, would likely cost me upwards of $100, but that was to be expected, because they were the very most important purchase I would make as a runner. Without them, or with a cheap and ill-fitted imitation, I was doomed to injury and failure.

I bought the shoes –one of which is featured, in near pristine condition, in the logo for this column—and indeed they set me back 120 bucks, even with the 10 percent APLA discount. I needed the particularly spendy model, I was informed, due to my tendency to overpronate, or roll in on my feet. The shoes, I was told, fix it.

Admittedly they have served me well. Or at least I think they have. I haven’t succumbed to shin splints or plantar fasciitis, and my toenails haven’t turned black.

But that was way back in September, a lifetime ago, in running shoe years. Our shoes, by his caculation, had logged upwards of 400 miles per pair. They were finished. Now, according to Coach Scott, everyone who has been training must pony up for another pair. If we don’t, he warned us, we will soon begin to suffer.

He made this announcement before our run on Saturday – an easy 8-miler on a sunny morning. But mid-way through, the power of suggestion took hold. I began to sense a slight give in my left shoe.

Still, I’ve resisted buying the shoes. These days the list of things I’m willing to spend $100 or more on is pretty short: groceries, ballet and gymnastics lessons for the kids, the mortgage.

Shoes? No way.

Scott did offer a tip: running shoe companies, like car companies, issue new and improved models from one year to the next. Often the changes are subtle, but once a new model is out, the price of the older model plummets.

My shoes are Asics GEL-Kayano 14, which at their peak retailed for $135. Now the GEL-Kayano 15 has arrived, and to give you a sense of deep runner-speak, here’s the ad copy:

The first thing revealed by a run in the GEL-Kayano® 15 is the lighter platform.

At 12.8 oz., almost an entire ounce has been shaved from the previous version, primarily the result of improved Solyte® midsole material.

The rear-foot features the largest heel GEL® Cushioning System yet used on the series for improved shock attenuation, while shearing forces are addressed by a more aggressively decoupled heel environment.

As with the previous version, heel stability is maintained by the TPU plate placed directly over the silicone gel unit.

I can’t wait to experience that aggressively decoupled heel environment.

But I’ll satisfy myself with the GEL-Kayano 14 for now, especially since I see -- as I toggle through websites while I’m writing this -- that price of the “14” has dropped, on one website as low as $79. Oh, they only have a size 12 left in stock.

Here’s my size on a site where the charge was $95, including tax and shipping, five bucks short of C-note guilt.

The shoes are in the mail.

Posted by Sara Catania at 3:44 PM | Permalink