Untamed Runner

When Shohei Otahni recently signed a 10-year, $700 million contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers, it was easily the biggest baseball contract in history and all sorts of interesting comparisons came up: his earnings compared to some other teams’ entire payrolls, his pay per minute, etc. What interested me the most was his per-game pay which is set to be $432,000 based on a 162-game season. This is particularly compelling for this coming year because due to an injury, he won’t be pitching for them. He can still bat and they’re planning to use him as a designated hitter, so he wouldn’t be playing any defensive time. Four at-bats per game is fairly standard in MLB so he would be making around $108,000 per at-bat.

The male and female winners of the London and Berlin Marathons make somewhere in the range of $45,000-50,000 for their first-place finish. The New York male and female winners earn $100,000. (Caveat–there can be various course record and time bonuses for them but for the sake of the math, we’ll go with the straight-up prize money.) Ohtani would only have to walk halfway from the dugout to the plate for the Berlin or London money, and just a few feet shy of the plate for the New York money.

Usain Bolt is the wealthiest track athlete on the planet, estimated to be worth $90 million. He burst onto the scene in 2008 so that’s 15 years to that sum. Ohtani will take just over one to reach that same level. In 2016, Bolt earned $33 million, or just less than half of what Ohtani will earn in a full year.

Most of the rest of the top ten track and field athletes for net worth are male and female sprinters and none of them even come close to Bolt. Eliud Kipchoge is not in that top ten and with the most successful marathon career of all time, has an estimated net worth of $3 million, or less than five percent of one year of Ohtani’s salary.

I don’t think most people believe that professional running is a gateway to riches. And, obviously Ohtani’s contract is an example in the extreme, though Bolt’s earnings are also an anomaly relative to his sport. Some running pros can earn a living (a handful have a handsome net worth) and if you’re not a pro but still have good wheels, there are local races with smaller prize purses and other benefits. I would never discourage anyone from running because there’s no money. The running should be fun (even if there’s pain in the training) and oddly, I’ve never heard many runners talk about the comparison between what pro runners earn versus the four major sports. Maybe it’s a pointless conversation—running just won’t draw the same crowds to the stadiums like the others.

And yet, it remains a sport that many of us love. So, enjoy the run, savor the pride of accomplishment, enjoy the camaraderie of the running world.

We travelled to my in-laws’ in Ohio for Thanksgiving and there was a 5K, the Fall Classic, near their house that week. I hadn’t fully given up on the idea of going under 19:00 for a 5K this year and since we were going to be roughly 5,000 feet lower in elevation than normal, I decided to take full advantage of that for my last race of the season.

It was held in their local Metroparks and the course was billed as flat and fast. Rule of thumb is that you can pick up 30-45 seconds for a 5K when you go from elevation to sea level. I did a tune-up race two weeks ahead in early November and in that one, I posted a 19:27 on a course that ended up being 3.05 miles. When I projected that out to a full 3.1 miles, the time came to 19:46. Getting sub-19:00 was going to be very, very close.

Some race courses, like the one I did for the tune-up, are not USATF certified and thus can be a little short. If a course is USATF certified, it means that it’s at least the race distance, and possibly a bit longer. Even if the shortest possible distance is a true 3.1 miles, the odds of any runner hitting that is slim as you need to run the tangents and curves with perfection. Not an easy task. And, I’ve heard that some courses will err on the side of being just a teeny bit long so that they can earn and keep the certification. To put it plainly, it’s very rare to hit 3.1 exactly.

As we lined up for the Fall Classic, the Race Director confirmed that the course was indeed USATF certified. This was good because if I went sub-19:00, there was no way the course would be short. The question was whether it would turn out to be 3.1 plus just a tiny bit, or longer. The further it went over 3.1, the more my chances dropped for getting the sub-19:00 on my net time.

Like most races, this one took significant effort and I was maxing out relative to the course length. However, while racing at sea level hurts at a level commensurate with racing at elevation there are two differences. One is hard to pin down but suffice to say that I can tell I’m getting more oxygen. The second, obviously, is that I’m running faster which helps mentally.

I crossed the line with 3.16 miles on my watch and a time of 19:16. A few moments after I hit the “Stop” button, my watch flashed “Fastest 5K, 18:55.” This meant that for the true 5K distance or 3.1 miles, I had gone sub-19:00. Gratifying, bittersweet, and the way racing sometimes goes. To brag a little, my mile splits were 6:06/6:08/6:08 which I was very pleased with from a consistency standpoint. That would be a breakdown I could hope for on the track, where you have constant markers and it’s flat. On the road, it’s more challenging.
A good end to the season? Combining the solid time, the even splits, and an age group place, I’ll take it.

Two quick plugs. If you’re in the Cleveland area and looking for a good spot to run, the Metroparks I’ve been in, which are known as part of the “Emerald Necklace,” are excellent for running. Also, the Fall Classic was well worth it. The fee was fairly standard but you got a quarter-zip pullover, a good chili buffet and finishing area at the end of the race, and most importantly, a closed road course—no negotiating other pedestrians, cyclists, etc. Normally that level of service would mean a much higher fee but not so there.

Following the new world records at Berlin and Chicago, the partial credit of these new times and all the other recent world records to super-shoes was expected and now, the debate over their merits and downsides has experienced some persistence in the media. Some of the discussion is still around whether they offer too much of an advantage. However, two other interesting items have surfaced in the past several weeks. It’s possible these points have been circulating for a long time in some circles but I don’t recall seeing them in more popular media.

It’s not known how the shoes affect individual people—some may benefit more than others and some not at all—but now the question has been raised on how it affects biomechanics. While having better return may allow runners to recover more quickly from a fast mid or long distance run and thus be better prepared to launch into their next workout, the question here is about long-term impact. Given that these shoes are relatively new to the market, it may be that we won’t have an answer to this for some time.

The second item that has gained traction is the shoes’ longevity. General rule of thumb for a well-made running shoe (one that you would find in the $140-160 price range at a running store) is that they will last 400-500 miles. I had assumed the carbon-plated shoes would have a similar lifespan. And, given that they’re not designed for everyday running but for speed and racing, you could stretch them out for quite some time if they’re supplementing your regular shoes.

Apparently this may not be true. Speculation now runs that the Nike Vapor or Alphafly may last 250 miles and that the Adidas Adizero Adios Pro Evo 1 could be closer to 50-100. This means that your standard model shoe is about 30 cents per mile, the Nikes at $225 would be around 90 cents per mile, and the Adidas at $500 could be $5-10 per mile. That’s a lot of extra money per mile.

This isn’t a unique thing in sports. NASCAR drivers may go through 12 sets of tires in a single race. Major league hitters will break multiple bats in a season, sometimes in a single game. These are not inexpensive. In other words, while equipment isn’t considered more expendable at that level, with the pressure that athletes put on it and their need to perform at a high level, extra cost that most people would find exorbitant is part of the game. On top of this, the professional runners aren’t buying their own shoes so the cost is somewhat irrelevant for them. Still, there’s a lot more at stake in terms of livelihood at some of these levels of competition.

What does it mean for the average runner? Unless money is no object, the shoes are a big investment. Right before this new wave of discussion started coming out, I was tempted to get a pair of carbon-plated shoes. Now, with the unknown biomechanical impacts and the absurdly short lifespans, I don’t think so. Don’t get me wrong, knocking 4% off of my 5K time is tempting. Yet, I still wouldn’t be close to my all-time best and so going any faster is sheerly for ego. I can only speculate about decision points for other runners. If you were a 2:22 male marathon runner in standard shoes and had a lifetime goal of making the Olympic trials, wearing carbon plated shoes would drop you to somewhere between 2:16 and 2:17, or roughly 60-90 seconds off the qualifying standard. Maybe $225-$500 is worth that dream.
In the meantime, while all of the newest iterations of these shoes conform to the rules and these records will stand, the debate and discussion continues.

This title is not the name of a new Metallica/Phish mashup collaboration. It’s a post-race phenomenon I’ve experienced and it’s the best phonetic resemblance I’ve come up with. The general rule of thumb of race recovery is that you need one day per mile. Thus, you need three days for a 5K, six for a 10K, etc. It’s why 100 meter runners can do multiple races in one day, for example.

Regardless of what the math is, the day after a race, I can tell I’ve put my body through a significant amount of exertion. However, while I feel the aftereffects, not only do I like running the day after a race, I almost feel compelled to do so. If for no other reason, it allows me to release the “nyech.”

What’s the nyech? I don’t really know. It’s not an overaccumulation of fast food or sugar residue in the system, nor is it something that results from having been sedentary. In a way it’s the opposite. Following the day or two leading up to a race, the warm-up, and the then race itself, where I’ve been maxing out my body over a decent distance by sweating profusely and burning plenty of calories and whatever else my body needs, I’m likely pretty depleted. And yet, when I run the day after a race, I feel like I’m releasing something. Maybe it’s scar tissue from the effort, both physical and mental. Or maybe I’ve unleashed some parts of my muscles during the race that I don’t normally use and it’s settling them back into a normal function. Or, maybe there’s some strange overaccumulation of adrenaline and endorphins. Maybe it’s a combination of all of these things. I don’t know if running the day after a race would work for everyone but whatever the nyech is, running as part of the recovery process allows my body to release it and I start to feel like my standard running self again.

Following a 5K recently, I lamented to a friend of mine the struggle from the one-mile mark through two and part of the third miles. This is never an easy stretch of the race but the difference this time was the fall-off in speed. It had happened a few times during this past summer and there were various explanations: heat, elevation gain, etc. But, I didn’t like the pattern. I was comfortable opening at a 6:15/6:20 per mile pace, which would put me in the 19:30s. When I say “comfortable” it wasn’t where I was on the edge of a pace I wasn’t sure I could hold but felt okay. I felt like the pace was a reasonable one I could stick with, if not push harder. However, even though I didn’t feel like my effort was lagging, my pace would drop off.

My friend referenced a workout to help with sustaining pace through the middle part of the race. It’s a total of six miles, starting and finishing with a one-mile warm-up and cool-down. The middle four are going three miles at 10K pace, followed by a fourth mile at whatever pace you can handle. The description sounded rough. But I was curious and wanted to see if I could improve on the middle section of my 5Ks so I gave it a go.

The first outing was terrible. I knew from .1 miles in (that is point one, not a typo) that I would be in trouble, not because I felt bad that early but because I could just tell. For my first three miles, I’d aimed for 6:40 per mile pace, or 20:00, and came through at 19:59. At that point, I was spent and the fourth mile reflected that. It’s not worth mentioning my time for the fourth mile.

I was daunted, but not to the point of not trying it again. Technically I should have been going for 6:43 miles the first time so instead of a 6:40 per mile pace, I went for 6:45s for the first three miles, or a net time of 20:15, with a slight lean towards faster than that. This time I ended up coming through the three-mile mark in 19:50 and feeling fatigued, but I still managed a 6:37 final mile. The last quarter mile did feature a significant climb so taking that out, the time would have been fair amount faster, which was hopeful. I also probably pushed a little too hard on the first three, as part of the goal is to run a hard fourth mile. Still, from a statistical standpoint, it was far superior to the first effort. I don’t know how to account for that, but I’ll take it.

My past speed work is usually something traditional, such as 800M or 1000M repeats which help train your body for faster leg turnover. Or, I do a threshold run to get my body acclimated to being uncomfortable over a longer period of time. This falls somewhere in the middle. New and tough, but definitely one where I’m pushing at uncomfortable intervals, which is the point of the workout. Mentally, it will certainly help on the next race.

I’ve mentioned in previous posts that if you’re planning to race as part of your running lifestyle, it’s important to find the right distance niche for you. Of course, even if you’ve found a niche, sometimes adjustments need to be made. It’s fairly common for professional 5000M and 10000M runners to transition to the marathon. Haile Gebrselassie and Kenenisa Bekele did this with different degrees of success. This normally happens as they’re getting up in in years and it becomes more natural to maintain a speed that’s a little less than 10000M pace over a longer distance.

If you’ve read my “About” section, you’ll know I’ve been all over the place over the past thirty years and I’m not in a situation where shifting my focus would represent brand-new territory. For the last eight years or so, I’ve been focusing mainly on 5Ks because it’s a distance I feel balances my enjoyment of miles with pushing the accelerator. Also, I wanted to get several more in before going too far up the age ladder.

Following this past summer, when I’d hoped to turn in faster 5Ks than I did, I started to wonder if it was about time to stop focusing on 5Ks and start a shift to the half-marathon. This was logical: it’s a longer distance to accommodate my forward progress in years, I’ve generally felt comfortable with heavier mileage, and one of my best races in the past several years was a ten-miler. If I’m not able to shift into the extra, necessary gear to get the 5K time I want, maybe it’s time to change.

And, after tussling with the idea for a couple of weeks, I ultimately settled back into 5K plans for the rest of the fall. Why? A couple of reasons. It’s what all my training has centered around for the past several months. Also, the races I’ve run recently have featured very warm temperatures, which has had an impact on my time. Maybe some cooler temperatures through the fall will help adjust for that. And, sometimes athletes just go through a rougher patch.

If I get through the fall and I’m still not finding that extra gear, then it may be time to reevaluate. Is this the right approach? Only time will tell. I’m sure plenty of athletes have made the transition to a different event at the right time, others have jumped too soon, and others waited too long. It’s one big piece of the unknowns of athletic performance.

At the recent track events I ran, I noticed that more runners than I would have predicted were wearing Nike Vaporflys or other brands’ carbon-plated shoes. These offer much higher energy return than the shoes without plates. The most recent version of the Nikes indicate they can drop up to 3% off your time and that is not inconsequential. When Nike was first promoting them several years ago, it was less common to see them and that has changed. 

In the early days of the Vaporflys, many people argued that the shoes were an unfair advantage and constituted mechanical doping. After protracted, heated debate, World Athletics issued a standard on what was allowed with carbon plate usage. I figured their decision was a way to allow continued use (and let the records that had been set with them stand) while establishing ground rules. A lot of people continue to argue that the plates are too much of an advantage, yet the other shoe companies have been manufacturing their own versions, to the extent that in one publication, I saw a “best of” list of carbon-plated shoes from multiple manufacturers.

Now athletes from many, if not all, all brands have options. That’s a big shift from a few years ago though not a surprising one. The shoe companies don’t want their sponsored athletes to fall behind, literally. They also want to offer a faster product that all runners desire.

They’re still expensive: the most recent iteration of the Nikes are $240 and many of the other brands’ versions are over $200. If they can knock 3% off a time, that’s worth it for many athletes. Still, it’s a steep price for most people, even committed runners. They’re not designed to be dedicated training shoes because with the way the carbon plates work, they’re best used in races or in faster workouts. Thus, it’s not just about spending more on your trainers; the shoes need to supplement what you’re already wearing.

Even though some people are still critical of the shoes, public opinion has shifted, or people are at least willing to use them for the purposes of dropping their time, and despite their price, the use of carbon-plated shoes is more prevalent, even among amateur athletes. While I’ve been tempted to snag a pair, I haven’t done it yet. Yes, it would be a huge boost for my time but given the stakes, mostly my ego, I’m not sure they’re worth it. Will they become a necessity to be able to reasonably hang on with similarly talented runners? I suspect that like many technological advances, the companies will figure out ways to produce these shoes at a lower cost and the plates will be a common feature and not a luxury. However, given the way the shoes work, it also seems likely they’ll remain as a racing and speed shoe and in that sense, they may evolve like racing flats–a product that runners who are serious about their race times will seek out but that most runners won’t necessarily choose to wear. We’ll see where it goes with these shoes but we’re certainly in a different spot from a few years ago.

Following the Mile High Mile a couple of weeks ago, I joined a friend of mine in the Twilight 5000 at the Englewood High School track this past Thursday evening. It featured four, 5000 meter races and we were divided into heats based on self-reported goal times.

Track and road races both involve running but there are differences. One of those is the proximity of fellow runners. In road races, unless you’re in a really big event like the Bolder Boulder, or there happens to be a cluster of people who race at your speed, you have a lot of space around you. In fact, it’s considered poor etiquette to get right on someone’s heels or shoulders when you have an entire path or road to work with.

The opposite is true on the track. Short of colliding into people, it’s okay and common to be in close quarters. Prior to running the Mile High Mile last year, I hadn’t done an event on a track since I was a teenager and I wondered whether things would be chill, or if it would be like a Roman chariot race. It hovered closer to chill than chariot. That being said, in both track races I did this summer, I spent the majority of my time just a few inches off of another runner’s heels or shoulder, or with someone mere inches off of my heels or shoulder. (One runner clipped my heels but, to their credit, apologized mid-race.)

Oddly, while it’s not a style of racing I’ve done a lot of recently, it felt easy to adapt to. Maybe it’s just part of the atmosphere. Unlike a road race, on the track I knew the people around me had similar times and thus there was a much higher intensity. It’s possible the factor of “near-collision” added to the adrenaline. Also, having someone to work off of, either because they’re right ahead of you or right on your tail, can help mentally during a race.

If you’ve been doing road races and opt for a track one, don’t be surprised if you’re close to other people for a lot of it. Or, if you’ve been on the track and go to a road race, you may be surprised at the ample space around you.

For the second year in a row I ran the Mile High Mile, an event put on by the Boulder Road Runners that bills itself as “Under the Lights.” They choose a local track with light poles, start the event at 6:00 p.m., and have twelve-fourteen one-mile races where the runners are placed based on age and/or speed. By the time the last events occur, it’s dark and the lights are necessary. However, this year the stadium lights never came on which led to an interesting workaround.

When we arrived around 6:00, the lights were off and this struck me as odd. When we go to a Rockies night game, the lights are on at the beginning even though the sun is usually still out. I assume it allows for the players’ eyes to gradually adjust as the darkness deepens, instead of flipping the switch as the sun sets. While that wouldn’t be as much of a concern with runners, I just assumed the race organizers would turn them on early.

As the races progressed and the sun sank lower, the stadium light fixtures stayed dark. This was okay until it reached the third to last race, at which point it was fully night and challenging to see. It’s true that a track is a smooth surface with white lines and it has the same curves and straightaway on every lap. It’s also true that running in the dark, especially at faster speeds, can be disorienting, even when you know the surface is flat.

At some point, it must have been clear that the lights were not going to come on and the race organizer began asking people to drive their cars up to the track and park them facing inwards so their headlights would illuminate the race. He also said, and I assumed he was joking, that it would be helpful if people came down to the track and used their cell phone flashlights to add more light. Joke or not, a significant portion of the fans assembled on the track and did just that.

The result was an erie, sci-fi look of a couple of dozen sets of bright lights around the perimeter along with hundreds of tiny cell phone light bulbs on the track itself. From the stands, during the races you could see the runners coming in and out of the pockets of light as they ran between the headlights and the people on the edge of the track. It wasn’t as rapid or stark as a strobe effect, but it was close.

For better or worse, I didn’t get to run during this phase of unorthodox artificial illumination. It would have been fun to give it a try. Still, it goes down as an unusual race factor and something I hadn’t seen.

Over the past couple of months, as has been evident in my blog posts, I’ve wondered whether I’m still able to go under 19:00 in a 5K. Some days it seems within reach and other days, it does not.

There’s a 5K coming up at the end of the month that’s on a fast course and features a very fast field. If I were to run it, my chances at an age group place would be slim. However, my chance at being to run with someone who could help pull me to a fast time is high. The main reason I wouldn’t run it is commute time; it’s on the other side of the metro area and not convenient. If I’m feeling right on the edge of sub-19:00, it’s worth the trip and time.

How close to the 19:00 barrier do I feel? We were out of town earlier this month and for several days after I returned, my legs were inexplicably sluggish. I had crammed miles in during the first couple of days back so maybe combining that plus travel, plus more of a sugar and fast-food heavy diet during the trip, contributed to it. The sluggishness disappeared but I did another workout the other day where I wasn’t as fast as I’d hoped though I could chalk that up to dehydration. Still, given my race times over the past couple of months and feeling a little more sore the past two weeks, I’ve been on the more pessimistic side.

The day following the dehydration workout, I did a casual three miles, then decided to try a fast mile around my neighborhood. My initial pace was not where I wanted it to be and as I finished the first quarter mile, my thinking was that if it reflected my current conditioning, it was “no way” on doing the fast 5K. However, between the quarter and three-quarters mark, I was holding a 5:45-5:55 mile pace. Going into the final quarter, I thought maybe I could sneak in at 5:59 and was pleasantly surprised when I finished at 5:50.

Would that convert to a sub-19:00 pace, especially considering I’d run a tough eight miles the day before? It’s hard to say. But, I was a lot more hopeful than I had been at the quarter mile mark, and in the days leading up to it.

A vexing part of sport is that it’s not an exact science, especially in scenarios that are too close to call. Maybe the 5:50 was an unexpected burst of speed, or maybe the past couple of weeks were slower for any number of reasons but don’t reflect what I’d be capable of on race day. While I’m still undecided on the fast 5K, I’m at least very much in the middle. If I do go, regardless of what the most recent numbers say, I don’t think I’ll be making any guarantees, as I don’t think I’ll know.