Timing Mealtime

Balancing when to eat and when to run can be tough. And that’s not just because if you work during normal business hours, then you’re probably running when most people are eating breakfast, lunch, or dinner. No, what I’m talking about here is learning how to schedule your runs so that your most recent meal doesn’t come back for a second tasting 15 minutes into your run.
This is one of those areas where you’re going to have to experiment to find what works best for you. I know some runners who can polish off a lumberjack’s breakfast seconds before heading out the door for a morning run and others who swear that they’ll have troubled stomachs their entire run if they eat the slightest morsel within several hours of training. There’s not much you can do about where you fall on the rockgut scale. When in doubt, err on the side of caution.
At a race in Japan once, I startled all the runners near me by popping a potato in my mouth just minutes before the start. I had a few stomach problems during that race, but knew that my opponents were completely psyched out. I won.
On the flip side, there’s also great variation among runners concerning how soon they eat after a run. Some runners step in the door and start munching; others don’t feel hungry for hours. This amount of time is going to be different even for individual runners from run to run—when it’s hot and you finish your run dehydrated and overheated, you’re probably not going to be as immediately hungry as on a 50-degree day. The harder you run, the more time you’ll probably want to allow before your next meal. Again, experiment to see what works for you. But here’s an important finding from the exercise science labs: If you consume some carbohydrate (it can be in solid or liquid form) within the first 30 minutes of the end of your run, your muscles will absorb those carbohydrates three times as fast as before your run. Although the rate at which they refuel slows some after those first 30 minutes, your muscles remain extra receptive for the first 90 minutes after a run.
What’s going on here? Think of your muscles as sponges. Following a run, they’re “drier” than at any other time. Just as a dry sponge greedily gobbles water more quickly than a moist sponge, so too do your muscles most want to be refilled when you’ve just depleted some of their stockpiles.
Why does this absorption matter? Because the gains that you make in your running that allow you to progress occur during the recovery phase following a run. By getting some carbs into your system soon after finishing your run, you therefore speed the recovery process. You’ll feel better on your next run, and you’ll be better able to nail each of your workouts and progress closer to your goal rate.
Carb refueling is especially important after longer-than-usual runs. Many times, when runners are dragging several hours or even the day after a long run, it’s because they waited too long to restock their muscles. As I said, some runners just don’t feel like eating any time near after finishing a run. That’s OK, but even they would feel better from run to run if they got in the habit of getting a minimal amount of carbs in. Keep in mind that I’m talking about only 100 to 200 calories in the first hour or so. That’s a bagel or a couple of pieces of fruit. If you have a super-sensitive system, liquid carbs are fine (and they’ll also help you to get in the important habit of drinking soon after your run). That can mean a sport drink or some diluted fruit juice. Diet sodas don’t count because they contain no calories, and therefore, no carbs.

Popping Pills: Vitamins and Other Supplements for Runners

Bee pollen, ginseng, beta carotene, chromium, brewer’s yeast—the list of wonder substances that are supposedly going to dramatically improve your health and performance is endless. We Americans are always looking for that magic pill that’s going to help us lose weight, feel great, have more energy, and, what the hey, why not have it prevent baldness and improve our sex lives at the same time. But the truth is that you can’t eat your way to being fit any more than you can eat your way to a college degree or a successful career. These achievements all take a lot of steady, hard, and sometimes not terribly exciting work. Yet the nutritional supplement industry, to the tune of more than $4 billion a year, has somehow convinced people that health and fitness can be achieved differently.

Vitamins and other supplements are often marketed as energy boosters or some such vague claim. Problem is, vitamins and minerals don’t provide energy. Food does. More specifically, the calories in food do. Only foods and drinks that contain calories provide energy.
What do vitamins and minerals do, then? Vitamins are like your body’s spark plugs—they are catalysts to reactions within your body. Minerals are elements that form and regulate the body. If your car wasn’t firing properly, you might get the spark plugs fixed. But once you got your spark plugs up to normal operating level, you wouldn’t throw four more under the hood and expect your car to run better. You would just be wasting your money with your misunderstanding of what keeps your car moving down the road day after day. Same thing goes for taking vitamins beyond the base level needed for good health. No studies have found increased performance in runners who take megadoses compared to runners who have a normal intake. In fact, no studies have shown increased performance caused by any of these kinds of supplements, be they vitamins, minerals, or substances not even recognized as necessary for normal human functioning, such as bee pollen. The right nutrition for good performance is pretty much the same as it is for good health, regardless of your level of activity.

Most nutritionists would say that it’s OK to take a daily multivitamin as a sort of health insurance, but even that shouldn’t be necessary if you regularly eat a wide variety of healthful foods. Vitamins and minerals from food are always better than the same substances from pills. When you get vitamins and minerals from food, you’re more likely to regularly be eating properly. For example, getting enough vitamin C from your diet means that you’re eating a decent amount of fresh fruits and vegetables. Having to meet your vitamin C needs with a pill means that you’re going to be hurting in other areas nutritionally, such as fiber and other disease-protective substances best found in food. Knowing all this information, I still find myself nearly getting hoodwinked once in a while by some smooth talker who promises the key to feeling great. The idea that taking pill X will solve all of your problems is just so appealing. When you hear claims like this, try not to be bamboozled. Claims for any nutritional supplement are almost always bogus if any of the following apply:

• The salesperson creates a nutritional need and then shows how his product fills it. ➤ The product’s manufacturers are portrayed as being persecuted by the Food and Drug Administration and other reputable, mainstream providers of nutrition information.
• The salesperson says that you’re nutritionally deficient without having detailed records of your normal eating habits.
• You’re told that it will make you lose weight without you having to exercise regularly and consume fewer calories.

Be especially skeptical about products that bear celebrity endorsements. These celebrities are almost always being paid to say what the manufacturers of the products want them to.

Sports Bars and Other Goop

Sports bars or energy bars didn’t exist in their current incarnation until 1986. Now one company alone, Powerfood, makers of the market-leading PowerBar, has yearly sales of more than $30 million. Should you add to its new-found wealth?
You’ve probably seen these things. They weigh a few ounces, come in a shiny wrapper, and for the most part, don’t taste all that great. So why are so many sold? Several reasons, many having to do with great marketing. The main useful reason is that they provide a couple of hundred of easily digestible calories that your body can use almost immediately for energy.
An increasing number of runners find a use for these products in their busy lives. Runners usually eat these bars within 90 minutes of a run when they’re dragging and want something to eat before their run that won’t bother them during the run. These bars certainly fit that bill. Runners also eat them soon after a hard or long workout, when they want to get something in their system to speed recovery but can’t yet stomach “real” food. Some runners also eat hunks of them on long runs, although the new energy gels are supplanting this use. And for people on the go, they’re easy to carry and eat at any time.
No runner needs an energy bar, however. After all, Frank Shorter had already won his second Olympic Marathon medal 10 years before the first energy bar was sold. As an example, a Malt-Nut PowerBar contains 225 calories, with 83 percent of them from carbohydrate, 10 percent of calories from protein, and 7 percent from fat. It sells for about $1.30. Eaten together, a bagel and a banana contain 275 calories, with 84 percent of them from carbs and 8 percent each from protein and fat. They taste better than energy bars to most people, are just as convenient, and cost about half as much.

Putting It All Together

Worrying about this percentage of carbohydrates and that percentage of fats sounds like a lot of work. How can you reasonably eat this way without taking a calculator with you on every trip to the kitchen? And what about when you eat out? Relax. The key to a good runner’s diet isn’t math, but making the right food choices. After all, a meal of butter, beef jerky, and cola can supply you with the right amounts of carbohydrate, protein, and fat, but it’s a disaster nutritionally.
Concentrate on getting the number of servings for each food type that I’ve emphasized. The percentages will take care of themselves if you focus on a variety of wholesome carbohydrates, fruits and vegetables, low-fat dairy products, lean cuts of meat, and legumes. Here’s a tip: carbohydrates, such as whole grains, vegetables, and beans, should cover most of the space on your dinner plate. Protein should be the accompaniment, not the centerpiece that many people make it. This guideline is true both at home and when you eat out.
Following these guidelines requires a big change in eating habits for many people. Two good books on eating for athletes are the Sports Nutrition Guidebook by Nancy Clark, Human Kinetics, 1996, and Power Foods by Liz Applegate, Rodale Press, 1994. It can also help to consult a registered dietitian. Registered dietitians have the initials R.D. after their names. Contact the local branch of the American Dietetic Association to find one in your area.

The Skinny on Fat

Many of us are all too familiar with fat, but fat isn’t all bad. With nine calories in a gram, or more than twice the amount of a gram of carbohydrate or protein, it’s a concentrated energy source. It’s what your body burns at low levels of activity, such as when you’re sitting at a desk or walking easily. Fat supplies and transports some vitamins, helps to maintain nerve fibers and cell membranes, insulates you from the cold, and cushions internal organs.
In a good diet, 20 to 25 percent of your calories come from fat. This amount is less than most Americans eat—the average is 37 percent of calories from fat. Eating too much fat means that you’re not getting the carbs you need to restock your muscles from run to run. It’s also bad for your health because a high fat intake has been linked to heart disease and some cancers. And extra fat from your diet is easily stored as extra fat on you. If you emphasize getting 60 to 65 percent of your calories from carbohydrates, with plenty of fruits and vegetables in the mix, it will be easier to get your fat intake into the 20 to 25 percent range. Choosing lean cuts of protein, such as white chicken meat instead of a greasy cheese steak sub, also helps.

Where’s the Beef for the Runners?

Protein is in every part of your body, from muscles to hair. Protein from your diet helps to build and repair muscles and regulate hormones. If you don’t get enough protein, you’ll recover from injuries and infections more slowly. One gram of protein contains four calories.
About 15 percent of your calories should come from protein. That’s less than most people eat. The recommended amount of protein means two to three servings each day, with a serving size being as small as two ounces of chicken or two teaspoons of peanut butter. Chow down on a half-pounder at your favorite burger place and right there you’ve exceeded your protein needs for the day. A good guideline to follow is that your servings of protein should be no bigger than a deck of cards. So for most people, getting 15 percent of their calories from protein is going to mean eating less protein than they’re used to. The exceptions are people who restrict their protein intake because they think that it’s good nutrition to exist on nothing but bagels, salads, and rice cakes. That’s taking things too far the other way. What’s wrong with eating too much protein? It means that you’re probably falling short in your carb intake. This shortfall could hurt your running because protein supplies a very small percentage of the energy for your running. Also, unless you choose carefully, the protein that you eat might come in a high-fat package, such as a marbled T-bone steak. Eating extra protein doesn’t build bigger muscles any more than eating pig’s feet helps you to grow extra toes. Extra protein that you eat mainly gives you very expensive urine.

Carbohydrates for runners

Carbohydrates, or just carbs to most runners, are your body’s main source of energy for aerobic exercise. One gram of carbohydrate contains four calories. Your body converts the carbohydrates you eat into glucose, a simple sugar. Glucose is then either used immediately by your body for energy or converted to glycogen, which, is the fuel stored in the muscles that power your running. When runners “bonk” or “hit The Wall” and have to slow dramatically, they’ve run out of carbohydrates.

Carbohydrates are classified as either complex or simple. This classification has to do not with how philosophical they are, but with how they’re constructed chemically. Complex carbohydrates are starches, such as grains, and simple carbohydrates are sugars, such as the fructose found in fruits. Common food sources of carbohydrates include fruits, vegetables, pasta, rice, bread products, cereals, and jellies. You should aim for 60 to 65 percent of your calories to come from carbohydrates. This amount will keep your muscles well-fueled so that you’ll be able to meet your training goals. A high-carb diet chosen from the right sources also means that you’re more likely to be getting all of the nutrients that you need because fruits, vegetables, and grains are packed with vitamins and minerals.

Most of the carbohydrates that you eat should be either fruits and vegetables or complex carbs such as pasta. Aim for this level of carbohydrate intake each day:

• 10 to 12 servings of grains (one serving equals a slice of bread, half a cup of cooked pasta, half a bagel, or one ounce of cereal)
• 5 to 7 servings of fruit (one serving equals a medium-sized piece of fruit, half a grapefruit, or four ounces of juice)
• 4 to 5 servings of vegetables (one serving equals one cup raw vegetables or half a cup cooked)

If these amounts seem like a lot, keep in mind how small one serving is. If you pour yourself a decent-sized bowl of cereal, that’s probably three or four servings right there. Complete your breakfast with half a banana on your cereal, a slice of toast, and a small glass of juice, and you’re already past 5 servings for the day. And that’s not counting the carbs in the milk that you put on your cereal.

But aren’t starches going to make you fat? No. Starches are complex carbohydrates. They contain four calories per gram, just like the carbohydrates found in fruit and vegetables. If you gain weight from eating a lot of starches, that’s from eating more calories than you burn, not because of anything inherently fattening about starches. The reason that people think that starches are fattening is that they’re often eaten with high-fat foods that contain a lot of extra calories. You butter your bread, fry your potatoes, or have pizza with sausage and extra cheese.
This kind of misunderstanding shows that it’s important to make sure that what you think is a high-carb food really is. When you have a thick crust pizza loaded with veggies, that’s high-carb. But when you have the thin crust meat lover’s special, more than half of the calories are coming from fat. Other supposed high-carb foods that are usually high in fat include muffins, granola, and macaroni and cheese.

The Real Runner’s Diet

If runners’ diets seem strange to most folks, that’s because most people don’t eat as most nutritionists advise. That’s another way of saying that the best diet for runners is the one that everyone should eat. This diet should be low in fat and include a moderate amount of lean, high-quality protein; the majority of calories should come from carbohydrates, especially in the form of fresh fruits and vegetables and whole grains. More than sedentary people, runners gravitate toward this type of diet because it makes them feel better.
As you become fitter, you become more in touch with your body and with how it feels when you put certain things in it.
I mean this both in the short term—those slices of bacon just don’t seem to taste as good right after a morning run—and long term, as you learn how some foods fuel your running better than others. Although your diet is important to your overall health, it’s not the key to your running; your training is. No amount of dietary manipulation is going to make up for miles logged. A good diet is important because it will allow you to get the most out of your running, not because it’s going to make you a better runner.
That statement may seem as though I’m splitting hairs, but I’m not. I’ve heard a lot of runners before races talk about how they’ve been eating such and such and not eating such and such, so they know that they’ll do well in the race. Then I hear how much they’ve been running (usually not much), and it’s obvious that they think they can eat their way to peak performance.
That’s a classic American belief—if we just take the right pill, we can avoid having to do the real work—but a unfounded one. A bad diet will probably get in the way of your running, but the most that a good diet will do for you is allow you to reap the results of the training that you do. That said, let’s look at the three main sources of calories in everyone’s diet: carbohydrates, protein, and fat.

Do Running Nuts Live on Berries?

As I’ve said, one of the questions that I’m asked most frequently has to do with whether my knees bother me because of all those miles. Probably the second most popular question I hear is, “You eat that?” This question comes about when I’m doing something as innocent as having a cup of coffee. It also happens if I’m enjoying a doughnut, putting cream cheese on a bagel, or having a glass of wine with dinner. Somewhere along the way, most people got the notion that being a runner means living off of the twigs and nuts that you gather out of your backyard. When running first achieved mass popularity in the ’70s, the sport was seen as part of a new movement for Americans who had decided that it was time to take charge of their health. So in the public mind running became associated with health food stores, megavitamin doses, and drinking nothing but carrot juice and purified water.
I think that’s too bad. Not because running can’t be an incredibly big step toward taking control of your health. No, the problem is that people who are new to running have been led to believe that starting an exercise program also means a simultaneous radical change in your diet. That’s not true, and it saddens me that some people might view running as off-putting because of this image.
That doesn’t mean that being a runner means eating whatever you want. Yes, I’m as wellknown in some circles for my legendary consumption of junk food as I am for my marathon victories. And as I’ve hinted, I still like to indulge myself occasionally. Eating is one of the major pleasures of life, and who doesn’t like to live a little now and then? But as you become fitter through your running, you’re probably going to be motivated to make changes in other parts of your life that will improve your health, such as getting more sleep and eating better. Running can help you to acquire an appreciation for simpler, heartier foods, which usually fuel you better and don’t bother you as much when you run. The upshot is this: Most runners find that they feel better if they make a few simple, healthful changes in their diets. But that doesn’t have to entail shopping only at the local organic produce shop. As most long-time runners will tell you, one of the great things about running is that all those miles often mean eating more and not gaining weight.

Which doctor you should avoid?

In general, avoid doctors who do the following:

• Propose that you stop running as the final solution
• Treat only your symptoms, rather than looking for the cause of your problem
  
• Say they don’t have much experience working with athletes
  
• Don’t look at surgery as a last resort

Of course, most insurance plans are going to require a referral to see a specialist, so you might have to have an initial meeting with someone who acts this way. But once you get to a specialist, make sure that he or she thinks differently. What types of specialists should runners see? That depends on your injury. Foot and lower leg injuries can be treated by orthopedists or osteopaths (I’ll say more about them in a minute), but they’re most often treated by podiatrists. Podiatrists have the initials D.P.M. (doctor of podiatric medicine) following their name. Podiatrists complete four years of training at a college of podiatric medicine and a residency. They are licensed to perform surgery and prescribe medicine.
Podiatrists focus not only on feet, but also on problems elsewhere that are caused by feet. This focus makes them among the runner’s best medical friends, because so many running injuries are caused by faulty feet. A podiatrist can determine whether factors such as overpronation or weak arches are contributing to problems in your biomechanics and setting you up for injury. These types of structural problems in the feet are often treated with orthotics.
Podiatrists are the best professionals to see to determine if you need orthotics, and they’re trained to cast the devices for you. Knee injuries are most often treated by orthopedists, although some knee problems are caused by problems in your feet and can therefore be addressed by podiatrists. Orthopedists are medical doctors (M.D.s) who treat injuries to bones, muscles, tendons, and ligaments. Orthopedists have a reputation for performing surgery, and although a good sports medicine orthopedist will always favor more conservative treatment first, many runners are leery of seeing orthopedists for this reason.
Running injuries above the knee are also often treated by orthopedists. Another good type of doctor to see for these ailments is an osteopath. Like M.D.s, osteopaths (D.O.s) are licensed to practice all branches of medicine, prescribe medication, and perform surgery. In general, they’re trained to view the body more systematically, so they’re likely to look at a runner’s injury from the standpoint of unearthing the root cause rather than just treating the symptoms.
Each of these three specialties has a professional sports medicine organization:

• The American Academy of Podiatric Sports Medicine (301) 424-7440
  
• The American Orthopedic Society for Sports Medicine (708) 292-4900
• The American Osteopathic Academy of Sports Medicine (608) 831-4400

I’m not saying that these are the only types of medical professionals that runners can benefit from seeing. Chiropractors (D.C.s), physiatrists (M.D.s trained similarly to osteopaths), physical therapists (P.T.s), and others can also be helpful. But podiatrists, orthopedists, and osteopaths are usually going to be the first ones to see for most common running injuries.

How to pick the right doctor for your running injury?

When should you see a doctor for a running injury? Most injuries, especially the softtissue overuse injuries, don’t need medical attention, especially if you treat them right from the start. When an injury drags on, or when you keep running on it and you get injured elsewhere, you start entering the gray area of when to get help. Certainly, any runner whose injury interferes with normal, daily activity for more than a week without improvement should seek medical help.
If your injury is a problem only when you run, then when and how soon to see a doctor is up to you. If your self-care routine doesn’t seem to be working, then you should probably see a doctor who might be able to diagnose and treat the underlying cause.
Runners can be pretty stubborn in their self-reliance, but sometimes you just have to bite the medical bullet and admit that your problem isn’t getting better on its own. Deciding to go to the doctor often comes down to how willing you are to put up with the lack of enjoyment that your running injury is causing you. You should also see a doctor if you repeatedly get injured in the same small part of your body. This type of injury means that you have an underlying weakness or structural deformity. A good sports medicine doctor will be able to get to the root of the problem so that the area won’t plague you throughout your running career.
Notice that I said a sports medicine doctor. Fortunately, the last 20 years of the fitness boom have produced a growth in the number of sports medicine doctors, who specialize in treating athletes. These doctors have the training, experience, and mindset to look at your injury as you do—an interruption of your body’s normal way of operating that needs to be treated at its root, not just for its symptoms. How do you find a good sports medicine doctor? As always, word of mouth from other runners is the best way. Some doctors belong to professional organizations for sports medicine doctors, but not all. Also, the American Running and Fitness Association maintains a listing of more than 5,000 of these professionals throughout the country. To find one in your area, call (800) 776-ARFA.

Hamstring Tear

Long-time runners suffer from injuries in the hamstring, hip, and buttock area more than beginners. Many of us have seen sprinters pull up suddenly with a hamstring tear. That doesn’t happen very often to distance runners. Our hamstring problems are low-grade, chronic microtears that accumulate over time and usually because of neglect. Most of these injuries are the result of poor flexibility in these areas, and veteran runners who don’t have good stretching habits are notoriously tight from knee to butt. But beware of hamstring problems if your job involves long periods of sitting. Sitting for long periods can shorten your hamstrings and the surrounding muscles and tendons. Try not to sit for more than an hour at a time. In your runs, ease into your normal pace to give the large muscles along the back of your legs a chance to warm up.

The Knee Bone’s Injury

The fear that most people have of runners’ knees—crippling arthritis—is largely unfounded. That doesn’t mean that runners don’t get knee injuries, though. In fact, in one survey of runners, injuries to the knee were more common than injuries to any other body part.
Let’s face it: The knee is one of the most poorly “designed” parts of our body. This tiny little shifting piece of bone acts as the brace between our feet crashing into the ground and almost the entire rest of our body. Add to that the stress of running on asphalt, overpronation, and, for some, being overweight, and it’s a wonder that there aren’t more knee injuries!
The two most common knee injuries for runners are iliotibial band syndrome and, appropriately enough, runner’s knee (what the professionals call chondromalacia patella). The iliotibial band is a thick cord that runs from the pelvis to the outside of the thigh and connects just below the knee. It helps to stabilize your thigh muscles and knee when you run. Usually, you’ll feel pain on the outside of your knee, but you might also feel it along the outside of your hip. The pain can be sporadic from day to day, but it usually comes on after you’ve run a set distance. Bowlegged runners are susceptible to this injury. They should concentrate on regularly stretching the iliotibial band to make sure that it can work through a wide enough range of motion when running. And anyone can get it if they regularly run on uneven surfaces, especially the same side of an overly slanted road.
In the short term, you’re best to limit your mileage to just below the level at which you usually start to feel pain. In the long term, be smart—work on increasing the band’s flexibility, and run on level surfaces. If you have no option but to run on slanted roads, regularly switch directions so that one leg isn’t always made to run as if it were longer. In runner’s knee, repeated stress on the knee causes inflammation and softening of the cartilage under the kneecap. This prevents the kneecap from tracking normally over the end of the thigh bone. You’ll usually feel pain around or behind the kneecap; it might get worse when you climb stairs.
Overpronators are especially susceptible to runner’s knee because the knee has to compensate for the extra inward rotation of the lower leg. Among relatively new runners, weak thigh muscles are often a leading cause of this injury. Your thigh muscles help to align your knee and keep it straight. If they’re not as strong as they should be, they may not be able to help the knee guide itself along its proper course.

Shin splints or tibial stress syndrome

Shin splints—or what the running doctors call tibial stress syndrome—are one of the most common injuries for new runners. That’s because they’re usually caused by muscle and tendon weakness in the front or inside of the lower leg. With more running, these areas become strong enough to handle the increased stress they’re being subjected to. Weak arches can also lead to shin splints by making the shin muscles work extra hard to raise your arches when you run. Shin splints can lead to stress fractures, so you want to beat them before they beat you.
Shin splints are tiny tears of the front lower leg muscles away from the shin bone (or tibia). At first, you might notice a pulling or vague aching sensation in the area after you run. The pain can become sharp, usually after you’ve run for a certain amount of time. The area around the shin may become inflamed, or lumps may form where the muscle tries to reattach itself.
I don’t mean to sound like a broken record here, but the best immediate treatment for shin splints is the standard: ice, anti-inflammatories, and cutting back on your mileage. And another thing I keep harping on: Run on soft surfaces whenever possible. Shin splints are one of those injuries that people sensitive to running’s pounding get; that’s why beginners, who haven’t built up as much resistance to pounding, get them much more frequently than long-timers. So reduce that pounding by running on more forgiving ground.

Achilles Tendon Injuries

The Achilles’ heel for some runners is the Achilles tendon. That’s because the Achilles tendon—a cord-like structure that connects the heel to the calf muscles—has a fairly limited range of motion. It can get overworked pretty easily. To make matters worse, blood flow to the area is poor, so it takes a while to get loosened up. If you have Achilles tendinitis, you’ll know it because nothing else causes sharp pain in that area. The pain, which can also be a burning sensation, will be anywhere from an inch above your heel to the bottom of your calf. In bad cases, you’ll be able to see how inflamed the tendon is, because it will be visibly swollen compared to your healthy Achilles tendon.
Achilles tendinitis is often caused by many of the same things that lead to plantar fasciitis, including tight calf muscles and overpronation. Sometimes it can be caused when the back of your shoe sits too high against your heel. (This is why you’ll see many running shoes with notches at the top of the heel counter.) In addition to the standards of icing, anti-inflammatories, and cutting back on your running if your normal form is altered, here’s another trick for beating Achilles tendinitis:
Wear heel lifts in your street and running shoes until the problem goes away. The lifts will take some of the pressure off your inflamed tendon by elevating it. A simple, at-home method is to cut a half-circle that fits your heel from corrugated cardboard. Be sure to put a new one in at least once a day as the cardboard gets compressed. In the long term, be extra careful about stretching, and get out of the habit of wearing high-heeled shoes, which can shorten and tighten your calves and Achilles tendons.

Bone stress fractures in your feet

Stress fractures are tiny, incomplete breaks or cracks in a bone. They can occur many places in the body, but runners most often get them in the feet. They’re caused by too much repetitive stress to bones that are overworked. That’s why stress fractures occur gradually—over time, the bones are asked to do just a little bit more than they’re ready for, and the shock is great enough to cause a slight crack. Stress fractures are different from a standard broken bone because with a stress fracture, there’s not a sudden, obvious incident when the bone breaks. Rather, the pain begins gradually, usually as a slight twinge, and only intensifies as you continue to run on it. Trust me, though—if you get a full-blown stress fracture, there will be no mistaking that you’re hurt. With every step, sharp pain will shoot from your foot up your leg, and it will get worse the longer you run on it.
Stress fractures are almost always caused by some of the errors that I outlined earlier in this chapter—increasing mileage and intensity too quickly, wearing shoes without enough cushioning, and doing too much of your running on hard surfaces. Runners who don’t include enough calcium in their diets are also susceptible.
Unfortunately, when you have a stress fracture, you need to stop running. Otherwise, you’re just asking for it. The bone will continue to rupture, and you could develop a complete break, which will add considerably to your downtime. So if you feel the beginnings of a stress fracture, take a few days off and ice the area (which will probably be a little tender and swollen, and maybe even a bit warm to the touch at first). If you definitely have a stress fracture, you’re best off not running for at least two weeks, as well as avoiding other weight-bearing activity during this time. If it’s still bad when you restart, stop again, and see a doctor.

Healing Your Heels

The most common running injury to the heel area is called plantar fasciitis. This condition is an inflammation of the plantar fascia, a fibrous band of tissue that runs from the heel to the toes. You’ll feel pain along the inside bottom of your foot anywhere from the heel through the arch. Many times, the pain is worst when you step out of bed in the morning or when you’ve been sitting for a long time, and then it improves during the day as the plantar fascia has a chance to loosen up.
The plantar fascia most often becomes inflamed because it has to work through more of a range of motion than it’s designed to. When your heel strikes the ground, the pressure on the heel pulls on the plantar fascia. If your calf muscles are too tight, or if you overpronate but don’t wear shoes with enough motion control, then you’re most likely to develop plantar fasciitis. Also, high-arched, rigid feet can predispose you to this injury because when your heel lands, your foot doesn’t move enough, so the plantar fascia has to absorb more shock.
The best treatment for plantar fasciitis is icing. Ice the bottom of your foot from heel to ball. One good trick is to ice your foot with a frozen cola bottle (if you can still find the glass ones). The cold of the bottle does the work of the ice, and rolling your foot over the contours of the bottle gives the plantar fascia a nice little massage. (It’s pretty hard to stretch it otherwise.)
Most people with plantar fasciitis can run on the injury. Cut back if the pain gets worse, not better, as you run. Preventative steps include increasing the flexibility of your calves and Achilles tendons, and making sure that your shoes have the proper combination of motion control and cushioning.

Tending your Toes

Most toe problems you’re going to get as a runner are cosmetic rather than serious. The most frequent visitors will be black toenails, which are so linked with the sport that the condition is also known as runner’s toe. Runner’s toe happens when the nail is either pressed down too much on the bed that underlies it or the nail separates from the bed. In either case, blood pools between the nail and the bed. Eventually, the nail turns black. When this condition is caused by the nail being pressed into the bed, it’s almost never painful. The nail gets very hard, and it looks like hell, but it won’t bother you. After a few months, the nail will grow out or fall off. In the meantime, you’ve got yourself a nice little memento from your miles that will instantly identify you as a runner to any knowledgeable person who happens to see your feet. Sometimes, the nail loosens rather than hardens, and this is usually uncomfortable. New runners whose toenails aren’t used to much wear and tear will get these more than longtime runners.
If your black toenail is wobbly, sterilize a needle, and then use it to drain the blood from under the nail, as you would drain a blister. Runner’s toe is usually caused by ill-fitting shoes. If your shoes aren’t long enough, your longest toe (which in some people is the second toe) will slam against the front of the shoe. You might also irritate your nails by running on a course that has a lot more downhills than you’re used to, because your toes are going to rise up a bit more than usual on the downhills to help you brake. Wet shoes, either from sweat or rain, are also a leading cause of runner’s toe.
Poorly fitting shoes may also cause blisters, “hot spots,” and other irritations on the tops of your toes. When a pair of shoes causes blisters during your first few runs, then you’ve probably bought shoes that are too small. Cover these irritated spots with one of the many second-skin products on the market, and you’ll usually be fine.

Ice or heat to cure your pain?

Ice should always be your first line of defense against injury. If I notice the slightest little ache, I like to ice it after my run and a couple of other times during the day, too, if possible. A few minutes of preventative care can work wonders in keeping a little nagging pain from developing into a disruptive injury.
Why ice instead of heat? The reason is that most running injuries are a result of soft body tissues (muscles, tendons, ligaments) that have become inflamed. Blood vessels get damaged and swell; the greater the swelling, the worse the injury, and the longer recovery is going to take. Icing the inflamed area causes the blood vessels to constrict. This reduces the swelling because less blood flows to the injured area and the damaged tissue relaxes.
This not only reduces the pain you feel, but also speeds healing, because as the tissue’s metabolism is slowed, there’s less tissue breakdown. Heating an inflamed area worsens, rather than improves things. Heat has the opposite effect of ice, so the blood vessels of the injured area become that much more swollen. Heat is helpful when your inflammation has reduced, however. This reduction usually won’t occur for at least 72 hours. At this point, the increased blood flow that heating stimulates will speed delivery of nutrients to the damaged tissue, thereby speeding healing. Heat is also good if you have overall stiffness in an area. The general rule is to use ice on small, acute body aches because they are signs of damage to a specific body part and to use heat for more widespread stiffness. Always ice an injury for at least 5, but no more than 20 minutes. The area should become red and numb, not white and numb. After running is the best time to ice, because the tissues will be the most swollen, but you’ll speed recovery if you can find a few other times during the day to ice. Rub the ice in circular motions on the injured body part.
The best method of icing I’ve found is to fill a few paper cups with water and keep them in your freezer. When you need to ice an injury, just tear down the top of the cup until the ice is exposed and hold the cup from the bottom while icing. This method keeps your hands warm while you ice, so you’re more likely to stick with it for the proper amount of time. When you’re done icing your injury, just put the cup back in the freezer until you need it again. These cups can last for months and will ensure that you always have one handy.

What to do if you feel pain from running?

Although there aren’t hard and fast rules for running while injured, here are some general guidelines:

• If you don’t notice any pain during your run, but have pain after a run or when you get up in the morning, it’s OK to run your usual run at your usual pace.
• If you notice pain during your run, but it doesn’t interfere with your normal running form, it’s OK to keep running, but stay close to home so that you can get back quickly if things deteriorate.
• If the pain becomes worse the longer you run, limit your running to however long you can run before this deterioration starts.
• If the pain causes you to alter your usual running form, don’t run with this injury until you can run normally at a relaxed pace. Running differently because of an injury will make other body parts more susceptible to injury, because they’re being asked to work harder than usual to compensate for the injured part that you’re favoring.
• If your pain interferes with your normal, day-to-day nonrunning activities, the only running you should even think about doing is to the nearest sports medicine doctor’s office.

If you’re injured and can run, or even if you just feel the beginnings of an injury, try to run primarily on flat surfaces. Running downhill increases the pounding on your legs, and running uphill forces your tendons and muscles to work extra hard. When you’re already flirting with disaster, you don’t need either. In all of these cases, consider taking anti-inflammatories and applying ice to the painful area a few times a day.

Should You Run on It?

Judgment calls are a big part of being a runner. You’re always weighing a seemingly endless number of issues in trying to answer some basic questions, such as how far, how fast, and when and where to run. If you’re injured, there’s an even more basic question to consider: Should you run? Here’s where injuries can get the most tricky. If you don’t run on your injury, it’s not going to bother you. Push this logic to its extreme, and it’ll never bother you—never run, and I can guarantee you that you’ll never have a running injury.
The standard medical advice for all injuries used to be: Don’t run for two weeks. If it bothers you when you start again, take another two weeks off, and keep doing so until you’re better. That’s not very helpful advice for most running injuries. If all runners stopped running every time they got a little ache or pain, some of them would almost never run!
What you want to know is how to finesse your ache or pain so that you can keep running without doing more damage. After all, a little knot in your calf that loosens up after 10 minutes of easy running is a lot different from an aching hip that makes you limp around the office, and then only gets worse when you try to run on it. How much and whether you should run with your injury depends on how it feels not only when you run, but also the rest of the day.

How to Prevent Running Injuries?

Even if you’re not injured, you should always be thinking about how to prevent injuries. Good running habits are so important, because the majority of running injuries can be prevented by eliminating the root causes. To eliminate these root causes, you need to increase the ability of your tissues to tolerate a force repeatedly and/or decrease the cumulative amount of force.
You can increase the ability of your tissues to tolerate repeated forces by doing the following:

1. Regularly stretching the major muscles, tendons, and ligaments that are worked when you run.
2. Correcting muscle imbalances that require a given body part to work harder when you run than it’s designed to.
3. Increasing your mileage and intensity gradually so that your body has a chance to adapt to an increased workload.

The second main way to prevent running injuries is to regularly reduce the cumulative amount of shock that you subject your body to. Among the ways to do that are the following:

1. Running on soft surfaces, such as dirt and grass, whenever possible.
2. Running in shoes that have adequate cushioning and that have extra cushioning in the appropriate place if you land hard on a certain part of your foot.
3. Running the appropriate number of miles to meet your goals, not just mindlessly amassing miles. Even the best-constructed body will eventually break down with too many miles.

You’ll also reduce the amount of shock to your body if you run at an appropriate weight. Beginning runners who might be overweight should therefore be especially careful about running on soft surfaces in well-cushioned shoes.

Are Running Injuries Inevitable?

One runner I know suffered a broken rib when he tripped during a run. Another I know broke his arm when he didn’t see a low chain-link fence during a dark morning run. These are freak occurrences. They sound like the kinds of injuries that skiers and football players get—random, acute events. Most running injuries, in contrast, are overuse injuries—they stem from repeatedly stressing an overworked body part and ignoring the early warning signs that something is wrong.
Why do runners get injured? Remember, when you run, your bones, muscles, tendons, and ligaments deal with forces of at least three times your body weight with each step. In order to continue running, your tissues must be able to withstand these loads, even when they’re repeated thousands of times per day. An injury is a failure in your body to handle these repetitive forces.
What causes muscle strains, tendinitis, ligament damage, and stress fractures? Either the forces to which body parts are subjected are too high, or they’re repeated too many times. In other words, injuries occur because of too much impact shock with each step, the cumulative effect of too many steps, or a combination of the two. Most running injuries occur because of the repetitive nature of the running stride. When repeated thousands of time per run, even a slight imperfection in how your feet roll through the gait cycle, for example, can lead to problems nearly anywhere in your legs. That’s why you need to take a global view of a running injury—you want to look at not only the area that’s bothering you, but what about your running is causing that area to hurt.
Conquering your injury, then, means two things: treating the immediate symptoms, and figuring out what went wrong to cause them. Take care of the symptoms, and you get to start running normally again. Figure out and eliminate the root causes, and you’re more likely not to be sidelined by that injury again.

Running Injury

Being injured is the pits. Many times, you can’t run at all. Even if you can run with your injury, you usually have to cut back on your usual distance and slow down. Your running just isn’t as much fun. Suddenly, your running, which is supposed to help with the stress in your life, adds to it.
Unfortunately, injuries are a part of the sport, and a common one at that. By some estimates, more than half of all runners are injured enough every year to have their training interrupted for more than a week. Now that I’ve completely depressed you, here’s the good news—injuries are common, but they’re usually predictable and preventable.
Most running injuries come from trying to do too much too soon at too quick a pace and ignoring the body’s signals that it’s on overload. So before looking at how to treat common running injuries, I’m going to show you how to avoid them.

Thigh Therapy

Thigh muscle imbalances happen to the best of us. Long-time runners are more susceptible to this imbalance than are beginners because with a lot of running, the abductor muscles (on the outside of your upper thigh) get stronger while the adductors (on your inner thighs) aren’t worked all that much. The problem is that these muscles are supposed to rotate your hips through a full range of motion, so when the adductors become too weak, and the abductors have to do too much work and you get hip pain. If you have this problem, strengthen your adductors by sitting on a chair with a soccer ball between your thighs and squeezing the ball several times.

Below-the-Knee Balance

As with your hamstrings and quadriceps, your calves may get too strong and tight while your shins get relatively weaker when you run regularly. You might have this imbalance if you have chronic Achilles tendon problems. To strengthen your shin muscles, write the alphabet in the air with your big toe. It sounds strange, but try it. You’ll feel right away how effective this exercise can be.

Upper Leg Equilibrium

Ideally, your quadriceps (your thigh muscles) should be about 25 percent stronger than your hamstrings. In other words, if you were to go to a gym, you should be able to lift 25 percent more when doing leg extensions (which work the quadriceps) than when doing leg curls (which work the hamstrings). But running can overdevelop your hamstrings while doing relatively nothing for your quads. An imbalance in the strength ratio between the two muscles might show up as chronic knee pain because the tendons around the knee can become strained by having to work extra hard to compensate for tight, too-strong hamstrings and relatively weak quads. When your quads are stronger, they can absorb more of running’s impact shock that is otherwise distributed to the knees.
If you have an imbalance in this area, try this at-home remedy. Fill a gym bag with shoes. While sitting on a chair, dangle the straps of the bag across the top of one foot. Lift the bag by straightening that leg. Do this exercise 12 times for each leg.

Triceps Strengthening for Runner

To begin the triceps strengthening exercise, lie on the floor with your back flat, your knees bent and your feet on the ground. Grip a small dumbbell with both hands. Rest your arms on your torso so that the weight is lying near your waist. While keeping your arms straight, slowly pull the weight behind you until it touches the floor behind your head, as shown in the figure. Slowly return to the starting position. Do this exercise 12 times.

Chest Strengthening for Runner

Lie down with your back flat, your knees bent, and your feet on the floor to get in position for the chest strengthening exercise. Keep one arm against your side. In the other, hold a small dumbbell while extending the arm perpendicular to your torso, as shown in the following figure. Slowly raise the weight until it’s over your chest, and then slowly lower it to the starting position. Repeat this exercise 12 times for each arm.

Shoulder Press for Runner

To begin the shoulder press, stand straight with a small dumbbell in one hand. The arm with the weight should be bent so that the palm of your hand is facing away from you and the weight is roughly at shoulder height, as shown in the following figure. Straighten your arm and slowly push the weight toward the ceiling. Slowly return to the starting position. Repeat the exercise 12 times for each arm.

Bicep Curls for Runner

To strengthen your biceps, stand straight with a small dumbbell in the palm of one hand. The hand with the weight should rest against your thigh with your palm facing away from you. Using your elbow as a lever, slowly raise the dumbbell to shoulder height, as shown in the figure. Return to the start position just as slowly. Try not to hoist the weight by jerking your shoulder or upper arm. Do 12 repetitions of this exercise for each arm.

Back Strengthening for Runner

To begin the back strengtheningexercise, lie down with your stomach and thighs against the floor, as illustrated in the figure. Prop yourself up on one elbow with your upper arm at a 90-degree angle to the floor, keeping the opposing leg straight and flat. Raise the other arm and the opposing leg to shoulder level at the same time. Hold for a few seconds, then relax and repeat the exercise with the other arm and leg. Do this exercise 10 times with each set of opposing arms and legs.

Crunches for runner

As shown in the following figure, lie on the floor with your back and head flat against the floor to begin the crunches. Bend your knees so that your heels rest on the floor. Cross your arms across your stomach. While keeping your back straight and your butt on the floor, slowly raise your upper body until your shoulders are level with your knees. Try not to curl your upper body toward your knees; instead, imagine that it’s being pulled by a string toward the ceiling. Slowly lower your upper body until your back is flat on the floor. Repeat this exercise 25 times.

Essential Strengthening Exercises for Runners

As with the stretching routine I laid out in the preceding chapter, the purpose of this section is to show you the minimum of what I think you should do in strength training, not present a one-size-fits-all strength training program. You might have noticed that everything I’ve said so far about strengthening exercises refers to upper body work. That’s what I’m going to focus on here. I’m not saying that runners can’t benefit from doing resistance training for their legs, just that I don’t think that doing so is as necessary for all runners as the upper body work.

I’ll show you a few leg exercises that you might have reason to do, but for now, I’m going to stick to my keep-it-simple mantra. All runners should do some form of strengthening exercises for these areas:
➤ Abdominal muscles
➤ Back
➤ Biceps
➤ Shoulders
➤ Chest
➤ Triceps
These key upper body parts contribute to running more smoothly. When these areas are stronger, you’ll be better able to maintain good running form when you get tired. In some of the exercises that follow, I use small dumbbells. For years, I’ve used 12-pounders. Again, this is the kind of weight that Arnold Schwarzenegger probably picks his teeth with. That’s fine. I’m just working at maintaining a decent level of upper body strength that will help in my running. Those 12-pound dumbbells are what work for me. Find a weight that you can use comfortably throughout the exercises.
Regardless of whatever weight you use, follow these guidelines in your strength training program:

• Use a weight that you can comfortably lift 12 times.
• After you do all the exercises, relax for a few minutes, and then repeat the set.
• Do this workout two or three times a week.
• Don’t lift weights on consecutive days.
• Schedule your strength training sessions for your easier running days or for days when you don’t run.
• If you have the time, do these workouts after you do your stretching routine.
• Do these exercises in the same comfortable clothes that you do your stretching in.
• Do the floor exercises on the same firm, comfortable surface that you stretch on.
• Keep these guidelines in mind as you review the basic exercises on the following posts.

The Slender Running People

Unfortunately, a lot of runners don’t believe a word of this advice. They like to point out that if a strong upper body were necessary to run well, then certainly you’d develop one through running. They also like to scare people away from trying to get stronger by warning that lifting weights will make you “muscle-bound” and add tons of unwanted bulk. After all, they’ll ask, wasn’t losing weight one of the main reasons you started running?

Sounds kind of like the reasoning that the anti-stretchers tried to use in the previous chapter. Obviously, you can run without ever even so much as looking at a weight or contemplating a sit-up, but that doesn’t mean that you’re going to run as well as you can, or that it will feel as good. Running can do some contradictory things to your body; for example, it can tighten the very muscles that are most needed for running. That’s why you need to stretch. In the same way, running doesn’t affect many of the muscles that, when stronger, will help make running easier. That’s why you need to strengthen.

As for worrying about piling on pounds of unwanted bulk, don’t. Just as most people who run are never going to have to worry about being as thin as I am because of not being genetically predisposed that way, most people are never going to look like a bodybuilder. The top bodybuilders are as suited to their chosen sport as I am to mine; most people can’t look that way, no matter how much they lift.

More important, the strengthening program I’m going to outline here would make most of them laugh. That’s fine. They work to build maximum bulk. What should concern you is doing a minimum to make your running better. What’s necessary for that isn’t much and certainly doesn’t involve any of the kinds of mega weights that bodybuilders throw around.
If you’re still opposed to the idea of strengthening exercises because you’re running to lose weight, consider the results of a study that was conducted in the Netherlands a few years ago. In the study, people were divided into a solid group and a slender group. Both groups then lifted twice a week for 12 weeks. As expected, the members of the solid group (the football players of the world) had stacked on significant amounts of fat-free mass during the study. That is, they gained weight in the form of muscle. The slender group, however, was as wiry as ever after the 12 weeks, with no real increase in fat-free mass. The researchers concluded that those with slender body types, which includes most runners, lack the genetic predisposition to bulk up.
If that’s the case, then why bother with weights? Because the slender group’s failure to gain fat-free mass doesn’t mean that they didn’t benefit from their lifting program. At the end of the 12 weeks, they had increased their strength by 13 percent, and they had 10 percent less body fat than at the beginning of the study. They were stronger and leaner, yet not bulkier, after just 12 weeks of lifting. Next excuse?

Top and Bottom Working Together

In addition to helping you run more smoothly, a strong upper body will help you to avoid injury. Ron Clarke, who set several world records in the 1960s, used to say that a distance runner couldn’t be too strong in the middle. What he meant was that when you run, the shock that comes every time that your feet hit the ground is transmitted throughout your body if your midsection is strong. Strong stomach and back muscles absorb some of that shock, rather than confining it to your legs. The result is that your legs have to put up with less impact force and won’t get as overloaded with potential wear and tear.
If you doubt this statement, think of trying to run if your body were like an accordion. With every step, you’d send shock from your feet up your legs to your middle, where, if you’re like an accordion, you’d then sag over or almost crumple. That’s not how to run smoothly or comfortably!

Only the Strong Finish First

Decent upper-body strength especially helps you when you tire on a run. For an extreme demonstration of this principle, go watch a race sometime. At the finish, you’ll see that the top finishers, no matter how hard they might be straining and striving, are running pretty smoothly. Their shoulders aren’t hunched over or somewhere up around their ears; instead, their shoulders are low, and their arms are driving in sync with their legs. Even when they’re very tired, one of the reasons that they can keep running fast is because their upper body is strong enough to keep up with their legs. Then watch for the finishers farther back. Many of them are tired in the arms, shoulders, and back, and you can see it in their form, which has disintegrated greatly from how it was at the beginning of the race. That’s partly because they’re not as strong relative to the top finishers, no matter how scrawny the first few people across the line might look.

Hurry Up and Weight

So if running isn’t going to make you so weak that you need help bringing in the Sunday paper, then why am I saying that all runners should do some strengthening work? For starters, because everyone should, in the same way that everyone should do some sort of regular aerobic exercise. The American College of Sports Medicine recommends that all adults do two or three resistance training sessions per week to maintain and build muscular strength. This recommendation makes sense to me. Being cardiovascularly fit, as you will become through running, is certainly the most important aspect of being fit, but it’s not the only one.
More specifically for runners, you’ll be able to progress more in your running if you include some basic strengthening exercises in your program. This type of movement means, among other things, that your upper body flows right along with your legs, rather than being somewhat awkwardly perched atop your legs, contradicting their every move. When you have a basic level of strength in your upper body, you can hold yourself better and more upright as you run. This ability will make a given pace feel easier.

Ever Notice That Runners Are Skinny?

Before getting down to business, I want to set a few things straight. And no, I’m not just doing this because I’m tired of having sand kicked in my face. Look at pictures of top runners at any distance from the mile on up, and you’ll notice one common trait—they’re all really skinny! Especially in the arms and torso, these are bodies that make people think more about prison camps than peak health. This impression is particularly prevalent with male runners, in part because our society still equates masculinity with brute strength.
But appearances can be deceiving. Yes, it’s true that in comparative studies, distance runners usually score below average in tests of muscular strength, as measured by a onerepetition maximum. But that’s largely because of the fact that their weight is also below average. When the figures are adjusted to take into account strength for body size, runners have average strength.
I’m making this point because some people, mostly men, are turned off by running because of how skinny top runners are. Given how we’re conditioned to think that bigger is always better, that’s understandable, but it’s also unfounded. Top runners are born with a body type that predisposes them to thinness, especially when they run upwards of 15 miles a day.
For most people, looking like that is just never going to happen, especially given that almost nobody is going to put in the number of miles that top runners do day after day, week after week. So don’t let the looks of a few genetic freaks—I’m including myself here—discourage you from running. You’re probably going to lose some weight as a result of your running, and I assume that most of you see that result as good. What you’re not going to lose is relative strength.

The Right Way to Stretch

For many of us, our early memories of stretching come from gym class. There, we did windmills, where we jerked one side of our body toward the other while touching one hand to the opposite foot. We probably also remember stretching being an exercise in group counting, with a leader saying, “One, two, three,” and the group responding, “Four!” So even when we weren’t bouncing around, we were holding our stretches for a few seconds, at best.

I hope I don’t disillusion you too much when I tell you that what you were taught in school wasn’t quite the truth about stretching. (And you thought it was only in sex ed class that you were given misinformation.) Bouncy, jerky movements and stretches that are held for a few seconds aren’t the kind of flexibility exercises that are going to help you as a runner. If anything, they’ll hurt you; you’re better off not stretching at all if you’re not going to do it right.

What is the right way to stretch? A good way to understand the right way is to know more about the wrong ways. The bouncy, jerky stretching I just described is called ballistic stretching. It’s bad because when you make a movement that lengthens a muscle, its initial reaction is to contract. Think about what happens when you briefly extend a coil, and then suddenly let it go. The same quick return to a shorter state happens when you stretch ballistically. This type of stretching increases, rather than lessens, the amount of tension in your muscles. In some cases, it can cause the muscles to tear. That’s not a great way to lower your risk of injury.

The right way to stretch is to do so comfortably, gently, and consistently. Improving, or at least maintaining, your flexibility is similar to improving your endurance. The key to progress in your running is to find a comfortable level of effort and to work out regularly at that level. As you stick with that approach, your endurance will increase, and you can gradually run more, or faster, without any more effort.

The same is true with stretching. Regardless of the specific exercise you’re doing, you want to find a point where the muscles you’re working on are stretched just enough so that you can feel it, but not so much that it’s obvious you’re overdoing it. This type of stretching is known as static stretching. As with the first part of your running program, when in doubt, ease up. It’s better to stretch a muscle a bit less than to overdo it. As with boosting your endurance, when it comes to flexibility, slow and long are better than fast and short. You should hold all stretches for at least 15 seconds. Thirty seconds is even better. This amount of time encourages increased blood flow to the muscles you’re concentrating on, which will gradually elongate them. When you comfortably hold a stretch for 15 to 30 seconds, the muscles will relax. This reduction in muscular tension is what makes you feel looser, both right after the stretch and from day to day when you’re consistent with your flexibility program.

After the stretch, relax the muscles you’re working on for the same amount of time. Then do the stretch once more, again holding it for 15 to 30 seconds. By the end of the second time you’ve done a certain stretch, you’ll probably notice that your flexibility in that area is greater than when you began, just like your normal training pace is easier 10 minutes into a run than at the beginning.

Some runners find it helps to time their stretches to ensure that they’re holding them for that 15 to 30 second range. Many people who say that they can’t hold a stretch for that long say so because they hold their breath while they stretch. After 10 or so seconds, they let the stretch go because they need to breathe. You should always be able to breathe normally while stretching.

Reasons for Stretching

Before showing you how to stretch, I want to tell why you should stretch. Some runners never stretch and try to cover up the real reason they don’t (laziness) with silly theories. The main reason offered for not stretching is summarized by the supposedly rhetorical question, “You never see a racehorse stretch, do you?” What they’re trying to say is thoroughbreds seem to be able to run pretty well just by running. To suggest that humans need to do more to run is to argue with nature.

Yes, it’s true that you don’t see racehorses stretch. You also don’t see racehorses sit behind a desk eight hours a day, or run on asphalt, or start running after being sedentary for the previous 40 years. I don’t see racehorses eating spaghetti, either, but that doesn’t mean I think that runners shouldn’t. So maybe when we’re all bred solely to run fast and spend our days trotting around on dirt tracks, we can forego stretching. In the meantime, all runners, at least of the human variety, should stretch.

As running strengthens your muscles, it also shortens and tightens them. This is especially true of the prime movers on your back side: your Achilles tendons, calves, hamstrings, butt, and back muscles. You’re will feel better running, as well as most of the rest of the time, if these muscles are limber and can move through a wider range of motion.

By way of analogy, think about in which instance you’d rather launch into a sprint:
immediately after having been driving for the past two hours or after having walked around the block? Intuitively, you know that you feel better running when you’re looser, no matter what the racehorse fans would have you believe. And just as you’re more limber at a specific time if you’ve been moving around, you’re more limber in general if you regularly incorporate stretching into your running program. Another important reason that all runners should stretch is because properly doing so will lower the risk of injury. Note that I said “properly.” I’ll get to what that means in a bit. What I want to say here is that the anti-stretchers will often give you anecdotal evidence about runners they know who stretch and still get injured. To that I say, “Yeah, and…?” No one has ever claimed that stretching will prevent injury. And when it’s done wrong, it most definitely can cause injury.

But when stretching is done right, it can help keep you injury-free. That’s true for the same reason that a short, taut rope is more likely to break under a given amount of force than a longer one of the same strength. In both cases, the shorter, tighter fiber is being asked to do a relatively greater amount of work, and eventually, it will tear from the task. When your muscles and connective tissues are more supple, they can more easily absorb and distribute the repetitive shock that running subjects them to. Because of these benefits, stretching has some adherents who are as zealous about doing it as some people are opposed to it. I know some runners who couldn’t care less about what you think regarding their political positions, but will subject you to hours of debate if you dare question their approach to stretching. You’ll see these runners at tracks sometimes, stretching for a good half an hour on the infield, and then jogging a mile and heading home. Some runners, it seems, get so carried away with their stretching that they spend far more time on it than they do putting in the miles. Now, I’m all for people doing whatever exercises they find make them feel good. But this is a blog for runners, not would-be yoga masters. It’s hard enough to find time on a regular basis to keep up a consistent running program. I don’t want people to think that on top of their running, they need to spend several hours a week stretching. That’s not necessary, and I think you’re more likely to stick with a stretching routine if it becomes just that, a routine, and an easy one at that.

How much time should you allow for stretching? The program I outline in this blog section should take only about 15 minutes to do. If you can do that four times a week, that’s only one hour out of the 168 hours in a week. I don’t think that’s too much time to spend to contribute significantly to making your running easier, more enjoyable, and less interrupted by injury.

Why stretch?

This has happened to almost everyone who has run for a while: You’re pushing against a wall or car or other big, immovable object, with one leg bending toward the object, the other behind it and straight. Invariably, someone comes along and says, “Need help holding it up?”
Ha, ha. What these people often don’t know is that you’re doing one of the classic runner stretches, the wall push-up. It might look funny, but it sure does a great job of stretching your Achilles tendons and calves, which can get sore and tight with running. As you probably know, those aren’t the only parts of your body that can get sore and tight from running. In this blog section, I’ll show you how to stretch to increase your flexibility throughout your body so that you can run with more efficiency and fewer injuries. I’ll also let you in on a related secret that has helped to keep me on the road for so many years.

How to pick the best treadmill?

You’ve determined that having a treadmill in your home will improve your running by making it more convenient. What do you need to know before you buy one? First off, you better have a nice bit of disposable income if you want to buy one that’s worth the trouble. Although treadmills are available for as little as $400, they’re not suitable for regular running. Their belts often stop running smoothly once you put in some miles on them, they’re much more likely to break down with regular use, and some of them barely go fast enough to allow you to run with normal form. Most treadmill devotees say that a good benchmark price is $1,500. Spend that much, and you can be pretty sure that the combination of features and construction will allow you to run smoothly on the treadmill for several years. Of course, there are manufacturers who will be happy to sell you a treadmill for more than twice that much. These high-end models are a little better, but as with buying a car, once you get to a certain level of quality, you start getting diminishing returns for your extra money.

Because of the expense involved, you should be sure that you’re going to use your treadmill regularly before investing in one. If you do decide to go shopping for one, keep these buying tips in mind:

• Shop at a store that offers several models, that will deliver and assemble your treadmill, and that provides a maintenance contract.
• Take your running gear to the store and run on the model you’re interested in for at least 10 minutes. (If the store won’t let you, take your business elsewhere.)
  
• Be sure that the treadmill doesn’t shake at the top speed that you plan to run on it.
• The machine’s top speed should be faster than the fastest that you plan to run on it. Same thing for elevation. It’s not good to frequently run a treadmill at full power.
• You should be able to change the controls easily while you’re running without having to alter your form drastically.
• The control panel shouldn’t shake while you’re running.
• To keep you from tripping, the belt should start and stop gradually, and the handlebars should be reachable, but not intrusive.

You also should consider how loud the treadmill is when you’re running on it. How much noise is acceptable for you depends on where you’ll be using your treadmill and whether others will be near while you’re using it.

Milling About

How do you know if a treadmill is for you? I strongly recommend that you use one frequently before going out and buying one. Who among us doesn’t have a piece of home exercise equipment that accumulates dust more than it does usage? If you think regularly using a treadmill might be for you, join a health club for a month. See what it’s like to run on a treadmill a few times a week. Be honest with yourself about whether you’ll continue to do so after you’ve put down some pretty serious bucks to have one in your home.
Here are some ways to beat boredom on treadmills:

• Watch the TV news or your favorite sitcom. Next thing you know (you hope), half an hour is up.
• Listen to motivational music.
• Don’t stare at the console—the time will pass more slowly if you do.
• Break your run into segments of various lengths and paces rather than one long haul at the same pace on the same grade.
• Have a friend run “with” you on an adjacent treadmill. Runners of vastly different ability can run side by side on treadmills.
• Run in front of a mirror to monitor your form.
• Visualize yourself out on your favorite running route. Imagine where you would be on that route 10 minutes into your run, 20 minutes into your run, and so on.

Also, if you have a treadmill at home, put inspirational posters or pictures nearby. Just do something so that you’re not always staring at a wall! If you have a treadmill in your home, don’t stick it in that musty corner of your basement. You’re just not going to be motivated to get on it a lot that way. Create as pleasant a setting as you can. Ann Trason, who has the women’s world record for 100K (that’s 62.1 miles!), has her treadmill near a window that overlooks a grassy hill. Also, putting the treadmill near a window gives you the chance to breathe some fresh air during your run, so at least you’re not foregoing all the benefits of running outdoors. If you can’t be near a window, try to have a fan nearby to keep the air circulating. You’re probably going to sweat more on a treadmill because there’s not the wind resistance that you encounter outside. So keep a towel handy.

The Fast Lane on the Beltway

It doesn’t take a blizzard to spur some runners to hop on a treadmill. Many owners just aren’t big fans of heading out in the dark and cold nearly every day for more than a quarter of the year. Treadmills are a great way to stick with your running through the toughest parts of the year. And that can mean summer, too—some runners retreat to treadmills when it’s scorching outside, but air-conditioned inside. How bad can it be always to have a nice, cool bottle of water within reach? Busy parents also appreciate treadmills because they solve the child-care question. These runners keep Junior occupied nearby while they hop on the treadmill for their 30 or 40 minutes of running.
Treadmills have long been a favorite of runners returning from or nursing an injury. The belt on most of them is padded, so you’re assured a softer, more level surface with surer footing than you would probably find outside. There’s also the matter of control. You can have pretty much any kind of workout you want on a good treadmill, all at the touch of a button. You can play with the incline setting to simulate a hilly run, adjust the pace setting to get in some fast running, or just keep the pace constant and see how long you can comfortably keep up.
Notice that I said “pretty much any kind of workout.” One of the few types of workouts that you can’t have on a treadmill is a visually interesting one. That’s the main drawback of treadmills—it can be very difficult not to feel like a gerbil in a cage. No matter how bad the weather, I would prefer to run outside most days. I like looking at my surroundings, encountering Mother Nature, and all that. But that’s me. If treadmills help to make your running easier, then I’m all in favor of your using one.

Terrific Treadmills

In March 1993, a runner I know went to bed one Friday night planning to meet a couple of friends for a long run the next morning. When he woke up, he could barely leave his basement apartment, much less meet his friends—more than two feet of snow had fallen overnight! Being the compulsive sort, this dedicated runner hit the roads anyway and somehow slopped his way around in the blizzard for his daily run. The next day, he did the same. The next day, he had Achilles tendinitis so badly that he was incapacitated for more than a month.

“If only I had a treadmill,” he thought. An increasing number of runners have obviously had similar experiences and thoughts, because since the beginning of the decade, more treadmills have been sold than any other piece of home exercise equipment. The big reason? Convenience.

Im-Pulse Purchases

Almost all heart rate monitors work the same way. You wear a thin plastic chest belt around your torso, just above the top of your rib cage. At the same time, you wear a wristwatch receiver. (These receivers can double as a chronometer.) The belt picks up your heart rate and sends that signal to the receiver. There, your current heart rate is displayed.
When you run with a monitor, it’s tough not to constantly look down at the receiver to see what the readout is, even when you can sense that you’re working at the same level of effort as the last time you checked it. To keep you from having to do this constant checking, many monitors have a feature that enables you to program in a floor and ceiling rate. If you go above or below these rates, the monitor will beep, and you’ll know that you’re out of the heart rate zone that you want to be in. For example, if 60 percent of your maximal heart rate is 108, and 70 percent of it is 126, then you could program the monitor to beep when you go below or above this range. Then you would know either to pick up the pace or to slow down. If you’re going to buy a heart rate monitor, I think you should get one with this feature. This feature makes you more likely to do your normal run without checking the receiver all the time, and it helps to build that ability to listen to your body instead of always relying on signals from the monitor.
Expect to pay between $100 and $180 for a good heart rate monitor. Each works a little differently, so be sure to read the owner’s manual carefully. If you want to read more on heart rate training in general, a good book on the subject is The Heart Rate Monitor Book by Sally Edwards, Polar Electronic, 1993.

More on Heart Rate

OK, so this heart rate training might be for you. But how do you know if and when you’re in that magical 60 percent to 70 percent of maximal heart rate that gives aerobic benefits without increased risk of burnout and injury? Here’s where heart rate training can get tricky, especially if you don’t like the whole idea of quantifying something that can be as free-flowing as running.

If you’re going to train between 60 percent and 70 percent of your maximal heart rate, then you need to know what that top figure is. You’ve probably seen this or that formula for determining your maximal heart rate. The most famous one is 220 minus your age. Say you’re 40 years old. This formula would say that your maximal heart rate is 180 (220–40). Using this number, you should run fast enough to get your heart rate up to between 108 (60 percent of 180) and 126 (70 percent). Sounds simple even for an idiot, right?

Unfortunately, any formula that you use to calculate your maximal heart rate is going to be inaccurate. The formulas are based on the average maximal heart rates for a person of a given age. So an average 40-year-old has a maximal heart rate of 180. Trouble is, your maximal heart rate may be as much as 20 beats above or below this average. Remember that maximal heart rate is something you’re born with; it isn’t a reflection of your fitness. If you have that base level of fitness and want to find your maximal heart rate, here’s how. If you run a 5K race and can honestly say that by the end you were working as hard as you can, then your heart rate at the finish is probably within a few beats of your maximal heart rate. Or try this test: Warm up with some very easy running for 10 minutes or so. Do a few accelerations of 15 to 20 seconds at a pretty fast pace. Catch your breath, and then run as hard as you can for two minutes. Pace yourself so that you maintain about the same speed throughout. If you run as hard as you can, you’ll most likely be within two to three beats of your maximal heart rate by the end of the run. If you aren’t sure whether you gave an all-out effort, jog for 10 minutes and repeat the test. Some runners find that they get a slightly higher heart rate if they perform this test uphill.

You can do these tests without wearing a heart rate monitor if you take your pulse for six seconds almost immediately upon finishing. But if you wait too long or take your pulse for too long, your heart rate is going to start to fall. So take your pulse for six seconds, and then multiply that number by 10 to get a decent estimate of your maximal heart rate. For example, if at the end of a 5K, your heart beats 17 times in six seconds almost immediately after you’ve stopped, then call your maximal heart rate 170. Once you’ve determined your maximal heart rate, the rest is easy. Multiply your maximal heart rate by 60 percent and by 70 percent, memorize those numbers, and be sure that you stay within that range on your normal distance runs.

Understanding Heart Rate

Before looking at heart rate monitors specifically, let’s delve a bit further into heart rate in general. There are many good reasons to use your heart rate as the guiding force in your running, but doing so has drawbacks as well.
Training by heart rate is good because if you know what numbers to use, there’s no more accurate way to gauge your running. When you head out for a run around your neighborhood, how do you know what your pace is? Even if you compare your splits along the way to what you usually run, who’s to say that you know what the earlier times mean? If the terrain is hilly, or the weather is warm, or you’ve been fighting a cold, or you got a bad night’s sleep, your pace from day to day will be affected. Heart-rate training proponents like to point out that heart rate monitors take all of those factors into account, and they do so in a way that helps you to progress in your training with less risk of injury and burnout.
The theory is that your heart rate can reach two extremes: your resting heart rate and your maximal heart rate.
Generally, your resting heart rate decreases as you become fitter because as your heart becomes stronger, it doesn’t have to work as hard to pump the blood that your body needs when you’re sitting around or sleeping. The average American has a resting heart rate of 72. Aerobically fit people usually have heart rates of around 60, and some hard-core distance runners have pulses of 40 or lower.
Your maximal heart rate is the highest rate that your heart can reach. Unlike your resting heart rate, it doesn’t change as you become fitter. Your maximal heart rate is set at birth. Past the age of 30, it decreases by about one beat each year, although it doesn’t decline as rapidly in very fit people. Most beginners should run at about 60 to 70 percent of their maximal heart rate. In that range, you’re going fast enough to get the benefits, but not so fast that you’re continually out of breath and running so hard that you’re more likely to get frustrated or injured. In that range, exercise should feel good.
Your resting heart rate and how hard you have to work to run in the 60 percent to 70 percent range vary from day to day. Heat, hills, stress from work, lingering fatigue from a few bad nights of sleep, dehydration, caffeine—all of these factors can elevate your heart rate. What this means is that if you monitor your training by your running pace, then maintaining that pace is going to be harder from one day to the next. If it’s 50 degrees outside and you’ve spent a restful day with the Sunday paper and you run on a flat course, your nine-minute miles are going to feel a lot easier than if it’s a hot Wednesday, and the office was miserable, and you started your day with three cups of coffee, and you’re running a hilly course.
Heart rate monitors allow for these differences. In a sense, your heart doesn’t care about all that stuff that happened today at the office. It just wants to be worked at a level of effort that’s between 60 percent and 70 percent of its maximum. That’s going to mean running slower after that stressful day at the office than on that blissful Sunday. No big deal—you’ve achieved the same aerobic benefits from both runs. Probably the biggest benefit of heart rate monitors for most runners is that they can help you to keep from working too hard. Sure, you can use monitors to help you stay above that moderate 70 percent-of-max threshold, and many serious racers use them just for that. But recreational runners can use them for the opposite end to great benefit. Using a heart rate monitor can prevent you from overdoing it so that you can continue to progress in your training. Remember, consistent, moderate running is the key to progressing, not intermittent hard bouts of exercise that leave you frazzled and possibly hurt.