drakepruitt

Technology and "Garbage Miles."

Last week I posted about the value of exercise in the imperfect outdoors versus the controlled conditions of indoors with all the aids of technology. Thanks to some of you for your comments and feedback. To be clear, I get a lot of value from being outdoors in the physical world so to speak, but I still love the role that technology plays in athletics.

Yesterday, I was talking to an experienced iron-man triathlete friend of mine about my training regimen, and specifically how I was keeping track of my running times on my distance runs. You know, the stuff you hear all the time from weekend jocks-- "I did 8 miles today, broke 8 minutes per mile...."-- He made kind of a face-- I would describe as cross between bemused, knowing, and disgusted-- and offered  "So you aren't traing for your race with the aid of a heart rate monitor?" I told him that it was in the car, and I was using my watch, and I know my pace and so on. Plus, I want to stick to my minutes per mile target. Yadda yadda. Right? He just smiled and said "Oh, you're logging garbage miles. Might as well chuck those sessions in the can!"

After a little bit of embarrassed to and fro, it came down to this: Training without a heart rate monitor is like driving your stick-shift car, without knowing what gear you're in. Though you ultimately get to where you are going, your car has been subjected to huge stresses from running high RPMs (aka driving at highway speeds in 1st gear) to choking from insufficient power (aka climbing hills in 5th gear). As a result, the car is really inefficient at using fuel, avoiding the repair shop, and generally ends up with a shorter lifespan. I've known this for awhile-- even read a few books on it years ago-- but let's face it, you can't really get a lot of oomph at the bar telling your buddies "I ran 8 miles at 85% of my max heart rate today. Man, I was flying." And you'll likely discover that you end up running slower than you want to when focused on keeping your heart rate in the aerorbic (beneficial) zones.

The bigger story is that we now know the science for effective training, and the average athlete has access to unbelieveable technology, particularly GPS enabled heart rate monitors that can tell you everything from how far you ran and where, to how your tachometer (heart rate) varied throughout the run. And, with easy integration to online databases and services, you can easily record, share and collaborate on your performance data with others. So, instead of logging "garbage miles," you have the data to understand your true fitness, and can get better results to boot.

My next door neighbor is training for a half-ironman in July, and his coach is located in North Carolina. The coach-athlete relationship exists purely online and via daily email dispatches-- exchanges of uploaded data from his heart rate monitor, and so on.  This is an amazing opportunity for all athletes to have access to top of the line instruction and improve their performances as a result.

So for me, it's been a good reminder that technology plays a hugely helpful role in making us better performers and helping us to achieve our goals. In the meantime, if you happen to be out on one of your training runs, look for me. I'll be the one staring at my tachometer!

Real World Work: a tale

I'm training for a half marathon this summer, and it's during my workouts that I do some of my more energized thinking- anything to forget about the side cramps! This morning, it was time for sprints at the local track, and I had a breakthru of sorts about the rewards that come from the physical, versus man-made worlds around us. Perhaps you'll find it interesting as you dive into that pile of unfinished DMs on Twitter.

To get to the track, I passed my well equipped, always open gym, chock full of treadmills all ready and at my service. Something about running indoors on an early Spring morning didn't feel quite right, so I drove to the track-- deserted in the early am,  save for a flock of geese making a buffet out of the dewy grass in the middle.

I hadn't been there in awhile, and I discovered it was not in the shape I imagined-- it was cinder rather than paved, and there were no  markings for lanes, finish lines, and the like.  Also, the track sits on a field below a low rise, so in spite of the rising sun, the air was crisp and full of hoary frost as I chugged down from the car. Hmm. Chilly, unmarked, desolate. Maybe the gym was a better idea after all.

 On my warmup jog, I fussed with my stopwatch-the usual-- can't remember how to set it to time splits and resets thanks to that user manual long since thrown away. Plodding along, mashing buttons to no avail, I noticed that the track surface was really uneven-- ruts from rain, weeds growing through the cinders. My feet skidded around, ankles rolling, and I started to feel like this was a bad idea. As I came around to the backstretch, I discovered what I hadn't seen before-- the crown jewel of this circus minimus --this section of the track was ... uphill! Not a huge hill, but a hill nonetheless. I felt it in my legs as I pushed along, as if a stiff breeze had hit me bow-on from out of nowhere.

Great. Sprint work? Without a timer, on a track without markings? Rutted, weedy and now, uphill! Just great. My frustration brought my pace to a crawl and then finally to a stop. "I need get out of here and head back to the gym!" The geese paused their fescue-fest, raisng heads in unison, beady eyes trained on me. "How much time will it take to get back to my gym,  nicely lit, warm, with shiny machines rubbery black belts, all able to time themselves? Hell, I even get fresh towels and water service to boot!" The geese just stared, unblinking, wary.

And then, it hit me-- clarity about why I was there in the first place. In little over 10 weeks time, I'm running a race..outdoors...with lots of other people... on streets with curbs, bumps, cracks and yes, hills! As I saw through my frustration, I realized that in spite of all it's real world discomforts, this ruddy ring was in fact THE BEST place for me to do my work because it simulates nothing. Authentic. Messy. Undefined. It's the real world. The world that I have to succeed in come the end of June.

So, with renewed determeination, some pacing and improvisation with a stick, I found the way to set my marks. And, though I couldn't crack the code, I managed to get my watch in countdown mode. Soon, I was off, getting my sprints done-- hills, ruts and weeds bedamned. It wasn't easy, especially on the uphills. But by the end, I felt exhilerated and a little self proud, standing there on a deserted track, with own flock of geeese, before most had ventured out of bed. I overcame what were minor challenges to achieve my goal for the morning.

I'll be going back again for my next sprint workout, and I will leave the machines at the gym to someone else. How about you?