The Letup, Part I

I don't recover well. In general. Sure, I can stay up all night - for whatever reason - but it takes me a couple days to get back into sorts. I can give a big effort - at the office, at the bars, what have you - but I've got to crawl out of that hole eventually. I have to let up, and it takes longer for me than it does for most. At least, it does currently. It's something I hope I can learn to have some say in...at least a little.

The funny thing is, I've found this same trend in my running. In hindsight it's not surprising, really, but the same themes that flit through my professional and personal life also appear in my athletic one. I didn't start to realize this, though, until I started to realize what it meant to run hard. To really push. And that happened about a year ago.

I have no track background, so I was never exposed to pure sprint workouts before last year. My only experience doing "track workouts" was in training for ultimate. I still remember a workout my freshman year in college where we were told to run 8x200m, each in under 30 seconds. I was flabbergasted at such a workout. How could I ever do it! How could we ever do it? 30 seconds is a fast 200. How was I going to run 8 in a row? I don't remember exactly how much we rested - knowing that team...too little - but I do remember that we struggled to complete the workout. And for good reason. It was a tough workout, for ultimate. For that kind of training.

Fast forward to last year. I'd started my program and was enjoying it. I spent the first half of the program training indoors where it was tough to know exactly how fast I was running. By the end of March, I was running outdoors and my 200 times were still close to that 3os mark; I had never broken the 27-28 barrier (and those times were clocked indoors). Because that was fast. Then one day, in the midst of a full-rest, full-effort 200m workout that I hadn't felt particularly good going in to, I ran a 29 on my second rep, and then for whatever reason, I got fired up. I timed my next rep to coincide with a jogger circling the track and ran a 28. Two reps later, a 27.2. Then a 26.7, followed by a 26.1 and a 26.2. Here's what I wrote after that workout:

April 2, 2008:
"After the 29, I timed my run to coincide with a jogger so I could at least run by someone. That helped kick up my competitiveness, I think, and even though I was the only one on the track from that point on, I was able to fire myself up before running. Once I broke the 28 barrier, I went for the 27 barrier and then the 26 barrier. I definitely felt a lot faster once the passion kicked in, but I've definitely got to get my blood up to run around a 26. I got sick after the 5th rep and just before the 7th rep but finished out just fine. I was pretty exhausted, both mentally and physically, after this workout. At least I know now that I'm capable of running much faster than a 27-28 in training. I think breaking that mental hurdle was a good step, even if I'm not able to train at that speed on a consistent basis."

The thing I hadn't realized then was that I was running sprint workouts as an ultimate player. Not as a sprinter. I didn't actually know what fast was for me. In fact, I had no idea. Through ultimate, I simply had in my mind what fast was, so a couple seconds faster than that was really fast. Any faster than that was out of my league. But slowly I started to understand. No, there are different fasts. On the track, since you're not worried about field position or locating the disc, or when/what you're going to do next, you can focus on other things. Things that will make you faster, like pumping your arms. Arms lead your stride. The harder you pump, the faster you'll go. Like bringing your hips underneath you when you run. They call this "running tall." It brings your center of gravity forward and centers your weight over your stride. Like relaxing all unnecessary muscles. Watch world class sprinters run and you'll see their cheeks bouncing all over the place. To quote Alison (the brains, remember), this is partly because they're running so fast. But it's also because they have relaxed all muscles they don't need for the task at hand. Like dorsiflexion*. By keeping your feet flexed so they make about a 90 degree angle with your shin at all times, you activate your calves to get the most work out of them.

Over the past year, I've slowly gotten better at doing all these things. It's not rocket science. The same things that made me faster would make you faster. My guess is, if the athletes reading this post all did my same workouts, I'd be right about in the middle of the pack. Maybe slightly above average, but not by much. Most of us would be in the same ballpark; some of you would be a level above. I have no doubt about that. For those of you who don't play ultimate or don't care about sprinting, I'm sure you could achieve a similar degree of improvement in some other arena. I just feel like we sell ourselves short too often. I think we could surprise ourselves.

Andrew

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*quick demo: stand up with your arms down at your sides; now, keeping your elbow against your body, lift your lower arm so it's pointing forward and parallel to the floor..."walking like an Egyptian" for the SNL fans; start by keeping your hand flat out in front of you like it's on a tabletop and notice your bicep; it's very loose with no muscles activated; now simply rotate your wrist so that you thumb points skyward; you should notice you bicep respond, and tighten somewhat...ready for work, after this simple motion; this is the same concept as dorsiflexion