Light Weigh, A Sound Mind

The Cutting-Edge Runner: How to Use the Latest Science and Technology to Run Longer, Stronger, and Faster
by Matt Fitzgerald

(Page 5 of 5)

Characteristic #7: Light Weight

Science Says Athletes who have a generally optimistic disposition are more likely to exceed their expectations in competition than athletes who are more pessimistic in their general outlook.

Did I have to bring up the topic of body weight? Unfortunately, yes. Being light is as beneficial to performance in long-distance running as any other physical characteristic. As body weight increases, so does the energy cost of running at any given speed. Running is a form of weight lifting–and the more weight you carry, the more weight you must lift. In one study, the addition of 1 kilogram of weight was shown to increase the energy cost of running by 3.5 percent. This loss of economy would turn a 40-minute 10-K runner into a 41:28 10-K runner.

How do you train to lose weight? You don't. If your primary goal is to lose weight, see a weight loss counselor. If your primary goal is to become a better runner, and you happen to be carrying a few extra pounds, you're best off training and eating for maximum performance. That is, training and eating the same way you would if you were already at an ideal weight. Your weight will take care of itself. Ultimately, quality training is more beneficial than caloric restriction for body composition (i.e., body fat percentage, a truer measure of health and fitness than weight, which is linked to height and body type). In fact, numerous studies have shown that caloric restriction negatively affects training.

Well-fueled muscles are able to work harder–and hard work burns fat and preserves lean muscle. My own sports nutritionist has told me that she improves her clients' body composition, performance, and overall health more often by increasing their caloric intake (along with the quality of those calories) than by decreasing it.

Characteristic #8: A Sound Mind

The sport of running involves a variety of significant mental challenges– including race suffering, fear of performing poorly, and the frustration of injury–that some runners overcome better than others. Mental fitness is a collection of psychological attributes that help runners surmount the mental challenges of training and racing. Over the past several decades, sports psychologists have intensively studied the mind's influence on sports performance and have found the same set of attributes and strategies occurring time and again in the most successful athletes.

One such study was conducted by Martin Seligman, Ph.D., professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Seligman used a questionnaire to categorize individual swimmers on the University of California at Berkeley's swim team as "optimists" or "pessimists" prior to the competitive season. The swimmers and their coaches then rated each race performance of each swimmer throughout the season as either "better than expected" or "worse than expected." By the end of the season, the pessimists had twice as many "worse than expected" performances as the optimists.

Besides optimism, other key attributes that sports psychologists have found to characterize mental fitness are confidence, focus, resilience, emotional control, motivation, and discipline. Sports psychologists have also identified a set of powerful mental techniques that are routinely practiced by those who possess a high degree of mental fitness. These techniques include effective goal setting and imaging. The systematic cultivation of mental fitness and practice of proven mental techniques is called mental training. Cutting-edge mental training is the topic of chapter 12.

	HIGH-TECH HELP
	RACE TIME CALCULATORS

When scientists make a big discovery, they sometimes get caught up in the excitement of it and confer greater significance upon the object of their discovery than it actually deserves. This is what happened when exercise physiologists learned how to measure VO₂max and subsequently discovered that elite endurance athletes always have an exceptionally large aerobic capacity. It wasn't long before the practice of testing runners and other athletes to determine their VO₂max and therefore their racing potential became widespread.

It has since become apparent that while a large aerobic capacity is a significant factor in running ability, other physiological characteristics (as discussed in this chapter) are also important. All great runners have at least a relatively high VO₂max, but not all runners with a high VO₂max are great. Two runners with the same VO₂max seldom run the same times in races, and two runners who run the same times in races seldom have the same VO₂max.

Because so many physiological characteristics underlie running ability, no single one of them is an exact predictor of race times. The best predictor of a runner's finishing time at any given race distance is actually his or her race time at another distance. It is widely documented that runners who run the same time at any distance over a mile tend to run more or less the same time at every distance straight up through the marathon.

In the 1960s, statisticians, sports scientists, and running coaches began to gather data on runners' best times at standard race distances, analyzed it, and found clear, consistent mathematical relationships among average paces maintained over the various distances. Finally, they created formulas that runners could use to obtain a finish time prediction for a particular race distance based on a recent result at another race distance. Digital technology has allowed programmers to create simple calculators that make this process even easier. These calculators are very handy for establishing goal times and also for quantifying your potential for improvement. For example, one of the athletes I coach recently set a 10-K personal record of 33:55. According to a formula developed by renowned running coach and exercise physiologist Jack Daniels, Ph.D., who has worked with elite runners such as Alberto Salazar and Joan Benoit Samuelson, this is the equivalent of a 16:20 5-K. Since this athlete has already run a 16:01 5-K, I have reason to believe that he can further improve his 10-K time.

While fun and practical, race time calculators are not perfect. If they were perfect, they would all produce the same results, and they do not. Therefore if you choose to use them, you should use more than one of them to produce predicted time ranges instead of specific predicted times. It's also important to note that all of the calculators assume appropriate training for each distance. According to one calculator, if you've run a recent 5-K in 21:02, you can expect to run a marathon in 3:21:00. But it's very unlikely that you'll run the predicted marathon time on the same training you did for the 5-K.

Here are some Web sites with race time prediction calculators.

	www.marathonguide.com
	www.runnersweb.com
	www.runnersworld.com
	www.runningtimes.com

KEY POINTS

	It's best to train in ways that take advantage of the latest science.
	Developing impact-resistant bones and soft tissues is the first priority of training.
	A strong aerobic system is the most important performance characteristic in runners.
	While sprinting ability is beneficial to distance runners, there's no need to train to increase your top-end speed.
	Your brain is as crucial as your lungs and muscles to running performance and should not be neglected in your training approach.

© 2005 by Matt Fitzgerald

About the Author

Matt Fitzgerald, runner, triathlete, and coach, is a former editor and current contributor for Triathlete magazine. He writes articles for such national publications as Men's Health, Men's Fitness, Outside, Fitness Runner, and the Runner's World Web site, and serves as managing editor of the sports nutrition Web site, Pioneering Muscles.