The big surprise is that the transition happened very fast like flipping a switch. So I don’t know what exactly the one change that made this transition, but I believe all these factors are generally valuable, so take what works for you and leave the rest 🙂
A quick background, I started running in early 2019 only once a week for about 3-5 miles with a running group at work. Then started triathlon training early 2020. In 2020/2021, I had run about 1,000 miles each year (give or take). In 2022, I’m on track for running 1,000 miles as well (not a super serious runner).
How it was
During my running career, I was always considering the 10:00min/mi as the feel good day marathon running pace (if all conditions are perfect). Which majority of days end up to be more towards 11:00 min/mi. Quick recap on my starting races:
- My first long run in Apr 2019 was a 21 miler and I finished in 3h56m.
- July 2019, SF Marathon finished 5h57m (with a knee/IT-band injury).
- Afterwards, all my marathon attempts were in an (solo) IM and it was more than 5.5 hours.
- In Dec 2021, I ran CIM for the first time and finished in 3h58m, and that was a great achievement.
- In Feb 2022, UMFL’s day 3, running 52.4 miles, took me 11h46m to finish, after a shin injury at mile 20.
The Challenge
Unlike many athletes my off season is not during the dark/cold winter months, it’s during Ramadan time, which in 2022 was in April. In May 2022, my first race was IM70.3 in Victoria, BC. I had a very interesting observation. This was my first time in a race’s run, the only limitation is my HR, not an injury/pain/tightness I developed during the race. The only change I have made in that race was one thing, I threw all the rules I learned about in the trash, and just ran with a relaxed body. That was a pause point and discussion with my coach (Andrew Sellergren), which he was very supportive of immediately.
Over my career, I have been gathering knowledge to learn the perfect running form and worked very hard on it with:
- Starting runs with lots of drills
- PT and running strength dedicated times
- Focus on good form with hip drive, square torso, relaxed elbow swings, and …
- The one that I have always struggled with is high cadence. The 170+spm cadence is insanely hard for someone like me. I’m 6’3”, 225lbs, size 14 shoes. I don’t know what’s wrong, but even when I land on the ball of my foot underneath my hips, it is almost impossible to get close to that number, normally averaging around 154spm.
The Secret Sauce
I have dedicated many runs, just to work with metronome, and ended up (later realizations) that I exert more energy controlling my body to hit this 160+ or 170+ cadence. Which is not natural at all. The more important rule is to have a relaxed body and not tense. So after discussion with Andrew here are my new running form:
- Passively active core
- Relaxed breathing (and more preferably through the belly)
- Relaxed shoulder and rounded chest
- Shoulder relaxation translates to relaxed swinging elbow
- Hip drives you forward
- Ball foot landing under your hips
- Don’t think about cadence, just fly freely.
This was a secret sauce to me. I started to see lots of good results during June/July/August after I started sticking to this plans whether in training or races:
- Every few runs, Garmin updates my running threshold with 15+ seconds every time.
- My normal easy transition run started to be average sub 8:00 min/mi, when normally it was 11:00 min/mi.
- In July 2022, SF Double Marathon finished in 8h28m, over 3h PR for the same distance in 5 months! Given that I was very conservative as I was panicking that I’m so fast and this would hurt me and I’ll fail the race
- My current running threshold is 7:36 min/mi @ 190 bpm.
The crème on top
In August 2022, I started making a life revolution and changed a lot aspects:
- Believing that any decision I make impacts my life somehow directly or indirectly, I’m a whole person, what I eat, the way I sleep, my behaviors, my habits, all impacts my relationships, work, life, training, ..etc.
- Changing my diet completely focused mainly on health (not just for training) and focusing on long term consistency. So for example, eliminating gluten, dairy, eggs that I might have sensitivity towards, consuming only clean nutrition, organic, grass fed, wild caught, …etc. Main protein source is fish and some chicken, and rarely red meat (almost none).
- Started working with a new doctor (holistic/integrative medicine) and got lots of action items out of the relationship that I could work on and improve. Improving my vitamin levels, pre-diabetic condition, body inflammation, gut health, ..etc.
- I worked with a Sports nutritionist, and the education I got from her was extremely valuable and changed my life.
Sports Nutritionist Tips for Endurance
One of the issues I had with my nutrition and didn’t feel like I belong to this sport is the crappy food that I eat just to have energy for my training, which in result impacts my general health, for example, pre-diabetes was becoming more an more serious for me, lack of energy, bad moods, brain fog, ..etc.
So this relationship with the sport nutritionist helped a lot by following those basic rules:
- Consume 5-6 small meals a day.
- DO NOT get yourself to be hungry. This is the time when cravings come up due to low glucose in your blood. When I crave In-N-Out, I immediately know that I should start eating.
- Consume a Carbs based diet. Carbs/Protein/Fat 60%/20%/20% diet.
- Always keep your fridge stocked with good food options.
- Plan your day ahead, when you are going out, take your snacks with you.
- Calories in-take per day changes based on the activity level of the day, so for example for me, zero or low activity is a 2600C day, 1-3 hours is 3600C, 3h+ is 4500C. (Not a hard rule, I play a lot with it based on activities).
- Consume only complex carbs in your meals, except pre/during/post workouts, you have to consume only simple carbs.
- I used to over consume fuel during workouts either during training or racing, now for training I consume less than half the calories I exerted per hour (half are fat based, and I don’t want to replenish all the glycogen that I exerte too), for example if 1hour I exert 500C, I would consume 230C.
- This had impressive results for me in IMCA 2022! And how I feel during training and racing. Helped with starting to see a consistent drop in my weight by burning more fat.
The Measurement
When I started planning this big change in August, I booked a Bodyspec DEXA scan to have a baseline. In mid October (2 months exactly), I did another scan to check the progress and readjust the course towards my goals. The results were so phenomenal that I couldn’t believe it. All the metrics and aspects have not just improved, but for the first time in my life they are in the optimal range, and that’s just the start.
Closing
The big change is to challenge your habituation and do what is best for you, put your oxygen mask first. The supposedly hard changes like eating healthy, does not need to be hard, find the healthy food that is tasty and you enjoy. Think consistency not quality. It’s okay to lose it one time, but get back on the course again.