RTS on what makes Usain Bolt so fast, how we ourselves can get faster and why it’s always a good idea to avoid burly men wearing marigold gloves!

Respect the Speed

 How to run faster and longer

I think I entered The Matrix last week. Whilst out for a quick run at lunchtime my wrist-worn GPS bleeped to tell me I’d completed the first mile in a sniff over two minutes. “Hmmm, a world record,” I thought, “I must be on form today”.  

Things got better! Within thirty seconds it bleeped again, this time informing me I had covered five miles. I was accelerating, and fast. Bleep followed chirp followed irritating non-stop beep.

In less than four minutes I had apparently run five hundred miles! That put me several times faster than Eurofighter. N.A.T.O. should be offering me a massive contract!

However, as my vision didn’t comprise of columns of fluctuating luminous green symbols I dismissed The Matrix as the cause.

The date was roughly a week after the particle physicists at the Large Hadron Collider at ‘CERN’ in Geneva had started to play subatomic conkers.

Perhaps, as the doom-mongers had predicted, they had inadvertently produced a black hole that was collapsing the universe. Maybe I was running at my normal pace but time wasn’t.

I dismissed these scenarios as low on the probability scale, and switched off my GPS assuming it to be faulty. Disappointed, I accepted the fact that I was probably toddling along at my usual pace of somewhere between slow and not much faster.

Speed! We’d all like more of it, but is it easy to get?

The Need for Speed

Usain Bolt half sprinted, half jogged his way to the one hundred metre Olympic gold in Beijing in a record time of 9.69 seconds. By my dubious calculations, that makes his average speed 23.2 miles per hour. His maximum speed will be faster than that.

In the middle fifty metres he made the rest of the fastest field of runners ever gathered look like they needed mobility scooters. With the race won by the 80-metre mark he had time to do the ‘Y.M.C.A’ dance, spin round and moonwalk over the line to a world record.

Where does his phenomenal speed come from?

Obviously a large part is due to training. But training only fine-tunes the machine. Genetics has given him what the rest of us can only dream of.

Most of the fastest sprinters are of Afro-Caribbean descent. The reason - many Afro-Caribbean’s carry a gene that causes them to produce a high proportion of ‘fast-twitch’ muscle fibres.

This type of fibre provides explosive sprinting power; enabling short bursts of high speed. The down side is that these fibres tire easily and are not suited to endurance events.

Slow-twitch’ fibres, on the other hand, are like the Duracell Bunny – they keep going for a long time. But they can’t produce the same raw sprinting power. Not surprisingly, elite marathon runners generally have a higher proportion of slow-twitch fibres.

So, they don’t go very fast, right?  

Wrong!

Haile Gebrselassie has recently smashed his own marathon world record. His time was 2:03:59. That makes an average speed for 26.2 miles of 12.68mph (20.2kmh). Ok, so not as fast as Bolt, but it’s under 5 minutes per mile all the way. (And Gebrselassie is an asthmatic!)

Let's remember that these are elite athletes paid handsomely for running at the (current) extremes of human performance. We will never match these feats. (Unless you mix up the two records! There’s a chance of running Bolt’s distance at Gebrselassie’s pace – an 18 second 100-metre dash) But there are still things we can do to increase our speed.

How to Run Faster

I doubt any of us know our relative make up of slow and fast twitch muscle fibres. To find that requires a biopsy – fibres are extracted (painfully) and studied under microscope. But we don’t need to know.

To run faster we have to, well, run faster. You can’t run a fast race, whatever the distance, if you haven’t run fast in training.

That doesn’t mean setting off like Bolt, and sprinting flat-out until your eyeballs pop out. Blasting off with legs spinning like Billy Whizz from the Beano (if you don’t remember it ask your mum or dad!) increases the chance of injury and is likely to be counter productive.

What is needed is to run shorter than your race distance at faster than race pace (after a good warm-up of course). You can do this with intervals, Fartlek (kind of a make-it-up-as-you-go-along run) or runs of moderately hard intensity that gradually speed up and finish fast. Just so long as you push the pace.

If you mix these runs up with some long slow ones, to build your stamina, you should notice race times coming down. Training programs for all distances are available from various sources, and all follow this general formula.

Avoiding the Risks

But trying to get more speed without following a sensible program can be risky, as I found out. 

The other evening I happened upon a couple of ‘hoodie’ youths sprinting along the street. They were really going very fast considering one was carrying a DVD player and the other a flat-screen TV.

Their pace was really impressive. In my search for more speed I asked them where theirs came from. They pointed me in the direction of a seedy looking pub.

The place looked rough, but I went in and struck up a conversation with two fit-looking men sitting in the corner. I asked them, “Are you interested in speed?”  

“Pardon?” they replied.

“You know, speed, Billy Whizz!” I answered.

Now, how was I to know they were undercover policemen from the drug squad?

They let me out of the cells the following morning, but not before I’d endured a thorough body search by a burly, hairy officer with very large hands stuffed in a pair of Marigold’s. He certainly tested the twitchiness of my muscle fibres, but not the ones in my legs!!

So work on your speed, but be careful how you do it.

Respect The Speed

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Heart pounding, dizzy, drenched with sweat and muscles screaming. Sound familiar? RTS explains why for runners a little pain can be a good thing.

Respect the Symptoms

 RTS after pushing it at the Spire 10 mile

A few months ago, a man was suffering in the local woods. His physical symptoms were dramatic.

Struggling for breath and gasping noisily, his heart was racing at high speed as if it was trying to thump through his pained chest. He was clammy and sweating, dizzy, and struggling to focus clearly as he endeavoured to stay upright.

His head was pounding, whole body hurting, and a very slight bluish tinge was creeping over his lips. A few passing walkers looked bemused and tried to ignore him as they wandered by. The pains in his legs worsened as he struggled to get home.

Less than two miles away, another man was suffering very similar symptoms – gasping for breath, heart racing and pounding, dizziness, blurred vision, chest pain, blue lips and wobbly legs. He too was clammy, but cold.

Thankfully, unlike the walkers in the woods, his wife didn’t ignore him and phoned for an ambulance just as she heard the thud as he fell to the bathroom floor.

On the face of it these are two very similar scenarios. What separates them is the context in which the symptoms exist.

Pushing it

I was the first man in the woods. Returning home from a long training run, I was pushing the pace very hard near the end of the three-hour session. My blood sugar was low and energy levels were depleted.

Although very uncomfortable, my symptoms were not of any concern to me. I knew they would pass quickly once I reached home and stopped running.

The second man was a neighbour of mine called Paul, an ordinarily healthy but physically inactive man in his late fifties. He was suffering a massive and sudden heart attack.

I passed the ambulance on his driveway as I reached home. Inside his house the paramedics resuscitated him and administered an injection of clot-busting drugs to try to get blood flowing more freely through his coronary arteries.

As runners we become used to pushing our bodies out of their comfort zone, and as a result experiencing, to a small degree, many of the symptoms and sensations described above.

This is fundamental to our chosen activity. Running is inherently uncomfortable, especially when we are new to it. As our fitness improves we tend to run further or faster until we reach a certain level of discomfort. As it gets easier we always strive to make it harder.

Pushing yourself is important, both physically and mentally. This is not only the route to improvement but also opens the door to a world of new experiences and discoveries.

Risk Management

However, exploring your limits is always matched by an element of risk. But risk is inherent in everything we do. Sitting at the computer reading this has a low risk of physical injury but an increased risk of back pain and cardiovascular disease.

What is important is the management of risk, and the risk / benefit ratio. For instance, if you run you risk injury. Even the most robust athlete has a chance of a fall or twisted ankle. All runners risk feeling the discomforting symptoms already mentioned, but the benefits of running are huge.

Some non-runners point to the extremely rare cases when a person has died whilst running, and suggest that the risks associated with the activity are too great. But this is an abuse of statistics to enable them to justify their inactivity. In reply to their poor argument, just look at the number of people who die whilst NOT running! Almost everyone!

Of course I’m not suggesting for one minute that you go out and run hard beyond your ability, or push yourself physically if you are not certain your body is up to the insult (if in doubt always seek medical advice). However, a little bit of regular ‘controlled’ suffering is like putting money in the bank, or saving for your pension. You will reap the benefits in later years.

Putting it in context

Remember that any discomfort or suffering that you feel (whether during running or not) only makes sense when put in context. Returning to the two scenarios at the beginning, my symptoms were within the context of a hard training session. They were totally expected, but more importantly I was in control of them.

I could have stopped the suffering at any time. And the consequence was that, once I had rested and refuelled my energy stores, my body would recover, overcompensate and make me a fitter stronger and faster runner (hopefully).

Paul was not so lucky. Not only were his symptoms totally unexpected and completely out of his control, but within the context of sitting relaxing at home they were terrifyingly serious. The consequence would have been sudden and untimely death had it not been for the speedy intervention of his wife, the ambulance service and the cardiac specialists at a major teaching hospital.

After Paul’s resuscitation he was rushed to the nearest hospital where, thankfully, he has made a complete recovery (he underwent a procedure called an angioplasty and stenting – a balloon was passed into his coronary arteries to re-open the blockage, then a wire mesh was inserted to hold the vessels open).

He has since modified his lifestyle to reduce the chances of a second attack. And guess what? He has a pair of running shoes, and is out pretty much every day putting in the miles on his feet. Now when he feels a little short of breath or his heart rate rising he is in control of his symptoms.

Feel them, but be in control.

Respect The Symptoms.

_______________________________________________________________________________

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In this month's column RTS explains how with a bit of careful servicing and bodywork repair you can upgrade your running performance from Fiesta to Ferrari.

Respect the System - From Fiesta to Ferrari

Take you running performance from Fiesta to Ferrari

As a runner you are a system of interconnected parts, all working as one harmonious machine. You can think of yourself as being like a car. What particular car you are depends on your recent lifestyle and exercise regime.

If you are new to running, the chances are you may be something like a basic Ford Fiesta - fine for short distances but not too speedy (and there may be a little too much luggage in the boot).

But that doesn’t mean you need to stay a Fiesta. Maybe you would like to be an Alpha Romeo, or a four-wheel-drive Subaru Imprezza, or even a Ferrari?

Well, with a bit of regular tinkering with your system it is possible to become that sports car of your dreams.

 

Although you can make major upgrades to your make and model, genetics will put some limit on what you can achieve. For instance, if you want to become a state-of-the-art Formula 1 machine like the Paul Tergats, Paula Radcliffes and Martin Lels of this world then you needed to have come out of a different factory to the rest of us. To compete with them you need to have chosen your parents very carefully.

 

But lets aim to be that Ferrari. What do we need to do to our Fiesta?

 

How Your System Works

 

The obvious start is to get a more powerful engine. To achieve this we need stronger and larger muscle fibres, especially in the legs. And within those fibres we need to develop lots of mitochondria, which are the cellular powerhouses of the muscles.

 

But just putting a powerful engine straight into our Fiesta’s body isn’t going to work. Powering all that extra energy through the same structure will crack the chassis or suspension system. Likewise, our body needs to strengthen. Muscles, bones, joints and connective tissue need to adapt to the new stresses to prevent our suspension system (feet, ankles, knees, hips, back) getting injured.

 

The new big engine will need a new air-intake to work properly. We must develop our respiratory system to efficiently extract oxygen and pass it to the red blood cells for transport to the muscles. We will need a performance exhaust system.  Waste products from the engine (in our case mainly lactic acid and carbon dioxide) have to be excreted as fast as they are produced or performance drops dramatically.

 

It’s no good having systems to transport oxygen and waste products if the pump can’t move the fluids fast enough. ‘Our’ Ferrari requires an efficient, athletic heart that can tirelessly pump large volumes of blood throughout the body.

And what about the pipes between the air intake, engine and exhaust. There is no point loading the blood with oxygen or waste products if it can’t be moved freely round the body. Arteries, veins and capillaries must be developed to accommodate high volumes of blood flow. The blood must be rich in healthy red cells, and flowing freely through a system of newly grown or expanded vessels.

Using all this extra power is going to make things very hot, and the cooling system must be up to the job. Fortunately we have the ability to sweat, which is an excellent way of removing the vast amounts of metabolic heat produced during strenuous exercise. Without this heat loss we would quickly stop and become very ill.

Then there are the questions of stability and traction control. We have to keep our Ferrari stable, on the road, and going in the direction we want. Power is nothing without control. We must control our stability and the transmission of power through our body and to the ground by developing strength in our core abdominal muscles, and also the fine muscles that aid balance and coordination.

The entire system will need to be managed and controlled by computers. With experience the brain learns which neuro-muscular bundles to fire and in what sequence, when to accelerate, what pace is optimum for fuel economy, when and how much to drink, and how much braking force to apply on the corners.

So all in all, turning our Fiesta into a Ferrari sounds like a monumental job of hi-tech precision engineering. And indeed it is!   

Every single component requires upgrading or changing, from the engine to the exhaust, air intake, chassis and suspension, cooling system and hydraulics, and computerised control. 

How to Upgrade 

But here’s the great news. All you have to do to achieve the phenomenal transformation is to go out and run, and your amazing body will do it all for you.

It will upgrade and re-model itself, making all the changes described above, without you having to think about it. You’ll even see the bodywork becoming sleeker and sporty. With a bit of speed training you can even install a turbo, and feel it kick-in as you race past a rival or sprint for the finish.

There are, however, a couple of things you do have to think about.    

Check your tyres regularly! – make sure you have a good pair of proper running shoes. Secondly, you wouldn’t drive your Ferrari to the garage, knowingly fill it with the wrong fuel and expect it to run well. Likewise, ten pints of ‘Old Scrote’ and a dodgy kebab on Saturday night will be unlikely to power you to a PB in Sunday morning’s 10K.

A healthy diet is essential, as this affects every part of your system. (I’m not suggesting total abstinence, all things in moderation).

Put in the effort and the correct training and you will become that Ferrari. You’ll be a highly sophisticated, tuned, toned, complete running system - a system that is far greater than the sum of its parts. You’ll be turning heads as you go for a spin in the country or for a high-speed whiz round your favourite racetrack.

Respect The System.

Happy motoring, and drive carefully. 

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RTS tells us how in his quest to be a men’s magazine cover star, he became a slave to stretching and why cloning himself was the only answer!

Respect The Stretch

   Vin demonstrates the single man's Karma Sutra

I’m in for a long stretch. Probably for life! My crime occurred eleven years ago. With my life in a period of change I wasn’t exercising as much as I ought to have been.

An ‘idle’ demon made a voodoo doll of me, and stuck a pin in my lower back, just above the hip joint on the left side. (This was almost certainly a work-related problem caused by ignorance and poor ergonomics.) For a couple of weeks I ignored it. Eventually my foolishness caught up with me; my back muscles were locked-up.

After a month on the floor, spaced out on muscle relaxants, I had my first bout with a physiotherapist. She did some massage and ultrasound therapy, and prescribed some simple stretches. She also advised me to do more running and cycling. Nice! This was my kind of advice.

Determined not to suffer the same problem again I made a simple stretching routine a part of my daily life. Every morning, upon waking, I’d roll out of bed and onto the floor, and much to my wife’s amusement, spend several minutes pulling my knees up to my chest, and then rolling them down to each side.

After that, on hands and knees I’d arch my back upwards before dipping it down and sticking my bum and chin in the air. For some reason this became known as my ‘porno’ pose (I have no idea why. Honestly!)

For a while this did the trick. My back was good, the running and biking was good. Life was good. Rarely, I’d feel a little unwanted stiffness (there’s nothing worse!), and this always seemed associated with tight hamstrings. No problem then! I simply added hamstrings to my morning stretch routine.

Training for the coast-to-coast run meant a significant increase in the amount of running I was doing. This was a good thing. “Keep running” the physio had said, and she had been right. It definitely helped.

But pushing the distances brought new stiffness in the calf and quad muscles. Only one thing for it, the stretching routine had to be extended. By this time it was taking about twenty minutes to hit the floor, loosen my back, extend the hamstrings, release tension in tight quads and relax tired calf muscles. I had to set the alarm clock ever earlier to make sure I wasn’t late for work.

I wasn’t the only one at it. My running buddy, Vin, was becoming ‘black-belt Ninja-master’ of the exotic never-seen-before stretch.

We’d stop mid way into long training runs and he’d contort himself into all manner of seemingly impossible positions. Some of them were dynamic stretches where he’d writhe about, limbs twisting like a basket of cobras. It was as if he was working his way through the ‘single man’s Karma Sutra’.

A strive towards a higher level of total-body conditioning brought the addition of some upper body exercises to the routine. Core strengthening and press-ups were added.

I became a fanatic. Hooked on the desire for a flexible body I’d be stretching before going to bed as well as in the morning and every time I ran.

I blamed those super-fit looking models on the front of men’s magazines. Nobody really looks like that. The pictures must be airbrushed. They should be banned. Young children could be duped into a life of exercise trying to copy them. This would pose a serious health risk to the fast food and computer games industries.

A foolish training session - sprinting too fast up a slope too steep, without (surprisingly) sufficient warm-up - partially tore an Achilles tendon. Then, several months later, anterior knee pain began to niggle.

Both these events resulted in further visits to the physio’s, and would you believe it, new additions to the stretching regime. Achilles rehab and ilio-tibial band flexibility drills were included. I now needed a calendar rather than a watch to time my routine.

The stretching had finally exceeded critical mass. The routine was now taking so long that I was having to get up before I’d even gone to bed.

I didn’t know whether I was doing me pre-sleep stretch, post-sleep stretch, pre-run or post-run stretch. It all merged into one continuous bout of contortionism. There weren’t enough hours in the day. There was nothing else for it. I had myself cloned!

To avoid confusing the Kids by having two Dads around I hid my clone away in the loft. I had created my own Dorian Gray.

In a parallel to Oscar Wilde’s ‘Picture of Dorian Gray’, my clone spent all day in the attic performing stretches, leaving me free to pursue a beautiful flexible existence.

He steadily becomes more stiff and crumbly whilst I maintain perfect youthful suppleness. I can even touch my toes again – with the back of my head!

So far it’s going fine. (I stuck my head through the loft hatch the other day and saw my clone working hard to ensure his ear lobes maintained just the right degree of flexibility.) But I get the feeling it’s all going to end in tears.

There’s a moral to this tale: it’s good to stretch, but don’t get carried away.

So, for my clone and I the stretch goes on. There appears to be no time off for good behaviour.

Respect the Stretch. 

 

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Yes he’s back! Welcome to another edition of the RTS (Respect the Stupidity) Column.

 

In his own unique style, this time RTS talks about motivation, cavemen, wellbeing and even manages to tell us about his Kylie fixation!

 

Intrigued? You’d better read on.’

 

 

Respect The Motivation

  RTS hunting wild bison across the dales.

“Ah, come into my world Mr Respect. Another hypnotherapy session is it? Well, lay on the couch there and let’s get started”.

 “OK, I believe in you. What do I have to do?” 

“Breathe as I stare in your eyes! That’s it, nice deep breathing. You’ll feel like you’re spinning around. Good! Now, we’re going to step back in time”.

 “To my childhood? Is it my turn on the swing?” 

“No, way before then.”

 

“Not the Battle of Marathon again, we did that last week. My arms are still sore from carrying Phidippides’ sword for him!” 

 

“Even before then. We’ve gone back tens of thousands of years. You are a hunter-gatherer living on the African plains. Confide in me, how do you feel?”

 

“I’m hungry, very hungry. Is there a McDonalds nearby? Maybe some chocolate?” 

 

“No, fast food has not been invented yet. You’re living on slow food. And the slower the better because you’ve got to catch it! What are you doing right now?”

 

 “I’m running………”

 

 

Running produces profound positive effects both physically and psychologically.

 

There is no doubt that it leads to improved health and fitness. Statistically, runners are healthier, live for longer, and have a lower rate of ‘all-cause’ mortality than non-exercisers. (This does beg the question ‘what do runners die from’? Perhaps we get to 100,000 miles and then spontaneously self-combust!)

 

And contrary to popular belief, there is some evidence that running delays the onset of arthritis – providing there is no underlying injury or biomechanical abnormality.

 

A common reason to lace up the trainers and get out for a few miles is the incentive of attaining a better body. Regular running tones muscle, reduces excess fat, and re-shapes a body that has succumbed to gravity and the excesses of modern living. Getting a different body seems a perfectly reasonable idea to me. I’d love Kylie’s body! But I should be so lucky! I’m sure I’m never going to get it, even for one night (which is good because my wife would kill me. Better the devil you know!).

Running lowers blood pressure and produces a release of endorphins, the combined effects of which relieve symptoms stress. The endorphins produce ‘runner’s high’ and elicit a fantastic feeling of wellbeing.

The above factors help to raise self-esteem, and it is no surprise that running is sometimes prescribed to reduce symptoms of depression.

As well as running away from our stress, there are many things to run towards. Having a goal, such as a local race, a big city marathon, or a worthy fund-raising run drives many of us to get out and train. And we feel great when we’ve put in the effort to train when there’s been an easier option to stay in front of the television. The camaraderie, collective suffering and shared elation of thousands of runners can induce a heady and addictive cocktail of emotions.  

                           

But deep beneath these obvious incentives to get out and run lies a more subliminal urge that may nag away at our subconscious mind. That is one based in our genetics, and I remind you of the hypothetical ‘hypnotherapist’ conversation above.          

  

Evidence suggests we as humans evolved as hunter-gatherers on the plains of Africa many millennia ago. This harsh existence centred on the continuous search for food. Large distances needed to be covered on foot, with the occasional sprint to catch animals for meat, or to escape a predator, or fight an enemy. Running was necessary for survival, both of the individual and the community.

Our anatomical make-up also suggests a running design – just study those calf/achilles complexes and those gluteus maximus muscles (I do love to study a good pair of gluteus maximus. Oops, we’re back to red-blooded woman kylie again!).

We have another basic urge that is balanced by the need to run (no, not that urge! I just can’t get you out of my head, Kylie!). That is the desire to eat as much highly-calorific food as we can. Our ancestors didn’t know when the next meal might be coming, so food had to be shovelled in to survive periods of famine. This scenario no longer exists in developed countries, but the urge persists. Running is a natural balance to gluttony.

How far or fast you run matters only to you. Likewise, where you do it, or with who. Some love the treadmill or the street. I’m fortunate to live where I can run on hills and open moorland. Not only are the sights and sounds fantastic, but also the physical act of running becomes a part of the aesthetic. My mind clears of the day-to-day junk and I feel like part of the glorious nature surrounding me. Running is a release.

Apart from the extremely rare times that I’ve struggled home with an injury, I’ve never regretted going for a run. Sure, I’ve sometimes come home wet, maybe a little cold, a bit stiff and sore, and with more blisters and fewer toenails, but I wouldn’t change a thing. In contrast I have regretted not running when I’ve allowed some lame excuse to get the better of me.

Sometimes it is hard to get the shoes on and head out of the door, particularly if the weather isn’t good, or you’re comfortable on the sofa. But in these cases, remember why YOU run, what YOUR goals are. Think of YOUR motivation and get out there.

You’ll feel great afterwards, especially if you’ve braved the elements as well as enjoyed the endorphin fix and ticked off the miles on the training log. Hand on your heart, it feels great doesn’t it?