We Run and Ride

Incremental: denoting a small positive or negative change in a variable quantity or function or; increasing or adding on, especially in a regular series. To improve by increments is to get better in small yet sometimes important ways.

The word increment is fascinating in part because it is so old. It dates from 1375-1425, with roots in late Middle English based on incrē (scere) to grow (see increase) + -mentum -ment.

Now that you’re incrementally smarter about the roots of the word, let’s consider what increments actually mean to you as an endurance athlete. Because it’s rare that people in endurance sports achieve improvement by leaps and bounds. More often improvement comes about increments, which are barely detectable changes in your body and mind that lead to better performance.

That’s why the word ‘incremental’ can be so illuminating for endurance athletes. It’s not just a question of running, cycling or swimming faster. Getting better at a sport is about mental planning for improvement as well as physical effort. Then it comes down to embracing those newfound capabilities, however small or large they may be.

A growing belief in yourself generally happens in increments.

Incremental progress

I recall the first time that I broke 32:00 in the 10k. I’d flirted with the barrier several times. But once I’d run 31:58, it seemed far more possible to take more time off the PR. But the ability to run 20 seconds faster than my previous 10K was hard earned. I set up an incremental training system to achieve that goal. For example, I’d been doing 400 repeats at 68-70 (which is 4:40 per mile pace) and half miles at 2:20-2:25 (which is 4:50 per mile pace). To push my steady state to a faster pace, I dropped my 400 repeat pace by two seconds, doing 8 X 400, then 10 X 400, then 12 X 400 with a half lap jog between.

This incremental change involved two standards: a faster per-lap pace and a bi-weekly increase in total intervals. This took about three months.

This produced an equally incremental change in the 800 repeats, which dropped to 2:15, or 4:30 mile pace. And a month out from the target race I was doing mile repeats in 4:45 to 4:50.

So you can see how incremental training works to increase both speed and endurance.

Next level

But my next goal was to run 31:10 for 10K. That was 5:00 flat pace. And that meant plenty of interval training at 4:30 pace and below to build ease of running at a much faster past. I used the same methods that worked to get below 32:00 pace. Within a year, I’d reached that goal.

The same principles hold true with cycling, and now swimming. Breaking your goals down into increments also has a mental effect. You begin to feel and believe in the progress you want to achieve. And to this end there were races along the way in which I shot for 31:40, then 31:30. Finally, in a race where six other running club teammates were helping with the pace, I ran that target 31:10 10K.

These same methods were recently used in an attempt to break the two-hour marathon. Nike athletes were schooled in precise pacing. They also had the benefit of highly controlled conditions on a relatively flat racing surface and a ‘human wedge’ to create a draft space for the lead runners to move with the least wind resistance. As quoted in a Runner’s World article about the effort, the team responsible for the effort decided to “science the shit” out of the marathon. And it worked. They ran 2:00:25, which is essentially a two-hour marathon. It was only a second slower per mile than the pace necessary to claim 1:59:59.

Metrics help

In endurance training, the increments by which we measure ourselves are typically ‘datametrics’ gathered through devices. These devices can range from a simple chronometer to a heart monitor all the way to power meters built into a bicycle crank.

We can thus measure ourselves by increments unimaginable just 20 years ago. But like all endurance athletes, we must be careful not to become too obsessed with such data as indicators of our true fitness. Athletes must also possess the ability to sense the relative merit of their efforts by natural means. Obviously none of these judgements about ourselves, be they supposedly objective datametrics or native sense of pace, are never 100% accurate. A number of factors such as temperature, precipitation, wind and other training conditions can greatly affect perceptions and performance on any given day.

So the true benefit of incremental training is found when the word is broken back down. You do the ‘incre’ part to measure your efforts toward goals, and the ‘mental’ part is found in trusting that you’ve done the work to hold the pace.

Thus it is truly incre-mental work we’re doing.

Sue and I joined more than 20 triathletes for a half-Ironman prep session before riding. 

We buzzed up to Madison, Wisconsin this weekend for a test ride on the bike course for the Half-Ironman event Sue will be doing this summer. The Half-Ironman course goes south from Madison as compared to the full Ironman course that goes west. But be assured of one thing; there is no shortage of hills to the south.

Which meant the group with which we rode split up within the first ten miles. That was expected. The range of athletes testing the course was quite wide, and it’s generally not the practice of triathletes to draft on long rides anyway.

Sue was feeling good., and we rode together through 25 miles. Then the hills started to take effect on me. Overall, the course offered 2200 feet of climbing. That makes an honest cyclist of you whether you’re male or female, novice or expert. But I know there was trouble in my legs early on. They felt tired the very first climb. Yes, sometimes things improve as you go along and warm up. So I kept up hope. But some days are just not meant to be.

Sunrise over the woods and lake in Madison, Wisconsin

In my case recent events had cost me some energy. Getting married the previous weekend was a blast, but it legitimately was (in a good way) an emotional and physical drain. At work on Tuesday, I literally closed my eyes while typing and woke up thirty seconds later sitting at my desk in a daze.

But like all dedicated dopes, I had a run scheduled that evening, so I dropped off the car at the train station for Sue and ran home. That run did not go well.

For one thing, I got a little too experimental cutting through a forest preserve on my way back home. Somehow I forgot there was a creek bisecting the preserve, and the recent rains had flooded a field I tried to cross. My shoes got soaked. Then I made the brilliant decision to jump the creek rather than backtrack. So I backed up twenty feet and made a running leap to clear the six foot stream. And wound up on my ass in the water. Even with my beloved Saucony waterproof sweats on, the water came right through.

After that little incident, with heavy shoes and a soggy ass too boot, the run turned into a four mile slog home. Somewhere along the way, it got even worse than that. My legs started to ache and the IT band on both legs tightened. I stopped and walked and stretched. It still meant a long way home.

For three full days after that, my legs ached. Bad. Something more than a tired run took place last week. Perhaps the combination of wedding excitement, alcohol and non-stop dancing at the party conspired to eclipse my energy. Whatever it was, my legs were still quite dead by Saturday. Most likely I’d bonked somehow during that run last week.

So I let Sue buzz on ahead. She had the company of a zippy little rider named Suzy who stood no more than five feet tall and could climb like a fly on a wall. So I kept company with the wind and the birds and followed the signs to keep on the course.

Part of the reason I had my head down during the ride was my mesmerizing new bar tape. 

At one point while riding on my own, I put my head down and missed a “straight ahead” sign. That meant I followed the main road on which I was traveling. It got awful quiet about a mile down. I could see no one ahead or behind. So I turned around and found the correct course again. At that moment I was caught by a big group of road cyclists. So I tagged on and kept up in the draft for five miles. Then we hit a big climb and I popped off the back. Even with a full pedaling motion during the climbs it wasn’t there.

Still, I finished all 56 miles about a mile an hour slower on average than Sue. I was pleased with getting in those miles without blowing up along the way. My general fitness is there because we’ve already had a couple good rides already, but the popped run earlier in the week clearly had its cost. Something blew up in my system and there was not enough time to recover.

After the ride we gathered our gear for a trip back to the hotel where the late checkout let us take a shower before heading home. On our way to the hotel, the fuel indicator on Sue’s Outlander began blinking. We’d forgotten to stop for gas even though we’d seen the first indicator light blinking on the way to the ride that morning. But now Sue had a warning:

“Okay,” Sue chimed. “That’s the bad one. Get off the road now.”

So we fumed it into a Mobil station just in time to fill up the tank. And I felt like that was a bit symbolic to my situation on the bike. Riding around on fumes isn’t much fun. It makes you tense and takes your mind off the scenery, for one thing. There were a couple of those hills where my own indicator light was blinking. There wasn’t much fuel in the tank, as it were.

But I made it. There’s something to be said for that every time. Knowing your own indicator light can prevent a total bonk. In fact things got a bit better after 30 miles when we all fueled up at the Sag Wagon. It can sure pay to be patient with yourself on the bike. It’s when you’re driving on fumes in the car that you really have to watch out.

Beware the Bad One. That’s the moral of this story.

This morning during a four-mile run in a driving rain, I hugged the edge of the asphalt by a busy four-lane road. Cars hissed past on the wet surface, and raindrops struck my face with such force it stung. I rounded the big curve of Orchard Road and turned east relieved that the next couple miles would be on a bike path, and not straight into the wind.

Then I rounded the corner with a mile to go and picked up the pace. I felt so good this morning I could have been thirty years younger. So I let the legs have their way and took my brain out of the equation.

But as I rolled along an object appeared on the road ahead. I’m always on the lookout this time of year because migrating birds are often struck by cars. I always stop to examine the odd thrush or owl that takes a road hit.

This one only happened to be a robin. But it was lying there in a classic pose of the dying bird. Head thrown back. Feet lightly curled toward its tail.

It is the same pose that fossilized dinosaur birds such as the archaeopteryx show in fossilized form. Recent discoveries of fossilized birds have documented the evolutionary history of early species of feathered dinosaurs. In fact, the lineage of dinosaur and birds may be inseparable. The creatures we call birds are actually extensions of the dinosaur populace.

It so happened that ur family gathered around the TV Sunday night to watch the epic Jurassic Park. That movie makes the case that recovered dinosaur DNA could lead to the regeneration of species such as tyrannosaurus rex. Of course, that isn’t true in real life, but imaginative prospects are real enough to generate an entire series of movies in which reality is placed in suspended animation. We willingly immerse ourselves in the amber of fantasy.

Yet staring down at that dead robin in the rain, I could sense that dinosaur lineage. We are not so separated from the past as we might like to think. Human beings have their ancient descendants too. Our bipedal ancestors wandered out on the savanna by necessity. That method of locomotion freed our hands to carry things, and freed our arms to run in an upright position.

Every person out there running owes a debt to the raw determination of living things that existed 350,000 years ago or 60 million years ago. And even that’s not long by earth’s standards of time. Our evolutionary history is but a drop in the rain bucket of time.

Of course, the ripple effect of that drop has now covered the earth with marks of human activity. We cultivate and consume at will. Hungry for property and possessions, the human race invents and destroys with such fervor it can’t even keep up with its own garbage.

The bones we bury in rituals will be our fossil legacy. For it is highly unlikely the human race will last another 300,000 years here on earth. The planet is not inexhaustible but we’re clearly treating it like it is. Those stubborn dopes who don’t believe the earth has limits happen to the principal advocates for the combination of greed and selfish religion. Some even welcome the idea that a New Earth will be born from the ashes of the one we destroy through our habits and our sins. This is known as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Only it is not fulfilling, only selfish.

Not so original sins

Wishful thinking has never cured much in this world. Nor has religion really had much of an effect on the behavior of its most ardent believers. The Bible clearly sucks as a science book and most of the time it doesn’t do all that much to control the appetites of those who consider themselves the most righteous of souls, and who most ardently defend it.

Instead, many who abide by it like to claim that it empowers them somehow. I well recall the race in which a guy that beat me wore some sort of Jesus shirt. He pointed up to the sky when he finished the race in first place, with me trickling in behind. He acted as if God had guided his every step or Jesus was his co-pilot. He imagined somehow that he could earn favor by making a show of his faith. Well, the Book of Matthew looks at that subject differently: “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.”

Just rewards
Thus I say bullshit to his claims of providence or the fairer grace of God. As for me, I just felt shitty that morning and didn’t run very well. The next week my time was a full minute faster than the day the Jesus Guy beat me.

He’ll be buried or burned in the end just like me. Our fleshly accomplishments largely mean nothing in the scheme of things. Olympic champions go back to their difficult lives just like the journeyman distance guys. In the end, it’s what we make of the meaning of our efforts, not the other way around.

And what should we actually learn from the running and riding and swimming that we do? Does it embolden us in imagination? Does it help us understand the temporal nature of our existence?

I’ve sat bedside with parents and spouses as they pass from this world. What it has taught me is that our existence is at once shallow and real at the same time. It is quite difficult to penetrate the surface of time, that thin skin of awareness on which we all skim along. But I can say that many of the moments when I have felt most alive in this world is when I have been in full motion.

And that makes me think of the archaeopteryx. At one point those dinosaur birds jumped and ran and used their burgeoning wings to lift themselves off the surface of the ground and climb trees or soar down through the branches back to earth. Those feathers put to good use made life much more real, active and interesting. That is the story of life itself, always pushing the limits. Always reaching for something new.

So it is a joyous thing in many respects that a formerly obscure dinosaur bird, once lost to history, should emerge in the form of a fossil for us to consider. How intimate a reality that is. And how important an insight.

The archaeopteryx defies all conventions. It is an archaeological liberality that people who trust both science and imagination grasp as significant. For here is the truth: the direct relatives of the archeopteryx are alive and flying all around us if we consider these realities. A dead robin along the side of the road proves that this is true.