Do You Wanna Get Down?

It's time to talk about injury prevention.  Nothing will put you down from OCR faster than an injury.  But most injuries are preventable.  Learn and execute a few simple things and your training and racing season will likely be injury free.  By that I mean debilitating injury.  As you know by now, my tendency is to re-injure my L5 herniated disc.

Although I injured it over twenty years ago, the problem started long before that.  It was due primarily to cumulative trauma.  That means I was doing something wrong repeatedly over time.  The injury only manifested itself upon extreme stress one time when I was lifting and twisting with a relatively light weight.  This kind of injury is usually blamed on a one-time event.  It is not.  Pay attention to cumulative trauma.  Because of it, I re-injured my back two years ago and had a lousy season.  I did it doing a team telephone pole running carry.  Now I just don't do that anymore.  The picture below at ABF Mud Run is me carrying a tire - walking.  I simply will not run.  The jarring compression on my spine will likely cause it to herniate again.  No thanks.

You can learn to prevent injury while at the same time learn to master just about any obstacle on the course.  Most obstacles require that you are able to do some form and combination of the following three simple body weight exercises: squat jump, pull up, and muscle up.  A simpler beginner form of the three is the air squat, chin up, and push up.

Learn the proper form and technique for these three.  Perfect the motions.  Do them to failure.  Learn to work through the sticking points, especially when you are tired.  Tiredness is one of those times when you lose a bit of concentration perhaps, let up a bit on form, compromise on technique.  Avoid that and you avoid injury.

Here are some examples:

The log hurdle - this is a combination jump squat and muscle up.  I see more people get injured on this simple obstacle than any other.

The military wall - combination jump squat, pull up, and muscle up.

Most people start these two obstacles by running up to them.  That does absolutely no good.  All your energy and momentum is forward.  But you need all your energy and momentum upward!  So start right in front of the obstacle and do a jump squat.

Can't do a jump squat more than a hundred times without stopping?  Then you have a weakness.  A weakness like this is a target for injury.  Start doing air squats as a normal part of your routine.  Everybody jokes about doing leg day.  It's no joke.

The best routine I know for perfecting these three simple moves is called "the Murph".  Run a mile.  Do 100 pull ups, 200 push ups, and 300 air squats.  Then run another mile.  Are you a beginner?  Cut it into a quarter and work your way up.  Can't do pull ups?  Get some resistance bands to help you.  No go on pushups?  Start on your knees.  Poor range of motion on air squats?  Do what you can, and stretch, and foam roll, and work with a partner.  Modify, modify, modify.  Work hard and work smart.  Stay healthy my friends.

Reboot

I don't know about you, but my reboot time between races goes something like this.

For the first week after, I pretty much nothing workout-wise.  Okay, I did a day of pushups and a day of pullups lasting what, twenty minutes each at about 50% effort.  This weekend I did a lot of walking around New York City just for fun.  Until I spotted an adult-sized playground down on Riverside Park at 105th Street.  Suddenly the juices started to flow.  But I get ahead of myself.

That first week after a race like ABF Mud Run (a 4+ mile, 50+ jam-packed obstacle race) is almost all recovery, starting right at the finish line.  My wife loaded me right up with protein, carbs, electrolytes, and water.  Same thing all week.

Honestly, I didn't even feel like working out this week.  Physically, mentally, and emotionally, I did not feel like it.  Is that typical for someone my age?  I don't know.  I'd like to hear from others out there.

Tomorrow I will be ready to go at it full blast for training.  My focus will be on manhandling that Destroyer obstacle from ABF.  It looks deceptively simple.  But if you can't do a single motion pullup to muscle up or a single arm pullup for the super elite, then you ain't doin' this obstacle.  And nobody but the designer of that wicked thing did do it last Saturday.  That's a good thing.  We need to fail obstacles sometimes.  We need to know where to grow and how to do it.  I will be on the high bar doing those single motion baddies until I can do them unassisted.  I have about a month until my next race.

And that month is about the right amount of time for me in between races.  I love to see the younger folks go at it every weekend.  I wish I could.  Maybe I'm doing something wrong.  Any masters level runners out there every weekend of the season?  What's your secret?

A little more about the ABF Mud Run last weekend.  Forget that it is my home course and that I train there year-round.  Literally overnight a few new obstacle popped up there to surprise me Saturday morning.  I loved them.  They kicked my butt.  Threw me into the penalty box.  Kept me humble.  Taught me some lessons about where to improve.  You see, at the end of every training session, Chad asks us what was easiest and what was hardest.  For me, the obstacles used to be easy.  With these newcomers to the course, I have something to work up to.  Not just the individual obstacles, but one after the other after the other.  No recovery in between.  You gotta be able to endure a constant onslaught of upper body, grip, leg, forearm, and especially, mental strength.  Otherwise, these things will waste you quickly.  I loved every second of it.

I can't wait to train on it again and run it again in October.  These obstacles were not rickety things of wood.  They were solid, home designed, metal monsters.  Unique to ABF, they are worthy of any elite runner out there to come and try them.  I expect there may be one or two new ones in October.

The bar was set high and it pushed my to my limits.  So my reboot time may be lengthier than yours.  My time between races might be longer than yours.  But I will tell you a secret.  A lot of people come up to me and ask me how old I am.  "53"  They want to look as good when they get to be my age.  Now that might inflate the ego a bit, but that is not the point.  My buddy Larry Cooper put it right.  He said, "Don't brag to me about how great you are at 20 doing OCR.  Let me see you going at it strong in another 30 years.  Then I'll be impressed."

It's a lifestyle of fitness.  That means endurance.  My reboot is long?  So what.  I'm loving every moment, setting the standard for a lot of people who are hungry for help, a better life, and a little bit of someone caring about them along the way.  That's not asking too much.  ABF delivered in a huge way last weekend.  They're family.

Shorter of Breath, and One Day Closer

The room was very dark and quiet.  The familiar and annoying rhythm of nurses waking me every hour to check something or do some test was replaced with just the vital signs monitor showing my heart wildly out of control.  No longer in a regular hospital room, I was moved to the CCU.  My heart had gone from A-fib to V-fib.  A real heart attack.  I was twenty-six years old.

That feels like a long time ago.  Today you know I am a mud runner, an OCR masters division racer in the best shape of my life.  But on that day long ago I had one thought on my mind.  Am I ready to die?

We all sign that death waiver before every race.  It's kind of a running joke among us.  Because like anyone else doing extreme things, death is simply not a factor in the equation.  We don't think about it, train for it, purposefully look out for it on the course.  We hide it deep in the recesses of our minds.  But in reality, we do sign on the dotted line and initial in forty-two places. 

Death is not just a possibility in OCR.  It is a guaranteed fact of life for us all.  It does not discriminate by age, gender, religion, or anything else.  And nobody knows the moment it will strike.  Are you ready?

I have not seen nor heard of any deaths on the course - yet.  But I have seen plenty of injuries, some potentially life-threatening.  The waiver we sign is good for litigation and insurance purposes.  But it won't stop the inevitable process of death when it is your time.  Are you ready?

Lying in that quiet room with others who were in fact really about to die, I pulled through.  The doctors could never explain the root cause of my attack.  There was no residual damage to my heart.  No restrictions on my future activities.  I was released a day later and went home.  The mild arrhythmia I can experience is controlled by a minimal dosage of drugs.  But none of that good news will stop me from dying one day.  I am ready.  I knew I was ready that day.  Whether I lived or died didn't matter.  All was resolved in this world, this life, and for eternity.

Are you ready?  Just ask me.

Behind Every Man is a Good ....

You've heard that saying, "Behind every man is a good woman."  Well I'm here to tell you that she is not behind me.  She is right beside me.

Today was the season opener for me and I ran the elite heat at the ABF Mud Run.  I won first place for my age division, qualifying me for a generous cash award and automatic qualification to the 2015 OCR World Championships.  Despite all the hard work and training to get me here, it was my wife who got me through.

She was a course volunteer today so she had the opportunity to see me at a lot of obstacles.  Not from a distance mind you.  Right there by my side.  Now this may be rare in OCR, but this course has great obstacle viewing/photo op areas.  So there she was.  Cheering.  Encouraging.  And she's not the only one.

Chad Mason's (the course director and ABF CEO) wife Jessica is right there too.  Without her, Chad would not be able to do the amazing things he does for this race and this sport.  Jess was even one of the official photographers today.

Larry Cooper's (the course designer and chief architect of bad ass obstacles) wife Ginger is side-by-side with her man.  He spent countless hours building this course.  She was there too, helping with designs and ideas.  She also helped at merchandise sales with Heather my wife this morning.  Then she came out and marshaled some obstacles.

Mike Amoriello's (ABF Street Team member) wife Nikki trains with him and his team every day.  They recruit people to OCR like you would not believe.  They are powerful motivators and encouragers.  Their teamwork is unmatched.

I'm sure there are many others out there who deserve mention.  You know who you are.  You are appreciated.  Your strength as couples makes people notice.  It's what makes ABF a great organization.  Thank you all for being there today and all year round.

Today's Mud Smear Award has to go to of course, my wife Heather.  I love you!

Now You See Me...

Visualization is a very powerful tool for some athletes.  Some use it to mentally picture victory.  Others create calming scenes to block stress.  Others like me use it to figure out the puzzle of difficult obstacles.

Yesterday I came upon a brand new obstacle and I could not figure out how to get over it.  So first I asked someone to demonstrate it.  But now matter how many times I watched, then tried to reproduce their moves, I could not get over it.  Rather than get frustrated, I stopped trying.  I stopped thinking about it.  Sometimes thinking too hard about an obstacle, especially while you are standing right in front of it, is too taxing.  It messes with your head.  It psyches you out.  And your odds of failure increase.

OCR is undoubtedly a mental game.  Like all other high-performance sports, having your head in the game is critical.  But it's not easy.  Situations like the one I describe above are better during practice.  That's the time to fail.  Fail multiple times in fact.  That's why it's called practice.  Visualization however, is practice best accomplished off the field in this particular case.

It didn't happen until about 11 o'clock last night.  I was already an hour and a half into trying to get to sleep.  But you know how it it.  These things bug you.  These are puzzles you just have to solve.  There's no way you're not going to nail that obstacle on race day.  I finally saw in my mind's eye what I had missed after watching one guy (the devious builder and designer of the obstacle) nail it with ease over and over again.  I missed it after watching the video of him doing it.  Even in slo-mo I could not see it.  Until that magic moment happened.  That breakthrough thought.  The one that eluded me in conscious thinking and watching.

He did something with his legs and body that I had not.  It was counter-intuitive.  But it was the solution.  Am I right?  Well, I will hit the course one more time this week to find out.  Race day is Saturday.  In the meantime, I will practice hard.

I have not given out a Mud Smear award in a while.  This one goes to the master designer, my friend Larry Cooper, with ABF Mud Run.  See you Saturday my man.  At the top of your obstacle!

Tapering

Do you taper before a race?  No, I don't mean apply that tape to various body parts just before a race.  Tapering is a deliberate training method whereby you scale back your training intensity (not frequency) to about 75% roughly two weeks prior to your event.  While this runs somewhat counter to my creedo from Bruce Lee to train like you fight (race), there comes a point in this master's life where I need to cut back. 

I do train like I race.  At the end of the session, I feel like I have been through a race.  I need to recover.  So on race day, I don't want to feel worn out from my training.  I want to feel ready.  I keep doing all the same training things on the same schedule.  The only difference is the intensity.  What does that mean?

My race pace on the street is about 8:30.  On the trail it's about 9:30.  During taper I run about 10:00.  For reps, I cut back intensity by reducing the number of reps and increasing the rest period in between sets.  I don't cut back on the weight because quite frankly I can't.  All the exercises I do are bodyweight.  We'll talk more about that another time.

My actual body weight will increase somewhat during this period.  That will happen for two reasons.  First, the metabolic burn decreases somewhat because my intensity has dropped.  Second, my carb and hydration intake will increase.  This taper period is the fueling period prior to a race.  The only thing that suffers here is a minor increase in body weight and a bit of rounding out.  The muscle cuts are not quite as defined.  But that's okay because by the end of the race all that fuel and extra hydration will be burned off and you will look as mean as ever.

There is a balancing point here however.  Don't overdo the fueling and hydrating with the wrong stuff.  We're talking complex carbohydrates and water here, not simple carbs and beer.  Save the latter for right after the race.  Pre-race, you want the slow burn, energy storage carbs.  While you do want to have minimum body weight on race day (less weight equals less effort on the obstacles), you don't want to compromise this important need for the fuel and hydration you will need to make it. 

I do not carry extra water and food on short races.  That's excess baggage that will slow me down or get in the way.  If I taper properly, I won't need any of it for races less than five miles.  If it's a hot day, I will take what's on the course. 

That's my plan.  Many elites do likewise.  But these are not rules.  You have to work with these variables and adjust them to your own needs.  Listen to your body, experiment with the fuel.  Race happy!