Issue #4: Finishing Touches!
“Try not to succumb to the planning fallacy in your race. Have the expectation that things will go wrong. When they do, [think] ‘this is what is happening right now, I'm doing the best I can’. Just avoiding a freakout is 99 percent of the battle, really.” - Brad Stulberg
With less than two weeks to race day, the training part of the deal is largely over. It’s time to freshen up, plan for the logistics of race day, and hone your mental strategies.
I have some training ideas below for your taper with a big caveat that this final phase may need to be the most individualized period of all of your training. Experience, personal strengths, and more should weigh heavily in deciding how much you reduce training load (if at all) and what training sessions you choose to implement in the last two weeks.
To help with the mental side of your race preparations (and race day execution) I’ve called upon a couple of experts to share their thoughts. Read on for tips from Phil Latter about setting yourself up for a potential flow experience on the Shut In Ridge, as well as advice from Brad Stulberg about what to do when faced with challenges along your nearly-19 mile journey.
Also in this issue, AntiFragile Physical Therapy’s Wes Miller put together a great video focused on uphill and downhill running form. The cues provided should prove very effective in getting you up and down (and back up) the course in the most efficient way possible.
If you need a refresher on the work we’ve planned up to this point, check it out on the ARC website where we are archiving the training program.
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Taper Time
The internet is filled with a wide-range of “perfect” taper plans. You’ll see testimonials and sales pitches for special formulas and detailed prescriptions. Seemingly opposing ideas can be passed along with equal fervor. “Decrease training volume by 20% each week in the final three weeks”, “sharply decrease overall mileage while gradually increasing in speed in the final 10 days”, or “maintain high volume and regular workouts” (this is my favorite as it comes with a built-in excuse: “I was just training through this one…”). The tricky thing is that any of these different plans could be the perfect plan, if matched up with the right runner.
Experience and experimentation may be needed to know what works best for you. If you are lacking experience and/or unenthusiastic about the idea of risking your hard-earned fitness with too much last-minute experimentation, you may do well to follow some general guidelines. You can back off of your overall training load gradually, focus your final workouts around aspects of running that will make you feel good and gain confidence, and devote time to giving your mind and body some extra TLC.
This is not a great time to put in “crash training” to make up for deficits in your previous training. If you never really got going with long runs, and you missed the “money back” cut off days… well, just think of the last couple of months as a long taper phase. If nothing else, you should feel fresh on the start line.
Best of luck!
Training Phase 3: Focus on Racing
Key Points:
- Gradually decrease training volume
- Design workouts based on the specific demands of the race
- Prioritize recovery
- Finalize nutrition plan
- Plan routines for race day
Phase 3 Outline
Weeks 9 & 10: October 24 - November 6
Hill Climb (or Long Hill Reps)
Ex: 20 min (or 2 x 10 min, 4 x 5 min, etc) @ one-hour race effort on a moderate-to-steep grade. Focus on maintaining a consistent and controlled effort while locking in to your “climbing gear”.
Medium Long Run with Steady Piece
Ex: 60 min easy + 20-25 min at “race effort” + 5-15 min cool down.
Tune-Up
Ex: 2 miles @ race effort on trail (2 min jog) + 4 x 30-sec hill reps (slow jog down) + 4 x 30-sec flat (1 min jog). Stay relaxed and smooth. No need to crush this one.
Race!
Ex: Run close to 19 miles from the Arboretum to somewhere past Mt. Pisgah at a very strong effort.
Find Your Flow
Planning out these newsletters has provided a great reminder of just how many amazing performance-related resources we have in the Western North Carolina running scene. When thinking about the mental side of Shut-In preparations, Philip Latter immediately came to mind. This Brevard-based athlete, coach and Asheville Running Collective member is a co-author of Running Flow.
Phil was kind enough to share his thinking about the conditions and abilities needed for flow, appropriate goal setting, and how to use feedback for to keep you motivated.
Mark Driscoll: How can a runner use the final weeks of training and race prep to set themselves up for a potential flow experience on the Shut-In Trail on the first Saturday of November?
Phil Latter: I know this interview is geared towards sports psychology, but all talk about flow is off the table if you're not fit and healthy. One of the major linchpins of having a flow experience is called the "challenge-skills balance." Basically, in order to tackle the type of challenge that's going to lead to a flow state -- whether that's playing a game of chess or scaling Everest -- you need to have the skills in place to do it. With Shut-In, that's going to mean both the endurance to cover 18 miles on singletrack trail and the muscular strength to handle the rocks, and roots, and thousands of feet of vertical climb and descent that await.
That said, if the training has gone well, now is the time to really get in tune with where your mind goes during runs. If you're a person who favors headphones, now might be a good time to use them less so that you can mentally get used to being in your head for hours without distraction. It's also a great time to nail down specific goals for the race. Ones that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound -- yep, SMART -- are going to be the most helpful to achieving flow. That's because you'll be getting feedback in training that'll tell you whether you're on track to meet your goals. If you want to break 3 hours for the course but you're struggling to run 15-minute miles on trails, then it's probably time to set some more realistic goals.
Not all goals need to be outcome-based, though. In fact, having some that are process-oriented are even better. See if you're checking all the boxes each day, and if you are, take pride in the fact that you're doing your best to be ready on race day.
MD: With respect to the value of feedback, as well as the potential pitfalls of that feedback, do you have any strategies or suggestions for how an athlete can use feedback in the race to keep motivation high.
PL: Feedback is huge in the event itself. There are going to be internal and external sources. Internally, I'm going to be listening to my breathing, the sensations in my legs and arms. Does my stride feel smooth? Does my heart rate feel sustainable? Those types of things. I'm also going to be listening for signs of mental fatigue. Keeping the brain sharp is every bit as important as keeping glycogen levels high, and those two are actually pretty strongly linked. The brain is the ultimate arbiter here, and if it thinks energy stores are dipping, it's absolutely going to suck as much motivation away as possible to keep you from emptying the tank.
Even though our heart, lungs, legs, and brain are what's going to get us across the line, we often rely a lot on external feedback sources. This isn't just what shows up on the GPS watch, though that's a big part of it. It's also where your main competitors are, what the crowd is telling you, and so on. If you have trained on the course and have set paces based on certain way points, that's awesome. Just be mindful that external feedback is going to be hindered by external factors, and those are out of your control. You can't blow the leaves off the course any more than you can properly align the satellites in the sky. That's why it's so important to lean into those internal feedback sources.
MD: How can we avoid the trap of focusing on the wrong feedback?
PL: There's a blessing and a curse here. I guess if I were to hedge a little bit, I would say if all the external feedback lines up with the internal feedback, then roll with it. Splits are fast, legs feel good, where I should be in the race -- go for it without a second of doubt. If the external feedback doesn't line up with the internal feedback, then we have what's called "ambiguous feedback." That's less helpful. Usually, that's going to be something like you're feeling great, but a well-meaning person yells out, "Keep it in check. You have a long way to go still." Suddenly, you're snapped out of feeling great and doubting yourself. In those cases, I would do a systems check. During long races, I often ask myself, "Do I think I could maintain X pace for Y more minutes?" If the answer is yes, then roll on. If the answer is "no" or "maybe," then it's probably worth revisiting. But if you find yourself flying up Ferrin Knob like it's a joyous day in the park, then screw the bystanders. You're in flow.
Shut-In is a great place to [focus on internal feedback and effort], but there's also a comfort in knowing how far you have to go. I would consider a compromise. Turn off the auto split on your GPS. Remove all "pace" from your watch screen. Just have the activity time and the mileage. If you want to do some simple division at mile 12 to figure out your pace or to ensure you're still on your time goal, go for it. But in a race where the temperature and trail conditions are a guessing game, it makes sense to simplify the experience as much as possible to get into that flow state.
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Interested in hearing more about flow? Check out this great discussion between Phil and Aaron Saft (he’s the #2 all-time men’s performer at Shut-In, by the way) on the MR Runningpains podcast.
Check out Phil’s writing: Running Flow & Faster Road Racing
Follow Phil on Strava for intel on good routes in Pisgah.
When Things Go Wrong
As Phil mentioned above, external factors can hinder our performance if we don’t have the right mindset. Stressing about the weather, the accumulation of leaves on the trail past 151, or last-minute course changes will take you out of the vital process-oriented mindset that allows you to focus on what you can actually control.
But what about the days when your preparation is top notch, your mind is focused, you are really ready to flow… but it all goes to hell anyways? How do we deal with the heavy legs, the falls, and the stomach cramps that pop up out of nowhere?
Contemplating these dreaded scenarios sent me down a serious doom spiral, so I asked Brad Stulberg for help. Brad is an Asheville-based performance coach, podcast host, and author who’s most recent book The Practice of Groundedness received a ringing endorsement from none other than Eliud Kipchoge. For years, Brad has been researching and writing about the characteristics and conditions necessary for excellence. He seemed like the right resource to help Shut-In racers plan for the tough days, and be ready to take advantage of the great ones.
Mark Driscoll: While runners train for (and pray for) a race day when everything "clicks", it doesn't always go that way. In your experience, how do high performers prepare for the days when it doesn't all go to plan?
Brad Stulberg: Anyone can perform when the sun is shining and everything is clicking. And we all long for those days when we enter the coveted flow state. But equally important to excellence is being able to show up and give it your all on the less-than-perfect days. Most endeavors, be it in sport or otherwise, don't go exactly as we planned or as we wished. There are so many uncertainties. The first and most important thing to remember is not to freak out. It is so easy to "doom spiral," to quote my dear friend and ARC's own Katie Driscoll, when things go awry. It's kind of the default mode for most of us, myself included. But if we are doom spiraling about what's happening that prevents us from doing anything productive or effective about it. So the first step is to recognize that things are going a bit haywire, and then to try and replace immediate rumination with acceptance of what is happening. I like to use the mantra this is what is happening, I'm doing the best I can. The more you can stay in the present moment and be with what is going on, the better chance you have of working through it. This is especially important in longer races, which almost always include some dark patches. How you navigate the dark patches often determines the overall tenor of the day.
Once you've accepted what is happening you can make a plan for how to deal with it. In the case of a race, it might be changing your fueling plan, resetting expectations, adjusting your pacing strategy, and so on. Then get on with the show, even if that means taking some negative thoughts or feelings with you. It's so important to remember that you don't have to feel great in the moment to perform well, and often it's the times when we don't feel well in the moment that, in hindsight, we look back on with a lot of pride for how we worked through them.
A helpful heuristic that covers a lot of this is what I call 4Ps: pause, process, plan, proceed, which is a lot different than our default of the 3Ps: panic, panic, panic.
MD: How can someone use the final weeks of a training block to prepare for potential curveballs and SNAFUs on race day?
BS: I think here the biggest preparation is just knowing that things could -- well, actually, in a race this long, things will -- go wrong.
All sorts of research shows that our affect, which is just science speak for how we are feeling, or mood, is a function of reality minus expectations. If your expectations are for a perfect race where nothing goes wrong, then when something does go wrong, you'll feel like crap, and be more likely to freak out. But if your expectations are that the race will be hard and full of dark spots, then when those dark spots occur, you won't be as liable to get sucked into them.
People tend to think about races as these opportunities to fully express one's fitness. This is great...if you are racing a 5K. The longer the race the more external variables that you may not be able to control come into play. Long races aren't just about physical fitness but about mental fitness and problem-solving ability too. And if you are freaking out when something goes wrong, you aren't in a good position to problem solve and make the situation better.
This comes up time and time again with any big event, so know y'all runners aren't alone. Daniel Kahneman won a Nobel prize for his work in behavioral economics. Part of this was something he and his colleagues called the planning fallacy. It basically states that all big projects -- such as building a bridge or a house -- take, on average, 40 percent longer than what is planned for and promised. The reason for this is that the planners don't take into account all the external variables that could occur: a death in the subcontractors family, a cancer diagnosis for the painter, a historic weather season, a pandemic, the city paperwork office being inundated because everyone is building at the same time, Clemson making the BCS playoffs so none of the carpenters can focus on their work for three weeks, and on and on and on.
Try not to succumb to the planning fallacy in your race. Have the expectation that things will go wrong. When they do, this is what is happening right now, I'm doing the best I can. Just avoiding a freakout is 99 percent of the battle, really.
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You can hear more from Brad on his weekly podcast The Growth Equation. His writing regularly appears in publications like the New York Times and Outside. See how deep he gets on these kinds of topics in his books: The Practice of Groundedness, The Passion Paradox, and Peak Performance.
A Focus on Form
Wes Miller and the crew at AntiFragile Physical Therapy have been serving the WNC running community for years. They are passionate about finding the WHY behind every ache, pain, or injury in order to help athletes gain knowledge, increase specific strength, and build resiliency.
When I asked Wes for tips related to hill running I expected an emailed response with some form cues or maybe a few running drills. Instead, Wes was able to create a whole video with running form demonstrations and a Shut-In case study. OK, I’m impressed!
Check it out for yourself:
Join the Club
The Asheville Running Collective would love to have you join our ranks!
Anyone can join, regardless of speed, age, or experience. With increased membership, we will be in a better position to unite runners and racers in Western North Carolina behind our shared mission, pull in more leaders and volunteers for ARC-sponsored events and initiatives (like this program), and have a broader reach in the community.
