A 2 Minute Starting Line Strategy to Improve Your Race Performance!

10 years ago • 3 Comments • 13.1 Training, Motivation, Running

8102976238_ca9fccee86_z — Standing like this for a minute before the race could improve your performance. *Photo by Thatcher Cook for Pop Tech / CC 2.0*

I’m always looking for running hacks – ways to improve my running that aren’t, well, running. I’ve found one I can’t wait to try.

My inspiration comes from one of the most popular TED talks of all time, social psychologist and Harvard Business School professor Amy Cuddy’s talk titled “Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are.”

Summary: Amy Cuddy is a social psychologist who is interested in non-verbal expressions of power dominance. She found that prior to a stressful event (like a job interview) people who posed for two minutes in a high power position (arms open or outstretched, taking up space, making yourself bigger) vs. a low power position (arms crossed, poor posture, making yourself smaller) had decreased levels of the stress hormone cortisol, and performed significantly better in the interview. (Start watching at 12:00 to see the recap of the experiment.)

Through her work Cuddy has discovered that “Our bodies change our minds, our minds change our behavior, our behavior changes our outcomes.” Her research demonstrates that people who adopt power poses prior to a stressful event have measurable positive chemical changes in their brains, and that these changes increase their success and how they’re perceived by others.

Later in the speech she addresses the concept of “faking it until you become it”, and accepting that you’re not FAKING it, you’re removing the inhibitions that prevented your real self, ideas, and capabilities from shining through.

THIS IS SO COOL. When we’re nervous and anxious it’s harder to put our best selves forward. Cuddy has found a life-hack that allows us to boost our chances of success just by standing with our arms outstretched in a power pose for a few minutes before we enter a rough situation.

Application: Give yourself the best chance of race day success. Step off to the side somewhere, pretend you’re doing some sort of stretching, and make yourself as big as possible. Hold your arms up and out stretched, feet wide, and lean left and right a couple times to make it look normal. Think some positive thoughts about how many miles of training you have behind you for good measure. You can also do the less obvious “wonder woman pose” where you stand with your feet spread slightly apart and your hands on your hips.

A lot of racing is mental. I know my legs can make it 13.1 miles on Sunday, I don’t know how fast my mind will encourage them to get there. Will I slow down because I feel discouraged, or will I push through? Will I confidently push the pace, believing I will still make it to the finish, or will I handicap myself out of concern? If I do start out a little too fast, will I be able to tell myself it’s all right and just slow down, or will I take it as a sign that I should give up and walk/jog to the finish? My legs didn’t feel too bad the day after my last half marathon. Physically, I didn’t push as hard as I could have, because mentally, my confidence broke at mile 7 and I just meandered towards the finish line.

So you better believe I’ll be off to the side before we start doing power poses to lower my cortisol, boost my confidence, and give my my mind the best chance of pushing my body confidently towards the finish line. After all, it’s only a two minute investment!

For a good visual, check out this blog post from the TED blog with a great chart on low power vs. high power poses.

Hope you’re enjoying the fall racing season!

Race Smart: Run the Tangents

10 years ago • 0 Comment • 13.1 Training, Running

It’s my taper week! Only a few easy miles of running left before my fourth half marathon. I like to spend the week before any big race finding non-running ways to prepare for the big day. I drink more green smoothies, stop drinking alcohol, and reduce my caffeine intake. I try to go to bed earlier.

I also strategize EVERY possible non-running way I can improve my race experience.

Here’s one I just discovered – running the tangents! Greg evidently has been doing this for years, and he’s the one who explained it to me.

Tangents: Race courses are measured using the most direct route possible, measuring the shortest way to navigate the course. Most of us, however, don’t run the shortest path. We choose a spot on the road, and wind along in our same position related to the sides of the road.

You can run a shorter course if you pay attention to how the road is curving and run the tangents. This means you’ll be crossing from one side of the street to the other as the road curves, so it’s not a great strategy if it’s a packed course. (Not only would it be rude and potentially dangerous to continuously cross in front of people, you’d also lose time trying to wind your way safely around other competitors.) But if the course thins out, it might be the easiest way to take a few minutes off your race time.

When I don’t run the tangents, it’s a longer course: When I ran my first half marathon, completely oblivious to the tangents, my Garmin calculated that I ran 13.25 miles, with an average pace of 11:03. If I’d run just 13.1 miles at that pace, I would have brought my time down from 2:26:23 to 2:24:45. That’s the difference between under 2:25 or not! Two minutes makes a difference if you’re reaching for a time goal, or if, like me, you’re so relieved to have the race over. Think about running two more minutes next time you cross the finish line and perhaps you’ll appreciate the power of the tangent!

Running tangents is easier for Greg who takes off with the front of the pack. His past few half marathons he’s finished in the top 100 of competitors, while I didn’t even finish in the top 1,000. It’s a little more packed with runners where I am! But I’m going slower so it’s not as dangerous to get around people once it thins out 😉

Happy racing!

Are you tying your shoes the right way?

10 years ago • 0 Comment • Live Well, Running

I’m a big fan of ways you can improve your running that aren’t actually running. There’s only so much time to run in a week, right?

For example… are you tying your shoes the right way? I watched this 3 minute TED talk a year ago, and discovered that, like many people, I was NOT tying my shoes the right way.

One little difference in how I formed the bow completely solved the problem of my shoes coming untied while I was running. The best part? I no longer had to double knot them, so they’re a breeze to untie and pull off.

It took me at least a week to get into the habit of tying my bow differently, but I’ve never gone back.

Now when I want to take a break on a run, I’ve got to fiddle with my i-pod instead of waiting for my shoes to come untied.

Watch the talk and see for yourself!

Cool, right? I love TED talks. Their slogan is “ideas worth spreading”, and I find them just that. They’re engaging, intellectual, fun to watch, and many of them have impacted the way I understand the world and interact with it.

I love them so much that Greg surprised me with TEDxCambridge tickets for my birthday! Here’s a photo of me at the event, trying on the google glass before the talks started 🙂 I love the guy in the background.

Take-aways: I left the talk thinking about how the speakers’ ideas could influence my running. Greg says that’s because everything looks like a nail when you have a hammer, and I’m so passionate about running.

I think that’s because we all have unique characteristics as part of an audience. We bring something to the table that affects the way we will interpret and share ideas. Ten of us could watch the same TED talk and find different applications for that knowledge, and that’s really cool. It’s one of the reasons I love it when people comment on my blog or share their own experiences with me. Ideas grow and evolve when they’re shared!

So thanks for sharing your ideas, reading mine, and learning (finally) how to tie your shoes the right way. 😉

Negative Splits & Why They’re Awesome

10 years ago • 2 Comments • Running

I’d been running over a year before I knew what negative splits are, and in my 2+ years of running I’ve only managed them during ONE race.

Negative splits are when later miles in a run are faster than earlier miles. It could mean holding steady at a comfortable pace and then increasing it towards the end, it could be a progression run where you run each mile 10 seconds faster than the last. If you’re running faster at the end of your run than at the beginning, that’s the heart of negative splits.

Negative splits are fantastic because they FEEL GREAT. You finish faster than you started, which is much better for morale than starting too fast and not being able to maintain it.

You’re able to put more of your energy into the faster miles, because you don’t need to conserve as much energy – most of your run has already been completed by the time you’re running your fastest.

Think of your energy as a glass of water. If you think of yourself as having a finite amount of energy for a given race, you want to pour that energy into your running as evenly as possible. But we don’t really know how full our glass is. Pour too much in the beginning, and you’re going to run out, walk/jog the last few miles, and end up feeling defeated. Save too much, and you’re going to end with that unsatisfied feeling that you could have done better.

That’s where negative splits come in. If you run a steady pace that is challenging but maintainable for the first portion of your race, you can slowly pick it up for the last portion of the race. If you pick it up too much, you can slow down – but you know that you only have a short amount left and you can just throw your energy into it.

The only time I’ve ever run negative splits during a race, it wasn’t my idea. I was running the Chilly Half Marathon and managed to meet up with someone from Greg’s company with a similar pace goal. We hit the last mile of the race, and he picked it up. We hit a half mile from the finish line and he picked it up more. He’s been running for decades, and he’d kept me motivated for several hours, there was NO WAY I was going to drop off in the last five minutes! So for the first time in my life, I ran the last mile of a race 45 seconds faster than my first mile. I have to tell you, nothing has ever felt SO good.

I thought about those negative splits recently, when the last 3 miles of my 10 mile run were unexpectedly fantastic. It feels good to finish strong. As an inexperienced racer, I do better to run slower than I think I could and then speed up if I’m feeling strong, rather than starting out too hopeful and finishing sore and defeated after taking walking breaks and having crazy positive splits.

Looks like I’ve finally found a reason to be negative about running 😉

When should you hit “Stop” on your Garmin?

10 years ago • 2 Comments • Running

Intersection!

Hit the stop button!

Gu break!

Hit the stop button!

Need a sip of water!

Hit the stop button!

That’s fine, because you’re trying to measure the speed and distance you’re actually RUNNING, right?

It depends what you’re trying to measure. After many months of trying to figure out how to get the best information from my Garmin, here are some things I’ve decided.

Long Runs: It’s helpful to know what pace you’re running when you’re actually running, but hurtful to think that you can make it 10 miles in a shorter amount of time than you’re capable because you’re actually taking breaks. If you’re stopping to take a Gu, or a quick walking break, your heart rate is descending, your legs are resting, your body is benefiting from that break. You can’t expect to magically remove all those breaks during a race and still maintain the same pace you run when your watch is going.

Solution? I hit the lap button for walking breaks or Gu breaks. I wait until the Garmin beeps for another mile so I’m in a fresh lap, and then I take the 30-90 seconds I need, and I hit the lap button before I keep going. That way I have information about how fast I’m covering miles when I’m actively moving, AND what my overall pace would be when I account for the breaks I take. It’s also incentive to limit the amount of time I spend walking – now every second counts, and they add up faster than you think!

Interval Runs: Stop the clock in between intervals UNLESS you’re using your Garmin to time a specific recovery period. And unless you’re using the Garmin to pace yourself during your warm up and cool down, you can probably skip using it then, too. Do you really need to log those miles that you’re jogging to and from the track? I’m not sure I do, since I don’t track my annual mileage. If you do, then by all means. Otherwise, consider just starting the clock and using the Garmin as a tool to meet your intervals, then stopping it during the recovery so the only data you have to look at when you get home is the data that matters – each interval.

Tempo Runs: Same as long runs – if you’re going to stop for a drink, it might benefit you to know you’re doing it by hitting the lap button so you can see the break but also have a gauge on what your active moving pace is.

I’ve struggled with using the Garmin a lot. I remember being shocked when I ran my first 10k at 10:45 minute pace. I’d been running with my Garmin at 9:45 pace and hitting “stop” every mile or so to take a break (which probably lasted 90 seconds or so) and then continue. I shouldn’t have been surprised at all, but I was… because I’d been lying to my Garmin, and that led me to unrealistic expectations of my own performance.

I wish I had a magic formula to tell you how many water break or intersection stop minutes you can subtract for race day by virtue of race day adrenaline – but I don’t. What I do know is that hitting the lap button instead of the stop button has kept me aware and accountable of the number of stops and how long they are. Yes, it stings to hit that lap button when I’m stopped at a busy intersection and it’s not by choice… but my recovering heart rate doesn’t know the difference, and I want to have the most accurate idea of how long it’ll take me to get from point A to point B.

Any of this sound familiar? It should. I was fighting with the stop button over a year ago, when I wrote a blog post titled “Goal: Stop Lying to my Garmin“. Some things never change! But hey – I’m getting better. 😉

Browsing Category

Running