Running Clinics Almost Here!

The next set of of running clinics are approaching quickly.  Register soon to make sure you get a spot.  We're happy to have Vi Fuel as a sponsor again and will be giving out free product and 25% off gift cards.  There will also be other giveaways like calf compression sleeves, arm warmers, and boxes of Vi gels!

The next running clinics will be held in the Bay Area:

October 14 - Race Planning and Strategies Clinic (tapering, pre-race, aid stations, course, logistics)

October 20 - Eat to Win Clinic (training, pre-race, during race, nutrition, fueling, hydration)

October 21 - Hill Running Clinic (climbing, descending, body position, technique, when and how to fast hike)

Sunday, October 14

Photo George Zack

Race Planning and Strategies Clinic

Sunday, October 14th at 9am

Tennessee Valley Parking Lot (Sausalito, CA)
Map Here

You've (hopefully) put in the training for your race, now what? How long should you taper before the event? How should you taper? What's a good pre-race dinner? Breakfast? Should you have drop bags?  How many? What should be in them? Should you start out fast or easy. How much should you eat during your event? How often? So many questions and you need the answers! Join us for an open forum running clinic where we present the fundamental information on race planning leading up to your event and race strategies during the race.

Topics covered:

• Tapering
• What to eat the night before and morning of the event
• Drop bags
• Planning for weather (at the start and during the race)
• Pacing – The benefits of a slow start
• Fueling, hydration, electrolytes during the race
• Open Q and A 
  
  
  *Group run afterwards!

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Saturday, October 20

Eat to Win Clinic - Co-hosted by Tim (Lucho) Waggoner!

Nutrition, Fueling for Training and Racing

Saturday, October 20 at 9am

Tennessee Valley (Sausalito, CA)

Map Here

One of the most misunderstood and potential show stoppers in ultra running and trail racing is nutrition and fueling both during training and in the heat of the race itself.  Come with us to explore the effects of good nutrition, concepts behind carbo loading, how, when, and what to eat in the 24 hours before a race, and how to fuel during your race for even energy.  Then learn how to recover with food post race.

This special clinic will include a welcome co-host to Footfeathers Running Clinics, Tim (Lucho) Waggoner.  Tim is a former Ironman PRO with top finishes in Ironman Kona.  He also is an accomplished ultrarunner with a 50 mile course record in his first 50 miler, a 6th place overall at Leadville 100 miler (his first 100!) and this year winning the coveted and incredibly competitive Leadman Race Series setting a new overall record.  His nutrition and fueling are legendary and he's on board with me in our clinics beginning with the Eat to Win Clinic in the Bay Area.

Topics include:

1. General diet

-optimal protein, carb, fat amounts

-effects of bad foods you should avoid/limit (e.g. soda)

2. Week of race

-caloric intake during taper

-carbo loading

-saturating yourself with hydration (useful?)

3. Eating in the 12 hours before race (dinner/breakfast)

-what to avoid (e.g. raw cabbage!)

-amounts (keep it light)

-proportion of carbs

4. During event

-how you fuel/hydrate depends on distance (13.1 miles compared to 50-100 miles)

-factors affecting digestion (heat, effort, etc.)

-balance of salt-water-fuel

-types of fuel (liquid, gels, solid)

-differences between gels (sugar types, caffeine)

5. Recovery

-window of maximum absorption

-what to eat (salt, hydrate, protein, good fat, i.e. salmon)

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Sunday, October 21

Photo Evan Honeyfield

Hill Running Clinic

Climbing and Descending

Sunday, October 21 at 9am

Rodeo Beach (Sausalito, CA)
Map HERE

Seems like everyone hates hills. Some think the uphills are too hard and everyone passes them in races. Others are timid on the descents and don't take advantage of our friend, gravity. Putting in the practice and training obviously helps, but knowing certain techniques and practicing them will chop huge chunks of time off your finish results and leave your competitors wondering how you got so fast on hills, especially over technical terrain.

This has become the most popular clinic with a number of repeat participants.  You won't want to miss it!

Topics covered:

• Hill running technique on technical climbs and descents.
• Climbing efficiently (when to walk vs run, arm position, etc), transitioning from walk to run
while maintaining pace
• Descending (low center of gravity, arm position, foot placement, etc)

• How to run various hill workouts for best conditioning results.

• Includes 3 x 3 min hill workout with warm up and cool down.



Cost and Registration:

One clinic is $30

Register for all three at the same time for $80

(for athletes I already coach cost is: $20/clinic)

Space is limited, so register early.

Register by contacting me via email - tim (AT) footfeathers.com


Feel free to contact me for more details about coaching services too.  I work with all levels and distances from 5k to 100 miles with custom, personal daily training schedules.

Check out the re-cap of our last clinics HERE!

Bad Parking and Random Fun

Though I reserve my other blog, timespassenger.wordpress.com, for parking and other human inadequacies, I'll just post a few recent (and some not terribly recent) shots here.

One of the days bumming around Reno.  Lost $3 and nearly caught lung cancer (can't believe they still allow smoking in these dumps).

This lady was giving me the evil eye when I took the stealth "reverse shot" photo of her after she performed a near perfect Equator parking job (splitting two spots). 

Pippit was happy to have me home (and to be going for a ride) after three weeks without me.

Patiently waiting for my toenail to come back.  My foot modeling career is on hold temporarily.

Not sure what this guy was thinking.   I like how the minivan lady just parked in the narrow spot crooked like nothing's wrong.

Relaxing at my last job (key word: "Last")

Heaven on earth.

Guy parked his trailer basically in the middle of the road, on a corner, no less.  Hillbilly.

The signs say "Motorcycle Parking Only".  SAAD, indeed.

Couple things going on here.  White car has performed the "Heavy Nose" parking job, crossing over into the next space in front.  And the truck (who must be rebelling against the white car) had neglected to pull completely into the spot.  At least he parked crooked enough to draw attention away from the other dumbassness.

Semi truck grocery getter.  Semi intelligent grocery getter.

I studied art (not quality beer appreciation).

Holy Hardrock.

No caption needed.

eyes closed, shaking head slowly.

Limo Leadville style.

Salt

So, electrolyte balancing is always a fun topic.  My friend, Lauri, asked me on Facebook after my DNF at P2P what happened.  I gave here the raw, simplified answer.  Andy Reed, who ended up taking 5th at P2P, chimed in that my cramping was due to fatigue and that I had too much salt in my body (as indicated by the salt on my clothes).  I disagree.

I'm always open to all points of view on stuff like this and would love to hear others' opinions on it, expert or not.

Tim Long

September 16 near Ashland, OR

To answer lauri's question. I got behind on salt/water on the first climb and never got out of the hole. — with Lauri Abrahamsen.

Like ·  · Share · Tag Friends

• Dan Roed and Leslie Rundle like this.
• 

  Julie Gayheart Holy salt......

  September 16 at 5:45pm · Like
• 

  Lauri Abrahamsen Really? That's a great lesson for me. I'm sorry about the DNF but I'm glad it was nothing too serious.

  September 16 at 5:47pm · Like
• 

  Patty Osorio-O'Dea I'm sorry to hear, Tim. Next time...

  September 16 at 6:31pm · Like
• 

  Karen Peterson Oh bubba... That looks rough.

  September 16 at 6:47pm · Like
• 

  Danni Baird wow the salt on those shorts!!!

  September 16 at 6:51pm · Like
• 

  Ellen Parsons Fletcher Sorry it was not a good day.....

  September 16 at 10:07pm · Like
• 

  Andy Reed The salty shorts indicate your body has too much salt, not too little. You need to look at the science/physiology. Tim Noakes explains it in Waterlogged. There is more than enough sodium in the body to support an ultramarathon. Cramps are caused by neuromuscular fatigue, not electrolyte disturbance. Fact.

  about an hour ago · Like
• 

  Tim Long Electrolyte Deficit
  With exertional heat cramps, an athlete typically has been sweating extensively with appreciable sweat electrolyte losses as well, particularly sodium and chloride. Whether during a single long race, match, game, or training session or consequent to multiple same- or repeated-day exercise bouts, a sizeable whole-body exchangeable sodium deficit develops when sweat sodium and chloride losses measurably exceed salt intake (6,7,57). The deficit threshold required to prompt muscle cramping is not well described; however, an estimated sweat-induced loss of 20%Y30% of the exchange- able Na+ pool has been noted with severe muscle cramping (6,29). How readily this occurs depends upon sweating rate (10), sweat sodium concentration (typically 20Y80 mmolILj1) (7,12,28), and dietary intake (27). And with continuous physical activity over an extended period of time (e.g., 3Y4 h or more), a high sweat sodium concen- tration generally stays high, even as whole-body water and sodium deficits progressively increase. This is possible because sweating rate remains fairly consistent during such long-term activity and serum sodium concentration is typically maintained or elevated, along with potential changes in sweat gland function or sympathetic nervous system activity that would tend to increase sweat sodium concentration (33). Other electrolytes also are lost in sweat to a much lesser degree, and several of these (namely calcium, magnesium, and potassium) have been implicated falsely as the cause of muscle cramping during or after exercise when purported deficiencies are suspected (3,15, 23,24,31,56,62,63). However, exertional heat cramp-prone athletes characteristically develop a sodium deficit because their sweat sodium and chloride losses are not offset promptly and sufficiently by dietary intake (6,7,57). -National Institute for Youth Sports & Health at Sanford, Sanford USD Medical Center, Sioux Falls, SD, American College of Sports Medicine

  57 minutes ago · Like · 2
• 

  Dan Roed I got lost after "with"? Tim is an exceptional athlete and he knows a little bit of what he speaks. Anybody who runs enough will have a "bad day" sooner or later. This allows for reflection on how we may do things better in the future.

  40 minutes ago · Like
• 

  Ken Michal I have a feeling that "Waterlogged" is going to confuse just as many runners as "Lore of Running" did! ;) Didn't he say "drink to thirst" in both?!? 
  Salty shorts means that Tim stopped sweating. Once that happened, his already elevated core temperature started to climb even more... He didn

  12 minutes ago · Like
• 

  Tim Long Go grab a cup of coffee, this is a long comment...

  8 minutes ago · Like
• 

  Tim Long Below is a well stated response to a question that resembles what Andy Reed and I apparently disagree on. Individual athletes can (and do) have vastly different levels of sodium (and loss during exercise). I happen to sweat a lot of sodium (obvious in my salt-caked clothes in races). I've messed around with levels of salt in my daily diet, which yielded no obvious difference in performance. I've toyed with salt and electrolyte intake in races (a luxury of doing so many training races in my schedule allows me to test all sorts of things out, in the hopes of tuning my own performance and also sharing my findings with other runners). 
  
  I've gotten to the point where, based on my effort level and race day conditions, I can guess when I'll feel the first twinge of cramping (initially typically in the tibialis anterior muscle [shin area] and/or the vastus medialis [quad above and to the inside of the knee]). If the weather is cool, I may not take any salt (e.g. Turquoise Lake 20 mile snow shoe race done in 4:30. I took in no salt). If it's hot and exposed, 90+F, I'm in for a long day of 900+mg of sodium intake with 40-60 oz of water/hr intake. The point is that it's individual. I need the salt intake or my muscles lock up. When they lock up and I continue to try to run on them, the damage is substantial. Other athletes may lose much lower levels of sodium.
  
  About Human Sweat (H2ProHydrate)
  Firstly whilst we have a huge amount of respect for Tim Noakes and his work he has a record of being quite provocative in his approach to certain topics. He likes to challenge exists dogmas and this is both healthy and necessary in science. However, sometimes he adopts quite an extreme position (in this case that sports drinks are completely unnecessary and that the companies that sell them are conning us) partly, I think, to get people to sit up and take notice and this certainly works!
  
  For starters we do agree with his point that listening to thirst is a good idea. Too many people do force fluid down too frequently and suffer as a result and in our advice to athletes we take a similar position. 
  
  However, one of the main points that we'd disagree with in his new book is in the way it dismisses that there is a large variation in sweat sodium losses; saying that they are relatively similar between people and mainly driven by dietary sodium intake. Our own data (which is probably one of the most comprehensive sets available) shows a much wider variance in sweat sodium values (approximately 19mmol/l to 84mmol/l) in well trained athletes than he quotes in the book (around 20-40mmol). 
  
  It's certainly possible that at the extremes when people are taking in huge volumes of sodium, or virtually none at all, the body could respond by losing more or less in sweat but the fact remains that the main mechanism for regulation of sodium is in the kidneys absorbing or excreting more in urine. From the large numbers of people we have tested (some of whom in professional rugby and football teams all eat similarly controlled diets to one another yet still show this wide variation in sweat sodium levels) it is clear there must be something other than just sodium intake dictating sodium loss in sweat and it would appear that this is genetics. 
  
  On a personal level as I explained in the talk at All3Motion one of the biggest drivers for me in getting my own sweat tested many years ago and looking into this topic further was that I had found by trial and error that by taking in lots of sodium in races I a) stopped cramping (as I had done a lot beforehand) and b) generally my performances improved dramatically. The consistent way in which this happened (and from listening to the experiences of other athletes we've tested and talked to over the years) leads us to strongly believe it cannot just be put down to a placebo effect.
  Also, although Dr Noakes is very sure in his opinion that sodium loss has absolutely nothing to do with cramping a lot of anecdotal evidence would suggest otherwise. For sure we don't believe it to be the only factor involved but the amount of athletes who have stopped cramping when we've upped their sodium intake in endurance events is significant. Again our own data from sweat tests and questionnaires shows a statistically significant correlation between athletes who report that they cramp regularly and the fact they tend to have higher sweat sodium levels. This may not offer definitive 'proof' of a link but it ties up with enough anecdotal experience to be taken seriously.
  
  As with a lot of topics in science and sports performance if you search hard enough you can definitely come up with a lot of evidence to prove and disprove most theories. Do we agree with Dr Noakes that many of the big sports drink companies have 'hyped' the efficacy of their products in order to sell more of them? Absolutely. Do we think that there is no benefit to be derived from intelligent use of certain supplements (such as sodium) to prevent performance dropping off as the body gets depleted during extended periods of exercise? No.

  7 minutes ago · Like