Viet’s Blog

Reflecting on this past weekend, I couldn’t get the image of Luke Skywalker out of my head. In Empire Strikes Back , Yoda tells Luke to go into the tree. Luke asks Yoda what’s inside. Yoda famously replies: “Only what you take with you.” If you knew you had to do a 200 mile relay race with 11 other runners, what are you going to bring? Our hopes, fears, anxieties all end up manifesting in the strangest ways during the Hood to Coast. The Physical Manifestations of Anxiety What if I get cold? Thirsty? Bored? I better have 2 more sets of clothes just in case. All the extra supplies we bring with us are manifestations of race anxiety. Not only does anxiety weigh us down mentally, it literally weighs down the van, costs more in fuel, and makes finding anything impossible since now you’re digging through a dozen different packs and bags because everyone else *also* packed everything in triplicate. I’m not advocating skimping on necessary items – things like safety and communication...

I've bonked at every marathon I've ever run. Every single one. Going into Vernonia, I was mentally bracing for it again. I was going to feel good but right at mile 18, Lucy was going to grab the football right as I was about to kick it.  Except this time I came to realize something: I was Lucy. I was sabotaging my own efforts. Whenever I ignored my fueling plan, whenever I surged to pass people or weave around a crowd, whenever I picked up my speed to negative split the back half of the race, the football was long gone before I ever started running to kick it.Good Grief! The bonk wasn't something that just …. happened. It was something I did to myself. It’s me. I’m the bonk.  For Vernonia I was determined to break the cycle. The first thing I dialed in was effort. I was determined to maintain a consistent effort the entire way through. Part of maintaining that effort was locking in my cadence. I chose music that was 180 bpm on the dot to maintain running efficiency....

So I was doing a threshold repeat workout where I'd run for 4-5 minutes at effort and then do a walking/jogging recovery in between reps.  I happened to be finishing one of my intervals and it just happened to be in front of the school where there were about a dozen high school kids doing something unrelated. Right as I was finishing off a rep and slow to a walk I hear some cheering.  "KEEP GOING!" "HUSTLE HUSTLE HUSTLE!" "YOU GOT THIS!" I mean I was maybe about 50 meters from a "no parking" sign. So maybe they thought I was almost to the end of my interval. But then i thought "wait a minute, I'm not going to be bullied into extending my interval for a bunch of kids." Mildly annoying, but I threw up a thumbs up in acknowledgement of their unsolicited encouragement and went on with the rest of my workout. I took this experience to Facebook, expressing that it was mildly and secretly annoying to me when people think that maybe I w...

  Speed work can be painful. You are hunched over, huffing and puffing. And even when you're going as fast as you possibly can, there is always going to be some elitist randos out there who will dismiss your effort as "slow."  There are some unsavory corners of the running community that are still very "high school" and the last thing you want to do is re-visit those nightmares. What if I told you that not everyone does speed work to get faster? That it doesn't have to be painful?  Here's why you should consider doing speed work: If you spend too much time at one pace your brain will learn to only activate the muscle fibers necessary to keep going at that pace. All the other muscle fibers won't get any stimulus and won't be familiar with being activated. On long enough runs, the first stringers will eventually get tired and when the brain looks for the second string, no one on the bench will be ready to go in. The result? Your pace and pe...