Dave Treadwell's Space: Training

Newton Running Shoes

Sat, 23 Feb 2008 20:54:42 GMT

For about a year, I have been using Newton running shoes pretty exclusively. Since they are a little unusual, I get lots of questions about how well they work and whether I like them. The short answer is: they're expensive, but I love them.

Being a fairly neutral runner, I use the Gravity, a "cushion trainer," for most of my running. I use the lighter-weight Distance for races. In the past year, I have bought ten pairs of the Gravity model and two pairs of the Distance model. I wish that they had a frequent flier program!

Previous to switching to Newtons, I had been a fan of the Asics GT-2xx0 series, having used them for a few years starting with the GT-2080 up to the GT-2110; the current equivalent is the GT-2130. These are fine shoes, but obviously I much prefer the Newtons.

The Downsides of Newtons

There is only one problem with the Newtons in my experience: they are expensive, at $175 for a pair of the Gravity model. This is about double the cost of mid-range running shoes, and it is even somewhat more than other high-end shoes.

I have heard on occasion that Newtons are less durable than other running shoes, but in my experience they last about the same mileage as the Asics, around 300 miles before the "bounce" in them declines to the point where I toss them. I've heard that other folks are able to get as much as 500 miles from a pair of running shoes, but if I tried that it would be a recipe for knee and ankle injuries. Perhaps the fact that at 190 pounds I am somewhat heavier than most runners causes me to go through shoes more quickly.

My very first pair of Newtons lasted a little less than 250 miles. I have read that it is somewhat common for a first pair of Newtons to last less mileage as you adjust to their different design.

So, at $175 for 300 miles, I'm spending about $0.58 per mile to run. A long run of 20 miles costs nearly $12. A month of 75-mile weeks costs $180. That is a lot... so much for running being an inexpensive sport!

I have heard that other people have trouble adjusting to the Newtons, including injuries. It took me only a couple of easy 4-5 mile runs to feel good in them, and I have had no injury troubles that I could even remotely attribute to the Newtons.

Why I Love Them

Speed. These shoes are fast. I can tell that the energy return design speeds me up. While it is difficult to do precise testing because of the number of different factors involved, I believe that they give me five to ten seconds per mile on flat, paved surfaces. There seems to be little or no speed gain on hills and non-paved surfaces.

Comfort. These shoes feel really good on my feet. The cushioning is in just the right spots. They seem to fit exceptionally well. The mesh upper design also seems to help cooling.

Forefoot striking. Landing on the forefeet is both more efficient and less prone to causing injuries. The Newtons really encourage this running style, making it feel totally natural. Newton has a good web page that describes how this works.

Customer service. I had one pair of the Gravity model have some of the sole come loose at only 130 miles. The Newton folks sent me an entirely new pair as a replacement!

Useful for hunting! The bright orange color of the Gravity model makes them suitable safety gear for your hunting expeditions! OK, that was just an attempt at humor. My wife enjoys mocking their bright color; I don't really care either way about the color, but if style matters to you in your running gear choices, you will definitely have some opinion on the, um, "assertive" styling of the Newtons.

How I Use Them

Lace 'em up and run, right?

Well of course. What I mean is how I rotate through pairs of these shoes. I find that rotation works much better than just doing through one pair at a time. Typically, I have two or three pairs of trainers in active use:

New, <150 miles: I use a pair with relatively few miles on them for long or hard/interval runs. Fresh Newtons have the most cushioning, so I use these for my high-quality running workouts.

Middle age, 150-250 miles: I use these shoes for typical middle distance E runs. I almost never go more than ten miles on a pair of middle-aged Newtons. These shoes have lost a little bounce for me, but they are still quite usable.

Senior Citizens, 250-300 miles: I just keep these around to get the last miles out of a pair of shoes. I use them only for shorter, low-priority runs like easy 5-mile recovery runs the day after a hard workout.

So that I can track the various pairs, I write a monotonically increasing number on the arch of each pair. Geeky? You bet.

Should you try them?

Newtons seem to be polarizing: people either love them or hate them. I'm obviously in the former camp. If you are someone who is a forefoot striker who wants to get faster and is willing to lay out the dollars that they cost, I strongly recommend them. If you want to give them a shot, I'd recommend buying one pair very early in your running season. Definitely don't try them out shortly before a big race! Use them over a couple of weeks so that you adjust to them. There is a good chance that you will like them a lot, based on what I experienced and have heard from other converts.

Marathon Training Learnings... and Public Goals

Sat, 17 Nov 2007 21:00:26 GMT

A couple of days ago, I did my last hard workout before the Seattle Marathon. Diligently following Jack Daniels' marathon Plan A, I've been much more structured in my training for my first marathon than any other endurance event I've done. I feel like I have learned a lot from this plan, and I thought that I would share some of my perspectives.

Daniels' Marathon Plan A
In his excellent book, Daniels details several specific marathon training plans. I selected his "Plan A" because it seemed fairly general, and it looked like I would be able to handle it. The basic structure of this plan is to start by doing several weeks of base work to build durability and aerobic fitness, then follow several phases where there remains a lot of easy base running in conjunction with two "quality" workouts each week. The quality workouts include some faster running, either "T" (threshold) pace intervals or "M" (marathon) pace long runs. T pace is one's fastest pace for one hour of running, which is just slower than 10k pace for most people. M pace is the pace that can be maintained for a marathon. All other running is at "E" (easy) pace, which for me is about a minute per mile slower than M pace. E pace roughly corresponds to heart rate zone 2 if you follow Friel's HR taxonomy.

What I Did
Since early August, I have managed to follow Daniels' plan very closely. I didn't miss any quality workouts except for two times when I intentionally replaced them with races. I had to eliminate most of "phase 2" due to a lack of time between when I started formal marathon training and when the race occurs. I did the vast majority of my Monday through Friday training as part of my commuting to or from work. The phase 1 ramp up worked really well for me, as I went from around 25 miles per week that I was doing for triathlon training up to a peak week of 83 miles. Most weeks were around 75 miles, until I started tapering a couple of weeks ago.

What I Learned
Doing lots of easy running really does help endurance. Surely my biggest endurance sports learning of the last year is that doing a lot of miles at a relatively easy pace really helps endurance for longer events. Easy pace has less injury risk, requires less emotional energy to perform, allows much quicker recovery, and it really does build endurance fitness. For example, right after finishing phase 1 of my training, I took a minute off my 10k PR in the Bank to Bay 10k, despite doing exactly zero miles at faster than E pace in the preceding six weeks.

Structured training really helps focus. Following a plan with an appropriate amount of detail was really good for me. Daniels' Plan A had just the right amount of structure for me: enough that I had to focus and plan for the two weekly quality workouts, but not to much that I couldn't fit it into my very hectic schedule. Since all but two of the weekly workouts are unstructured, I had a lot of flexibility with this plan.

Commuting works great for E runs. I found it really effective to do lots and lots of E workouts while commuting. Because these are generally unstructured workouts, I didn't need to be at all precise about selecting a route that accommodates the workout. I was able to select routes on the basis of how long I wanted to run, scenery, timing, and the like. Most of my good commuting routes are fairly hilly, but when doing E pace runs I just slow down or speed up to maintain the right heart rate. If I had to stop randomly for a stop light or to wait for a bus, it didn't matter.

Commuting is hard to combine with quality workouts. Because of the structure of quality workouts, e.g. 2x15min at T pace, doing these workouts while getting somewhere specific is hard to do. Stopping for a light in the middle of an interval is obviously undesirable. Doing intervals while running downhill is dangerous because of the injury risks, so route selection gets much harder. I reluctantly did a couple of quality workouts as commutes because of time constraints, but as much as possible I tried to avoid this.

Quality workouts in the dark are hard. I don't mind easy running in the dark, so long as there is just enough light to see the ground in front of me. Running fast in the dark is really challenging, though. When training near my limit, concentrating on obstacles in the path is much harder, and I found it nearly impossible to go really hard while ensuring that I didn't trip over something.

Use occasional hills to diversify interval workouts. Because the Seattle Marathon course is somewhat hilly, I wanted to get in some hill training in my quality workouts. What I found works well is to select a route where the last one or two intervals have a significant uphill component. Obviously, I had to slow down a little to complete these workouts at the right intensity. Having the uphill work seemed effective for me.

It is cool using the real race course as a training route. I'm fortunate to live very near the Seattle Marathon start/finish. Therefore, I frequently used the real race course for training. I did the last 4-5 miles of the course about a dozen times, in part because it is easy for me to combine the finish with commuting. I did other significant sections of the course about a half dozen times. Over the course of my training, I have run every inch of the course except for the parts on the I-90 express lanes, which I had to simulate with surface streets. I feel like I know the course really well.

Don't go over 2.5 hours in L runs. Feeling especially ambitious in my last "L" run (long run at E pace), I decided to do most of the Seattle Marathon course. I ended up doing 24.1 miles in 3:02, skipping the I-90 bridge part of the course and doing a little extra before and after the course to get to and from my house. While it was cool and not all that hard to complete this workout, I felt very tired for a while after. Daniels suggests never doing workouts this long, and he is right. I should not have taken the risk of going this long so as to avoid the tiredness I felt afterward.

M runs are hard. Daniels' plan A has several workouts of this form: 2 miles E + 15 miles M + 2 miles E. These are brutal workouts, but they are very gratifying to complete. I did my last M run a week after the 24.1-mile L run, and that made for a serious effort. I did manage to do it at my M pace, even including the hilly parts of the Seattle Marathon course, but it was quite an effort. I did my other M runs on a flat course while a bit more rested, and those were challenging and fun. It took many days before I felt somewhat recovered from these runs.

Running training is a lot simpler than triathlon training. This is probably an obvious comment, but it sure is simpler to train for a single-sport event than a multi-sport event. Because I could concentrate on just running, I removed a lot of the complexities of working on the other sports. Also, the absolute limit my body can handle for running seems to be around ten hours weekly, so I can find the time to train at my physical limit for running in the ten hours per week that I am willing to devote to endurance sports. I could physically do and benefit from much more than ten hours of weekly triathlon training, but there is no way that I could find the time for that.

Public Statement of Goals
"They say" that it is good to be pubic about goals (something about "accountability"), so here are mine for the race next weekend:

Good: 3:20:59. I started this whole thing wanting to qualify for the Boston Marathon. For my age, I need to do 3:20:59 to qualify. Based on how I have been running, this should be completely possible, barring injury, sickness or bizarre weather.

Better: 3:10. For men under age 35, the BQ time is 3:10:59. It would be cool to hit this time so I don't need any sort of "for my age" disclaimer.

Best: 2:59. My 1:24:01 time from the Halloween Half Marathon suggests that I should be able to do under three hours in a full marathon. It would certainly be cool to be able to say that my first marathon was faster than Lance Armstrong's marathon debut, but achieving this will require perfect execution and decent conditions. Hopefully, I will avoid the stress fractures he got.

The Plan
I'm going to try to do the first half as close to 1:30 as I can manage it. Since the first half is fairly flat, I am pretty confident about being able to do 1:30 without too much difficulty. Then:

If feeling good, pick up the pace a bit, perhaps +10sec/mile.
If feeling OK, just maintain pace and soldier on.
If not feeling OK, back off and guarantee the BQ.

At mile 20, the serious hills start, so I am ready to put down the hammer then and try to survive to the finish. I'll be downing a gel every 20 minutes, and I will drink at least a big sip of water at every station.

If you see me in Memorial Stadium at 11:14am next Sunday, expect to see a big smile on my face despite the discomfort I will surely be feeling.

Carrying Gels in a Marathon

Sun, 11 Nov 2007 20:19:17 GMT

With my first marathon coming up in just two weeks, I have been trying to figure out the best way to carry gel during the race. Based on my training experiments with nutrition, I find that I need about one gel every twenty minutes when doing hard exertion. Given my expected pace in the race, this means that I will need to carry at least eight gel packs (or equivalent) with me. Jill Fry's team gave me a lot of suggestions to try out, and being a bit of a gear head I pursued a lot of them.

I found that I needed to optimize for these (fairly obvious) attributes:

Minimum weight to carry eight gel packs or equivalent
No bouncing when loaded with gel
Trivial to get gel while racing
Carry nothing in my hands
Comfortable enough that I will not really notice it during the race.

With those in mind, here's what I tried. I am listing them in order of worst to best.

FuelBelt Gel-Ready Race Belt When a friend pointed me to this and I found it on the FuelBelt web site, I thought for sure that this would be the answer. It seems designed exactly for my needs. However, I found that it is awful for this application. Gel packs are difficult to get in and out. They bounce a lot unless there are just a couple of gels in each side. I have an average-size waist (about 33"), but it was WAY too loose for me despite the assertion of "one size fits all." Gels fell out when I did a bouncier motion like bounding up a curb or fast downhill running. Overall, this is a total reject.

Amphipod RaceLite Go I bought this before the FuelBelt race belt; I should have learned my lesson about using race belts to carry gel. While this one worked slightly better with a few gels in its pouch, if I had more than three gels in it, it would bounce annoyingly. It did fit better than the FuelBelt, and I could see it possibly being adequate for a shorter race--maybe an Olympic- or HIM-distance tri run leg where there's a need to carry a few gels and having a clip-able race belt to hold a race number is helpful in T2.

Various Amphipod waistpacks I love these for commuting, and they would probably be acceptable for this application if not for the size. I only tried the ones that have bottle carriers, and I don't need a bottle carrier in the race since I plan to get water on the course.

Sugoi Vulcan Run Shorts These are great workout shorts: I have three pairs. They almost work for being gel carriers in a marathon, except for two issues. First, they only hold two gels in each of the three pockets for a total of six gels. Next, when holding two gels in a pocket, there is a little bouncing. For a shorter race like a half marathon, these shorts are perfect. Also, there is the risk that race day will be too cold for shorts, so I don't want to depend on using this mechanism. I got a suggestion to check out RaceReady Tights, and they may just work well, but I didn't try them.

FuelBelt Helium Waistpack This is a really good running waistpack. It is really comfortable, and there's no bounce. The two-bottle version could work for what I need if I were to dump gel into one or both bottles, likely cut some with water so it goes smoothly through the cap; without water, gel is too viscous when the bottle nears empty--think of a 20% full shampoo bottle. Having gel in a container has the advantage that I don't need to open gel packs while running, which takes just a bit of dexterity. The only downsides of this solution are quite minor: the bottles are a little tricky to get into the elastic holders while running, the small extra weight of the water for cutting the gel, getting precise amounts of gel is harder, and I wouldn't be able to use a variety of gel flavors.

One other note on the Helium: I got a size large which FuelBelt asserts is right for my waist size, but I should have bought a medium. The large is just a little loose on me, even then the Velcro fastener is on the minimum size.

Road Runner Sports 5k Waistpack (not listed on their web page) This is a very small and light waistpack. If I pack it carefully, I can hold six gels in the main container and stuff two additional gels into the waistband on the sides. It weighs nearly nothing, it is comfortable, it does not bounce, and I am able to get gels easily enough while moving. It is also one of the least expensive solutions that I tried. Overall, it is a winner.

It is a little ironic that a pack with "5k" in its name is the best solution I found for my marathon. If only I could run my 5k pace for 26.2, I would be all set!