STRIDE RIGHT! You Too Can Pretend to Be an Elite Runner

Years ago, my intrepid marathon pit crew, Team Sina Bina, stood ready to hydrate and cheer me at the crack of dawn on the sidelines of the course on Oahu.  Bless them.  They didn't know they'd be standing there well over an hour before spotting me Quasimodo my way towards them in all my sweaty, road meat glory.

However, their time was not wasted for they had the great honor of watching the pack leaders waft by them while the sun still hung low on the horizon.  Once I found them, I guzzled water, simultaneously sucking down air in wheezing gasps which resulted in a vortex of H2O effluvium escaping my pie hole and landing rather inconspicuously on my already sweat logged running shirt.  My state of physical apoplexy escaped my crew.  They were too busy waxing poetic over the languid beauty of the elite runners.  Extolling their silence, their buoyancy, their speed, the effortless quality of their motion.

I limped off, snarfing oxygen in lame pursuit of those damn glorious runners.

Here's the sad part, I defy any distance runner of middling aptitude to admit that they've NEVER spent at least 43 minutes of a long run daydreaming of miraculously corralling superhuman speed during a marathon, imagining they find themselves prancing along at the head pack on race day.  We train fully aware that the probability of running a 2:14 marathon is nigh impossible and yet we run.

But speed aside, there's no reason you can't run like an elite athlete.  As a matter of fact, there's every reason to try because chances are a few elite changes will make you marginally faster and, more importantly, will stave off running injury.

Aside from the obvious form  requirements, like running tall and striking mid-foot, elite runners have a consistent stride rate of about 180 to 190 strikes per minute.  It sounds insanely fast and if you're running a 14 minute mile, there's a chance you'll start off scuffling along like Groucho Marx.  But keep in mind, if you've got a low stride rate you're channeling your energy DOWN instead of forward.  That slows you down and results in greater impact (read INJURY!).  Considering that elite runners spend less than one tenth of a second per stride meeting rubber to road, you'd think they were flying (actually, I think they are) and that limited impact time goes a long way in alleviating a ton of stress on the body.

(For simple stride drills, check this out)

Here's how you figure out your stride rate.  While you're running, start a timer and count how many times your right (or left) foot hits the pavement in sixty seconds.  Aim for 90-95 strikes total (which gets you to the 180-190 optimal stride rate).  Chances are, you're off.

Here's how I make an immediate adjustment.  I pick a power song on my i-pod.  I've got a line-up  of songs  just for stride rate. Every 20 minutes into a long run, I go back to my "STRIDE RIGHT!" song as a gentle reminder that logging miles isn't enough, I need to think about form and stride. I just run to the beat and I know that I'm hitting my optimal rate because after about 10 miles, I'm incapable of counting properly so I just let the beat help me along.  Lately, the song that gets me there is "Pop Song" by Starf•cker.  But I have a feeling you've got a diddy of your very own that will get you where you need to be.

Manna for Runners

For peak running function, "Carbo Loading" has been the mantra of distance athletes the world over.  The spaghetti bacchanal that precedes every marathon arguably keeps Ronzoni in business.  But not all carbs are equal.  I know.  I've used myself as a guinea pig.  And since I have the added pleasure of baking professionally, I've been able to experiment in my own ovens and then on my own body.  From San Francisco sourdough, to homemade papardelle, to hand pulled soba noodles, to a vicious slab of cake, the loading of carbs is my mission and great pleasure.

Sadly, cake has never been the most efficient fuel.  Pasta tends to burn fast.  Soba noodles are a righteous pain in the arse to master and the sourdough, well, I end up eating an entire loaf and fall into a food coma.

But Manna Bread, that's the stuff of endurance.  As a food, it's remarkably streamlined and nutritionally substantial.  It's available in the freezer section of most high end grocery stores.  Frozen for freshness; it's made from sprouted grains and has a short shelf life which bodes well in the nutrition department.  In lieu of pulverizing a dormant wheat berry into oblivion so that the nutritional fuel conversion is instantaneous and hardly lasting, Manna bread requires that the wheat berries sprout, creating a nutritionally dense and complex food stuff.  The sprouted wheat berries are then ground into a paste and baked at a very low temperature, low enough that the nutritional value is maintained due to the lack of excessively high temperatures that would otherwise knock the nutrients right into dormancy. And with complex carbs and 6g of protein a slice, it's hitting all the right running notes.

The result is a bread that eats more like a moist wheat cake, the lack of leavening makes for a compressed texture that's lush and hearty.  Don't freak out when you slice a piece and your gorgeous Manna isn't the dry spongiform to which you've become accustomed in a bread.  This stuff is downright dewy.

But why let someone else have all the fun of sprouting and baking?  And why not tailor the goodness to runners specifically?

I make Manna in large batches, 4 loaves in each batch, because it's just a easy to sprout 6 1/2 cups as it is two.  I store the extra bread in the freezer.


MANNA BREAD
Makes 4 loaves

This process takes a few days.  Patience. This is a living food, one that gives you all its worth in nutritional punch and guarantees a carbo load with staying power.

INGREDIENTS

6 1/2 cups of wheat berries, ready for sprouting

6 1/2 cups organic wheat berries (find in the bulk section of your grocer)
2 cups spring or filtered water (1/2 cup water for each loaf)
sea salt
1 cup organic white chia seeds (divided into 1/4 cup servings for each loaf)
1 cup raw, unsalted sunflower seeds (divided into 1/4 cup servings for each loaf)

PROCEDURE

soak overnight

-In a large bowl, soak the wheat berries overnight.

drain in a large, fine sieve.  

-Drain the berries in a very large, fine sieve.  Keep the wheat berries in the sieve.  I keep the sieve suspended over the sink for the duration of the process, you'll see why in a second.
-Soak a clean kitchen towel completely.  Rinse the berries, and wrap the moist towel around the sieve so that it covers the sieve and berries entirely, a little hobo bundle of sprouting goodness.  The kitchen towel serves an important function.  It covers the surface area of the exposed wheat berries, keeping them from drying out and locking in the moisture while still allowing excess water to drain.  This keeps any bacteria from clinging to our sprouts.  Keep rinsing and recovering the berries with the towel every few hours, making sure the towel stays moist.  Do this until the berries sprout.  This can take a day. This past week, it took a little over 2 days.  You want the sprouts to be as long if not a little longer the than wheat berry itself. Too long and the bread will take on a distinctly grassy flavor.

sufficiently sprouted

-Once your little berries are sufficiently sprouted, you should end up with the equivalent of

four quarts (that's 4 cups a quart...so 16 cups.  and we started with a mere 6 1/2 cups!).

4 quarts of sprouted wheat berry.  Not a bad return for just a few days of rinsing.

a wet paste, ready for some wet hands to take charge.

-Working in batches, place 2 cups to 2 1/2 cups of sprouted wheat berries into a food processor.  Grind the berries until a uniform mass forms.  With the machine running, add 1/2 cup water, a hearty pinch of salt and 1/4 cup each of the chia seeds and sunflower seeds.

4 loaves.  I got a bit enthusiastic with some black chia on the far right.  

-Wet your hands and transfer the sticky dough to a sheetpan lined with parchment paper.  Form the dough into a loose loaf.  Do this 3 more times to form the remaining loaves.
-Bake the bread at 225º (if you're using a convection oven, bake at 200º) for 3 hours.  The crust should feel dry but not hard and the interior of the bread should hold it's shape completely but will be very moist.
-Personally, I slather the stuff with cashew butter and apricots.  Wait a few hours and then take my lasting carbo load on the road.  Feel free to slather it however you see fit.
-For storage.  Wrap the loafs tightly in plastic wrap.  Freeze the loaves you aren't going to consume immediately.
Nutritional information:  1 slice (56g); 160 calories, fat 2 g, carbs 26 g, protein 6g

Running in Circles for Helga & a Recipe to Aid a Moving Benedition

(Helga Racing)

I started running in 2000. I'd put on my ratty sweats, roughly scrape my hair into a pony tail, check to see that mom was comfortable and then I'd walk the half block down 26th street to North Fillmore, cross the street and then I'd start what had become a moving prayer.

I ran a 1/4 mile loop over and over, a loose circle lined with childhood memories: That's where the Carreys lived until 7th grade, and the Rattigans were nestled down that side street until sometime in 4th grade and the Wrenns had always faced directly onto the main drag across from Woodmont elementary. All these neighbors, they used to bear witness to my mother running this same circuit every day. On a slow day, she'd average five miles. That's 20 laps. On a training day, she'd edge towards 20 miles.

My sad sack hamstrings screamed after one measly mile. But I bullied on, one sloppy footfall after another, my jagged rhythm playing metronome to my silent benediction, "please. please. please. please."

Please, stop her suffering. Please, show her mercy. Please, give her comfort. Please.

Less than nine years before I started my pathetic 4 lap devotional, my mother was running marathons. How was it that she was now dying of cancer?

And because I'd asked "Why?" every day for the five years she'd suffered without so much as a cosmic courtesy reply, on her last days I ran in her honor and in her footsteps to plead for the end of her suffering.

She's been gone for close to eleven years and I still ask please. Please stop the suffering. Please show some mercy. Please give us comfort. Please, enough with the cancer already.

Since I haven't gotten so much as an automatic "out of office" email response to my non-denominational ecumenical badgering, I've decided to stop asking, to stop pleading and to simply start running. To honor Helga. To honor all the wonderful souls who have suffered from cancer. I'm running what I think of as Helga's race, The Marine Marathon, to raise money for the American Cancer Society. Donate here if you can.

Please and thank you


___

I've tried in vain to convince my body that eating half a chocolate cake the night before a long run is an enlightened carbo load. My body's just not having any of it. So I've gone down that slippery slope of experimentation, of convincing myself that baking a healthy alternative is actually JUST as delicious and satisfying as the butter and bittersweet version.

We all know it's not.

But I have come up with a weird, health conscious recipe thats a riff off an already odd combination of chocolate and zucchini cake. It's really not half bad, it's a slow burn energy boost and it's a fantastic way to get rid of a few CSA zucchinis.

Long Run Cake

2 cups of grated zucchini
1 cup of apple sauce unsweetened, organic
3/4 cup muscovado sugar
1/4 cup honey
2 eggs
3/4 cup cocoa powder (I use Callebaut extra brute)
1 1/2 cups oat flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoons vanilla

PROCEDURE
•Preheat oven to 350º
•Blend together zucchini and apple sauce in a food processor until it's the consistency of baby food.
•Transfer the zucchini and applesauce to the bowl of an electric mixer and add sugar, honey, eggs and cocoa powder. Mix on medium speed with the paddle attachment until the mixture is smooth and there are no cocoa powder lumps
•Add oat flour, baking powder, salt and vanilla and mix until just combined.
•Fill cupcake papers almost completely full and bake for 20 minutes or until the tops of the cakes are firm and a toothpick comes out clean.

Popping Patella

"I can't bend my knee. But I'm finished, dammit."

Behold, the Halloween text of a woman in pain.  

It contains a smidge of hyperbole. I was bending my knee just find for miles; I enjoyed 17 miles of free wheeling knee bendability.  For those miles, I blithely made full advantage of some healthy patella action.

At the 17 mile marker, I could have sworn someone on the sidelines took to stomping on an economy sack of Doritos.  Or maybe they were just popping packing bubbles.  "Crunch. Pop. Crunch. Pop."  Or maybe, just maybe, my knee had taken to the percussive arts with zeal.  That would explain the beastly stabbing pain that was making my eyes water.  

Damn you, Rosie Ruiz and timing chips.  With 9 miles left, there was a lovely subway stop a few limps away that would dump me at the finish.  

Hobbling up towards the 18 mile marker, I got a brief view of the Georgetown University tower.  Mom spent her last years on that campus undergoing surgeries, chemo and radiation in a bid to beat colon cancer.  She lost.  8 miles more miles, waddling on a lame knee, was nothing in comparison.  Couldn't come close.  I'd raised thousands of dollars for the American Cancer Society with a promise that I'd finish the Marine Marathon for Helga and I'd be damned if I didn't finish.

The truth is, I really could bend my knee.  It just hurt like hell.  But what's a little snap, crackle and patella pop when it comes to fighting cancer? 

That's why I keep running.  And I'm going to keep running until I raise $64,000 for the American Cancer Society.  That's $1,000 for each year my beautiful mother lived.  

This blog is a running journey, a compilation of what I've learned in my years of training, injury and baking for optimal running efficacy with an emphasis on health and fundraising.  If you have a motivational running story to share, send it along.

Happy and healthy running.  And don't forget to donate!