TRAINING WITH MY UNCLE JACK

My uncle Jack was a top ranked miler during the 1920's. When he described the training he used to run fast times and win a drawer full of medals, I thought he was lying. At the time I was training harder, and racing in lighter shoes, but I was barely bettering the times he had run 40 years earlier.

Later, after I realized how different uncle Jack's life was from mine, it was easier for me to understand how his remarkable success could have been achieved. While my life was sedentary, my uncle Jack's was active. He had worked six days a week as a conductor on a commuter train. Every morning he rose early, milked his cow, fed his chickens, ate his breakfast and walked a mile to the train station. From seven in the morning until seven at night he walked up and down the aisles of the train collecting tickets. After work he walked the mile to his house, milked the cow, fed the chickens, ate his dinner and went to bed.

Every year he trained a few weeks before his first race and then trained twice a week and raced once a week until the season ended. He never ran far and he never jogged, but then uncle Jack didn't need to jog. Uncle Jack's strenuous existence kept his cardiovascular system in tip top shape, relieving him of the need to run for fitness. The purpose of his running was not to get in shape, but to prepare his body for the specific rigors and stresses of racing.

A typical workout consisted of one to three miles of race paced running where uncle Jack practiced segments of a one mile race. This race specific training was made endurable by taking brief rests between hard surges of from 100 yards to half a mile in length. Such workouts are known as intervals today.

The lifestyle my uncle Jack grew up in is in many ways similar to the lifestyle of modern day rural Africa and because of these similarities, it is no surprise to me that the African runners dominate distance running today. To illustrate my point, I offer the following:

In 1983 while on a training run with Kenyan Joseph Nzau, winner of the Chicago Marathon that year, I asked him what he thought was the primary difference between American and African distance runners. His reply was, "An American runs 10 miles and calls it training, an African runs 10 miles and calls it living."

In November 1989, while working as a journalist, I interviewed 37 year old Suleiman Nyambui of Tanzania. He had just run 28:39 to finish second at the Arturo Barrios 10K in Santa Ana. Nyambui told me he had just returned from spending three months at home. He told me he had not trained while in Africa, and that he had only trained for four weeks since returning to America. I was surprised that he was so careless about his training, but Nyambui explained that he was too busy to train in Tanzania, because everyday he walked and jogged many miles visiting relatives living in far-flung villages.

In 1990 I raced across the Sahara Desert in Southern Morocco. Passing through the small villages that surrounded every oasis, I observed that even the village chiefs didn't own cars, everyone walked, jogged or rode a donkey to get from one place to the next. I saw pint sized children jogging, school books under their arms, as they journeyed from distant shepherd camps in the desert to attend the village school. Each evening the same kids jogged home.

The real African advantage is not altitude, it's the physical fitness their active lifestyle requires. An African runner doesn't need to jog for years to develop the basic fitness needed to train, he can train and race from the first day he takes up our sport.

We don't live in Africa and the America my uncle Jack grew up in is gone. We need to get in shape before we train. The best way to get in shape is to follow uncle Jack's example. Uncle Jack didn't run himself to exhaustion trying to get in shape, he walked himself to health and fitness. Similarly, the best way for you to get in shape is with gentle repetitive exercise.

You need to jog an hour a day to develop the physical fitness my uncle Jack enjoyed as a result of his active lifestyle. You don't need to run fast and you should never run faster than a pace that allows you to talk comfortably and in complete sentences. A staccato of short gasps is not talking in complete sentences and such a conversation is a sure sign of over-training. Running an hour a day only serves to bring us to the fitness level my uncle Jack enjoyed everyday of his life.

This daily easy paced running will improve your body's efficiency at delivering fatty acids, glycogen and oxygen to, and evacuating waste products from the working muscles. This same running will stimulate the working muscle cells to add more mitochondria (energy producing modules) and to increase the storage of glycotic enzymes and myoglobin. These enhancements will allow you to maintain a faster pace, longer. And as an added bonus, this slow running will increase bone mass, protecting against stress fractures, strengthen ligaments, protecting against joint injuries, reinforce tendons, protecting against tendonitis and strengthen running related muscles, protecting against muscle pulls.

Once you are in shape, you need to train before you race.

The best way to train is to follow uncle Jack's example. Uncle Jack trained twice a week, running three to four miles at race pace. In order to be able to run three to four miles at race pace, we need to divide the running into segments and take rest breaks between each segment.

Training at race pace develops race specific speed by enhancing the body's ability to utilize oxygen, improving race pace muscle strength and optimizing race pace muscle coordination. Improved oxygen utilization, muscle strength and coordination leads to more economical running and a higher level of performance.

1. Jog an hour a day to develop fitness. 2. Train three miles a week at race pace. 3. Rest before racing. Result: Your times will improve.