On Thanksgiving day, if my good fortune holds, I'll finish the Five-Mile Manchester (Connecticut) Road Race for the 50th year in a row. I started my Manchester streak in high school, continued it through college, nurtured it in midlife, held on to it through a long professional career, and now, at 66, treasure it more than my Medicare card. [Editor's note: Start. Dont Stop]
Over the years, I've won nine Manchesters, lost a lot more, and kept going back. Once, when 200 runners was a big crowd, I could count on seeing my photo in the newspapers. (I was the tall, skinny guy with the curly hair, shaggy beard, and tattered painter's cap.) Now, among the 15,000 annual runners, I am an anonymous, invisible midpacker (beard and hair shorter and grayer, cap still in place).
I've run Manchester in a blizzard, on a 16-degree morning, in balmy sunshine, and in a cold, pelting rain. I've run it before marriage, after divorce, after remarriage, with whiny, irksome infant children, while living in another state, while living in another country, and with amazing adult children. Great friends have come and gone, as have my parents, a particular blow. Still, I return to Manchester every Thanksgiving.
My Manchester streak is not a record, and I'm not particularly fast these days. I know many runners my age who are faster, damn them. I don't feel special in any way. Maybe just a little stubborn.
But proud? Yes, I'll cop to that. Because my 50 years at Manchester represent an ethic of sorts. It's what runners do: We keep on keeping on. Once I ran endless 100-mile training weeks. Those memories have faded. Now I run about 25 miles a week. And you know what? I feel quite okay about that.
I owe much of my Manchester success to an unlikely mentor. In the fall of 1964, I had just turned 18, and started my first cross-country season at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. On a chilly Wednesday afternoon, Coach Swanson called a team huddle to discuss the day's workout. I happened to notice a really old guy jogging toward us–I soon learned he was 43. Imagine that! He wore no shoes, a wool sweater, and torn khaki slacks, and could easily have passed for a homeless person. A few minutes later, he joined us for six miles at 6:00 pace.
The geezer runner was Charley "Doc" Robbins, a psychiatrist at a local hospital, and third-place finisher in the 1944 Boston Marathon. When his colleagues took Wednesday afternoons off for golf, Doc trotted over to Wesleyan to run with the track and cross-country teams.
A Manchester native, Doc had finished his hometown Turkey Trot for six years in a row, 1945 to 1950. He won in '45 and '46. However, in 1951 he couldn't make it home to Manchester, a Hartford suburb. He was unable to afford the train fare from Ohio, where he attended medical school. Too bad, but Doc never let the small stuff get in his way for long. A year later, he picked up where he had left off, running the 1952 Manchester. That started a streak that Doc continued through 2001, his 50th consecutive (and last) Manchester. Except for the missing train fare in 1951, he would have managed 57 straight. (He died in 2006.)
Doc ran all those Manchesters in garb similar to what I first observed in 1964, and many of them barefoot. He once told me that he added wool socks when the temperature dipped below 50, and cheap rafting shoes below 40. From the day I first met him, Doc became one of my running idols. He was smart, fast, consistent, unyielding, and completely his own man.
Doc believed that running was a supremely simple sport. You required only minimal equipment, and the healthiest foods were the ones growing in your backyard. To build endurance, you ran long and slow. To build speed, you ran short and fast. When you had little spare time–his lot, as a full-time psychiatrist–you did a modest warmup, a hard two-mile effort, and a cooldown. In living out his simple practices, Doc was like an aerobic Henry David Thoreau. I have never forgotten the lessons he shared on our many weekly runs together–Doc, the chatty veteran; I, the raw college student eager to Hoover up every morsel of running wisdom–and they have always served me well.
From Doc I learned that there's little point in running once or twice (or one or two years; or one or two decades), and then quitting. Real runners stick it out, because sticking it out is the value proposition. We learn little from hitting one finish line; we absorb much from a lifetime journey. On my 50-year journey, I've found that the secrets of lifetime running are simple, as Doc promised, yet profound and far-reaching. I hope you'll find them useful, too.
Start. Don't Stop
Don't worry. I won't go all whacko on you. I'm not suggesting you should run the same race for 50 years or more. But streaks have a power that can keep you running strong. You just have to separate the good streaks from the bad ones.
First, Thanksgiving is in fact a great day for a race streak. It's the most popular racing day of the year, with many big, historical races dotting the calendar along with hundreds of local affairs. Why Thanksgiving Day? I'd like to think runners are wise enough to acknowledge our blessings, especially our health and fitness. This is close to the very essence of Thanksgiving.
Of course, guilt and gluttony could also account for all the Turkey Trots. We see the massive calorie consumption ahead, and figure we ought to have one 30-to-60-minute period when we burn more calories than we shovel down.
I began entering Manchester because I was a Connecticut runner, and Manchester was the state's biggest, most famous race by far. To me, it became one of the two linchpins of the running year–Boston Marathon in the spring, Manchester in the fall. I never intended to become a streaker, but after a decade or so, the annual pilgrimage seemed to develop a momentum of its own.
If Thanksgiving doesn't offer you a good race-streak opportunity, look to other annual events in your area: the Memorial Day 10-K, the Firecracker 5-K on July 4, or perhaps a half-marathon in October. Pick a large, established race that's as much festival as fitness challenge.
But be careful: While I hate to admit it, there are running streaks I wouldn't wish on anyone. Take the guys (and one or two women) who have run more than 30-straight Boston Marathons. That's remarkable, except that many of them are now tilting worse than the Tower of Pisa. I enjoy my running most when it's not accompanied by a limp, hitch, or hobble.
Then there are the gnarly folks who run every day. You can find them at RunEveryDay.com. Some of these people are up above 15,000 days in a row. Yes, I admire their tenacity. But let's face it: This isn't the sanest form of running. No one ever begins their list of "Healthy Running Tips" with the advice: "Thou shalt run every day. Did you hear me? Every single freakin' day."
Here's the key to a good running streak: Improvise. I have a friend who started running Manchester with me back in the early 1970s. Twenty years later, he moved to the Virgin Islands. He's no dummy; he doesn't fly north into the Connecticut cold every Thanksgiving. He wakes up in the balmy Caribbean, gathers a few friends around, and starts his annual five-miler at precisely 10 a.m., the same time as the Manchester start. This year will be his 41st in a row. "We line up to sing the national anthem at 9:55 a.m.," he says. "Then we run."
My vote for the smartest running streak goes to the annual-mileage streak. Try to hit 1,000 miles a year for as long as you can. That's roughly 20 miles a week, a solid marker of dedication and persistence. Annual mileage streaks give you a bar to clear, but also give you wiggle room for flu, injuries, new jobs, new kids, new relationships, new homes, and all the usual stuff. It's possible that 500/year might suffice, but I'll have to think about it more.
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I have long believed that runners focus too much on the physical, numerical side of our sport: leg length, cardiac dimensions, weight, footstrike, arm carriage, and stride frequency. We similarly obsess over pace, finish times, heart rate, lactate threshold, and running economy, as if these determine who we are as runners.
They don't. They might contribute to your half-marathon PR and even your health, but they don't define you as a runner. There is muscle fiber and then there are the 50 shades of gray matter between your ears. The second is far more important than the first. If you want to succeed as a lifelong runner, you'll gain more payback from brain-training than from any other workouts.
In other words, you need to create self-reinforcing, motivational patterns that build a strong foundation under your fitness. Running is easy: Put one foot in front of the other. Staying motivated to run requires much more. It takes thinking and planning. It takes believing in yourself and the value of your workout time. It takes a powerful web of attitudes and practices that make your daily exercise as regular as, you know, brushing your teeth.
There are countless ways to flex your motivational muscles. Read stories about courageous, life-changing runners in Runner's World; these rarely fail to inspire. Follow blogs and tweets by runners you admire. Keep a training log to chart your own story, not someone else's. Research shows that exercise and diet logs work; they help you hold your resolution. Go on internet forums where runners help other runners, and become part of the conversation. Put workouts in your daily calendar or appointment book. Treat these entries as seriously as you do meeting requests from your boss, and don't skip them. Bonus: They're almost certain to be more enjoyable and more productive than those meetings.
Collect great running quotes. You can start anywhere, from the Bible to The Iliad and the The Odyssey to Mark Will-Weber's classic book The Quotable Runner. I once asked Mark to pick the greatest running quote. He chose: "Bid me run, and I will strive with things impossible," from Shakespeare, Julius Caesar.
Be sure to update your collection regularly with new quotes you stumble upon. Here's a good one I happened across while writing this article, from Aristotle: "Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an action but a habit."
Many great runners and coaches have counseled that you can increase motivation through variation, particularly of running routes. I've never believed this. I have one best route that I run from work, one from home, and one from the trailhead, and I have run these routes thousands of times. How can anything be better than the best? The great Villanova coach Jumbo Elliott used to tell his runners to "live like a clock." I live like a guy who's got only one map.
Lastly, the best way to keep yourself running will always be: Find friends and family to join you. I have traveled to my last 40 Manchesters with my brother-in-law Bill, and my last 20 with his son, Jeff. The three of us share a car for an hour on Thanksgiving morning, but most of the year we trash talk each other in that strange way that guys do.
I mostly pick on Jeff, the strong, fast, young one. He started his Manchester streak at 13, and used to play fair. When he began his work career in California, he even took red-eye flights back home to the East Coast at Thanksgiving. For this, I gave him his due. Then he turned unethical and moved to a Connecticut town just up the road from Manchester. This is not fair play, and I am still plotting my revenge. For now, I intend to taunt him by maintaining my 29-year gap. The way I see it, if my brain sends out a strong enough signal, the legs will follow.
Published: Oct 22, 2012 12:00 AM EDT
First the bad news: If you aim for a lifetime of running, you will hit bumps on the road. Heck, let's be honest: You will hit something that looks like Mount Everest, and on the back side a gulf as deep as the Grand Canyon. The challenges we each encounter are uniquely ours, but they will come. We all have good years and bad. Shift happens.
I have run Manchester with a "walking pneumonia" that produced an audible crackling in my lungs as I gasped for air. This was in 1981, my 19th Manchester in a row. I was willing to slow down and crackle a little, but not to abandon the streak. A decade later, my Achilles tendon began making almost the exact same sound. You can look it up; it's called "crepitus." Several doctors told me I would need surgery if I hoped to continue running. I ignored them, adjusted my running routine (to almost nothing), and hobbled through Manchester that year.Now the good news: I haven't heard a peep from that Achilles tendon in the last 15 years. The body wants to heal itself, and only requests that you give it a little time and space. Injuries come, and injuries go, never as soon as you would like. But they eventually depart. Two years ago I ran slowly at Manchester because I was recovering from meniscus surgery. This year I plan to kick butt.
The above were just a few of my physical bumps on the road. The emotional stuff hits much harder. In the mid-1970s, when I was 27 years old, I served as a Peace Corps volunteer in El Salvador, in Central America. One evening I was fixing dinner when I heard a knock on the door. I opened it to a very sober-faced man I had met once before–the director of Peace Corps operations in El Salvador. "I have bad news for you, Amby," he said, handing me a telegram. My eyes scanned to the bottom. There I saw the signature: "Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State." The telegram informed me that my father had been killed in a car accident. I should fly home at once. I did, and soon felt myself sinking into more sorrow, details, and swirl than I had ever known.
This was in early November, three weeks before Manchester. Somehow, I managed to run most days. The runs were short–I didn't have the focus to do more–but I remember them as the most brutally hard fartlek sessions I have ever done. They cleared my head and cleansed my wounds.
On Thanksgiving Day, I ran Manchester. I knew my father–a former athlete, YMCA director, and the person responsible for my interest in sports–would have wanted me to. And I won. I would like to tell you I was inspired by my father's memory. That's the way the story is supposed to be told: Son wins race to honor father.
But it wouldn't be truthful. The truth is: I was running fast to escape the pain and confusion.
Life requires us to make adjustments, to change course. Some years, when the waters of your life are calm and you feel a sense of control at the helm, you'll race hard, and hope for personal bests. Other years, beset by a perfect storm of turbulence, you'll have to settle for less. That's okay. Less is still something; just don't surrender and abandon ship.
Sidestep Injuries
I didn't want to include an injury section, but how could I not? Every day we read studies stating that 20 to 80 percent of runners get injured per year. As a result, we are advised to change shoes, or run barefoot, or try orthotics, or schedule regular massages, or freeze our buns in an ice-bath, or stretch, or lift weights, or sit on a foam roller, or take a magic supplement, or befriend a local chiropractor. In dire situations, better try them all.
Call me officially dubious. I'm sure that some of these gambits work some of the time for some runners, and even more certain that they don't work most of the time. That's because injuries happen to runners the way germs happen to the receptionist in your doctor's office.
There is only one method almost guaranteed to work: Stop running. This has been the hardest lesson I've had to absorb in 50 years, and the one I wish I had learned better many decades ago. When your feet, ankles, calf muscles, shins, knees, quads, hamstrings, or hips hurt, stop running. Now. Not the day after tomorrow, next week, or next month. Get real. Take time off immediately.
Here's why: The vast majority of the "20 to 80 percent" of injured runners have soft-tissue problems–that is, sore muscles, strained tendons, joint inflammation, and the like. These are not broken bones or ACL tears. You don't need a splint or a surgeon. You just need to give your body time to repair itself.
For sore muscles, three days off might suffice. Use ice. Take ibuprofen (for an acute injury, but, please, not every day for the rest of your running life). Rest. Kick back in a comfy chair, fire up your Kindle or iPad, or enjoy that book or film on the shelf. On day four, walk around the block a few times. On day five, see if you can run two miles without discomfort. These are just guidelines. Listen to your body.
For joint pains, take as much as a week off. Try swimming, biking, or an elliptical machine. But only if it doesn't hurt. You know how much fitness you lose in a week? Nothing. That's why we taper before races. You know how much weight you gain? Yes, a pound or so, but it comes off again as soon as you return to healthy running.
The one thing that's absolutely, positively known about running injuries is that old injuries lead to future injuries. The key, then, is to avoid injury the first time around. Today you might have a tender spot on your shin. Keep running, and it could become a full-fledged injury that leads to chronic problems or to other counter-balance injuries. You could spend a lifetime regretting the days when you continued running; you'll never regret the three to seven days of rest.
Sample Alternative Exercises
In this one running life we are each granted, there are some choices to be made. Think carefully about them, and know how to choose. If your goal is to race a personal best performance in roughly 50 days (seven or eight weeks), you should spend the next 50 days running as much as you can. This is the specificity-of-training rule, and it has earned its "rule" designation the old-fashioned way–proven by many runners and coaches through many years. On the other hand, if your primary goal is to run healthy for 50 years, you should explore other options (the more, the merrier, though I have drawn the line at belly-dancing classes). You'll feel better and last longer on a regimen of part-time running mixed with a smorgasbord of alternative activities.
This doesn't mean you need to enter an Ironman Triathlon. In my opinion, the bicycle is one of humankind's greatest inventions, and also a completely insane way to share the road with large, speeding vehicles. I bike an hour or more every day, indoors, on my recumbent, while reading a magazine, watching Morning Joe, or checking the financial news so I can lament the trajectory of my 401-K plan. Did I mention I do this indoors? I haven't fallen off yet, and not a single truck has come careening around the sofa at me.
I am fortunate to have many friends who excel at swimming, and I despise them all. No, not really. It's just that I feel a gnawing envy as I watch them glide effortlessly across the pool. Me? I sink. And swallowing large gulps of chlorine is not high on my list of enjoyable activities.
No, I do better with indoor cycling, rowing, and elliptical training. You have to seek out the exercises that suit you best. I always wanted to be like Jack LaLanne, and knock out several hundred push-ups a day. One brave day I got all the way up to 11. Unfortunately, I do push-ups like Amby LaLame, and nothing is going to change this. I haven't entirely given up on strength-training, but I have accepted my Olive Oyl arms.
A final thought: "Walk" is not a four-letter word, at least not for runners. Walking is one of the best, cheapest, most accessible exercises, and no doubt the original workout routine. While it does put weight on your feet and legs, like running, it uses them in such a different manner that you can often walk pain-free when running hurts. Walking is also the easiest form of exercise to share with friends, co-workers, and family. For the last five years, I've taken several brisk walks a week, two to four miles at a time. I've even come to enjoy these walks, especially when I have a companion to yak away at.
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We live in an obesogenic time and culture. Translation: Just about every adult, even runners, gains a pound a year in midlife. At first, the extra three to five pounds seem imperceptible. But 20 extra pounds become all-too-perceptible. Not to mention dangerous. The extra pounds increase risk for everything from arthritis to heart disease.
To run long and healthy, you need to control your weight. Period. First you have to monitor it. Then when you see it going up, you need to take action to do something about it. Believe it or not, the scale is your friend; it doesn't lie, and it knows how to keep a secret. Pay attention, and act today. It's far easier to lose five pounds than 50.
Do what you must to maintain a healthy weight, or to get back to it. I know people who skip breakfast (generally not the best choice), many who skip lunch, and a few who skip dinner. Pick your poison. There are hundreds of diets out there, and they seem to serve equally well (if you cut calories) or equally badly (if you don't). Figure out what works for you, and kick start your program whenever you need it. Often times you only have to eliminate a handful of foods such as soda, chips, French fries, and chocolate-chip cookies.
I hit my plus-20 pounds a decade ago, in my mid-50s. They didn't show much, since I had started from such a long, lean point. But I disliked my slowing race times, and the sideways view in the bathroom mirror postshower. Over a year or two, I lost 10 of the extra 20, and proceeded to improve my half-marathon time for the following five years in a row.
I find that drinking pure water instead of sugar water is always a good choice. Michael Pollan famously said: "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants." It's hard to argue with his dictum, where "food" means "unprocessed food." I'd add, since we are sweaty runners, "Drink water."
I lost weight in part by introducing more lean protein into my diet, and cutting back on the heaping plates of rice and pasta. Big, colorful salads have always been a personal favorite, and they let you eat lots of food volume without consuming tons of calories (easy on the dressings!). Ice cream should be, sadly, a rare indulgence. I have mostly substituted Greek yogurt and blueberries. You know the truth about your diet and your weight; you know what you need to do. If action is required, don't delay.
Running Supports This Marathoners Sobriety
Olympians and lifetime runners might not seem to have much in common. One shoots for a gold medal on a specific day and year; the other aims to keep running through many years, even decades. However, I think they do share something critical: Both aim high. Without this, they simply can't reach their goals.
In eighth grade, I had a social studies teacher who wore large, flowery hats, spoke French, gestured like a Shakespearean actress, and scrawled terrific quotes on the blackboard. One, from Robert Browning, I've never forgotten: "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a Heaven for?"
At the time, I was a vapid, fidgety kid, who happened to be colossally bored by social studies class. But the words connected with me on some level. When I joined the cross-country team three years later, I followed Browning's advice. Running is such a measurable thing, with its standard distances and stopwatch-timing. We naturally try to reach higher–to run farther or faster–in each new attempt.
At Manchester I was lucky enough to win the high school division in 1963, my first year in the race, and more than my share of open-division titles. Before long, I set my sights on a masters win. Didn't happen. So I waited 10 years, and took aim at the 50-plus division. No luck. Sigh. I could see where this was headed: nowhere. I had been a winner once. Long ago. End of story. But somehow I pulled out of my tailspin at 60. I scored a few wins in Manchester's 60-plus division. Now, those are already dim memories. Still, I keep tabs on myself each year with the Age Graded Calculator, which "equalizes" running times for runners at different ages (runnersworld.com/tools). While I can't match my scores from prior years, especially those from 40 years ago, the calculator, like a bathroom scale, keeps me honest. I enjoy the challenge, the reaching high, the testing of my present self against my all-time best self. In my best Manchester ever, at age 26, my time scores a 90.59 on the calculator; in my best recent Manchester, at 63, I score an 84.81.
Of course, we shouldn't judge ourselves by times alone. There are higher standards–much higher. Like good character, charity, and the example we set for others. I've seen so many huge changes in my 50 years of running: astonishing new world records, the women's running boom, the half-marathon explosion. But the biggest by far is the generous work runners perform through their sport. I'm thinking of the cancer-support groups; the efforts for physically and mentally challenged individuals; prison programs; shoe-collection programs; and many more.
Some say running is a selfish activity, and I am no doubt partial proof of that. But I also believe running is additive, not subtractive. It increases our energy and our potential for good deeds; it doesn't diminish. Like many others, I do what I can, when I can, for whom I can. Browning's words still resonate with me. I don't stretch my legs (as much as I probably should), but I try to stretch myself to see what I can achieve, and what I can contribute.
Run long and healthy. Help others. It's a potent combination.
