When searching for company for my day-to-day runs during the week, often one of the barriers between running with someone and running alone is the choice of location. Most of the time, I don’t mind driving to a run, but throughout the year, and particularly at this time of the year, I like to be on hilly terrain. Some of my contemporaries do not. Having once avoided hilly runs myself, I know the excuses: a fast run is better than a slow run, and the hills only slow things down and tire you out for all your other sessions. I was once a slave to the mileage and pace on my GPS-watch. Hilly runs only slowed things down and made my training diary look less-impressive. So what changed? Why did I start to embrace the hills instead of avoiding them? Well, a wise coach played a part in it, but also, perhaps not so coincidentally, I stopped getting injured. And perhaps most importantly for my own peace of mind, I could rationalise their benefit, and be ok with sometimes feeling tired during my other training runs. So, lets have a look at why hills are good for you:

Running up hills engages more muscle. Instead of just moving horizontally (forward), when we run up a hill, we move horizontally and vertically (up), allowing gravity to impose more of a challenge to our motion. Engaging more muscle mass has neuromuscular, biochemical, and cardiovascular benefits. The proportion of benefit to each system is determined by the volume and speed with which the hill is traversed. And better still, there are benefits to be found in running down hills too!

Muscles are always looking for the most efficient means for achieving a task with the minimal amount of fatigue.

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The post Don’t Skimp on the Hills | A Runner’s Tribe Column by David McNeill appeared first on Runner's Tribe.

Betterment. It’s a virtue that defines what a competitive runner strives for with every training endeavour: to be better. But it’s also a virtue that defines almost every aspect of our lives. Being a better parent. A better cook. A better writer. Better at your job. Being a better person. Oprah Winfrey so eloquently put it once that “running is a great metaphor for life: you get out of it what you put in.” And so it is, that betterment reflects the effort and devotion we put forward. It’s a fitting quote from Oprah, albeit, a little corny. But the reality is, there are many more people out there who despise running than those who love it. And so the virtues of betterment that a runner pursues have very little metaphorical application.

Or do they?

Many things runners do - particularly elite competitive runners - to be better on a daily basis can seem obscure, and seem not to be applicable to betterment in other aspects of life. I mean, can A-skips and hurdle drills really make me a better cook? Maybe not, but running does encourage attitudes and behaviours that are necessary in the pursuit of all forms of betterment. What can we learn from elite runners to be better at whatever it is we are pursuing in life?

Elite runners love feedback. And they seek it out daily. Did I push too hard, or was it just right? How is my form? I have often been complemented on giving sound, level-headed advice when asked. But whenever I have found myself in similar situations warranting similar advice, I am much worse at following it myself. Seeking feedback protects us from ourselves; from being passionate when we should be pragmatic, and vice versa. Feedback is like a good GPS navigator - it ensures we make the right turns at the right time, and get to where we want efficiently.

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Too often in my career, I have walked off the track querying my performances; wondering why I ran so poorly when training pointed to something better…or wondering how on earth I ran as fast as I did when preparations had been poor. The latter scenario has never been so much a concern as it has been a blessing. But in the case of the former, I was always left wondering what it is I did to sabotage my performance; why, despite my best intentions, my performance didn’t improve from one race to the next. I’d like to say the days of unpredictable performances are behind me, but I am human, and I am sure unexplained performances lie in my future. At some point or another, many of us have run a great race, fed off the motivation of that performance in preparation for the next race, and then run poorly that next time around. Why don’t we improve sometimes? Why don’t races always live up to expectations? What is it we do to sabotage training and performance gains?

Being overzealous is one factor. While it is sometimes easy to equate harder training with better performance, we sometimes jump the gun, and think training harder is the only answer, when often, the first answer is to be consistent. Imagine giving a lemon a squeeze, and getting some juice out of it. Rarely do you get all the juice out of the lemon with a single squeeze. More juice is yielded when we start to wring the lemon. Just as we wouldn’t fetch another lemon before we’d squeezed all the juice out of it, sometimes, we need to keep training consistently before we start training harder. When we prematurely start to train harder, the balance between stress and adaptation is shifted, and we do not recover and adapt at the rate at which we are stressing our bodies. When we train consistently after already seeing improvement, subsequent improvement with the proverbial wringing of the lemon is actually a product of our body’s ability to recover faster and more fully from training, so that we adapt quicker and more completely with each training session. Of course, the time comes when the lemon is dry, and you will need to fetch another. Learning when to be consistent and when to train harder represents the art of coaching and training.

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I recently had dinner with two dear friends, Benny and Rich. Our reunions are relatively few and far between, given Benny is in Sydney, and Rich lives on the other side of the (Yarra) river…far too far away for a comfy northsider.  But in the interim, we lift each other up with a lively and intimate group chat. It’s a treasured 3-way friendship.

Over dinner, we reminisced about training camps together in southern California at the incredibly spartan Mt Laguna Lodge – a collection of mountain cabins near the southern end of the Pacific Crest Trail, with nothing but a post-office and miles of beautiful single track trails and hilly dirt roads. Together with the Melbourne Track Club, we had great success training there. It was always a team effort. We acknowledged that without the team together, a good mental headspace would be lost, and with it, any chance of translating fitness into results.

With the benefit of hind sight, I’d say headspace – that environment you create in your mind by fostering contentedness about “the state of things” – has been my biggest challenge as an athlete. As athletes, we commonly address what mental fortitude it takes to run our best race, or get the most out of our training session. But that racing and training headspace only serves us for a couple of hours a day at best. There is a bigger foundation to take care of the other 22 hours of the day – more important to our ability to perform when it counts. I have found 3 Ps – people, passion, and purpose - particularly important for finding peace in daily life, and for fostering my best when it counts.

People

As the cliché goes, surround yourself with people that bring out the best in you. I have always found that a useful cliché, particularly as a self-confessed introvert. Whether in person or on our phones, Benny, Rich and I talk about our goals, talk about our challenges and failures, and bounce ideas off each other. There’s a certain vulnerability about doing that, which takes trust…not something you can do with anyone. But it’s funny that sometimes, to be honest with ourselves, we need someone else to be honest and vulnerable to. Being honest and vulnerable with someone else allows us to understand ourselves better – an important precursor to inner peace. Having people in my life that I can be myself around, that enrich my perspective on the world…they are all literally changing my brain chemistry for the better – creating a strong mental foundation, without which I could never hope to be mentally strong on race day, or any day for that matter.

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Our list of curiosities is peculiar to the casual observer. We count miles/kilometres instead of calories. We prefer Strava to Facebook. We are the high-performance runners (in lieu of the demeaning obsessive-compulsive label) - the runners who run to get faster (whether that's breaking 3hrs in the marathon, or breaking 13mins in the 5km), as opposed to the runners who run to stay healthy.

So in the age of super-foods, of detox juice cleanses, of low-carb, high protein, fat-is-good, gluten-free mumbo jumbo, where does the high-performance runner stand? Is conventionally evolving wisdom enough for us, or does our pursuit to test the limits change the advice we should be following? And seriously, should I run 50km a week, or should I run 150km a week?

Depending upon the domain you're seeking expertise in (diet, mileage, weights, psychology, perhaps even faith!), chances are there is a certain degree of polarisation in the arguments made for and against certain practises. You're either high mileage or low mileage, weights or no weights, low carb-high fat or high carb-low fat. And while the information age has made it easier to self-educate on these issues, it has also blurred the boundary between information use and information abuse. Where once we found advertisements on television, and information in scientific journals, now we find information and advertising in a single place: the internet. Twitter has become the playground of people with vested interests in both business and/or in science, which has made it difficult to decipher what's right and what's right($$)!

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At the risk of being condescending, and calling all runners control freaks, my experience is that habitual runners (from the hobby joggers to the Olympic medalists) share qualities of being perfectionist, pedantic, meticulous, and non-compromising. Broad generalisation, I know. But all positive attributes to have when kept in check - capable of breeding consistency: the hallmark of a successful and happy runner. I too find the term control freak a little harsh, but for lack of a better term, it will do. As champion 1500m runner Jenny Simpson of the USA said, “where my job begins and where my job ends is a very fluid thing. It’s my life”. Running is my life too, and on that note, I will admit to being a mild control freak. For some runners, the extent to which their life revolves around running goes only so far as ensuring they can get their 30min run in, 5 times a week. For others, running can strictly dictate when you go to bed, when you say no to social occasions, say no to alcohol, say no to relationships. And perhaps most commonly, running can dictate what we eat. And while many aspects of my own life revolve around running, food is not one of them. In true Melbournian fashion, there is an aspect of my life that revolves around food, all of its own accord.

As a runner, food is the topic I most commonly get quizzed about. “Do you watch what you eat?” “What do you eat after workouts?” “How many calories do you consume each day?” And since I am a vegetarian, the question that proves the bane of my existence, “where do you get your protein from?” I have rehearsed my answers as many times as I’ve been asked the questions, and rarely have I said what I really think. When asked about food, I talk about food as the people who ask me the questions expect me to answer them. But in reality, it’s not what I think about when I think about food.

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Netflix and Chill. While it’s still a relatively recent phenomenon to the rest of the world, it’s been the old adage of serious runners for as long as running has been a professional sport. Perhaps not always Netflix, and perhaps not the same connotation of the word “chill” as others make of it’s meaning, but nonetheless an excuse to avoid the effort and fatigue associated with leaving the couch to engage in life outside of running. It is but one of the characteristics of a serious (or not so serious) runner that has the capacity to impact one’s relationships with others.

For the hobby jogger, weekend warrior, and serious athlete, there are many elements of life outside of running that are at least in part affected by running. And for the friend, family member, or significant other who shares in a runner's life, the all-encompassing impact of running can become a source of resentment, with the resentment going both ways. I’ve nearly seen out my 20s now - a time when relationships around me have formed, solidified, broken apart, and then been sought in others. I’ve seen many a runner and non-runner torn apart by both selfishness and misunderstanding. I’ve guiltily watched on as fellow runners have abandoned running; bowing to the social pressures imposed by family to focus on more serious pursuits (I say guiltily, as I’ve been fortunate to never have that pressure from my own family). Common themes tend to characterise the misunderstanding that can brew between runners and non-runners. But it is rare that blame lies exclusively with one side.

Given the common themes, how is it possible for runners and non-runners to level with each other and find balance in each other’s peculiarities? Or should runner’s resort to confiding only in runners, and should non-runners ward off being drawn into the self-fulfilling, often one-dimensional runner’s life? Certainly, it can be done. And how it is done may just make you a better runner, or a better non-runner!

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As I sometimes do on solo runs when motivation is lacking, I plug in my headphones as I head out the door, and listen to a podcast. Last week, I listened to an illuminating discussion about the meaning of work - why we work, how we are reworking our perception of how to be happy and productive, and how to find meaning and success in the workplace. My workplace for the past couple of years has been a non-traditional one - I’ve been a professional athlete in a traveling band of Aussie (and a few international) distance runners. We were moderately successful in 2016. At the Rio Olympics, the group had arguably its best international championship performance ever - 16 Olympians, and 11 finals reached. For followers of the sport, that was not a result built from one major championship to the next, but a project that evolved over many years. As I listened to this podcast about cultivating success and meaning in the workplace, many of the ideas resonated with what I have found to be a cultivator of success in my own team. So, what makes teamwork work?

For one, when collaboration takes precedence over hierarchy, teamwork blooms. Running is an inherently individual sport, and the sport itself is hierarchical. When we line up to race, we build a hierarchy from first to last place. Many training environments are equally hierarchical, where the contribution each individual makes to the group effort is stifled by their place in the pecking order. The collective success of a team should never be dependent on the ability of the best runner, nor should it be just about running ability. There is just as much personality in our training group as there are runners, and although we joke about a pecking order, the reality is that no team member’s contribution is stifled by their own ability or their performances. Nor is our ability to train together stifled by a ranking of ability. Every session, we collaborate, share, and determine the best way for each member of the team to get the most out of the session. Different athletes will lead at different times, depending on their strengths and their current level of fitness. The strongest and fittest runners don’t always lead the charge. Propagating a hierarchy within a team destroys the purpose and meaning that each member can garner from being part of the group. Every member should feel, “I am an important part of our team’s success”. Without this, the process lacks meaning. And it is easy to underestimate the value of a meaningful process to stacking the hierarchy in your favour when it counts - on race day!

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The post Teamwork and Social Capital – Article by 2 X Olympian David McNeill appeared first on Runner's Tribe.

Our conscience makes decisions on a minute-by-minute basis in every conceivable scenario of our lives. While every choice and every scenario is different, in essence, we make just two decisions: yes or no. As runners, we make these decisions in two types of scenario: when we are at the limits of physical exertion, and when we are not. In reality, most of the time, we are not approaching our physical limits. Nevertheless, when faced with any choice as a runner, our conscience negotiates three challenges:

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