Strength, Force, and Endurance

Strength, force, and endurance

Early in 2014, I read through a copy of Joe Friel’s book “The Triathlete’s Training Bible”. This text was quite interesting, informative, and helpful. Ultimately, however, it was like a lot of supposedly definitive guides on training that I have read over the years — useful for me, to a point.
One take-away phrase that I gleaned from Friel was “strength, force, and endurance”. For athletes and others who wish to train for triathlons, marathons, and other distance events, these are the core aspects of an effective training plan. Strength, as I understand it, is about building muscular and cardio strength as well as the mental and emotional strength needed to withstand distance training. Force is speed: It’s about training with speed bursts, intervals, sprints, and shorter distance racing events so that your body learns speed in order to pace itself for longer distances. Endurance, in my mind, is analogous to patience. It is about learning not to go all out in the first ten miles of a 26.2-mile marathon. It is about understanding how to go the distance with mental motivation strategies, practice runs, long walks, meditation, and the kind of effective cross-training that will help make you fit for life.

Friel’s words came back to me this morning as one of my friends, a certified PiYo instructor, launched a new fitness challenge via her social media universe of friends. The challenge is to do a certain number of squats every day through the month of August and to experiment with different styles of squats.

Now, squats are an excellent exercise in the strength field. They build up the muscles that power the body through both force based trainings and endurance activities. They are, as my friend pointed out in her efforts to coax me into participation, a great complement to endurance training.

However, there’s a time and place for squats — in my mind, at least. As I write this blog, I am preparing to participate in an Olympic Distance Triathlon in nine days and a marathon in 74 days. This is not the time, I told my friend, to embark on a strength-based regime such as squats. This is the time to taper for the triathlon and then to rev up the mileage for the marathon. I asked my friend if I could participate in the challenge with an exercise that would complement the marathon training. Her response was, “Of course!” She also wanted to know what I planned to do and added that she knew nothing about training for marathons. I decided, as a result, to use this blog post as an opportunity to think and talk about what I might do and how it might complement this phase of my training.

Before I go further, I do want to return briefly to Friel. As I noted, his “bible” was helpful but biblical, if biblical might be defined as the ultimate truth. Where and how did the book come up short?

It’s hard to answer the question I rhetorically posed definitively, but for starters, training plans are plans and life is life. Plans and life do not always map themselves neatly onto each other. Friel proposes very helpfully that the triathlete can devote several years to mastering a life plan of training, and notes that the years of competitiveness can stretch much longer if training is seen as a life strategy. That assertion supports my own belief that unless one is being paid professionally to win races, one should really look at fitness as an activity of joy and a pursuit for life. This also means that life will interfere and training will not follow a logical plan.

The second way that Friel’s book fell short was that it was aimed at people who swim, bicycle, and run much faster than I ever will. I see this target audience as a useful one for selling books, but it becomes problematic when your personal goals might be just as lofty and ambitious for your own self as the goals of an age-group winner or elite athlete might be for them because the road map for the slower and weaker is a little less clear. This is an obstacle I face constantly as I look at training plans that assume such things as being able to run a 10-minute mile (12 minutes is my current working average, though I did beat a 10-minute pace in a recent four-mile race) as a baseline given. I find it hard to follow charts based on such “average” paces when my body is not exactly average.

And finally I have had to take age and weather into consideration. Just when it’s seemingly warm enough to get into the open water swims and long outdoor bike rides that are essential to good triathlon training, the weather in our part of the world refuses to cooperate. Thunderstorms are a frequent occurrence, which for safety reasons results in a cancellation of rides and often even closes indoor pools that are vulnerable to lightning strikes. By the time the skies clear, your schedule may no longer be clear. Along with weather, I have had to come to terms with the fact that while I might be getting better, my body is not getting younger. As I have entered my fifties, I have done so with a much healthier body and outlook on life: I have gotten my weight down to a healthy level and have maintained that level for two years; I have figured out generally what kinds of foods support me the most and which ones are detrimental; and I have amassed a wide range of internal and external knowledge about how to exercise and train so that I not only maintain my current level of fitness but also encourage it to grow. From these learnings, I have deduced that much of training is looking at what works for others and then making up new rules — based on memory, knowledge, and personal experiences — to figure out what’s likely to work for one’s self.

So, my outline of how to train for a marathon — and/or comparable endurance events like the Olympic Distance Triathlon — is as follows:
1. Make a guide for the year. Note that I used the word “guide” and not the word “plan”. Choose one or two “big” events that you’d like to participate in. Again, note that I’m using the word “event” in place of “race” and the word “participate” in place of “compete”. Plan, race, and compete seem to connote stressful, less fun-loving experiences and might — in my mind — go against the premise that we’re doing all this to live longer, healthier lives. Figure out when those events take place and map your training plan (okay, now it’s a plan, but see it as a loose plan) accordingly.
2. The loose plan should be divided into phases: A time for working on what Joe Friel calls “strength”; a time for concentrating on “force”; and a time for endurance. Other training books have spoken of strength as conditioning or base building; and force as speed. If your loose plan actually manages to map neatly onto your life realities, you’ll be dedicating some time to strength, force, and endurance year long. The nature of these things, however, will vary. Variation, by the way, also helps keep training interesting and fun.
3. I generally think of the ideal amount of time to concentrate on training for a “big event” as fifteen to eighteen weeks. This is the rough equivalent of a college semester, which is probably why I, as a college professor, tend to think in such terms. Big events can overlap — my marathon, for instance, comes about nine weeks after my triathlon — but if you have overlap, you want to keep in mind that your training should be about preparing yourself for both events. Along these lines, you also might want to set goals. This year, for instance, my husband and I chose to run this particular marathon because we want to run it in honor of our ten-year wedding anniversary. As a result, I have poured a little more mental energy into the marathon and looked at the triathlon as a fun source of inspiration.
4. Give your body a good honest assessment and consider what kinds of force, speed, and endurance activities work best for you. For me, power yoga and such exercises as squats, lunges, jump roping, and sprints are very good from about December to March when it’s cold outside. In the winter, I work out indoors and enjoy the social interaction I get from the cycling, yoga, pilates, and light weights training classes I have access to at the Y where I work out. I usually disappear from those classes once the better weather rolls around. I also have found that as I have aged I like to do speedwork in ways that don’t involve running. My knees, my hips, and even my boobs feel a lot more vulnerable to the pounding and jolting. So I often use my swim sessions — which I love — as opportunities to do intervals. I can’t say that they’re giving me the same kind of strength and speedwork that I might get from the track, but I do think they offer some benefit and they will help my body last longer.
5. Be ready for every single interruption to your schedule that might emerge. I have already mentioned thunderstorms. Other things that have thwarted my best of intentions this year have been family illnesses, financial crises, work commitments, farming demands, community service activities, and personal fatigue (some might see this as code for laziness, but if your body is telling you not to do something you normally love, it might be worth listening). The interruptions will alter your loose plan and force adaptations. They also will teach you some things that might come in handy for future events: For instance, I started this year following a plan (as in a rigid plan) that would have had me bicycling about three to five hours a day at least once or twice a week in June and July. I stressed and stressed and stressed about not being able to do those rides until I realized that I simply did not have time in my life to do these kinds of rides and that it might be better to get out there and do a one-hour or two-hour ride, rather than nothing at all. This week, after logging two twenty-five mile rides, I have realized that I feel great and that into the future that might be the peak goal to shoot for.

So that’s the outline I’m following now for a marathon. I hope to run 12 miles this Sunday and 12 miles two weeks from this Sunday (after giving my body a week to recover from the triathlon). From there, I’ll work in a 14-miler, then 16, 18, and 20 miles. I’ve been working my mind to prepare my body for these runs with exercises in visualization; a renewal of some basic daily yoga, a practice that usually stalls when the winter transitions to spring and I start chomping at the bit to be outdoors; and simply by mentally breaking the workouts down into small increments. This is not a tactic I have tried before, but it is a compilation of several things that I have tried and have had success with. We’ll see if it works.

And so, finally, what might I do with the August challenge of squats? For me, a good alternative would be:
1. A five minute marathon visualization exercise, as I am falling asleep.
2. Deep yogic breaths, and a few minutes of yoga practice aimed not at pushing for force and strength but for endurance, first thing in the morning.
3. A short afternoon nap.

Is this a challenge? For the phase of endurance, it is. These are tactics aimed at fostering positive energy, mental discipline, and hopefully a happy outcome as I cross the finish lines I have mapped for myself on August 1 and October 4.