Why distance running is like great wine - Brief Article

Running & FitNews, June, 1999

While some sports are like making lemonade, distance running is like making fine wine. In making lemonade there is immediate feedback, one sip and you know how well you've done. Add more lemon or more sugar, and sip again, until it's perfect. Immediate feedback makes it easy to learn. When you've done it right, the behaviors that occurred during the preceding few seconds are reinforced and hopefully repeated on subsequent occasions.

Alas, the distance runner who runs one or two marathons a year does not have the same sort of instant feedback. The behavior of the preceding seconds, hours, or even days may be largely irrelevant to the day's performance. A multitude of variables, often extending back over a period of months or even years, determines the day's performance. Was it the long-term training schedule? Did the speedwork of the past few months sharpen your edge or lead to fatigue? Were there too many or too few 10Ks? Should you have rested more or less? Shoes? Diet? Weight training? Just like the fine bottle of wine, a rare combination of variables over several years has produced the pleasure and the success of the moment. In both running and wine making, when it's good, how can you do it again? If it's not, what needs to be changed?

Feedback comes only after a long time, and there is no opportunity for quick correction. Thus, turn to the masters who have gone before. The rough plan comes from the cumulative experiences of past generations, great performers, and coaches. The recipe need not be concocted from scratch by each generation. The wisdom of the past is deposited in the rich pages of Lydiard, Costill, Henderson, Glover, Galloway, and others. Follow their recipes and you'll never make bad wine. But to make your best wine you must go beyond. You must know yourself and learn what works best for you. The masters' programs must be fine-tuned based on your own experience.

Since your feedback isn't instant, keep a record so that you can use your experience to improve your performance. Record each day's run--distance, time, effort--all the details. When you've run a good race, go back and see what you did during the weeks or months before. The morning after the marathon, when your body still hurts, is the time to reflect and reassess your long-range preparation and the performance that followed. Look at your training--long runs, recovery runs, rest days, speedwork, and weight training. Study the pre-event period--from the time intensive training ended and the race began. Reflect on the event itself--from start to finish. What worked, what didn't, what needs to be changed? This is how you adjust your recipe, ready to plant the grapes for the next batch of even better wine.

(Jack Lesyk, Ph.D., is a sports psychologist and the Director of the Ohio Center for Sport Psychology, Beachwood, Ohio. Contact him directly via jjlesyk@sportpsych.org or through AR&FA Clinic.)