::cough:: anyways. The benefits and drawbacks of running with a group or as a loner.I. Am a loner. Generally speaking I train with just me and the coach, but this got me thinking about the benefits...and wondering what other people do--and think.
The article is from the New York Times, enjoy!
September 17, 2009
Personal Best
To Train Harder, Consider a Crowd
By GINA KOLATA
DATHAN RITZENHEIN, one of America’s most talented runners, was in a slump.
He had been a national star since high school but, starting several years
ago, he felt as if he had reached a plateau. He wasn’t improving the way
he’d hoped, and had been suffering stress fractures, repeatedly breaking a
small bone in his left foot.
He and his coach tried to figure out what was wrong and seized upon the idea
that perhaps it was the altitude training. He had been living and training
in Boulder, Colo., hoping to take advantage of the thin air, which can
increase the red blood cells that help deliver more oxygen to muscles. But
maybe, Mr. Ritzenhein and his coach reasoned, training at Boulder’s
elevation (about 5,430 feet) was putting too much stress on Mr. Ritzenhein’s
body.
So Mr. Ritzenhein, his coach and his family moved to Eugene, Ore. (430
feet). “It didn’t work,” Mr. Ritzenhein said. He did not improve and, to his
dismay, suffered another stress fracture.
In June, Mr. Ritzenhein joined a running group, a team of elite runners
coached by Alberto Salazar, winner of three consecutive New York City
marathons in the early 1980s. It made all the difference, Mr. Ritzenhein
said. He was re-energized, excited about running again. And, he said, most
important, he trained with fast runners who pushed him to work harder than
he ever could alone.
At a track meet in Zurich on Aug. 28, Mr. Ritzenhein, 27, broke the American
record for a 5,000-meter race, finishing in 12 minutes 56.27 seconds — a
pace of 4:09 a mile in a race that is 3.1 miles long. The American record
before that, 12:58.21, had stood for 13 years.
Mr. Ritzenhein is convinced his success is because of running and training
with a group. Running alone, he said, “You can’t push yourself as hard — you
feed off the energy of other people.”
Mr. Salazar said in an e-mail message that he is a firm believer in group
training. He had trained with a group himself, he said, and group training
“helped develop our great runners of the ’70s and ’80s.”
Group training is an aspect of performance that has never been
scientifically studied. Exercise physiologists say it can be impossible to
demonstrate its value because usually too many things change simultaneously
when people start to run in groups: the coach, the location, the training
regimen. To do a proper study, it would be necessary to assign athletes at
random to train alone or with a group, assessing their performances after a
period of time — something that would be extremely hard, if not impossible.
But despite the lack of solid evidence that group training helps, more and
more athletes are starting to think it does. And, they say, there are
lessons for amateurs who want to run or swim or cycle faster. The right
workout companions, they say, can make all the difference.
“In sports, you need to train at race pace,” said Edward Coyle, an exercise
physiologist at the University of Texas at Austin. “To do that, you need a
coach and you need teammates to push you.”
Recreational athletes can benefit, too, Dr. Coyle said. Many run by
themselves or without a specific program. “They probably underestimate their
ability,” he said. Group runs “would help them tremendously.”
Many amateurs already train with groups — masters swimmers, competitive road
cyclists and runners who join clubs or groups that run together regularly.
And there can be drawbacks. Slower athletes may try to push themselves
beyond their abilities, and faster ones may not be challenged enough.
Michael Berry, an exercise physiologist at Wake Forest University and a
competitive cyclist, said he just can’t ride with his group on his recovery
days, when a workout should be easy. He always finds himself riding too
hard.
Before he started cycling, he was a runner, and he had the same problem.
“Say Monday would be a recovery day, an easy five-mile run,” said Dr. Berry,
53. “Someone would show up who hadn’t run all weekend. My competitive urge
was such that I said to myself that I didn’t need to recover.” But, he
added, “As I get older I realize that, yes, I do need to recover.”
Yet the power of groups easily outweighs their drawbacks, says Kevin Hanson.
He and his brother Keith start running groups that draw hundreds in
Rochester, Mich., and in 1999 started a team of elite runners, the
Hansons-Brooks Distance Project.
Kevin Hanson said he and his brother got the idea for the elite team when
they began asking why American performances had declined so much in the
1990s from the golden days of the ’70s and ’80s.
“Frank Shorter, Bill Rodgers, Greg Meyer,” who, in 1983, was the last
American man to with the Boston Marathon, “all trained in groups,” Mr.
Hanson said.
But in the 1990s, distance runners began training on their own, with the
guidance of a coach. And Americans were no longer among the best in the
world.
“We started to see a decline in the sport,” Mr. Hanson said. The countries
whose distance runners were the best — Ethiopia, Kenya and Japan — all
emphasized training in groups, he noted.
“You say: ‘Wait a minute. We were most successful in the U.S. when we
trained in groups. The three most successful countries in the world are
doing group training,’ ” Mr. Hanson said. There must be a message there.
So he and his brother started recruiting runners for their elite group. Its
advantages, he said, are that athletes have “shared motivation, a shared
sense of ideas.” And they encourage one another.
“So often it may be hard to drag yourself outdoors,” to go for a training
run, Mr. Hanson said. “But when you have 8 or 10 or whatever number of
teammates counting on you, then you’re there.”
That’s also what Kara Goucher says. She ran her first marathon last year, in
New York, and came in third among women. Her time, 2:25:53, was the fastest
ever for an American woman running her first marathon. Ms. Goucher
attributes her success to group training.
She graduated from college in 2001 and ran on her own, coached by her
college coach, for three years.
“I really struggled,” Ms. Goucher said. “I kept getting injured.” She had
multiple stress fractures, a knee injury and shin splints. Her husband, Adam
Goucher, was also running alone, coached by his college coach, and was also
struggling, she said.
In the fall of 2004, the Gouchers moved to Oregon and joined Mr. Salazar’s
team. It made all the difference, Ms. Goucher said.
“I think it’s possible to train on your own, but I do think it is better in
a group,” she said. “You see success in each other. Everything seems more in
reach.”
“And it holds you accountable,” she continued. “Instead of waiting all day
to do my run, I have to go out and meet the girls.”
Kevin Hanson adds that when one person in a group has an outstanding
performance, others gain confidence that they might be able to do it, too.
They know how hard everyone works, they know they can run with that person
in practice. If that person did it, if they ran that fast, then, team
members think, why not me?
That happened this year when Desiree Davila, one of his team’s members, ran
the Berlin marathon in 2:27:53, finishing 11th. She was 26 years old; Mr.
Hanson said the only other American woman to run a marathon that fast that
young was Joan Benoit Samuelson in 1983.
“It was a huge motivating factor for all of our women,” Mr. Hanson said.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: September 24, 2009
The Personal Best column last Thursday, about the benefits for runners who
train in groups, misstated Kara Goucher’s time in the 2008 New York City
Marathon. It was 2 hours 25 minutes 53 seconds — not 2:32:25, which was her
time in this year’s Boston Marathon.
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