Run Faster

The Grand Tetons
Originally uploaded by Stuck in Customs

I’m going on about a week’s vacation with my husband, starting tomorrow. As the photo suggests, we’re going up to Wyoming. We don’t have any definite plans of where we’re going to stop, other than to visit his aunt who lives near Cody, but I imagine we’ll end up in the neighborhood of Yellowstone and the Tetons.

I almost always bring my running shoes and clothes with me when I travel - you never know when you’ll find a great place to run. However, sometimes I find it hard when traveling with family or friends to fit it in - after all, it’s vacation and I want to spend time with the people I’m with.

This coming week’s going to be easier than usual. Since I just raced last weekend and I haven’t started training in earnest for my fall marathon, I’m just going to take it easy, maybe wake up early a couple of times and fit in a short run, but not worry about it too much if I don’t. After all, we’ll probably be doing some hiking so I’ll get in some exercise - and skipping a week really isn’t going to hurt my fitness level that much.

So, I’m curious - what are your best tips for fitting in your workouts while on vacation? Or, when you take a vacation, do you also take a vacation from running?

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

This weekend I listened to Episode 94 of the Dump Runner’s Club podcast - a podcast I highly recommend. In that episode, Matt discusses how your weight effects your running, including giving information about an ‘ideal weight’ formula for runners originally proposed by Dr. Stillman. The basic calculation is that if you are a sedentary male, you should weigh 110 pounds for your first 5′ in height + 5 1/2 pounds for every 1 inch thereafter. For women, it’s even more strict - 100 pounds for your first 5′ in height + 5 pounds for every pound thereafter. But that’s not where it stops - if you’re a middle distance runner, Stillman says you should weigh 12% less than the ’sedentary’ calculation - and 15% less if you’re a long distance runner.

I’ve got to say, this seems quite low to me. Even though my height and weight puts me right in the middle of a healthy BMI range, if I were to go by Stillman’s formula, I would have to consider myself quite a few pounds overweight. On the other hand, if I were at the weight Stillman would recommend for me given my height and putting myself in the long distance runner category, I would be underweight according to the BMI charts. So what’s a runner to think?

Personally, although I weigh myself fairly regularly - about once a week - I try not to worry too much about it. Instead, I concentrate on trying to maintain a healthy diet, and I watch my portion sizes, especially when I see a pound or two creep on. That said, I’m sure it would help my running - and it wouldn’t hurt my health - if I could manage to move my weight down a bit so that I was a bit more towards the low end of the healthy BMI range. In fact, according to this article by Joe Henderson, a 10 pound weight loss, which would still put me in a healthy BMI range, could translate into a 4 1/2 minute improvement in my half marathon time. Unfortunately, since I’m not that great about tracking my weight in my running log, I can’t really correlate any weight gains or losses against my race times.

So, I’m curious - when you’ve lost or gained weight, what differences have you seen in your running times?

If you’d like more information about Dr. Stillman’s weight calculations and how they relate to running performance, check out this article at Peak Performance.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!