Next Workout: Saturday, Jan. 23, meet at 8:45 AM, workout at 9:00 AM Parking lot for Columbia Island Marina

Walk-to-Run Trainees:

1) Our first Meeting at the Marina

It was good to see a lot of folks down at the Convention Center last Saturday.

This week, we meet at our home for the rest of the season, the parking lot for Columbia Island Marina. The web page for our program

http://www.mc-coop.org/walktorun/

has a map and directions to our meeting site, and some of you who caravaned with me after our Orientation session already have a head start in finding it.

The easiest way to get there, is to get yourself onto the GW Parkway, heading South, between Memorial Bridge and the 14th Street Bridge. [Until further notice, there is no access from the Northbound lanes into the Marina, due to the construction.]

There is only one sign for "Columbia Island Marina" and the entrance is right at the start of the construction on the "humpback bridge." If your lane goes up sharply and enters a construction zone to cross a bridge, you've just missed it, and you will need to go around for another pass.

[To go "around the block" for another pass, take I-95 South to VA 110 North, to VA27 "Memorial Bridge", around the traffic circle before the bridge, to the GW Parkway South "Reagan National Airport", and back again toward the Marina.]

Please print out a map of the immediate vicinity (with road names) and bring it with you on Saturday. And please leave extra early this first time, just to give you some extra time to find it without stressing.

If you get turned around and can't locate it, please call my cell phone, 703-371-5171.

Why do we meet at Columbia Island Marina? Four reasons:

a) It's central, in between Maryland/DC and Virginia. Technically, the parking lot where we meet is on a island in the river, so it's part of DC. Every workout we do will be "interstate" - when we cross the aptly named Boundary Channel, we will cross into Virginia. [Our route past the Lincoln Memorial will actually cross a state line four times!]

b) The Marina has plenty of free parking, *almost* all the time. [The one time it fills up, is for July 4th fireworks right across the river.]

c) There are relatively clean bathrooms very near the parking lot where we meet. Like all the bathrooms on the National Mall, the ones at the Marina *should* be open at 8 AM every Saturday.

d) The Marina is the perfect distance away from Iwo Jima for a two mile run/walk up to that Memorial, with a two-mile downhill on the way back. We will also walk/run across Memorial Bridge to the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial on the Northwest corner of the National Mall, for another 4-mile round trip. Both routes are scenic as Spring arrives.

Some of you, I'm told, prefer to do the first few weeks of walking at another location, closer to home. That's fine, so long as you don't stay up there all time. A large part of this program is the group effort on Saturdays, and a lot of the coaching advice I can give, both to the group and to individuals, is in-person. I don't coach long distance, because I can't give my best to a trainee without seeing them walk or run, and checking up on them in person.

When we start doing run/walk intervals you HAVE to be with us at Columbia Island so I can explain the theory, and show you how to use your own watch to set your own intervals. Thereafter, you can run once or twice a month elsewhere, but even that's really missing a large part of the program - a friendly group of runners doing the same training on the same course, and learning from each other.

2) Route for Sat. 1/23/10

Our 3-mile walking route for Saturday may be found at:

http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=2630032

From the parking lot, we will follow the path North, and across the footbridge over Boundary Channel and into Virginia. We will then skirt the end of Pentagon North Parking, and pick up the bike trail which follows alongside VA27, all the way to Memorial Bridge. We will cross the bridge on its South sidewalk, to the large statue at the DC end of the bridge (our turnaround point). From there, it's a straight shot back to home base.

We will do this route walking, and our route to Iwo Jima next Saturday walking, so that we'll be (mostly) all together while learning the routes. Later on, when we introduce the running intervals, we'll be more spread out, but by then, the routes will be more familiar, so you'll always be able to find your way back to home base.

[I will expound on the value of a running partner - which, among other benefits, makes it harder to get lost - in a future newsletter.]

3) So what's with all this walking?

We do all our workouts as walking for the first month (Jan. 9 - 30). Why?

- first, to get everyone in the habit of regular exercise. Once your body is used to regular exercise, introducing the running intervals will be less of a "shock to the system," no matter how little you've run in the past years or decades.

- second, even walking starts the process of strengthening your bones and joints, the parts of the human anatomy that take the longest time to grow and strengthen.

- and finally, we walk to get everyone used to the venue and to the routes, before we turn up the pace, and spread out into little groups along the trail.

4) Weather

The bad news, is that it will be COLD out there the next few Saturdays.

The good news, is that it was colder two weeks ago during our orientation. That is about as cold as it gets in Washington, D.C. So every week from now on will (hopefully) be warmer than when we started!

When you run or walk in weather this cold, make sure you cover up extremities - wear a warm hat (not a baseball cap!) and good gloves. In really cold windy weather, you may need to cover your face with a scarf, ski mask or balaclava. Thicker socks and thermal undies are also good, especially since we're just walking this Saturday.

The most important thing in cold weather is to stay dry. That's why a wicking layer (non-cotton, non-wool) next to your skin is as important in Winter as it is in the heat of Summer.

You also want to stay internally hydrated. Exercising in cold, dry air can dehydrate the body surprisingly well, as you lose moisture with every breath you exhale.

We won't be out in in long enough to worry excessively about the cold, so long as you stay dry, keep your extremities covered (especially non-moving parts like hands and head), and keep moving. Were we already running several miles, and were it raining or snowing, we'd have more to do to prepare.

If you can find back issues of Runner's World, the February 09 issue, on page 40, has some good tips on running in the cold. I will also try to dig up some other articles about cold weather running in future newsletters.

5) Charting you midweek routes:

Eventually, when you learn your average running pace, you will be able to interpolate your running or run/walking distance merely from the time it takes you to cover that distance. "Dead reckoning" from sailing lore is multiplying your known rate of speed by the time spent at that speed, to guestimate the distance covered.....at least well enough (in our case) to approximate a certain distance for a midweek run.

For example, on our first walk at the Orientation, we covered the one mile distance in about 20 minutes, within 30 seconds plus/minus for the whole group. If we set out without a mapped course this Saturday, and walked at that same pace for an hour, we would cover about 3 Miles.

But until you know your speed while running with walk breaks, and the effect that head/cold, hills, wind and other variables might have on your speed, you'll need to map out a route of approximately the distance required ahead of time, to better guide your workout. If you happen to be directionally-challenged, you may want to print out your route and bring it with you on your midweek workouts, so you can find your way home.

The tool I use most often to map out routes is GMAP-pedometer:

e.g. http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=2489848

which allows you to map out a route of any distance, from any point in North America. It also allows you to map an out-and-back route, by drawing the "out" and then auto-complete the return trip back to where you started. So from your house, for example, you could draw out just half of the distance required for a given midweek distance, and let the software do the rest.

Please make sure you're using the "manual" drawing tool, or the software will have you running straight down the middle of every road on your route, and your cursor will not draw where you want it to.

Once you have a route, you can save it, and then save the bookmark in your browser. You can then share the route with the whole world, or keep it to yourself. So far, over 3 million running or walking routes have been saved on GMAP-pedometer.

There are other online tools out there, if you want to try something else. Just use something that lets you draw a route from the starting point of your choice, rather than a fixed location. A hybrid view or street map grid is better than just a satellite view. And make sure you have one that can scale down to the point where you can distinguish sidewalks and trails, and not just streets.

Please use common sense on your midweek workouts. Beware of dangers after dark. Women should be cautious of venturing out alone after dark, or in isolated areas. And in really sketchy places, men should be, too. Getting together with another trainee for one or midweeks is a great strategy, so long as your running or run/walking paces are compatible. And group runs around the DC area are a great option if you have to workout after dark.

You can do *some* of your workouts indoors on a treadmill, or on an indoor or outdoor track. If we get another round of serious snow or ice, that might be your only option.

But please don't do more than 1/3 of all your workouts on those softer surfaces. The only way to get your bones and joints adapted to running on asphalt (roads) or concrete (sidewalks) is to run on them regularly, and let you body strength to meet the challenge.

As always, no one midweek workout should be longer than the previous Saturday's workout, but the total of all your midweek workouts in a given week should be at least double the mileage of the preceding Saturday.

Make sure you give yourself rest days, or cross-training days, after each hard workout day. It is during the rest and recovery after workout stress that your body recovers what it lost during the workout, and makes itself just a little bit stronger than it was before. If you don't give yourself proper rest after your workouts, you can never become more fit, no matter how much you work out - and you run a greater risk of injury. Pay attention to how your body feels.

And if you are obsessive enough that you must work out EVERY DAY, do your cardio work (running, walking, cycling, elliptical, etc.) every *other* day, and on the day you're resting your legs, work on your upper body, your core, or your general flexibility (Yoga and Pilates are great for that). Don't stress the same body part two days in a row - stress something different on the second day!

It is the repetition of the workouts (with rest in between), and the gradual increase in the distance and intensity, that build you up for greater things. Don't rush the progression. Give your bones and joints time to strengthen, before you really stress them. We will have you running miles and miles by the Summer.

If you have any question about your midweek workouts, please let me know.

6) Local Running Lists

Here are some of the local resources you can use to determine your target race in April, midweek running locations or groups to run with (when you're running more), and other resources for runners: