Matt Metzgar

I Think I Can (Part 2)

Over a year ago, I wrote about how golfer Luke Donald planned to take on Tiger Woods and become the number one player in the world.  At the time, Donald didn't think he had to practice any harder, he just had to "start believing."  Since then, Donald has won exactly zero PGA Tour events.

Now another poser has stepped to the plate.  Rory Sabbatini recently stated that Tiger is "more beatable than ever," and won last week due to some "fortuitous occasions."  This is despite the fact that Sabbatini started Sunday with a one-stroke lead against Tiger, shot a 74 and lost by 4 to Tiger at the Wachovia Championship.  If Tiger is so beatable, why didn't Rory beat him last week when he had the chance?

Tiger correctly stated today that he has already won three times on tour this year, the same amount of wins that Sabbatini has over his entire ten-year career.  In fact, Rory has exactly one win over the past four years on the PGA Tour.  Shouldn't a person have some type of credibility before they go around criticizing the number one player in the world? 

Compared to Tiger's results, Sabbatini's career is a joke.  The media shouldn't even print his statements because he has no substance to back them up.  Anybody can talk tough, but real masters of their craft go out and perform -  and let the results speak for themselves.

Today's Workout 05/09/07

Today's workout was a speed workout: 8 x 80 meters on grass.  I wanted to do more, but it was blazing hot out.  It was 95 degrees during the workout, but it felt warmer than that.

That's one thing that's strange about Vegas, it's often hotter in the evenings, even after the sun goes down, than during the day.  The sun cooks the pavement and ground all day, so even if the sun has set there's still a ton of stored heat.  I remember last summer when I would wait until 9 pm to run, and it was still almost 110 degrees.  I may have to switch to morning runs this summer, we'll see.

Speed

Even from casual observation, a person can see a relationship between running speed and body weight.  If you go and watch a local 5k race, you will see that the top finishers usual have low levels of body fat.  Some might attribute this to the miles and miles of training they do, but I don't.  I attribute it to their running speed.

Endurance runners often get a bad rap with their "long slow distance" training.  Images come to mind of a jogger moving painfully slow down the road doing mile after mile.  But top endurance runners do not train this slow - instead they are quite fast.  For example, in last month's Boston Marathon, Robert Cheruiyot won in a time of 2 hours, 14 minutes, 13 seconds.  This equals a pace of 5 minutes 7 second per mile.  A 5 minute mile is tremendously fast, so clearly this person is not just running long, but running very quickly.

If you look at 5k races at the professional level, the men are running just over a 4 minute per mile pace.  Again, this pace is incredibly fast and is the defining characteristic of this type of performance. 

In comparison, I have seen overweight people finish a marathon.  If running distance was the answer to weight control, then you would think that the miles put in for marathon training would be enough.  If training for and running a marathon isn't enough to control body weight, then what's next, ultramarathons?  Clearly a change in strategy is needed.

Research also shows the importance of running speed compared to distance for body composition.  In this study, the authors state that, "Relative to the effect of running distance, running velocity ... had a 4.7 times greater calculated effect on waist circumference in men." 

In conclusion, I think the evidence clearly shows that it's better to run fast than to run long for weight control. 

Runners and Weight Gain

I saw this news release from the National Runners Study the other day.  This study tracks runners, their mileage, and their weight over time.

I've mentioned this study before, as it has shown that even at high mileages, runners gain weight with age.  This new finding from the study tracked runners and their mileage over seven consecutive years, and looked at the change in weight.  Here are the results:

	Annual Weight Gain(lbs)
Miles Per Week	Men	Women
< 15	1.4	2
15 - 30	0.8	1.4
30>	0.6	0.75

Overall, there is a relationship beween miles run and weight, with the more miles run the less the weight gain.  But still, even running over 30 miles per week, the subjects gained weight every year.  And the answer to stopping this continual weight gain is not in adding more miles, but in designing a better exercise program, as I'll talk about in the next post.

San Diego

I was at a annual conference in San Diego last week.  This year we had dinner aboard the Midway aircraft carrier one night, which was pretty neat.  Here are a few pictures from the trip.

Today's Workout 05/06/07

I headed down to the track this morning and had a good workout.  The workout consisted of:

• 4 x 400 meters (1:1 work rest ratio)         
• 5 minutes rest
• 4 x 400 meters (1:1 work rest ratio)            

It was starting to get pretty hot after that, so I called it a day.  All in all, it was a pretty effective session without overdoing anything.