There is a great book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb called Fooled by Randomness, which examines the role of luck in all areas of life, particularly business and investing.

Taleb is a professor of mathematics and a derivatives trader. Not much to do with sport. But his business is complexity. There is something in statistics called “survivorship bias”. There is a danger that what we measure excludes those that have fallen by the wayside, distorting our view of the world.

Sport is a bit like that when it comes to injury and overtraining. The winner is the best on the day, and not necessarily the best over time. What we certainly don’t see at all are the no-shows, the non-runners, the might-have-beens. Imagine England’s rugby performance over the past few years if Jonny Wilkinson had not been injured.

Taleb is a fitness fanatic and keen cyclist. He says he is not interested in competitive sports, so he does not offer much to help an athlete understand success, except to offer the proverbial observation that a baseball hitter is normally cursed when he appears on the front of Sports Illustrated as it is normally followed by a reversal in fortune. (Mathematically, the previous winning streak was in fact an unsustainable run of luck).

In competitive sport, luck is not very likely to take an average athlete to a gold medal. But bad luck will certainly remove good prospects from the population of potential winners. Reducing that component of luck is what athletes strive for. In my own more modest marathon ambitions, I’m trying to do the same. Except there is not any pressure to win, just a pressure to turn up. That is not a small pressure, and if you are raising money for a charity, that pressure builds the nearer you get to the day. I ran my first marathon injured and while still recovering from a virus, dangerously toughing it out so as not to let down those who’d sponsored me.

Continue reading ‘luck, latent talent and training’

It did start to feel like it would never end. I’d begun to regard a heart rate above 50 as normal. I can’t recall when I’ve sustained such a measurement for such a long period. I was rewarded for not training yesterday: my resting heart rate this morning fell back to 47 beats per minute, indicating the passing of the virus. I suspect it could still go a little lower, as I didn’t have enough sleep.

Over three weeks of no exercise, my weight only drifted up a couple of pounds. Even so, I was eating a lot. Over the past few days, it seems to be moving in the other direction. From 73 kg (161 lbs) last week, my rather imprecise scales are now leaning the other side of 72 kg (159 lbs.) Following on from the BBC’s Truth about Food programme and its revelation that the calcium in dairy products like yoghurt drain fat from food, I’ve started eating quantities after some meals. I’ve also gone back to porridge and honey for breakfast – classic marathoner’s food and a staple of Paula Radcliffe. It certainly has left me full in the morning, even in the recent cold weather, so no need for a couple of pieces of buttered toast and marmalade. The Christmas cake is now but a small, drying triangle, and so much easier to overlook at coffee time.

I’m nervous about losing weight, and the Bath University Human Performance Centre staff warned me not to pay too much attention to it on a daily basis – I guess they’re only too familiar with the danger of obsessiveness in this area. I’m not particularly heavy. But my VO2 Max, or capacity to pump oxygen around the body, will certainly improve for marathon purposes if I dropped some weight. Combining that with higher intensity training looks risky. Two pounds in a week is probably a little too much to lose, and may be a case of more noise than signal, likely to even out on a week-to-week basis. But I’m happy eating lots of fruit, smoothies, pulses and organic meat.

Resting heart rate 47

Weight 72 kg

Mood

Total exercise energy consumed 568 kcal (5k jog, 10 mins bike)

The use of computer generated imagery by the BBC in its Truth about Food programme reminded me of an amazing IMAX film called Wired to Win documentary made about the 2003 Tour de France.

There is no better to way to understand some of the crucial aspects of elite athleticism, both from a neurological and physiological point of view. CGI is used to show how the process of repetitive exercise gradually builds synaptic connections until they are finally and fully established. Then it is as if there is a neurological explosion. In real life this is revealed through a progression of a four-man team descending mountainous hair-pin bends time after time at high speed until they are riding in tight formation, almost tyres touching. This neurological adaptation, because it goes unseen, is perhaps much less well understood than the physical adaptations that take place in sport. Repetitive practice in most activities is boring and easily puts off the less motivated. But Wired to Win makes it plain why the repetition is necessary, and why submission to the boring routine will eventually yield extraordinary results. The film also shows how the body adapts to injury as one of the riders tries to continue after serious fall in the Tour’s infamous pile-up.

It is said that the difference between a virtuoso musician and the less gifted is not so much innate talent, but the ability to sustain a high level of work. Studies have shown that work rate rather than IQ or perfect pitch is what matters. A decade’s work consisting of 10,000 hours of practice is the estimate of what it takes to be a virtuoso performer. Is there any similar study that can quantify the same for athletes? Because we delight in the example of the prodigy like Wayne Rooney, or Boris Becker, perhaps we overlook that what most talent needs is a volume of quality support to sustain that practice over an extended period of time. Sometimes longer than we are prepared to wait.

Sally Edwards the heart rate monitor advocate and leading author on the subject of training with heart rate monitors identifies that neurological adapation also takes place when the body is exercised close to or at its VO2 max, or lactate threshold. This is at or near when the body starts to go into oxygen debt and respire anaerobically. Most amateurs will steer clear of the hard interval training to achieve this. It involves running sprints with rests between, and running up and down hills. But marathon experts reckon this kind of training is priceless, because it makes you faster and stronger, ultimately making the marathon experience relatively less arduous because you complete the race after much less time on your legs.

When you do even a little bit of this kind of workout you feel much more co-ordinated. My typing improves immeasurably. Imagine what it does for a Lance Armstrong? The Wired to Win film features the moment where Armstrong is catapulted from his bike at speed while climbing a mountain. His brake lever catches the fastening clasp of a baseball hat being waved by a fan. Miraculously he recovers, seemingly unscathed, and with extra adrenalin pumping through his veins takes off even faster than before.

Resting heart rate 50

Weight 73 kg

Mood

Exercise

Virus lifting

Exercise Easy run 40 mins, 10 mins bike 667 kcal burned

It’s hard to argue with 40 years of non-stop running. But when you’ve had a virus that’s kept you off the tow-path for more than a fortnight, the sterling example of British marathon legend Ron Hill can leave you feeling a little disgruntled.

Lancashire born and bred, 68-year-old Ron has the amazing bullet-proof constitution typical of many brought up with wartime austerity. [I hope that's not just the lazy, soft, southern Generation X-er in me talking!] Ron told me on Monday evening, after a lecture in aid of Bath homeless charity Julian House, that a virus had never stopped him running. He said he’d even raced when ill. Start with a cough and a spit and, so long as you warm up slowly, he said, you’d be fine. The thing was not to do too much while run down. Contrary to popular opinion, he said, it was worth changing into your running gear, even if you only covered a couple of miles.

Ron’s uninterrupted running record is unprecedented. He says he has not missed a single day since 1964. But is Ron an anomaly?

I know that my own virus this past two weeks might easily have led to something worse. Two people I know of – a mother and child – contracted pneumonia on top of it. As all my family have had it, more or less as severely, and normally hardy members of the local community have succumbed, I’m not ashamed to have had to take it easy, focus on rest and the best nutrition.

Ron Hill confessed to having run the day after a car crash which crushed his ribs. And on the same day that he had exploratory surgery for a knee injury. He kept this from his family, of course.

It clearly worked for him. But I suspect that more athletes would do more permanent damage by not resting than would succeed by following what appears to be a compulsion to run, even though that compulsion must be a major component in the will to win.

Dr Tim Noakes, author of Running Lore, contends that Ron Hill’s overzealous training programme cost him the Olympic gold in 1972. What might such a win have done to inspire British marathon running for several generations? Noakes also notes that the chronic chest infections Hill suffered at some points in his career would now be regarded as classic symptoms of overtraining syndrome.

Resting heart rate 53

Weight 73 kg

Mood

Sick with virus (16th day)