Cross-Training and Two a Day Workouts

Like most people, for the last two months, I’ve mostly been staying at home.  Like most people, I’ve been eating more than usual, and I’ve been gaining weight.

Some of it may be “stress eating.”  Some of it may be “boredom eating.”  Mostly, though, it’s too much temptation.  I’m always home, and there’s too much good food in the house.

In early March, Deb and I made sure we had enough food at home that we wouldn’t run out of anything if we had to go for two weeks without leaving the house.  We were able to get enough of the foods we usually eat, although finding bread was difficult.

I think lots of people had difficulty buying bread.  It seemed like everyone I know was baking bread and posting recipes.  Soon, Deb and I were seeing friends posting all kinds of interesting recipes.  I had to try some of them.  One was a recipe for brown bread.  Another was for strawberry shortcake cookies.

We also made some of our old favorites.  Deb made rice pudding.  I made my mom’s banana bread recipe and two large deep dish pizzas.  On the weekend of the Boston Marathon, we had pot roast and Indian pudding, which are two foods I use to eat whenever I visited Boston.  Most of these recipes make enough that we had leftovers for the next few days.

Since the middle of March, restaurants in our area have been takeout only.  Many restaurants are struggling to stay in business.  We could easily fix all of our meals at home, but we’ve been getting takeout orders from a few of our favorite restaurants to help them survive.  Naturally, these meals always leave us with more leftovers.

Do you see the problem?  When you rarely leave the house, and you’re surrounded by good food, it’s hard to resist eating more than you really need.  Before I knew it, I had gained five pounds.

Last summer, I worked hard to lose 15 pounds, so I could bring my marathon times down.  You can’t do that through diet alone.  I ramped up my running until I was averaging 10 miles a day.  That’s not an option right now.  Since December, I’ve been recovering from a minor case of Achilles tendonitis at the insertion point in my left heel.  It’s improved enough that I can regularly run eight or nine miles without any discomfort, but I sometimes feels tight afterwards.  If I try to ramp my mileage too quickly, it’ll flare up again.

I used to do lots of cross-training.  There was a limit to how much I could run without getting injured, so I would supplement my running with aerobic cross-training.  I’d get up early, so I could do 30 minutes on the stationary bike before going to work.  That’s like an extra three miles of running, but without the same injury risk.  I could do that before work, and still go running after work.

I also used to do lots of weight training.  When I was in my 20s, I dedicated as much time to weight training as I did to running.  As my priorities changed, I cut back on the weight training, so I could have more running days.  It’s hard to do both on the same day.  By my late 30s, I was no longer trying to build strength.  Now I was just doing maintenance workouts.

All of my cross-training fell by the wayside three years ago.  When I was recovering from back surgery, I was only allowed to walk.  Eventually, I was able to add running back into the mix, but it was more than a year before I was doing more running than walking.  Until recently, I never got back into cycling or weight training.  I had a home gym, but the only equipment I used was my treadmill.

One of my friends recently created a private Facebook group, where he and his friends could post photos from their workouts.  It was a vehicle for encouraging each other as we were each trying to stay in shape while sheltering at home.  I posted photos from some of my runs, but as I saw others posting about all their workouts, it inspired me to begin cross-training again.

I started by dusting off my stationary bike (literally) and adding short cycling workouts in the morning.  I usually ran in the afternoon, so these were “extra” workouts.

My stationary bike has 15 resistance levels.  I used to use levels 2 and 3 for warming up and cooling down.  I’d do most of my workout using resistance level 4.  Occasionally, I’d go higher, but I’ve never been above level 7.  I can’t imagine what level 15 feels like.

Since I’m not currently used to cycling, I had to start out doing just 20 minutes.  At first, I was doing the whole workout at level 2, and it still felt like my legs were going to fall off.  Now, I’m started to use level 3, and I’m stretching the length of these workouts.  I still find cycling to be more tiring than running, but it’ll get easier with time.

One of the first running books I read was called the New Competitive Runner’s Handbook.  The authors of that book used the terms, “running equivalent” or “RE miles.”  The concept was that if you did an aerobic cross-training workout, you could consider it to be the training equivalent of running whatever distance you would’ve covered if you ran with the same effort for the same amount of time.  That’s all well and good, but it can sometimes be difficult to compare the effort of different activities.  I can run for more than an hour and have it feel effortless.  If I spend half that much time on a stationary bike, I’m already fatigued.  Does that mean my cycling workouts are more intense?  No, I’m just not used to cycling yet.  To convert my cycling miles to RE miles, I divide by three.  That’s a rule of thumb I’ve heard from triathletes.

A week after I started doing cycling workouts, I started doing weight training again.  Twice a week, I’m doing six exercises that work most of the large muscle groups.  I’m using far less weight than I used to, but it’s a start.  I’ve lost a lot of strength in the last three years.  It’ll take time to regain it.

I like to keep a spreadsheet that summarizes all my training for the week.  I’ve been doing this for more than 20 years.  I convert everything to “RE miles,” and add it up.  It’s hard to compare intense anaerobic workouts like weight training to running, but I do my best.  It’s imprecise, but I want to be able to summarize my total training volume.

For the past two weeks, I’ve done at least two workouts every day.  Usually, it’s cycling and running.  Sometimes, it’s cycling and weight training or running and weight training.  In addition, I sometimes go for short walks with Deb.

Here’s a graph that shows my weekly “RE mileage” since the beginning of the year.  Until recently, it was mostly just running mileage.  Occasionally, I did a little bit of walking, but it wasn’t a significant proportion of my total training.  In the last three weeks, the graph looks different.  I’m still doing the same amount of running, but I’ve added both cycling and weight training.  As a result, my weekly “RE mileage” has roughly doubled, compared to three weeks ago.

The legend may be too small to read, but blue is running, light blue is walking, green is cycling, and red is weight training.

These cross-training workouts serve more than one purpose.  In the short term, they’re helping giving me a new source of motivation, now that I no longer have any races on the horizon.  In the long term, they’ll hopefully help me control my weight.  In the last two weeks, my weight has leveled off.  I’m not losing weight yet, but I’m no longer gaining weight.  That’s a start.

The Advantages of a Home Gym

I started running while I was in college.  Before I graduated, I also took up weight training.  I bought a set of weights and a cheap weight bench that required assembly from an assortment of metal tubes, nuts, and bolts.  The bench didn’t seem real sturdy, but I wasn’t using a lot of weight, so it met my needs.  More important, it was something I could afford while going to school and working part-time.

While I was in college, I was living with my parents.  They were nice enough to let me use my mom’s “sewing room” as my weight room until I graduated.  I also bought an abdominal board that could be used for incline sit-ups.

The nice thing about that weight bench was that it could be disassembled and stored in a box for transport.  That made it easy to take it with me when I moved into an apartment.  I was living by myself, but I still got a two-bedroom apartment.  I used the second bedroom as my weight room.

Shortly after Deb and I got married, we bought a house.  I set up my weights in a room in the basement.  By now, I was able to handle more weight.  I no longer felt comfortable using a weight bench that seemed kind of rickety.  I found a fitness store that built their own equipment by welding 2x2 beams of iron together.  I replaced my department store bench with a nice sturdy bench that would last a lifetime.  The bench could be adjusted in different ways, so I could do incline or decline bench presses.  It also had an attachment for doing leg exercises, and another one for doing curls in a seated position.

By now, I owned a variety of bars and cast-iron weight disks of various sizes.  Over the next few years, I bought other pieces of equipment, so I could do more exercises.  First, I bought a pair of squat stands with wide heavy bases.  Next, I bought a high lat station, that also had cables and pullies that could be used for various rowing exercises.

Finally, I bought a fly attachment, and I replaced by curl board attachment with a better one that was padded on both sides.

I didn’t buy this equipment all at once.  These purchases were spread out over a period of about five years.  By the time I was done, I spent about $1,000 on weight lifting equipment.  I was set up to do just about any exercise that can be done using free weights.  I owned enough weight disks that I didn’t have to interrupt my workouts to move weights from one station to another.  I could set up everything before I started, and then move quickly from one exercise to the next.

I had friends who had gym memberships.  That had access to other types of equipment, but I was appalled by the cost of their gym memberships.  In the first five years alone, they spent more on their memberships than I did buying all my equipment.  Weight disks and benches don’t wear out.  Once I had them, I could use them for a lifetime with no additional cost.  It’s 30 years later, and I’m still using the same equipment.  There was an up-front investment, but since then I’ve saved thousands of dollars in membership fees.

At first, I just had weight-lifting equipment, but then I bought a stationary bike.  Now I could supplement my running with aerobic cross-training, and I didn’t have to leave my home.

The last major addition to my home gym was a treadmill.  Throughout my 20s and 30s, I was content to run outside.  Then I set my sights on running the Pike’s Peak Marathon.  That was the same year than I turned 40.

The Pike’s Peak Marathon is a trail run that starts in Manitou Springs and goes all the way up and down Pike’s Peak.  In the first half of the race, you ascend more than 7,800 feet.  That’s a mile and a half of ascent!  The average grade is 10.7 percent, but some parts of the trail are much steeper.

I don’t live near any mountains.  There’s no place I could go where I could practice running up a steep grade for mile after mile after mile.  That was my initial motivation to buy a treadmill.  I found a nice durable treadmill that could simulate grades up to 15 percent.  I did workouts where I alternated between running on a 5 percent grade and walking on a 15 percent grade.  At first, I could only keep this up for 30 minutes.  Then my quads would be screaming.

I kept up this training until I could routinely run uphill for an hour.  Then I started adding weekly long runs.  I gradually worked up to the point where I was simulating the entire ascent.  It took me three hours.

For the race itself, I had to contend with the thin air at elevations going up to 14,000 feet.  There’s no way I could prepare for that, but at least I was ready for the climbing.  The treadmill prepared me for that.  Despite living and training in Minnesota, I finished in the top third of the field.  Almost all the runners who finished ahead of me lived in Colorado, Wyoming, or Utah.

Now that I had a treadmill, I couldn’t resist using it for most of my winter training.  I live in a cold climate where the snow and ice stay on the ground all winter.  Running outside not only involves bundling up for cold temperatures, but also running on layers of packed snow and ice.  The best you can do on icy streets is to shuffle along slowly.  On the treadmill, I could train at race pace or faster.

Now, in addition to weight training, I could also run and bike, all without leaving my basement.

It’s worth noting that the treadmill and the stationary bike have moving parts, and they eventually wear out.  I’m now on my second stationary bike and my third treadmill.  These pieces of equipment are more expensive than the weights were, so it’s no longer clear that owning my own equipment is still significantly less expensive than having a gym membership.  It’s worth it, though, because of the convenience.

If you go to a gym to exercise, you have to take the time to drive there and change clothes before you start working out.  Then you have to shower and change clothes before driving home.  That takes a lot of extra time.  With a home gym, you just have to change into workout clothes and walk down to the basement.  Working out in my own basement has made it possible for me to do short workouts before work just be getting up a little earlier.

Often, the hardest part of a workout is getting started.  Who’s more likely to start a workout: the person who has to drive somewhere or the person who just has to walk down to his basement?

I still haven’t got to the biggest advantage of a home gym.  I never have to wait until a piece of equipment is available.  I can do my exercises in any order I choose.  The equipment is never in use by someone else.  (OK, Deb sometimes uses the treadmill, but we can pretty easily coordinate our workout schedules.)

I don’t know about you, but I need to listen to music while I work out.  I especially need music when I’m on the treadmill.  I don’t use a portable music player of any kind.  I don’t like the idea of sweating all over a pair of headphones.  I also wouldn’t want any cords that could get caught on something while I’m lifting weights.  Because I’m the only one in the room, I can fill the room with music.  I have a stereo in my living room, and I ran some speaker wire through the floorboards, so I can have a remote set of speakers in my exercise room.

I’ve always felt fortunate to have the convenience of a home gym, but now it’s more important than ever.  Because of COVID-19, lots of businesses are temporarily closed, including gyms.  People who have gym memberships no longer have access to the equipment they usually use.  Even while sheltering at home, I can still do all the same cross-training exercises I did before. Thankfully, I can still run outside, and the weather is starting to get nice.  It’s nice to know, however, that I could also run without leaving the house, if I was willing to do all my running on the treadmill.

Getting Back to Basics

Over the last 10 years, I’ve adopted a lifestyle that’s all about traveling to different places and running marathons.  That’s all on hold for now.  The last time I ran a marathon was March 1st.  The last time I was on an airplane was March 2nd.  I don’t know when I’ll travel or race again.  I’m no longer racing, but I’m still running.

Since the middle of March, I’ve been “sheltering at home.”  I only leave the house for essential activities.  Fortunately, getting outside for exercise is considered to be an essential activity.  The important thing is to run by myself.  I’m used to doing that, so it’s not that big of a change.

I have several different running routes.  I have a few different loops through my neighborhood on streets and sidewalks.  I can combine them in different ways, depending on how far I want to run.  I live in a quiet suburban neighborhood, so it’s not generally crowded.

My shortest loops are only about a mile, but they’re entirely on residential streets.  Running in the street, it’s easy to maintain “social distancing.”  Most of the time, I’m the only one there.

I have longer loops that include sidewalks.  Sometimes, I’m the only one there.  If I pass one person on the sidewalk, I’ll move way to one side as I pass, and they’ll move to the other side.  If there’s too many people, I can move into the street.

Running the same loops over and over again can get boring, but it’s the easiest way to avoid crowds.  I have other routes that are much longer.  Some are loops that as much as 7.6 miles.  Others are out-and-back routes that are about 10 miles.  One day in March, I did a 10 mile out-and-back run on a paved bike path that follows a narrow greenway under some power lines.  At first, I didn’t see many people.  Toward the middle of my route, I started to see more people.  Often, it wasn’t easy to maintain “social distancing.”  I enjoyed the change of scenery, but I haven’t returned to that route.

I’ve been a runner since I was 19.  In recent years, I’ve been in a perpetual state of marathon training, but it wasn’t always that way.  At times, I ran primarily so I could lose weight.  At other times, I ran to maintain my overall fitness.  I know what it feels like to be in really good shape.  I also know what it feels like to be completely out of shape.  I much prefer how I feel when I’m in shape.  I don’t want to lose that.

I’m currently running about six days a week.  Often, my daily run is the only time I go outside the house.  That’s made me really appreciate my runs.  I’ve always enjoyed how I feel when I run, but now it’s also my only chance to get fresh air and sunshine.

I wouldn’t characterize what I’m doing as training.  I’m just running.  When I was racing frequently, I didn’t need to get out by myself and do long training runs of 20+ miles.  If you’re running 26.2 miles every other weekend , you don’t need any other long training runs.  Likewise, if you’re going all-out in most of those races, you don’t need to do much more in the way of speed work.  I used to do two or three all-out marathons every month.  On the days in between, I’d just do an hour or two of easily mileage.

I’m still doing all the easy mileage, but without the races.  For now, I’m just enjoying my runs and maintaining a minimum level of fitness.  I’m not doing long runs, and I’m not doing speed work.  I’m keeping up a mileage base of at least 40 miles per week.  When the time comes, it won’t be too hard to get ready for races.  I’ll need to add the long runs and speed work, but my mileage base will be there.

This Time, I Pulled the Plug

I just cancelled my plans for another race.  Several other races have cancelled or postponed, but this time I’m the one who pulled the plug.  The race in question was the White Nights Marathon in St. Petersburg, Russia.  The race is scheduled for June 28.

I’ve been interest in visiting St. Petersburg for years, but it’s not a place I could easily visit on my own.  This year, Marathon Tours & Travel (MT&T) was going there for the first time.  As soon as I found out I could go there with a tour group, I signed up.  I was looking forward not only to the race, but also to going sightseeing with a group and seeing places like the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood.

To travel to Russia, to need to get a visa.  To get a visa, you need to have a letter of invitation.   For tourists, the letter of invitation comes form the hotel where you’re going to be staying.  MT&T took care of that.  I got the letter of invitation on January and began the process of applying for my visa, which involved mailing my passport with a visa application.  In February, I got my passport back with a Russian visa.  Then I booked my flights.

At the time, COVID-19 seemed like it was confined mostly to China and a few other countries in Asia.  I had no idea that it was could to spread throughout the world, with major outbreaks in the United States, Europe, and Russia.

My first inkling that this trip was in trouble came in a message from my friend Gary, who also booked this trip through MT&T.  His visa application was rejected.  Russia had closed its borders and they were no longer processing any visa applications.

A lot has happened since then.  The United States imposed a ban on travel to and from Europe.  European countries in the Schengen Zone imposed their own travel bans.  COVID-19 spread like wildfire in all of these countries.

Every race on my scheduled before this one was cancelled or postponed.  One of my July races was also cancelled.  I got occasional emails from MT&T with the status of the White Nights Marathon.  There were travel bans, and the Russian consulates were temporarily closed, but the race still wasn’t cancelled.  I was pretty sure I would eventually need to cancel this trip, but I kept waiting for the official word.

On Monday, I got another update from MT&T.  Here’s an excerpt:

Once again, we appreciate your patience as we navigate through this challenging time.  As mentioned in previous email communication, we have been monitoring the situation closely and have been in contact with the race and our ground operator.  Here is what we know:

• As of today, the race is still scheduled to take place on June 28. 
• There is a nationwide lock-down that has been extended until May 11.
• Hotels are not hosting foreigners until June 1. 
• The Russian Consulate offices are still closed in the USA so visas cannot be processed.  ILS (the visa processing center) estimates that they will remain closed until the end of May, but this is still an unknown factor.

Based on our departure scheduled for less than two months from now and the uncertainties, we are providing you with the following options.  Please respond with your choice by Friday, May 8, 2020. 

• Defer your package with Marathon Tours & Travel to 2021.  Our 'inaugural' White Nights Marathon will now be designated as 2021.  We know that many of you like to be the first to experience a new destination so this will secure your spot on our package for next year. Please note that the package pricing for 2021 has yet to be confirmed so there may be a slight difference.
• Apply your payment(s) to a future Marathon Tours & Travel Trip. The amount that you paid will be credited to your account to use on a future Marathon Tours & Travel trip in 2020 or 2021.
• Still travel to Russia.  If you still want to travel to Russia, then we will continue to plan your trip on your behalf.  We cannot guarantee what the situation will be in regards to travel, the race and/or any other restrictions imposed on foreigners.
• Receive a Refund.  If you select this option, please allow up to 60 days.  There will be a processing fee associated with this choice, which will be communicated when known.

Technically, the race is still on, but there’s a long list of reasons why I shouldn’t plan on traveling to St. Petersburg to run it.

1)      Although Russia’s ban on foreign travel is currently only through the end of May, it could easily be extended through June or beyond.

2)      Even before they closed their borders, Russia was requiring foreign visitors to quarantine for 14 days upon arrival in the country.  My visa is for specific dates.  It doesn’t account for a quarantine period.  Even if it did, I wouldn’t want to be away from home for that long.

3)      To get to Russia, I need to fly through airports in other European countries.  If either Europe or the United States extends their travel ban, my flights would most likely get cancelled, making it impossible to get to St. Petersburg with any reasonable itinerary.

4)      The tourist sites I was planning to visit might be closed.  At the very least, even if I could go sightseeing, I would be mostly on my own, instead of traveling with a large group.  I wouldn’t get to see St. Petersburg the way I was expecting to see it.

5)      Finally, and most important, I’d be at risk of contracting COVID-19 and spreading it to other people.  That’s not a risk I’m willing to take.

I contacted MT&T today to inform them that I was opting for a refund.  Ideally, I would defer to next year, but there’s too much uncertainty right now.  I’m not planning any big trips until I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I still need to cancel my flights, but I’m going to wait to see if the airline cancels them.  If I cancel, I get a credit which is good until the end of 2022.  If they cancel, I get an immediate refund.

I still have 10 races on my calendar for this year, but I don’t know if any of them are going to happen.  Five of them are in July or August.  Four of them are races that were originally scheduled for April or May, but got postponed to weekends in September or October.  Finally, I’m registered for the New York City Marathon in November.

Ironically, the races that are most likely to be cancelled are the ones in September, October and November.  Two of them are races in Europe with thousands of runners.  The other two are in the US, but they have tens of thousands of runners and hundreds of thousands of spectators.  The summer races are much smaller.  They only have dozens of runners.  Even though they’re sooner, they may be possible with a few adjustments for social distancing.

I don’t know when I’ll race again.  The only thing I know for sure is that my next race is probably going to be a small one.