August: Science

   Ask for a million-dollar loan on your next long run - or propose marriage, even if you're running solo. Uttered aloud, the ease with which you're able to have these conversations will tell you whether or not you're training at the right intensity. They'll also entertain strangers you pass.    It's an old rule that just got snappy new scientific credentials: if you can sustain a conversation without gasping for breath in midsentence, you're working at the perfect intensity for aerobic conditioning; push any harder, and exhaustion will begin taking you down. A recent study from the University of Wisconsin had subjects on a treadmill recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Researchers simultaneously measured the subjects' heart and breathing rates. They found that those who huffed and sputtered their pledge were working too hard; they'd lapsed into anaerobic territory.

   It's pleasing to see an old training nugget like this redeemed by people wearing lab coats, especially because it affirms that your body pretty much knows what it's doing. Training has become the province of heart monitors, stopwatches, and calculators. If you're told that 80 to 90 percent of your weekly mileage should be run at 65 to 80 percent of your maximum heart rate, will you stop in the middle of a workout to do the math? Will this prescription give you better results or an edge over your competitors?

   In yet another validation of common sense, researchers at Iowa State University found that optimum aerobic conditioning occurs when the intensity of exercise "does not feel unpleasant." How's that for cutting-edge science? The two groups in the study (one young, the other middle-aged) reported their perceived level of effort while running at various speeds. Most subjects intuitively preferred to work at the very edge of aerobic/anaerobic transition.

   It's easy to sneer at academic efforts that prove the obvious. Yet we all seek scientific validation in our workouts, sometimes to excess. Elite Kenyan runners drafted into American training programs tend to find the technologies, diets, and number-driven workouts to be curious, even absurd. After all, most Kenyans achieved their world-class status simply by running unimaginably long yet unmeasured distances, often barefoot.

   Power to you if you've got such forbearance and ability. The rest of us need benchmarks, encouragement, and occasional coaching. Our workouts are constantly improved by the latest scientific study and a professional trainer's advice - or so we believe. It's as if we don't trust our bodies, as if the primitive act of running suddenly requires modern experts.

   This overstates the case. All runners are more attuned to their bodies than non-runners, more aware of ways that subtle changes can bring gratifying improvement to speed and endurance. Years of running teach us how to keep pain at bay. We are lab animals in our own right, working a continuous feedback loop with every workout, every race. Runners don't need stopwatches or scientific studies to improve. Then again, it only makes sense to take help anywhere you can get it.