Recently I had a conversation with an old runner/basketball
teammate of mine. We talked about how running and basketball are vastly
different. Now when you compare track (distance events) with Mountain/Trail
Running with Basketball…you have an even better discussion on hand. It can be
argued that basketball requires natural explosive speed that distance running in
general does not require. Some agree that natural speed is a true talent that
someone is born with and thus, if you do not have it you are a step down from
someone born with it. Distance running on the other hand requires an athlete
with or without natural speed to put in miles and miles of hard work to be
elite. Many coaches of top elites around the world uphold the theory that a
person born with natural speed can succeed in just about any sport. This
basically means an athlete born with the right mixture of fast twitch to slow
twitch muscles suggests an elite future. In some ways I agree with this
argument. I have had the opportunity to coach some very strong young athletes
in my past and in early stages of life you can visibly see that there are in
fact some kids that are more talented than others and, some by a long shot.
In a 3 month span of track season I had a few kids that
really stood out early in the season and found that they were easily gapping
the rest of the kids in their age group in workouts. I had one kid in
particular who was not the fastest of the bunch and would usually finish mid
pack in workouts. This kid in the mid pack was a great kid to coach, a coaches
dream athlete. He listened, worked hard, and kept in mind that athletics is
about progression. He stuck to my plan. Week by week he made up ground on the
more “naturally” talented kids and by championship season he was dominating
these kids. When I coached basketball and even my experience with the sport at
a young age I remember some of us had great touch for jump shooting and some
had great ball handling skills straight out of the womb. Over time, some kids
had the mentality to work harder and excel at these skills even though they
were not the best early in life. These are outliers to the theory that natural
talent alone predicts future superstardom. This also brings me to the first
topic in the discussion between basketball, track, and mountain/trail running….Mentality.
I will look at 3 variables in the discussion as to the differences between
these 3 sports. There will be 3 parts on my blog for this discussion so check
back frequently. First I will discuss mentality, then form, and lastly
genetics.
Mentality
Why do I choose these 3 areas of athletics to compare? I
competed in all of them and I constantly come across discussions as to which
sport is the toughest. I do not have an argument as to which is harder for
everyone but I can say right now before you get to the end that mountain
running has been the hardest of them all for ME if you take into account many
variables, at least the ones I have thought of. There are obviously some that I
have missed and if you feel I have missed them LEAVE A COMMENT and I will ponder the idea and obviously comment
back.
Now mentality, this involves many variables. For times sake
I will pick 2 that have come around conversation the most…Work ethic and pain
tolerance. These are two huge variables sustaining the mental aspect of
sport and 2 of the most important in my opinion. These 2 variables set apart
the elite athlete from the good athlete. In all 3 events I must say, the best
of the best are indeed “insane”. Yes, I admit I’m insane, I’m crazy, but there
are some in this world even more insane than I. I once heard a story about a great
track star that woke up 2-3 times a night just to do sit ups and push ups
followed by a hydration period, then back to sleep. INSANE. Another story of a
guy I once looked up to was that he once had a 5x mile workout that he felt
didn’t go well so he went home after a short cool down, rested a few hours,
went back out and repeated the workout until he felt it was respectable.
Another story of a bball teammate of mine at the young age of 14 after a 3 hour
practice he stayed in the gum just to practice his jump shot with an additional
2 hours in the gym shooting a few thousand jump shots from the 3-point line alone
in the dark. No argument here when it comes to work ethic. A great athlete is
just insane and will work excessively harder than your average competitor.
Now as I said I will merely give my experiences, I can not
speak for all. When it comes to basketball work ethic is a necessity in order
to be great. I recall countless hours of drills for defense, ball handling, and
shooting. Look at distance running (Work ethic is almost identical for mountain
running as it is for track running), I’ve also spent hours doing long workouts
and dealing with the weather while training. Work ethic is difficult to differ,
but this area of mentality collides into the variable of pain tolerance. For
me, basketball was a very technical event so drills were easy once you got good
at them and in a sense you just focused on volume of the workouts and also accuracy.
Accuracy is not very important for distance running, but one thing is for sure
pain tolerance between these two sports are worlds apart. In basketball drills
can be done effortlessly, you merely walk through these and burn few calories
depending on intensity. When playing a game your heart rate rarely ascends past
90% of your maximum. In bball you do have contact and sometimes you get bumped
or knocked on the ground and if you have the heart of a champion, no matter if
you broke a finger or sprained your wrist you will be out on the floor playing
the final minutes for the chance at victory.
Running is not a contact sport, but ask anyone who has
competed in Europe or even in a tight pack where you have 10 guys snugly bound
waiting for a chance to spring the last 400 meters of a qualifying round.
Sometimes you go down in races and again, if you are a competitive individual
you won’t just get up and finish, you will get up and compete. In my first ever
steeplechase, I fell in the water pit, HARD. Embarrassed, not hurt too badly,
but my pride was definitely fatigued. I got out of the water and surged to the
back of the front pack and hung on for the ride. As we hit the final 800 meters
I worked my way into the lead and coming off the final water barrier I told
myself “I cannot lose after all this”. I ended up checking over my shoulder
with 20 meters to go and went on to win in my debut after a nice spill. Now
physical pain caused by mishaps is not a great argument for distance running as
mishaps such as falling, or getting bumped are rare occasions. In basketball
these are frequent situations and therefore, if can be argued that you must
possess a high pain tolerance to deal with constant mishaps in the way of physical
pain. If you have ever been hurt physically in running or bball you know one
thing, it doesn’t truly hurt until you are out of the moment. Meaning the next
day or once adrenaline has slouched down to normal levels. Let’s look at the
other side of pain tolerance, which is physical and mental simultaneously.
Distance running offers you a chance to really see what you
are made of. Sometimes you don’t feel good, but it is still important that you
run fast. I remember a 10 mile tempo I had once where I came through the first
mile on the trail in about 5:15 and felt like trash. I thought to myself, “I
have 9 more of these to go, do I really want to do this”? I needed this workout
as it was during a high volume phase of training and this workout was important
as it would give me the feeling of what race day would feel like racing 31.07
miles in the USA 50k Championship I was set to compete in (How did I do?).
I made it through this workout painfully. Checking my watch
every few minutes dreadfully, digging in to my soul, searching for anything I
could to drive me to finish this workout. The pain of what many runners refer
to as “hanging on”. This pain of hurting early and forcing yourself to unwillingly
endure a long period of time under extreme cardiovascular pain is no doubt the
biggest factor setting distance running apart from basketball. Say you have
pushed so hard that you have reached glycogen depletion and your electrolyte
level has also become imbalanced. You are cramping and unable to run stable and
smooth. Unlike basketball where you may come out and rest a few minutes while
your teammates take the load, in running only YOU can fight this battle and you
must take this cheap debt of pain to the finish line. In comparison, mountain
running and track running also provide different experiences when cramps set
in. Many times in mountain races you must run long distances between aid
stations and dealing with uneven terrain when the muscles are cramping is a
skill only refined by hours of trail running and even then, you can not prepare
much for what you will do when you have “hit the wall” and still need to climb
3,000 ft. more. This brings me to Part II of the discussion….Form
Check back in the coming days…..
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