Well the time has come again for another blog, however, instead of writing this from my normal locale which is upstairs at the ZAP office right in front of Frank and behind Nick (in a spot that I hi-jacked from Jess) I am sitting in my hotel room in sunshiney Tallahassee, FL, which is pretty tubular.

This is my second experience with training in Tallahassee and I must say it is one of the greatest pleasures of the ZAP Fitness Elite Athlete training agenda. We arrived here a couple weeks ago and, well despite some dreary days at the start (including a day with Biblical flooding that drown my poor Sebring out for a couple days), the weather has been perfect, which is certainly a welcome relief from my typical holiday training which takes place in Michgain (snow,snow, snow,snow) and then Seattle (rain, rain, rain, rain). So, we have all been able to get settled in and have been focused on some high mileage intense base workouts heading into our track seasons which have, for me personally, gone strikingly better than my workouts last year at this time.

It is a simple life that we live here and the typical day generally goes something like this:

• 7:45 - Wake up eat a Power Bar
• 8:15 - Leave for the run
• 12:00 - Lunch
• 3:00 - Nap
• 4:30 - Run again
• 6:30 - Dinner
• 7:30 - 11pm - Play Guitar Hero

and on top of all that:

• 7:45 am - 11:00pm - Listen to Jankowski talk about being a Champion

So, like i said... simple. I don't think we have to worry much about anyone confusing the life of a  long distance runner with that of a rock star, but we all love what we do and wouldn't have it any other way.

 As a Zap newbie, this is my first blog, so I think that I will take the opportunity to introduce myself.  My name is Alissa McKaig, and I hail from Indiana, although please do not confuse me for a Hoosier…I am a Purdue Boilermaker to the core.  Go Black and Gold!!  My athletic background was not in running, but in swimming.  My two older sisters swam competitively, so naturally, I followed them into the pool.  I played soccer too and absolutely loved it.  I never would have even attempted running if not for a back injury in middle school that forced me to take nine months of down time from any form of exercise.  At the end of that time, I started running four miles every day to get into shape for high school soccer.    I loved the consistency of running; I ran the same four miles and enjoyed watching my time get faster and faster.   Improvement is a heady and addictive joy, and after that first taste, I was captivated!  My sophomore year, I ran for the cross country team, after much cajoling and prodding from my family.  Running was a private experience for me, and I was sure that competing against other people would ruin it.  However, just the opposite happened; competition spurred me on and made me want to run farther and faster.  Running fully had its hooks in me from that point on, and I have never looked back!!  It’s amazing to me that running has brought me this far.  I knew I wanted to run in college, but never in my wildest dreams as a high schooler did I envision I would be running as a professional!!  It is such an amazing opportunity, one for which I am so grateful.

I have never lived outside the Midwest, outside of one short stint in Texas, and am so excited for this opportunity to train in the mountains.  North Carolina is beautiful, although to be honest, the mountains are kicking my butt.  After being here for two months, I am slightly more adjusted, but I’d be lying if I said those first few weeks were not rough.  However, what does not kill you makes you stronger, right?   I’m not dead yet, so I must be more fit!!  I have raced a few times this fall, a sort of slow ramp up to club cross country nationals, and I am pumped to keep racing and see all this training pay off.  I am happy to be part of the Zap family, and hopefully the updates you receive in the next couple of months will be full of good news and fast racing!!

Sleeping in an airport is not fun.  Once you accept your fate and it sinks in that you are going to sleep at the airport, you tell yourself that it won’t be too bad.  You have a good bench picked out, you have entertainment, you have a makeshift pillow and a good jacket for a blanket.  You say, “how bad can it be? Its just like camping except better because its indoors.”  It never works out the way you envision it.  There are too many factors that can go wrong.  You can get kicked out of the gate you were in because of “security reasons” and have to go to the ticketing terminal where all the benches have arm rests.  You go from cozy, carpeted, private gate to a sea of bodies and tile.  Walking around, scouting out a spot, you see the lazy airport personnel chatting it up with co workers, the early-to-bed airport crashers who know they don’t have a good spot but can’t leave their stuff to find another one and instead just fell defeated in the hallway.  They missed their connection or had their flight canceled just like us, I can see the despair in their eyes.

There are four components to sleeping in an airport making the difference between a relatively restful night and a night of wakefulness and hopelessness.  The first and most important factor is temperature.  Often taken for granted in a normal sleeping arrangement, sleeping when you are cold is nearly impossible.  Further, you want to be warmer sleeping than you are throughout the rest of the day, making a seemingly comfortable room temperature too cold to sleep without proper bed accessories.  The second factor to a good nights sleep in an airport, many would rate number one, is sleeping surface.  Usually you have two options, cushioned bench or thin carpet floor.  Tile is possible, but only in the most desperate of circumstances when your will to get sleep is only slightly higher than your will to live.  Airports, fearing civil altercations, seem to have removed quality (armrest-less) benches from sleeping acceptable areas because of their highly coveted worth.  The reason surface is number two is because it is not a deal breaker, a decent nights sleep is attainable on carpet when paired with other favorable amenities.

The third issue affecting sleep in an airport is light.  A close third, bright light cannot facilitate a peaceful rest.  Luckily, it is a quick fix to prevent light from intruding sleeping space.  I have found a hat can work but has the tendency to fall off with movement.  Other, more creative, patrons have built a makeshift tent with a jacket and prop, such as a bench.  This method however potentially takes away a valuable temperature regulator.  The last aspect is noise.  This is most often not a factor because there is always a quiet place, but no place in an airport stays quiet.  Vacuuming, loud conversation, airport announcements and a sudden influx of people can quickly wake you to alert and a decision must be made to abandon your nest or ride out the intrusion, either of which could be unrecoverable.

When faced with the potential of sleeping in an airport, weigh all options and contingency plans and recognize that it will be almost always worse than it initially sounds.

Over the past year I have found that, at times, training to be a professional runner can feel much like trying to dig through asphalt with a wooden spoon. Putting in vast amounts of effort but never really getting anywhere. Obviously, it was time for a change. A move that would take me one more quarter of the way across the country and hopefully from humble personal bests to slightly better than humble personal bests, or at the very least allow me to find more enjoyment in running. Having started my running career in southeastern Idaho, moving to Oklahoma, then Detroit, a move to North Carolina seemed fitting. Reverting back to the slow and simple life in a modest, mountain town. Blowing Rock, NC…. Here I come.

Two weeks ago today I was running around a suburban running shop like a chicken with my head cutoff. Being the only employee on staff, I was scrambling to help all six customers who were clamoring for more attention while looking forward to my afternoon run, a break from running shoe store stresses and an escape from my increasingly mundane schedule. Finally something new and excited. A chance to run with a team again and to have a sponsor to help take some of the financial pressure off.

I’ve just finished my first week here at Zap, as well as my first Adult Marathon Camp and first blog as a Zap athlete. Talk about a baptism by fire. Being surrounded by so many new tasks and experiences has made my transition fairly quick and simple. The immediacy of the situation left me with little choice but to merge with my new surroundings. Being thrust into the flames has allowed me to quickly meld into the group. So here I am, hopefully a fully-functional part of this well oiled machine that is Zap Fitness.
 

  I am writing this blog as I enter my fourth week at ZAP Fitness. I came here by way of Indianapolis, Indiana and Grand Valley State University.

My first few weeks at ZAP have been filled with many new experiences: food (believe it or not I had not eaten a green vegetable in my life until a few weeks ago), mountainous terrain, living in the dirty south, coaching, and new teammates. Most important is the fact that nothing here felt strange or uncomfortable, and my new teammates felt like old teammates from day one. I am very lucky to have been able to rejoin my college teammate and friend Nate Peck. There aren’t too many guys in post-collegiate groups that have the opportunity to continue to train with their college teammates. 

My first few years of college were plagued with injury and setbacks, but that has passed and allowed me to improve significantly in the last couple of years. I’ve been given a unique and exciting opportunity here at ZAP to be able to push my body to it’s limits and reach my goals in running. I’m looking forward to hitting a large training block this fall gearing up for some big 5ks and 10ks this spring on track.

The spring season is a great time to be at ZAP.  The weather is mild.  The parks we frequent are in full bloom.  Everyone here is arriving at peak form and performing very well in races all over the country.  For me, too, the spring has been very exciting.  I came away from both the Mt. SAC and Cardinal Invitationals with substantial PRs in both the 5k and 10k, respectively.

More than breakthrough performances, however, I am most happy with the process I have gone through in achieving those new best times here at ZAP.  In this first year I am learning more and more about myself as an athlete.  I am becoming stronger and fitter than I ever have been before.I spent so much of my first year at ZAP rebuilding my fitness.  During that time, I learned a lot about the role that patience plays in our sport.  Occasionally it was difficult to compete in races while knowing that a best effort could still be so far off a goal pace.  Luckily, the environment here at ZAP is wonderful for keeping everything in perspective.  Most everyone has dealt with an injury at one point or another that has kept them from racing at the level they want to be competing at.

Looking ahead, I am excited for another great opportunity to run a personal best this weekend in the 10k.  Most of the ZAP crew will be there with me in Portland, OR, with each trying to better their 5k or 10k times and secure a spot on the starting line at the U.S. Outdoor Championships.
It has been a wonderful spring track season so far and I am looking forward to hopefully concluding this season in Eugene, OR at the U.S. Outdoor Championships.

I may have graduated from college exactly 1 year ago to this day, but that doesn't mean I've lost the spark of intellectual curiosity.  In fact, with Thomas and Warrenburg to argue with on daily runs, during dinner, and afterward in the kitchen, you could say the flame burns even brighter.  One of my favorite classes I took in college was entitled Judgment & Decision Making.  It was class that meshed professors from the departments of Psychology, Economics and International and Public Affairs.  During lectures, we frequently discussed different heuristics, or experienced-based techniques used during problem solving, learning and discovery.  Basically, a heuristic is a rapid, intuitive/unconscious "rules of thumb" that we begin to use as we mature and encounter situations.  Often times, we don't even know we are using them.  After I took this class, though, I began to notice the effect of heuristics in peculiar aspects of life, particularly running. 

Today I want to talk about a heuristic known as the Anchoring Effect.  Anchoring is a psychological phenomenon in which people tend to make assessments of situations based upon a reference point.  I started talking about the anchoring effect one night at the Zap dinner table in reference to predicting the time and finish of a race.  When discussing a future race and Dave says "I think Nate is going to run 13:45..." it is then impossible for me to make a prediction without taking into account the time he just said.  This effect can be particularly dramatic when the question you are trying to answer is completely unknown.  We love to make bets at Zap, so now when each of us decides to make our call for the correct time that the race will be won in, we all come up with our time prior to the first statement so as to not set a reference point and Anchor the others' guesses.  This can be especially important when betting on races like the marathon where the finishing time range can be several minutes.

ANYWAY, back to the point.  I started to notice something similar to the Anchoring Effect happening in the NCAA indoor mile this winter.  If you follow college track & field these days then you know that we have a seriously talented group of freshman runners this year.  And when I say "talented group of young runners," I don't mean it in the typical sense of a freshman running well for being a freshman, I mean guys who are leading the NCAA as freshman and competing on the world scene.  It seemed like every other weekend this winter and spring that a new bar was set.  Running under 4 minutes in the indoor mile used to be the bar, but after German Fernandez ran 3:55 in a low key race coming off of an injury, it seemed like things changed.  Guys started running 3:56, 3:57...and not being satisfied.  I see a phenomenon happening here and I think it has something to do with the Anchoring Effect.  As guys and girls run faster (and especially young ones) the whole mentality starts to shift.  What we once considered as fast, now has become a "good start," and what was once "phenomenal" is now the standard.  The new 'bar' is what we now set our references for outstanding times at. 

This is absolutely essential for American distance running.  To compete with the best at the world stage, we have to completely change our notions of what is really good.  There are hundred's of cliche quotes about "believing in yourself" and "shooting for the stars," but there is actually some truth to their underlying principles.  I love hearing about new American Records because it raises the bar one notch higher and forces everybody else to reassess what is good.  On a separate but related note, what I don't love is this year's slowing of the US National qualifying standards.  Set the standards slower, and people, on average, will run slower.

The tough part about heuristics is that they largely exist in the unconscious realm.  You cant just say "make 12:50 in the 5k your new standard of excellence," because that wouldn't be reasonable at this point.  What I did learn about changing heuristics in JDM was that knowing is half the battle.  Until we become consciously aware of these little mental speed-bumps, can we begin to expect changes in our psyche.

Completely disagree?  Feel free to share your thoughts...