Feed the Cats

 this is one of those long rambly posts that's really just for me but whatareyougonnadoyaknow?

For the past 2 months I've been looking into sprinting training and trying to learn more about how to coach/improve sprinting and speed. Pretty quickly you'll come across something called "Feed the Cats" which is this program developed by this high school coach named Tony Holler. 

Feed the Cats is the opposite of how I developed as a runner. I looked like an 11 or 12 year old until I was about 17. Growing up I never felt like I was someone who was naturally talented or athletic, probably because I was way smaller than everyone else. The one thing I was good at that other people seemed to not enjoy as much was running a lot and putting in a lot of work. I think before my sophomore, junior, and senior year I ran more miles over the summer than anyone else on the cross country team. I won the most improved award my sophomore and junior year at the end of the season. The longer the race and the harder the course, I would do better and better relative to everyone else on the team. It's the classic you get out of it what you put into it and I think it affected me more than anything else in my life at the time. I put a lot of my identity into being someone that works hard and puts in long hours that other people aren't willing to put in.

I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. It got me a long way. It got me all the way to my 30s before I started thinking things like, "I don't think this easy 10 mile run is really doing anything for me." It got me to the 10 miler this year where I knew my training had been really good and I checked the mileage and intensity boxes and ran the worst time ever (the weather was maybe a larger factor but whatever). It got me to playing capture the flag in the summer last year and realizing, "man, I'm SLOW" 

What I'd told myself was that I couldn't get by on athleticism and that my route was hard work hard work hard work and that I'd eventually be able to out work other people. And in the process of that I think I lost whatever athleticism I did have.

In college I was doing my thing of running hard nearly every day and trying to run a lot of miles and it felt like on any given week I could race an 800 in about 2:08 or 2:09. It was something I raced a lot in high school and even though I had gotten away from a lot of that training I could still pull it out when I had to. Earlier this Fall I would struggle to run 2:20 pace for 500 meters. I would run a 500 and a 300 with a 3 to 4 minute rest between and the combined 800 time would be about 2:18. I was doing more or less similar training but I'd lost the ability to be fast.

And you could say, 'well aging is just like that. what you really gotta do is move up the marathon where it's all about endurance.' But that sounds awful to me. If something feels wrong, why make the ruts in the path even deeper? I don't feel older. I think I want to let go of something that isn't serving me anymore.

Maybe a reasonable person would look at all this and think, 'well gosh why's it so important anyway?' but when you get into running and you see your weekly mileage numbers go up and you're running longer than you've ever run before and you're setting PR's and beating people you used to lose to and winning (?!) races it's like the most affirming, identity building--you're gonna be chasing that high for the rest of your life. Or until you're 33. 

But anyway Tony Holler of Feed the Cats would look at all that mileage and all that effort and hard work and, what he would call "conditioning" and say, "Of course you're slower now, all that work killed your athleticism and speed." His philosophy centers around peak speed and athleticism. He wants athletes to be as fresh as possible, running as fast as possible as often as possible. It's the antithesis of my work hard all the time and be a little to a lot tired all the time approach. He wants racehorses, not workhorses.

And two or three years ago I would've looked at that and said, "But I'm a workhorse!" I need a lot of volume because if I'm not working hard then I'm automatically going to get beat by everyone who's more talented. Which, maybe that's true but two things have changed since then:

1) I really don't care if I run another 60 or 70 mile week again. I know I can do it. I did it for a whole year. I could go out and run a 100 mile week but it would just make me really tired. It wouldn't be the fun challenge that it was my junior year of college. 

2) Climbing has taught me that I can still improve at new skills. I don't have to be a distance runner for all my days forever more. I can get better at things I thought that I had no affinity for. And that's fun.

Even as I'm writing all this, a part of me from high school and college is thinking, man you sold out. you lost the way. what do you mean you don't care about mileage anymore? what about once a runner? what about the trial of miles? you're soft now.

To which I'd say, the whole point was to get better! Mileage was a means to an end. To improve! I know I put in a block of work that can stand next to any other season in my life and I didn't get better! At some point you just have to be honest with yourself. 

I feel like I've done a poor job of explaining Feed the Cats but you can look it up if you want. I've been watching his videos nonstop for the past day and a half and it's made me reflect on everything I've been writing: who I am, what are my beliefs when it comes to sports, what makes a good athlete. 

The thing I love about Tony Holler is he seems like a guy who's doing it right. He cares about performance. He cares about discipline and intentional effort and most importantly he cares about a program that serves his athletes and makes them better at doing something they love doing. I had the unspoken belief that sprinting was something I wasn't any good at and was incapable of getting better at and good sprinters are just born with it. And now I'm at a place where I can see the road map of how I would go about trying to get better.

Be an athlete!