THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, October 27, 1994 TAG: 9410270590
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PATRICK K. LACKEY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Medium: 94 lines
Ron Canaway ran 45 miles on sandy trails at Seashore State Park last Oct. 8 - breathing through his nose.
Afterward Canaway, 49, waited for his legs to hurt. When they didn't he got this great notion.
He had already planned to run the 26.2-mile Richmond Newspapers Marathon on Oct. 16 and the 50-mile Mountain Masochist Trail Run near Lynchburg the following Saturday. Why not run the 26.2-mile Marine Corps Marathon in Arlington, beginning just 16 hours after he finished the 50-miler?
This past Sunday, in a heavy rain, he completed his trilogy of endurance runs - 102.4 total miles in eight days - having breathed through his nose the whole way.
He survived to report, ``I don't know anybody else that does these three races that all start and end in Virginia in two weekends, Sunday to Sunday.''
And by Tuesday of this week, he was out jogging near his Kempsville home, mouth closed as usual, inhaling through his nose. He looked good. The spring already was back in his legs.
He stopped breathing through his mouth on runs early this year, after reading a magazine article recommending nose breathing for ultra-distance events. He can't remember which magazine the article ran in, or why it said breathing through the nose might work. He just tried it and found he could run farther than before, and recover quickly.
Mel Williams, director of the Human Performance Lab at Old Dominion University, said, ``That's a new one to me.''
Williams, a mouth-breather who at age 56 still finishes marathons in well under three hours, said nose breathing forces a runner to go slower, because a nose breather gets less air than a mouth breather. It's the difference, he said, between a little tube and a big tube.
If you're running 102.4 miles in eight days, slow is good.
Canaway, a retired Navy radioman now employed as an electronics technician, sounds almost mystical when he describes nose breathing.
He feels peaceful breathing through his nose, he said, and acutely aware of his surroundings as he never was breathing through his mouth.
He said of his 50-mile trail run: ``I could tell you where every tree is located, every rock.''
The Mountain Masochist Trail Run is aptly named. The race starts 600 feet above sea level, peaks at 4,400 feet up and ends at 2,400 above sea level. Actually, in running up and down, the runner goes the equivalent of about 1 1/2 miles straight up and just over a mile straight down.
``It is very rugged,'' Canaway said. ``It is dangerous. You have to concentrate to get through the trails.''
Last year, breathing through his mouth, Canaway finished it in 11 hours and 14 minutes and was so beat he quit running for three months.
This year he finished in 10 hours and 35 minutes. He and his wife, Gail, drove an hour or so back to a motel in Lynchburg, where he got about five hours of sleep, before they began driving to Arlington. They arrived there at 8 a.m., an hour before the Marines race.
His time for the Richmond Marathon was 3 hours and 51 seconds; for the Marines marathon, 4:37.
Canaway, who is 5-foot-5 and stocky, started running in 1982, after watching one of his eight children compete. Once he had to take off 12 months while a foot injury healed, and six years ago his running was interrupted by back surgery for a ruptured disc. ``The neurologist told me not to run,'' he said, ``but she didn't tell me how long not to run.'' Two months after the operation he returned to the roads.
Canaway said he was helped this year by a non-prescription food supplement called Pycnogenol, which is extracted from the French Maritime Pine. Like Vitamin C, it is an antioxidant, and he said eating it seemed to speed his recovery from workouts, though with the nose breathing he never got beaten down.
Through late summer and fall, he was running about 65 miles a week.
For inspiration, he read and reread a book on older athletes titled, ``Over the Hill . . . But Not Out To Lunch.'' His favorite part was about a 5-foot-6 runner who was 91 years old. The runner, Ivor Welch, was good but conceded he couldn't keep up with the 60-year-olds.
Canaway, whose children range in age from 4 to 28, said he hoped some younger runners might be inspired by his efforts.
When Canaway was asked why he would want to run all three long Virginia races in such a short time, he flexed his leg muscles and said, ``If you had legs like that, wouldn't you?''
His next goal is to run the Western States 100, a 100-mile course partly in desert, partly in mountains, sometimes in snow. He might try it next year, breathing through his nose.
It works for him. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
L. TODD SPENCER
Ron Canaway, 49, ran a 50-mile Mountain Masochist Trail Run, got
five hours, sleep, then did the Marine Corps Marathon.
by CNB