SportTechie’s Athletes Voice series features the views and opinions of the athletes who use and are powered by technology. SportTechie talked to 2018 USA Marathon champion Brogan Austin about apps, wearables, and how running inside allows him to achieve consistent results.
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Brogan Austin finished out 2018 with a career-best marathon time of two hours, 12 minutes, and 39 seconds that also won him the U.S. national championship in Sacramento, Calif., in early December. He spent his winter training for the 2019 New York Half Marathon, and placed sixth in that race at the end of March. Now, over the next 10 months, the 27-year-old will prepare for the 2020 U.S. Olympic Team Trials, which will take place in Atlanta at the end of February 2020. Another good performance there, and Austin could be on his way to the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.
At a time when many runners are eschewing indoor sessions in favor of trail running, Austin’s professional career has been underpinned by treadmill workouts.
He has relied on indoor running for years in pursuit of consistency, which he believes isn’t as easily attainable when running outside. He happened upon it by necessity. At Drake University in Des Moines, the Iowa native escaped harsh weather during long winters by training on treadmills after getting an injury on an indoor track.
Austin’s 2018 USA Marathon win stunned many in the running world, but was built on a career of smaller successes. He qualified for the NCAA Cross Country Championships in 2014 after finishing fourth at the Missouri Valley Conference Championships. At the league’s Indoor Track & Field Championship in 2014, he was honored as co-Most Valuable Athlete after winning his third consecutive 5,000-meter conference title, setting an indoor school record of 13:59.71. Austin earned the Missouri Valley Conference’s Elite 18 Award twice in cross country, in 2012 and 2014, and was a Capital One CoSIDA Academic All-America third-team pick in 2014.
Data is a key component of Austin’s training—he graduated from Drake in 2015 with a degree in mathematics—and he uses training platform’s like Garmin Connect and Final Surge, as well as a running power meter that attaches to the laces on his shoe called Stryd. That the conditions of treadmill running are consistent compared to running outside means he gets reliable metrics from which he can judge his progress. (Plus, many treadmills now have TVs. Jeopardy and Ellen have served as nice distractions to the long hours of training.)
Apps and Wearables
“I have a Garmin watch and use Garmin Connect. It’s ridiculous how much data you can pull in: heart rate, steps, how much you’re running, how you’re trending, and how your heart rate is trending. There are a lot of pieces of information that you can take in and reflect on. I love looking at data. The more data I have, the better. It helps to just reflect on where you’ve come from and think about how you can change for the future. And having a one-stop shop like Garmin Connect has been good for me.”
“My coach and I use Final Surge, an online training calendar. Whenever I complete a workout on my watch, it sinks to my phone which automatically updates it to Final Surge so my coach gets an instant update about how I performed during my workout.”
“I also use Stryd. It gets your wattage on how much energy you’re putting into each stride. It also reads oscillation of the foot and determines your cadence. Stryd is a newer application of tracking and it’s extremely accurate. We can test our watts and try to perfect our cadence and our ground contact and our form. We can make sure our foot’s not oscillating too much or throwing our body and energy in the wrong direction.”
Training Inside
“I really didn’t pick up this habit of running on the treadmill until college. And it really stemmed from winters in Iowa, which can be pretty unbearable with snow and ice and the temperatures.”
“In college we had an indoor track, but it was only 150 meters. I eventually got a stress fracture running on it, which I believe was because of the tight turns. I resorted to running on treadmills so I could get the effort in and run at a fast pace without getting the torque of running around tight corners. The more I did it, the more I enjoyed it. I had my best season that year because I was able to stay focused and have better workouts.”
“The more research I’ve done on it, the more sense it makes. More recently, we have been basing a lot of our training on effort, so you really progress your workouts as your fitness levels progress. Running on a treadmill helps me reach the zones I want to hit.”
A Consistent Environment
“Running is a long-term sport. And people just reiterate that you need to have long consistent efforts of being healthy and precise. The treadmill allows you to be super precise in your training and also you have the consistent environment so as soon as something doesn’t feel right you can adjust accordingly.”
“Outside weather isn’t consistent, but on the treadmill you know day in and day out how you’re supposed to feel. I’ve grown to adore the treadmill for those circumstances. Now, I listen more to my body and the treadmill allows me to quickly adjust so I know what paces I should be running. If it doesn’t feel right, I can adjust accordingly. All the external factors are off the table and I can really just focus on my body and my effort.”
“When it’s hot outside, you might have to run slower because you’re putting in a tougher effort because it’s so hot or so windy. This winter for Iowa it’s been one of the worst in a long time. There’s been a sheet of ice everywhere and it’s been freezing. I’ll still run outside for my easy days and long days because the treadmill can be boring. But if I were to go outside and try to put in a good effort, I’d have to run slower because i’m running on ice and snow and I’m not getting true turnover.”
Preparing for 2020
“There’s a learning curve for your body to adapt and be more efficient in sweating and cooling down. For the Olympic trials in Atlanta, anything can happen. We saw that in Los Angeles four years ago when it was 88 degrees and people paid the price. I’ll definitely be sitting in a sauna leading up to them. If you do that three or four times a week a few weeks out [of a race] your body starts acclimating for heat a little more.”
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