Coach Tracking Life Cycles in Athletics : Colleges: Jim Crakes, cross country and track coach at Point Loma Nazarene College, hopes his research will better prepare his teams.

Jim Crakes, cross country and track coach at Point Loma Nazarene College, wants to make it clear: He is not trying to play doctor.

He is compelled to come forth with that admission because of a sabbatical from which he has just returned.

One would think Crakes might have spent his study time in the sun, on tracks around the country scrutinizing new training methods.

But where does Crakes end up? In laboratories, studying saliva samples with a bunch of chronobiologists.

Why?

“Well,” Crakes said, “I didn’t want to just go and look at tracks.”

Not that chronobiology was the only alternative--it just happens to be one of Crakes’ interests.

Don’t be scared by all the syllables. Chronobiology can be deciphered by just picking apart the word. Chrono is short for chronology (time span), and biology is the scientific study of life. Chronobiology , then, pertains to the study of time spans in life or, as Crakes puts it, “the cycles of life.”

The question, then, is why would a small college track-and-field coach be interested in the cyclical nature of life? Shouldn’t he be looking for ways to make runners run faster, jumpers jump farther, vaulters vault higher?

Well, Crakes insists his findings, due this summer, may help him to better prepare his teams.

Crakes, 60, has long been interested in the cycles and changes he sees his athletes going through. He has been coaching on the college level since 1960 and at PLNC since 1975. He published a paper on chronobiology in 1986. He has been studying environmental effects on athletes since the 1960s.

He was a member of the NCAA subcommittee in 1966 that studied the effects of high altitude on athletes before the 1968 Mexico City Olympics.

In 1973, he published a report in Track Technique on the relationship between positive thinking and athletic performance.

Biorhythms also interested Crakes in the 1970s.

Like chronobiology, biorhythms were said to predict one’s highs and lows, both physically and mentally. They were really nothing more than a techno-horoscope.

“The problem with biorhythms,” Crakes said, “was that they were based on birth dates and didn’t prove reliable.”

If Crakes sounds as if he is one of the establishment nay-sayers, it’s because he is. He earned a Ph.D. in scientific bases of physical education from the University of Oregon in 1960. He knows something about the body’s functions and rhythms, what affects them and what, such as one’s date of birth, does not.

Crakes will be inducted into the NAIA Hall of Fame next month. He was voted into the hall on his first nomination, a rare occurence and one an NAIA spokesman says came because of Crakes’ mating of science and sports.

His scientific approach has not only brought honors--it has brought results. In his 15 years on the NAIA level, Crakes has coached two District 3 track-and-field team champions and 12 runners-up. He has coached 42 All-Americans. In cross country, Crakes’ PLNC teams have won nine District 3 championships.

And while his teams continue to win, Crakes continues to observe.

Perhaps no other group of athletes go through as many cycles as college students. Not only are they gearing up for big meets, then gearing down, but they also must gear up for big tests, then downshift. And that’s to say nothing of the daily cycles of classes, meals, sleep . . . .

But anyone can observe; Crakes wants to predict.

He is interested in discovering whether he can gauge stress and its relation to fitness, athletic performance and injuries.

More than that, however, Crakes wants to see just how cyclical stress is. Are there peak stress levels during the day, during the week or during a track season?

If so, maybe he can predict such things as when an athlete is most susceptible to a stress fracture, or what time of day, day of week or point during a season an individual is likely to run a personal best.

And that’s where the saliva samples come in. Researchers in Wales discovered a method of measuring stress through saliva. They found that a hormone called cortisol, directly related to stress, can be found in saliva.

That saliva can be used to study what’s going on in an athlete’s body is a breakthrough in itself for researchers such as Crakes who have problems with “invasive” methods of measuring bodily fluids.

“This is a viable spin-off, a noninvasive technology we can use without having to use blood or urine,” Crakes said.

The researchers in Wales offered Crakes their methods and technology. Crakes in return brought them subjects and data.

Well, OK, he didn’t actually bring them subjects. He instead spent the first half of his sabbatical coaching the Crusader cross country team--and taking saliva samples from his runners each day at various times: Before practice, after practice, upon waking up, before going to bed, before meets and after meets, . . . .

Then it was off to Wales to defrost the saliva samples--Crakes kept them in his freezer at home, right next to the ice cubes--and measure their cortisol levels.

The measurements recently arrived. Now Crakes has to put them together with variables to see if there are indeed any correlations.

The results could lend a hand in helping a coach predict when an athlete is in peak condition.

And if such things can be predicted, then they can be altered, sometimes simply by changing sleeping or eating patterns, Crakes said.

Although Crakes has seen the raw data, he is not saying whether they prove or disprove his hypotheses.

“It’s just too complex,” he said. “We had 14, 15 people (plus a control group), so it doesn’t mean what we find out is fact. It will just lead us to further investigation of the truth.”