Mileage reporting 22nd week 2014

A scrumpdilliious 6.5 mile run this morning. Felt a big sluggish, so was going to just go slow. Slow turned out to be an unexpected pick up in my previous MAF pace, so I tried to relax and accidentally went faster every mile. By mile 6, it was just too much fun and I finished that mile at an 8:56 minute pace, which was admittedly a bit faster than MAF, but I was a Kenyan for that lap. :D Also swallowed a couple of bugs. Bleh.
 
50 minutes on treadmill doing incline running by heart rate. Most of the run was at a maffetone pace, but I like how the tread adjusts the incline to my heartrate to keep me in the optimal range and keep me running. Didn't get above 6% incline, but that is fine with me. As I lose weight it gets easier and easier to run hills. Down to 190 today!
 
A scrumpdilliious 6.5 mile run this morning. Felt a big sluggish, so was going to just go slow. Slow turned out to be an unexpected pick up in my previous MAF pace, so I tried to relax and accidentally went faster every mile. By mile 6, it was just too much fun and I finished that mile at an 8:56 minute pace, which was admittedly a bit faster than MAF, but I was a Kenyan for that lap. :D Also swallowed a couple of bugs. Bleh.


HAH! And so, you are doing the MAF thing lately, I see? How's that going?
 
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LOTSA bare feet so far this week.
Sunday: 4 mi walk, evening stroll bf w sister and the dog on nice paved suburban trail.
Monday: 5-6 mi bf, dunno maybe more, suburban sidewalks near my mom's house. Perfect surfaces for this bf princess.
then, a bunch of squats, presses, some abs.
Tues: Evening swim, about an hour
Wednesday: 2.5 am in shoes around my gravely house, then another run bf downtown where the sidewalks are so nice. maybe 4 mi? Maybe more. Then lunch and evening swims, short ones.
Thursday: short run, bf again, till the pavement got hot, then some weights
 
Great interval run this morning. 11km/6.8mi, with 8 x 2', trying to bring my HR as close as possible to Zone4 (about 90% of my max HR).

I have a small nagging groin pain, which worries me, as this is a reminder of the injury I sustained when I did my only marathon in 2009

So far it is under control, but need to keep an eye on that
 
Swimming! Shooting hoops! My left arm has better aim than my right arm, yet it's my non-dominant hand. I don't get it. Though I think it has something to do with running, which uses both sides of your body, equally, and maybe has an effect on strengthening different sides of your brain, too. I was never able to do crap with my left arm before I became a runner. I can more easily paint with my left-hand, too.
 
Nice 5 mile run at 4:45 am., 70 deg. f., 83 % rh.
Felt really good today on this run!
 
HAH! And so, you are doing the MAF thing lately, I see? How's that going?
I am really enjoying it. I am not using a heart monitor, but running "by feel." I kept it easy for about 6 months, then felt like adding speed once in a while, so have, but always just for fun. Never to stress myself out. Sometimes it is hard to be patient, but I am gradually getting more comfortable at faster speeds. Just as imporatant, I seem to be having less trouble with injury. I'm not sure I agree with the whole fat burning hypothesis. My husband has brought up some interesting possibilities for questioning that is what is happening, but the gradual building up is working, whatever the exact physiological mechanism.
 
Easy run early this morning as afternoon temperatures are too hot, +35C yesterday afternoon. Went about 4 miles at a comfortable pace, let the dog set the pace this morning. Turned into a sprint finish as he was like a horse that smells the barn and picked up the pace when he saw the home stretch. Felt good to pickup the pace, tomorrow I'll start adding hills in the mix again. Well gentle rises that we call hills in Winnipeg, there is a bike path that goes over a sound barrier about 5 times, for about a 45 foot climb each time over a 2 mile stretch. ;)
 
A week of recovery and problem solving.

Recovery from my head cold after a weekend of sleep knocked most of it out, and recovery from my stubborn stubbed left toe as I've laid off running completely, but still walk a mile or two a day, and have been riding my bike more, taking our toddler to day care.

Problem solving my sore left shoulder issue, reading up a fair amount, deciding it's probably impingement from pronated grip on various lifts, principally the bench press, but others as well, along with tight pectoral muscles and/or overdeveloped anterior delt in comparison to posterior delt. Otherwise, the lifting has been going well this week, and I'm close to where I was a few weeks ago I think.

So next week I'll ease into running again (and no more looking for traffic while hopping curbs--that's usually what gets me!), and change my st routine to emphasis more pulling movements (back), less pressing movements (chest and shoulders), and more supine and neutral grip lifts with dumbbells instead of prone grip with barbell and pull-down bar.

It's annoying not being able to go full out. I miss the long runs in particular now that it's so nice out. And I need the abrasion to keep my feet clean from all the sticky seeds and buds falling from the trees.

Anyway, great to run vicariously through everyone else's reports!
My husband has brought up some interesting possibilities for questioning that is what is happening, but the gradual building up is working, whatever the exact physiological mechanism.
That's what I concluded a while ago, that the theory may not be right, but it's a good method to get over-trainers to ease up. Kind of like how AA telling alkies that drinking is a disease allows them to quit. A convenient myth.
 
4.76 miles in my luna monos while pushing my baby girl in the stroller at avg pace of 10:38 with an avg heart rate of 155bpm. This is really good for me and proves to me what I'm doing trainingwise is working for me. Finally was able to get my heart rate monitor to pair back up wih my Garmin by using a trick I found online of taking the battery out, flipping it upside down and sticking it back into the heart rate monitor for about 20 seconds. Apparently this shorts the circuit which causes the heart rate monitor to reset itself so that it will pair with the Garmin. Once I put the battery back in correctly it worked perfectly. Sweet! Have the Rugged Maniac obstacle course race tomorrow. They have added some new obstacles so it is now over 30 obstacles, and some of them really require some upper body strength. Hope I don't make an ass of myself... :)
 
By mile 6, it was just too much fun and I finished that mile at an 8:56 minute pace, which was admittedly a bit faster than MAF, but I was a Kenyan for that lap. :D Also swallowed a couple of bugs. Bleh.

Maybe the protein replenishment from insects did it for you. You might want to start packing grasshoppers and crickets for snacks while you run.

Anyhow, haven't reported in for a few days. I've run every day easy except Wednesday when I ran for around 22 or 23 minutes at tempo pace. Ran 8 miles this morning, nice and easy.
 
Half a mile walking backward, followed by over a mile running, forward. Lol. Mostly barefoot. The problem with walking backwards is that I can not see what I am going to step on, so I now have stickers and a tiny bit of glass in my foot. The asphaltish stuff I was on got a bit hot, and soon that is all I noticed instead of what was stuck in my foot. I put my mocs on for the last 1/4 mile, but they are irritating cuz their bottoms are falling off. Grrrr.
 
I am really enjoying it. I am not using a heart monitor, but running "by feel." I kept it easy for about 6 months, then felt like adding speed once in a while, so have, but always just for fun. Never to stress myself out. Sometimes it is hard to be patient, but I am gradually getting more comfortable at faster speeds. Just as imporatant, I seem to be having less trouble with injury. I'm not sure I agree with the whole fat burning hypothesis. My husband has brought up some interesting possibilities for questioning that is what is happening, but the gradual building up is working, whatever the exact physiological mechanism.

My own suspicion is that Maffetone is a bit too enthusiastic about it, plus it seems like a lot of his big success stories are from highly talented athletes whose biggest error in their training prior to Maffetone was that they were running everything too hard. So there was a huge area of cardiovascular fitness in those athletes which was underdeveloped and just ripe for picking.

My own thinking on this has come around to the program that John Parker presents in his book Heart Monitor Training for the Compleat Idiot. His program uses both easy running (less than 70% of the heart rate reserve) alternating with bouts of harder running, where the runner does work above 85% of the HRR. Well, roughly alternating, and he warns that if you're going to err to one side of doing too much hard or too much easy, go with too much easy and take breaks if needed. The idea seems pretty good, keep the easy stuff easy, and that allows you run the hard stuff hard, hard as in not only will your heart rate be up in the zone, but you'll be running near top speed for that heart rate. It maybe doesn't do a runner much good to be running nearly all out by heart rate on overly tired legs, as that won't really help to build the neuromuscular adaptations needed to promote a strong and efficient stride.

But I definitely suspect that both Parker and Maffetone are correct in their assertions that probably most runners tend to run their easy runs too hard and too fast.
 
My own suspicion is that Maffetone is a bit too enthusiastic about it, plus it seems like a lot of his big success stories are from highly talented athletes whose biggest error in their training prior to Maffetone was that they were running everything too hard. So there was a huge area of cardiovascular fitness in those athletes which was underdeveloped and just ripe for picking.

My own thinking on this has come around to the program that John Parker presents in his book Heart Monitor Training for the Compleat Idiot. His program uses both easy running (less than 70% of the heart rate reserve) alternating with bouts of harder running, where the runner does work above 85% of the HRR. Well, roughly alternating, and he warns that if you're going to err to one side of doing too much hard or too much easy, go with too much easy and take breaks if needed. The idea seems pretty good, keep the easy stuff easy, and that allows you run the hard stuff hard, hard as in not only will your heart rate be up in the zone, but you'll be running near top speed for that heart rate. It maybe doesn't do a runner much good to be running nearly all out by heart rate on overly tired legs, as that won't really help to build the neuromuscular adaptations needed to promote a strong and efficient stride.

But I definitely suspect that both Parker and Maffetone are correct in their assertions that probably most runners tend to run their easy runs too hard and too fast.
I agree about the athlete examples. It seems like it's the over-trainers that benefit most. Surprise surprise. Telling a recreational jogger to monitor their heart rate makes little sense to me, but I know a lot of people here have had great success doing just that.

For me, there are basically three paces: anaerobic (sprints), lactate threshold (tempo), and aerobic (easy pace). Heart rate, as I understand it, is a proxy measure, of VO2 max, if I recall correctly, which itself highly variable according to individual genetics, athletic background, and current training. Given this variability, for me at least, I can't see the sense of running by monitor and a standard formula rather than by feel, unless you're willing to diligently do your MAF tests on a regular basis. I know when the pace is easy. I can run for as long as my joints, tendons, and muscles can take it. Cardio conditioning isn't the limiting factor (for distance). Lactate threshold depends on conditioning. When I'm in good cardio condition I can maybe run 5-6 miles at lactate threshold. Right now I'm in crap cardio condition and would be lucky to knock out a mile at tempo pace. Sprints are sprints, I can go 100 meters full out multiple times when I'm in decent condition.

The only question is what the ratio of these three paces with respect to one other should be. Everyone says the majority of one's running should be easy pace. The rest is details. I would imagine the more miles one runs, the greater the percentage should be easy miles. If you only run three times a week for three miles, you could probably do every run at tempo pace no problem, after having built up to of course.

Oh, and another thing I've looked into a bit is the idea that anaerobic exercise will interfere with building a good aerobic base. A lot of people disagree with this and say the exact opposite, that running will interfere with strength training, but strength training has little detrimental effect on running. I've found this too me true. My only scheduling concession is to avoid heavy squats and deadlifts before a long run day. Then after the long run I like 48s of rest before I hit the ST again, in order to build back energy stores.

BTW, anyone want to by my Garmin F10? Barely used . . .
 
For me, there are basically three paces: anaerobic (sprints), lactate threshold (tempo), and aerobic (easy pace). Heart rate, as I understand it, is a proxy measure, of VO2 max, if I recall correctly, which itself highly variable according to individual genetics, athletic background, and current training. Given this variability, for me at least, I can't see the sense of running by monitor and a standard formula rather than by feel, unless you're willing to diligently do your MAF tests on a regular basis. I know when the pace is easy. I can run for as long as my joints, tendons, and muscles can take it. Cardio conditioning isn't the limiting factor (for distance). Lactate threshold depends on conditioning. When I'm in good cardio condition I can maybe run 5-6 miles at lactate threshold. Right now I'm in crap cardio condition and would be lucky to knock out a mile at tempo pace. Sprints are sprints, I can go 100 meters full out multiple times when I'm in decent condition.

The only question is what the ratio of these three paces with respect to one other should be. Everyone says the majority of one's running should be easy pace. The rest is details. I would imagine the more miles one runs, the greater the percentage should be easy miles. If you only run three times a week for three miles, you could probably do every run at tempo pace no problem, after having built up to of course.

.

Erm, I don't know if one can really say that heart rate is proxy measure of VO2 max. The most readily contradictory example I can think is the fact that regular training will raise a person's VO2 max and the heart rate will remain the same. As a person's V02 max improves, the heart rate doesn't get higher, especially as the muscle cells develop more mitochondria and more capillaries are developed to help deliver oxygen to the muscles.

My own view has come to see heart rate as a useful measuring gauge of effort. The biggest initial difficulty with that measuring gauge is to calibrate it, and there are 2 important measures to take in order to do so -- heart rate max and resting heart rate. HRM can be estimated by age and activity formulas but it's probably better to do some sort of actual physical test. Resting heart rate can be taken just by measuring it shortly after waking up.

Now my own experience regarding easy effort is that it is possible to fool ourselves. I began running again last year at what felt fairly easy, I could converse and all that. But when I did get the Garmin last Christmas and began using it, I often found that what I though was my easy pace was usually somewhere in the low 140s. With the numbers and data I now have, I know that my truly easy pace needs to be 135 or 136 bpm or less. The toughest thing, especially early on, about running under that heart rate was that I felt damn slow and my ego got chafed and irritated. But that pace has been improving and now I feel better that I am truly running at easy effort.

That doesn't mean I don't think the running I did earlier on where my heart rate was somewhere between 140 to 148 and in the sort of in between zone between easy pace and threshold/tempo pace was useless. I think it's useful and obviously lots of people do lots of running in it. The basic problem is that it may take a little more out of you than you realize and that impedes the effectiveness of the harder running, along with the fact that because it is putting a little extra stress on you, you won't get as full of recovery and enhance the risk of injury or even illness maybe. So that's why it might be very effective for more people to learn to run truly easy, below 70% of their heart rate reserve and develop an area of cardio fitness that's being missed or squandered in a sense.

I definitely agree with you that the more miles you run, the more you need to do them easy. That's what I'm working with right now. But it is also possible for a person to get faster by doing 3 or maybe even 4 harder workouts per week, example hill running, tempo, long run, and improve their fitness. The key is recovery, so take a day in between those runs and recover. That's the basic program of sorts that Fell Runner uses, where he has pretty much dumped out doing easy runs and runs 3 or 4x a week.
 

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