Mileage reporting 22nd week 2014

yesterday I said "i dont understand why my feet are so tired"
now I look at them and see 4 or 5 little holes on my soles

they put new asphalt on my village' streets this week
very easy asphalt, smooth, but with very little tiny gravels here and there
it looks like they are sharper than I was thinking...
 
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.
McMillanTrainingZoneGraph1.gif
I'm too lazy to look up the original sites where I read this. "Science of Running" maybe? This was the second or third article in a Google search. The basic idea is that heart rate per se isn't what we want to know about, but rather VO2 Max, as this will predict performance. But it's not reasonable to hook up a breathing apparatus unless someone is running on a treadmill in a lab, hence the use of heart rate as a proxy measure that can easily be quantified 'in the field.'​
Anyway, didn't mean by any means to discourage anyone from using a monitor, whether as a gauge of VO2 max or effort level. I just said that for me, it seems superfluous. A friend gave me his old HRM and I ran with it once and my aerobic effort 'feel' aligned perfectly with the heart rate calculation (I think I was using the Mayo clinic formula, not the Maffetone one, which is more conservative). At aerobic pace, like I said, I can run forever, legs willing. I probably have a well-developed sense of aerobic pace because of my bicycle travels, when I was in the saddle eight hours a day on average, but I dunno, seems like I've always had a good feel for this (same with lactate threshold on a tempo run), so it's surprising when I read others don't. No offense.​
In general, I'm really enjoying numberless running these last months.​
Anyhow, I'm where you were a month ago after your battle with this lingering virus. Finally back to normal, but not looking forward to building things back up again. Still, raring to go.​
yesterday I said "i dont understand why my feet are so tired"
now I look at them and see 4 or 5 little holes on my soles

they put new asphalt on my village' streets this week
very easy asphalt, smooth, but with very little tiny gravels here and there
it looks like they are sharper than I was thinking...
Like our winter grit, that stuff is more abrasive than it looks. I got torn up sometimes after just a few miles . . .
 
4 miles today, maybe more. I ran with relaxed breathing the entire way, felt good and my pace dog decided to go easy on me today. Boy, some shoddies are grumpy this morning, ran by a couple of young ladies greeted them with a cheery good morning, but nothing in return. I got a couple of those just ignore him and the weird barefooter will go away looks, actually I found that comical. :)
 
Well I fell off the wagon for two weeks..... No miles put in at all. Today though I managed 3 miles in one of my favorite cities in the US, Minneapolis. I'm here visiting my youngest son as he recovers from his Bone Marrow Transplant. Hopefully he and my wife will be coming home in July and my running can get back on track a bit more.
 
Well I fell off the wagon for two weeks..... No miles put in at all. Today though I managed 3 miles in one of my favorite cities in the US, Minneapolis. I'm here visiting my youngest son as he recovers from his Bone Marrow Transplant. Hopefully he and my wife will be coming home in July and my running can get back on track a bit more.

That's not falling off the wagon. That's having the right priorities in a time of intense stress.
 
Friday, 2 miles with hills on rough pavement. For no apparent reason, left sole got tender again right before bed the night before, but I was able to take it slow on the run and enjoy the warm pavement alongside dear hubby. We decided to stay home for dancing last night. He cleared a spot in the basement, with the nice cement floor, and we danced like crazy for about 45 minutes. But he had made me a new drink(for me) with whipped cream vodka and orange juice. It tasted really good, but made me frantically, desperately SLEEPY. Now he knows just what to slip me if I'm causing him too much trouble...

Saturday we ran 4 miles around the pond loop. I did a few fartleks. Now for some garden yoga. :)
 
Well I fell off the wagon for two weeks..... No miles put in at all. Today though I managed 3 miles in one of my favorite cities in the US, Minneapolis. I'm here visiting my youngest son as he recovers from his Bone Marrow Transplant. Hopefully he and my wife will be coming home in July and my running can get back on track a bit more.
Always nice to hear good things about the Twin Cities. Glad to hear your son is recovering well. In different circumstances I'd invite you out for a run down by the river.
 
Always nice to hear good things about the Twin Cities. Glad to hear your son is recovering well. In different circumstances I'd invite you out for a run down by the river.
I love the twin cities, was here 5 years ago with our oldest, same scenario. I plan on getting out again tomorrow morning for another 3 maybe
 
I love the twin cities, was here 5 years ago with our oldest, same scenario. I plan on getting out again tomorrow morning for another 3 maybe
Oh, tempting but I've got family plans tomorrow. How much longer are you in town?

I'm in horrible condition and haven't run much the last few weeks due to a persistent head cold and stubbed toe, but it would be great to meet up with a fellow barefoot runner. Are you close to the river?
 
Oh, tempting but I've got family plans tomorrow. How much longer are you in town?

I'm in horrible condition and haven't run much the last few weeks due to a persistent head cold and stubbed toe, but it would be great to meet up with a fellow barefoot runner. Are you close to the river?

East Bank..... I sent you a message in the convo app of the site. Get a chance check your in box. Hope you kick that head cold and (fingers crossed) I haven't stubbed a toe in a while, hopefully I didn't just jinx myself.
 
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Oh, tempting but I've got family plans tomorrow. How much longer are you in town?

I'm in horrible condition and haven't run much the last few weeks due to a persistent head cold and stubbed toe, but it would be great to meet up with a fellow barefoot runner. Are you close to the river?

East Bank..... I sent you a message in the convo app of the site. Get a chance check your in box. Hope you kick that head cold and (fingers crossed) I haven't stubbed a toe in a while, hopefully I didn't just jinx myself.
 
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East Bank..... I sent you a message in the convo app of the site. Get a chance check your in box. Hope you kick that head cold and (fingers crossed) I haven't stubbed a toe in a while, hopefully I didn't just jinx myself.
Thanks, head cold's pretty much gone. Stubbed toe is still a little stiff but no longer painful. I'm planning on giving it a test drive Tuesday, hopefully three miles if everything checks out, then four on Thursday, five on Saturday, with run-commutes in between. Of the four times or so I've stubbed my toe running, all but one have come when I'm crossing a boulevard, hopping a curb, and looking for traffic instead of navigating the uneven terrain. It's those curbs that aren't flush with their yards that do me in.

I hate when I can't run. Not running also demotivates me to lift, although I've had a good ST week. Generally, the more I run, the more I want to lift, and the more I lift, the more I want to run. There's a good synergy there for me. But only running keeps the weight off and affords sounds sleep. I know I'll never drop this winter weight until I'm back running consistently for a few months. The ST doesn't do it for me.
 
Nice and easy 20km/12.4mi light trail run this morning, despite finishing late the night before, and with a couple of great Armagnac shots (thanks French neighbour !). So I wasn't in the best condition to beat my PR today :hungover:. Still enjoyed the run, though !
 
Managed to stay out of the sun with weights/PT/floor exercises and backward walking, at the gym, followed by a 3 mile hike in the woods. Wish I had discovered backward walking sooner as I am achieving incredibly balanced muscles as a result of backward walking, and more easily than any of my thousands of other attempts -especially since my weak and strong muscles, from my waist down, are opposites, backward walking makes total sense. Apparently, in Japan, it's totally common.
 
My
Conquered the Rugged Maniac this morning. Made it through each obstacle. Vff speeds worked much better than sandals would have. Saw some barefoot runners but didnt recognize them. What a blast!
My husband tried his new Luna sandals for fishing last weekend, thinking his feet might be cooler, but found they caught too much in the river muck. Next time it will be the VFF again.
 
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