After a lot of thought and reading a lot of blogs, I have decided to try low intensity, long endurance training, as featured in Dr Phil Maffetone's advice and philosophy. (Much more on his website.) This morning, armed with a heart rate monitor and watch, I set out on an experimental run, just to see how it felt running at a low heart rate. I'll be starting the training proper after the OMM next weekend, so this was more of a trial run. Here are a few thoughts....
A common feature of my long distance events this year is that I have run out of energy at about 15-18 miles. I guess it is strange that I hadn't really thought through why that was happening. I guess I just put it down to "not being fit enough". But what does that mean?
The Maffetone approach would suggest that part of the problem is that I am not well adjusted to aerobic running, and that I am running more than I need to in the anaerobic zone. In the low intensity/speed/heart rate aerobic zone, I'd be burning mainly fat as fuel. In the higher intensity anaerobic zone I am using up valuable glycogen based energy, which needs to be restored with carbs during the race.
The other problem was probably that I haven't been taking on enough calories during the run itself, exacerbating the problem.
The Maffetone method (and other related long, slow training regimes) aims to keep your body down in the aerobic zone, in order to increase your efficiency at low intensity levels. As time goes on (months) your body should see an increase in speed at the same HR, allowing you to stay in the aerobic space while picking up the pace. That's the theory. I'll give it a go.
The first challenge is to decide what that base HR is going to be. Maffetone's method suggests 180 - age, which for me would be 122 bpm. I have to say that for me that would generally be walking pace! Today I tried to keep to 133, knowing that I will have to reduce that when I start training properly.
Here are a few observations:
- Even at 133 bpm, it was slow. Generally 12 minute miles. I could feel my body urging me to pick up the pace.
- I could generally keep my HR down to 133, but it was easy to surge higher, especially when running on the flat, where my natural pace would cut in and I would soon be up to 140 bpm!
- I had to look at my watch a lot, and need a better alerting method. Luckily my watch has many apps you can load to do just that. Or I could write my own using the built in programming language. That will allow me to just run, slowing down if a bleep from my watch tells me to.
- Muddy tracks raise the HR, which is not surprising as negotiating a muddy track is really a series of jumps and jinks to find the best path.
- I had to walk up a few hills, especially towards the end (when it is natural for the heart rate to rise).
Once this weekend's OMM is over I shall make a long, slow, HR controlled run my basic Sunday morning run. 2-3 hours out on the hills and tracks of Hampshire.
And hopefully Snowdon 50 will become a reality!
PS - The autumnal picture at the top isn't really related to the post, but I took it this morning during my run, so wanted to use it!
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