Building a Base

The toughest part of running for me right now is I remember the way it used to be. Back when I could confidently say “Four miles? Bah. It’s not even worth tying my shoes for.”

Well, these days I can’t even run half a mile without breaking into a brisk walk. Sure – some of it has to do with the extra 20 pounds I’m carrying (yes – I really let myself go during the last year and a half), but most of it has to do with the fact that I’ve lost *all* of my aerobic base.

Here’s a statistic for you – do you realize that your aerobic system provides about 95% of your energy needs in a 5K and almost 100% of them in a marathon? Yet most of us neglect proper cardio vascular training by doing our long runs too fast and doing too many intervals and hills way too hard.

Building our cardio vascular system involves slow, persistent training over a long period of time. I don’t know if I’ve ever told this story, but (time for some proud parental bragging) two of my children were rowers (the kind who row the big boats like you see in the Olympics, or the opening credits of House). My daughter scholar shipped at an NCAA division I school, and my youngest son was racing internationally at the ripe age of 16. Both of them received coaching from people who rowed internationally at the highest levels (World Cup and Olympics). The two of them would literally spend hours every day on rowing machines or running at *very* low heart rates (65% of max or less) building their aerobic base. Why? Because that is how the elites train. All I know is within a few months they were able to row on the water for hours and not really break much of a sweat.

What can I take away from this? This time I’m not going to fall into the trap of thinking that I *need* to train hard. The key this time around will be weekends – long runs at low intensity. Back to back. Miles of slow running until my body says it’s ready to train hard. How will I know when I’m ready? When my long runs become easy.

Yes. This time I’m going slow and steady.  Say, wasn’t there some Greek fable about that?

This week:

• Monday: 6 miles easy
• Tuesday: Rest
• Wednesday: 4 miles easy.
• Thursday: Rest.
• Friday: Rest
• Saturday: 10 miles easy.
• Sunday: 8 miles easy
• Total: 28 miles

The Difficult Part of Starting Over

Today is day 3 of my start over as I work myself back into race shape. I'm finding the going to be difficult. Want to know why?

When you take as much time being inconsistent in training as I have the past few months, the worst part is not the weight gain that I experienced as much as the loss of cardiovascular fitness. Right now it's kind of sad to think a year ago I was *over-trained* for a marathon. These days I can barely huff and puff a mile out of my body!

So, these days the exercise is getting back into aerobic shape. The key to getting back into aerobic shape is putting in volume at a *steady pace*. And the key to a *steady pace* is running slow enough to be able to maintain that pace over several miles. It's the old adage "You need to train slower to race faster." Do you know how difficult that is?

Well, I'm finding out. Tomorrow: tricks to maintain that slow and steady pace.

Why I Use a Heart Rate Monitor

Ask a runner if a heart rate monitor is important and you'll get one of two answers. Either a hearty "Yes!" with an explanation of the merits of heart rate training, or else a resounding "No!" with why using a heart rate monitor is a big waste of time. Since yesterday was a rest day, I thought I would spend today discussing why I'm in the camp with the "Yes" men.

Before using an HRM, I ran every training run like it was a race. My PRs plateaued and I wasn't getting any better. It took Advanced Marathoning by Pete Pfitzinger to connect the dots.

My introduction to a heart rate monitor occurred about three years ago. At the time, my daughter and youngest son were pretty serious about rowing. They were going to a local rowing gym run by Olympic Gold Medalist Xeno Muller. One of Xeno's motivating speeches is the importance of aerobic conditioning. He credits his conditioning for his Gold Medal in 1996 and Silver Medal (despite having a chest cold) in the 2000 Olympics. Part of my kids training involved understanding this concept. They were required to use a heart rate monitor. Every few weeks, Xeno would perform a blood lactate test on them. After a good warm up, a blood sample would be taken and a testing device used to measure lactate concentration. Then, the intensity of the workout would be increased and another sample taken. This would be repeated for about 30 minutes. Xeno would then construct a graph of heart rate vesus lactate concentration. The point where the curve took off provided visual feedbck to the rower about the heart rate where lactate treshold occurred. Then, to aerobically train, the rower simply rowed or ran or cycled for hours on end just below (10 beats lower) that rate. Train harder and lactate would build at a rate faster than the body would flush it - reducing the effectiveness of each workout and leading to more time required for recovery, essentially taking time away from the time that *should* be used to build an aerobic base.

The same philosophy holds for running. The key to any good training plan are the hours and miles we put in at intensities below lactate threshold to build aerobic conditioning. Now - do we need a heart rate monitor to do that? Nope. Not at all. Running slow can be completely done by feel or by pace. But, the reason that Xeno used an HRM was to concentrate on heart rate instead of pace to measure a workout's effectiveness. He was a huge proponent that this was a more accurate measure to use when conditioning.

Now - back to the original question - why do I use a HRM? Well, I've bought into Xeno's philosophy. My daughter ended up with a scholarship. My son was racing internationally in the single scull by the time he was 16. It obviously worked for them. I use my heart rate monitor to make sure that I am not training too hard when I shouldn't be or not training hard enough when I should be. In theory, it keeps me out of lactate threshold when I shouldn't be there, and gets me there when I should be. If I ran purely by pace, I would have run too hard on Wednesday. My recovery run wouldn't have been a recovery run, but another lactate threshold run.

Should you use an HRM? If you are the type of person who would be bugged because the HRM is telling you to slow down, then it's probably not for you. If you want to (and can) run every hard workout BTTW, then it's not for you. But, if you are the type of runner who is frustrated because your PRs have seemed to plateau, or you can't seem to shake the injury bug, or you are frustrated that you just can't seem to get over that hurdle from 10K to Half or Half to Full, then maybe the problem is your aerobic conditioning. A HRM may help you stay out of lactate threshold and spend more time in your ideal aerobic zone. One thing for sure - it will make you understand that patience is a virtue.

In closing I can tell you this - using an HRM is not going give me the athletic talent to run a sub 4 marathon. But, I can't help but think that using my HRM has helped me get into better shape and has kept me from being injured. It has definitely kept me from turning every training run into a race. It's the reason that I am starting to worry about finding the *time* train these days.

Aerobic Conditioning

In my blog yesterday I made a snide comment about speed work: "I am quite amused by the people running 15 to 20 miles per week who think that they will run a faster half marathon times by introducing speed work." I received a couple of comments, a few emails, and a couple of tweets about this comment, so I thought I would explain myself.

First, I apologize to all you teachers out there. "...run a faster half marathon times..." Anyone have a red pencil? Time to read before posting. Yow!

Next - the real purpose of the statement. Everyday I spend some time cruising the forums over at Runner's World and reading a bunch of running related blogs (see the sidebar). There are always tons of questions about speed work. "When should I start speed work?" "I want to add speed work to my training plan." "I think I should start doing speed work." So on and so forth. Here's the bottom line. It doesn't matter how much speed work you do in a training cycle. If you run out of gas before your race is done, you are in trouble.

Performance is greatly dependent on our muscles' ability to use oxygen to produce energy. This is the "aerobic" cycle. Once they reach their upper limit, our muscles quickly start breaking down glucose without the use of oxygen . This is the "anaerobic" cycle. This cycle produces acidic byproducts. If we produce acid faster than we can flush it out, we end up with rapid muscle fatigue. We have just run out of gas.

The key here for any distance is to be able to run aerobically as long as possible. According to Glover, energy needs for marathon and half marathon distances are met 99% aerobically and 1% anaerobically. Even at 10K distances, energy is 97% aerobic. Skew your anaerobic metabolism a couple of percent and you will not be able to perform at your max. We typically manage this by proper race pacing. In essence all that proper race pacing does is slows us down so we don't drive our metabolism out of our aerobic zone.

Hopefully, you are getting the gist of this message. Want to run faster farther? Be more aerobically fit. Want to be more aerobically fit? Run more general aerobic miles. Now, that doesn't mean that speed work doesn't play a part. What speed work does is allows us to buffer acid buildup, which allows us to run anaerobically a little longer. But the real key is to be able to run aerobically for a longer period of time. Once you figure that out, you will watch your times plummet!

I speak from experience. Since increasing my mileage base from 20 to 30+ miles per week during the last nine months, I've seen the following improvements: 5K PR - dropped almost 3 minutes; 10K PR - dropped 6 minutes; Half Marathon - dropped 6 minutes; Marathon - to be determined. This means that I am adequately trained at the 10K distance. I still have trouble at the Half (out beyond mile 11), and I have yet to run a marathon since upping my mileage. I'll get a better feel for my Half in a couple of weeks. And Marathon - well, you'll just have to wait a while!

Sorry for the long post. Oh yeah - I did run yesterday. Six miles, general aerobic (heart rate 80% of max) at an average pace of 9:22. On tap today - 60 minute tempo run. This will be a challenge for sure!