Road To The Sham: Closed

And so the Road to the Sham ends with a cancellation of the race due to Wuhan Corona virus AKA: COVID-19. Don't let these folks bully you into not saying Wuhan virus. All current evidence says it started in Wuhan China and it's not racist to say so. If they want to go down that hole then they need to call the Spanish Flu by it's "science" name, H1N1. But that's not really the point of this post.

Anyway. Months of training for this particular event was not in vain. No, I won't be racing so I won't get the PR, well, shot at the PR, but I am much fitter than before and I've had eye opening experiences some of which I'll review below:

1) Current MAF training results: I have dropped between 30 seconds to a minute on my MAF runs. Hills that spiked my heart rate well over MAF limits are now manageable. That is I still slow down but I no longer have to walk to maintain my MAF number.

2) I have been able to run over 100 miles a month without injury. This is something that was impossible to do prior to MAF training and being very strict about speed during rest days. Matter of fact HAVING rest days. Now the pros are doing 100 miles a week. I'm not there yet particularly since I'm not doing marathons, but I'll definitely be doing more mileage as the months go along to maintain this fitness.

3) I have a bad arch in my left foot. In February I purchased a new sneaker: Nike Vomero 14.

This was the first non-stability shoe I have run in since the early 2000s. I got into stability shoes after knee, Achilles and a heel spur. Looking back I figured that it was my sneakers rather than my form (I heel struck). In the past 5 years or so I adjusted to a mid-foot strike but I still wore stability shoes with inserts. Problems went away. So I thought that perhaps now that I was running in better form that I could wear a neutral show. Yes I did try the Vaporfly 4%. It was very springy but had nothing under my arches. I thought it to be a bad idea to spend on that if I couldn't run in it for long due to arch issues. Glad I didn't.

Anyway Vomeros were and are very comfortable. Very springy and make my stability shoes feel like well...shoes. Since I was still comfortable I got the idea to get a lighter shoe for the faster runs and race day. I settled on the Nike Pegasus Turbo 2.

Soooo..very light. Very springy. Even less arch support.

Did a few tempo and threshold runs in them. Great.

Then the pains started. Particularly in one foot. Exactly what I was afraid of. I noticed at the end of the run while walking that my left foot was collapsing inward. Something that doesn't happen in my stability shoes. Boooooo. I put my old insert into the Vomeros but they made the problem worse because now the shoe was too tight. But that's when I noticed it was only one foot that had issues. Just to confirm, I put the inserts into my stability shoe, which I had stopped using since they felt like garbage compared to the Nikes, and took another run where I found the inserts helped with the impacts, making them closer to the Nikes but now I had no foot pain (which honestly usually went away after a mile or so in the Nikes)

My next experiment will be to put the insole into the left Vomero and nothing in the right since that foot doesn't seem to have problems. But now that the race is cancelled I don't need to wear the faster shoes since given the current public scare it's unlikely to be running any races until the fall. Perhaps this will give me the chance to get custom inserts from one of those stores that I can use in the Nikes.

Right now the summer plans are to go heavy into the MAF training, including my bike rides in order to increase my aerobic capacity. The faster I can run at low heart rates the faster I can run in race conditions.

Thanks for following.

The Peak Before The Taper

So the Sham is March 20, or 5 weeks out. I hit max distance 2 weeks ago so by the time it's 2 weeks out I'll have done the distance, and most importantly, the time quite a few time. It also means speedwork is on the table. One of the things with heart rate training is that there are a LOT of miles where you are running well below race pace so fast running becomes foreign. Running by feel becomes slow because you "feel" fine. So speedwork is what's on the table. Essentially all runs from now on will be half MAF running and half race pace or better. Listening to the body so that I don't get injured. Speaking of which, the huge benefit of my current training is that I have totally avoided the injuries I usually have by now (usually knee pain but sometimes foot too).

What's also nice is that I now know my expected heart rates for different paces and supposedly I can keep out of the red at a pace that's about 20-30sec/mile faster than my target pace. This means there is a strong chance of a PR. We shall see.

Road To The Sham: Hitting Sevens

So we had a bit of warm weather which allowed me to run in less clothes. Mid 50s is great running weather and it showed. On a previous post I noted that my "street MAF" average time was 9:20/ mile. Well yesterday I ran a MAF of 8:16/mile with many dips into the 7s. I won't do a track test until March. The great thing here is that I'll likely be able to maintain my target speed at a low heart rate relative to last time. If so, I should be able to hit my PR. The one "problem" now is that I'm running faster than I intended to. I may end up having to actually slow down on purpose as to avoid injury as I'm now over 100 miles/month (which I've only done 3 times before).

Road To The Sham: Polar Moments

On suspicion that my Amazefit Bip was not accurately measuring my heart rate, I purchased a polar chest strap. Today on my treadmill run I was pleasantly surprised to see that my monitor connected to the machine. Found out that the Amazefit was off by as much as 22 BPM!!!! With an average of 12 BPM

Here I was thinking I had the aerobic fitness of a 90 year old.

So the lesson here for people getting into heart rate training is to get the chest strap monitor.

Road To The Sham Part 3: Street MAF vs. Track MAF

So yesterday I did a track MAF session where my MAF average speed was 8:17/mile. Today I did a 5 mile "street MAF" session and my average speed was 9:20/mile. More than a minute different per mile. There were some hills and clearly there were some 'undetectable" gradients that assisted in this drop. So now I have a baseline street and track MAF speed to compare progress (I hope) against.

I can already see why MAF training is popular with those who now swear by it. Firstly, it makes running fun again in that you have something to do other than beat on your legs (and heart). These slow miles "fly by" because you're paying close attention to your heart rate.

The next interesting thing was that I felt 'fat burn" in my legs. I don't usually feel burn in my legs unless I've taken time off due to illness or even changing to cycling. To have felt that during a slow run tells me that my body is using a different source of energy.

And it bears repeating that it is very nice to not be totally knackered at the end of a run. VERY

Road To The Sham Part II: MAF(fing) A!

So I put the MAF to the test this weekend. Not going to work. The standard 180 minus your age as top HR during a run had me walking. We're talking 42 minutes to cover 3.4 miles and that's with me deciding at mile 2.5 to up my "max" by 10 BPM.

No way, no how I take a "long run" with that kind of pace. I simply do not have the time for that. at the rate I was walking, cause that's what I was doing, it would take me 2.6 hours to complete 13 miles.

Absolutely not having that.

Why was I walking so much? I had read that when people start out they do a lot of walking so I did expect to do some walking. I particularly expected it at hills. Level ground though? I was going so slow it was impossible to jog much less run.

So the next day when I took my usual walk I noted my heart rate because I wanted to know why I was having this issue. Lo and behold my walking HR was 20 beats lower than my calculated MAF rate. Explains a lot. There is no way that I could maintain a MAF rate of any speed that did not involve extremely poor form running (shuffling).

So what to do?

So in my self-imposed "slow" runs I had put a limit on my speed which corresponds loosely to a modified MAF of +15 BPM over MAF calculations. For me this is a very easy jog. since I am prone to "discovering" that I'm running 30+ seconds per mile faster than target pace, I'll be paying far more attention to my heart rate for the remainder of my runs.

I've watched other runners say they do something similar, in terms of modifying their MAF calculation to accommodate their fitness levels so I don't think my mods are unreasonable. The principle is to run aerobically and that's what I'm going to do.

As a side note, Just so you know just how much easier it is to run on a treadmill, I did a MAF run on a treadmill. My pace there was FAR faster than what I did over the weekend ( by 4 minutes/mile). So clearly the miles done on a treadmill do not match what you do on the road, by a long shot. -Update So this afternoon I went and tried my MAF test on a track. Completely different results; ~8:20/mile which is about what I had determined as a good slow pace for me. I'm going to guess that the street route that I was on was a problem and perhaps I was anxious. Also I'm not sure my walk heart rate is as high as I thought it was. Perhaps because it was early and I hadn't drunk much or eaten.

So I'm satisfied with that result. If, during the next few months I can drop 20 seconds off that rate I'd be very happy.

Road To The Sham Part 1: We're In!

So I'm officially running the 2020 Anthem Shamrock Half Marathon. This will be my third run. I was supposed to run last year..umm this year, but I was not in a good mental place to do the training and I don't like doing things half-assed. My last run, in 2018, I did far worse than I should have due to a couple of major mistakes that I'm fixing this time around. First mistake was my training.

Too FAST:

I am a natural sprinter so I came into running from doing 5ks. Also being naturally impatient, every, and I mean EV-ER-Y training session was done at or above race pace. For like 20 years. In addition I was undereating for the calories and sugar I was burning and was crashing. At the time I had no idea. I thought that you trained hard so you were used to it on race day. Oh so wrong.

Of course I also injured myself. A lot. Knees, lower back, foot pain, Achilles pain.

Professional runners know my mistake: No aerobic base. I didn't know about that. Anyway, my race pace goal was 7:39/mile. My training took me below that many many times during my long runs...for the entire run. Boo.

Blew Up On Race Day:

So on race day I made many mistakes. First I changed my morning eats including neglecting my morning coffee. I have one cup a day. Caffeine helps with fatigue. If you train with it then you need to run on it. Dont go changing your regimine on race day. You may eat earlier than usual but you better EAT!

Second mistake was that I ran the race backwards. By that I mean that rather than have negative splits as planned, I had positive splits AND a total bonk at mile 12 where I walked 50 meters. *hangs head in shame*

I ran the first mile of the race at near 5k pace ~7:05/mile. While I can keep that up for about 5 miles I cannot do that for a full 13. By the time my average pace got down to 7:30 I was already 8 miles in and the damage was done. Miles 8-10 are my transition miles. I generally know how I feel at that point. Either fatigue sets in or I'm good. I was not good.

As I now know, I basically burned sugar or glycogen over the too fast portion of the race and had nothing left at the end. I still PR'd for that particular race but it was far from my goal which was 30 seconds faster than my overall PR. So what am I doing differently?

Firstly I'm already at 11 miles for my long runs. The intent here is to be very comfortable with the distance before race day. Being impatient I need to mentally prepare to run that distance and that amount of time without losing focus, getting bored, etc. So I'll be doing 13 miles throughout February.

Second, I'm running slow to run fast. I had heard this phrase a number of times. But me being impatient could not keep myself from seeing a person ahead of me and having a "look squirrel!" moment and chase them down. So I'm running long runs at a pace no faster than 8 min/mile and closer to 8:20./8:30/mile. This is still in my aerobic zone but well away from 90 or even 80% effort. It's around 60% max heartrate. That's a guess because I don't actually know my max heart rate but I know the old 220-age does not apply to me at all. My Amazefit says that at a 6:45/mile pace I'm pushing 188 BPM and I can run faster than that.

I've already seen benefits of this. I haven't injured myself. I'm not crashing after the long runs. Still a bit tired by none of the "I feel like crap" feelings of overexertion.

My overall schedule is 5K speed work, Half long run distance 10-15 seconds per mile slower than race pace, and then long...slow...run.

I've also incorporated dead lifting. I read somewhere that Meb (who will be at the Sham!) used deadlifts to win Boston. Supposedly he (or Bolt) dead lifted 1.7 their body weight. That's my goal. I started out below my body weight. I'm up at 1.4 now. I don't necessarily need to go to 1.7 but it's a goal. If I can go there without injury I'll do it, but I'm not killing myself. This has addressed an issue I've long had: Weak lower back and glutes.

Race Day Plans:

So the plan on race day is to address problem number one: Wrong pace! The Sham employs people to pace different finish times. I'm going to hang out with whomever is close to the pace I want to keep. The most important thing for me is to not overrun the first 8 miles. If I'm burning fat rather than sugar (or glycogen) for the first 8 I can lift my pace for the last 5. That's the plan.