Posts Tagged ‘running improvement’

I’ve been doing the zippier pace thing now for a little over a month.  In that time, I’ve often averaged faster than McMillan’s suggested range, but since heart rate is my alternate pace policeman, I’ve still remained in the “legal” zone for general aerobic runs. (as refresher, I’ve been shooting for 150-160, which comes out to 76-81% MHR or 68-75% HRR)

I haven’t worn it all the time since I know my effort level now and this week I eschewed the monitor completely, preferring to run freely without any excess numbers or “shoulds”.  I just wanted a fun week of whatever felt good.

Then today comes and it’s beautiful out, little wind, I was going 11 miles, so an excellent day to check heart rate.  I was really curious to see what it’d show since the whole week had felt so comfortable.

Result:  Fastest pace/lowest HR combo I’ve ever had.  Ever had.  Not some whiny “since last year” or “compared to when I was faster”.  Ever.  Hah!  I averaged 7:51 @ 157 avg. (73% HRR).

What does this mean?  The plateau is officially, 100%, don’t let the door hit you on the way out, over.  Here’s the week as it went:

M – 6@8:57 (race recovery)
T – 8@8:10
W – 8@7:54
T – 9@8:09 (low 40s and it snowed!  Later, a scrumptous Tday feast at Lara and Jeff’s)
F – 9@8:14
S – 6@8:33 (30+mph  gusts of wind, I did not enjoy this one)
S – 11@7:51 (157 HR…sweet)
Total: 57mi

I’ll end this section admitting that, silly as it is, I still feel guilt for running sub-8s on my GA runs though according to my heart rate, I have every right to own that pace.  Note to self: Will you please, please stop comparing yourself to others? And remember to buy peanut butter.

Why I hate these photos
When I first saw my race photos from Sunday’s Half, I had a minor major freakout.  What is this horrible overstriding I’m seeing?  I spent months working on my gait and thought I had it under control!  How depressing to think I’d deluded myself this whole time.  Then there’s my funny little hand, looking like I’m carrying an imaginary flag…

But after a bit of contemplation, I realized a couple things:

1. All the photos they took of me are at the end of the race at mile 13 and the finish line.

2. I checked out photos of the reigning local master phenom, Doreen McCoubrie (also 49 years old, who finished this race in 1:23) and at that same spot she’s doing the same thing, though from the rest of her photos, that’s not her usual stride.

If that woman, a World Class athlete who competed in the Olympic Trials in 2008 can reach her leg forward at the end of a race, then I’m not going to let it worry me.  Besides, I’m not touching down with that straight leg, I’m still in flight – if I was really a “braker”, then the heels of my shoes would have way more wear on them than they do.

It might be my leadup to hop over the mat or it could be that I extended my stride because the finish line was so close.  Whatever.  I’m sure that’s not how I ran the bulk of the race so I’m giving myself a pass.

Why I love these photos
This is the home stretch, the last .1 of the race!  I don’t look pretty, in fact I’m totally sneering in the second one thanks to the sun in my eyes, but damn, do you see me heaving?  Do you see me fighting for air or looking like I’m struggling for anything?  No, ladies and gents, you do not!  And with my last 5k averaging 7:05s?  Headroom, babies!  I had real headroom on this one.

2 steps from the 13 mile mark

The 13 mile mark

Finished!

About the imaginary flag, I decided it’d look cooler if I make shadow puppets when I race.  So far I’m rockin’ the bunny and swan but will spend the next 8 weeks perfecting Abe Lincoln.  This form stuff is so hard.

I want to start by talking about these last couple weeks after making that decision to pick up the pace on easy and long runs.  I am fascinated by the results so far, it is working better than expected.  Not only are those paces feeling comfortable (easys are averaging 8:15 – 8:10 with sub 8s on the way home) but my heart rate has shown a marked improvement to where those runs are averaging 152, 154.  It’s magic.

Now, I lost a nice amount of weight, so obviously this is making a dent, but here’s the part I find fascinating; I’ve been at this same weight (114-115) for 5 weeks, but it wasn’t till that one day when I decided to consciously start picking up my paces that things started happening.

What’s interesting about this is you’d think that you lose weight and suddenly you run faster since there’s less mass, but it wasn’t that way for me (though I’m sure it would have infiltrated the averages eventually).  I had 3 weeks running the same as always at that new weight, albeit somewhat faster thanks to the end of summer, but nothing like the dramatic turn from one day to the next.

This confirms the idea that, for me, my paces are truly led by habit.  By suddenly flipping the switch on Easys and Longs, I think the central nervous system got a kick in the pants and told the body “hey, it’s ok, you’re allowed to do this”.   And like night/day, everything felt easier.

Other external forces would be weather, though I’m using comparable days as comparison so that’s not in the equation.  One thing that does help the heart rate I think, is running later in the day as I have been, after I’ve been moving around a bit.

Now be aware, I am not telling you guys to go out and start racing all your easys and longs.  You’re your own experiment and the popular consensus is that conservative is the way to go, though I have been reading some articles that say moderate pace is something worth exploring.  That said, I have a few things going for me that made the transition easy:

1. A constant mileage base around 60mpw
2. I’m very lucky when it comes to recovery (knock on wood)
3. I lost 9lbs since July 23rd, so of course that helps

I feel silly for having to “warn” you, but I get enough feedback from blog readers to know that people do sometimes follow my lead.  Just do it carefully, please.

Weight Revisited
I got down to 113 for that one day and as I’ve mentioned, I tend to hit a new weight, then it bops around for about 3 weeks before settling.  But I might be at my set weight for the amount of food I’m consuming: around 1900 calories/day with an occasional night out where I stuff my face and don’t give a shit.

While I originally said 110 was my ultimate goal, I was never married to that particular number, the whole point was to get back to the speed I was seeing last year and then move beyond that.  Since things are starting to cook for me again, I’m satisfied to stick here a while, maybe indefinitely.  I just wanted to make this clear for anyone else who’s pursuing a new racing weight, to think in terms of sustainability, what you can be happy living with and to consider what your goal is.

My goal is to be faster, not the fastest possible I can ever hope to reach.  I’d be happy to be a work in progress forever…as long as there’s progress!  Having said this, my weight might bop down a bit more, which I wouldn’t have a problem with, but I’m not pursuing it, I’d just let it happen.

Today’s Workout
It’s amazing how much calmer one feels entering a tough workout when training is going well.  I actually looked forward to this one, though it was a toughie: warmup, 3@Half Pace, 1hour easy, 3@Half Pace, cooldown.

It was a windy day, 17mph gusts, 41 windchill to start, 50 by the time I finished.  I only did 1mi warmup since that’ll mirror race day.  Turned out to be exactly 2 hrs. and 15.5 miles, avg pace 7:45.

The key, as Coach A Muse/Adam reminded me, is not to run the easy portion too easy, so by the time you revisit Half Pace, you’re tired – just as you would be in a race.  Considering how my easy paces have been lately, I was confident that portion would remain somewhat zippy, and it was.

1mi warmup: 8:07
3 Half Pace: 7:13
1 hr (7.5 mi): 8:03 avg.
3 Half Pace: 7:12
1 mi home: 8:08

I’d like to say the HP miles were a nice low heart rate, but they weren’t, it was too windy, but coming back was lower.  I was targeting 7:10s for HP, so it wasn’t perfect but that’s ok – this workout says my endurance is fab and that things are definitely going well.  Been a long time coming.

Now I’m off to one of those voiceover jobs where I have absolutely no clue what I’m saying.  Today’s favorite word is Triiodothyronine.   What fun.  Later, my lovelies.

Continuing on this weekend’s blog subject, I’m loving the return to my old way of running (faster overall as well as from the get-go).  But I wanted to say to you lovely readers that this is totally my own experiment and nothing I’d suggest for anyone else.   So here’s a disclaimer:

You will rarely see me give advice on forum posts or here because I don’t feel qualified to tell someone else what to do and also, everyone’s so different.  So keep in mind that the conclusions I come to or new experiments I try are results of investigating my running logs as well as the peripherals surrounding my running (mileage, what I can handle recovery-wise, etc).  Plus, I’ll try anything to get outta this rut.

Second Run With New Paces
Yesterday’s Long Run was way fun.  Again, like Saturday, I went a little overboard with the initial miles, only because it’s amazing to me that I can feel good going fast out the door, when my usual run profile for the longest time has been 9:00-8:45′s to start, then whittling down with each mile.  Such a creature of habit, I thought I needed that slow start!  Kooky.

Anyway, this was a 14-miler that started 8:00, 7:50, 7:50 (hilarious splits) but then I slowed up as the heartrate increased – was 70 degrees so warmish – then used HR to keep it real which averaged 162 (76%HRR or 81% Max for those keeping score at home).  No pretty progression shape on the SportTrack graph, but it was hella fun!  I was tired and satisfied at the end, knowing today would be a rest day.  Average pace 8:11.

Now, keep in mind that I will not be running all Sunday runs like this!  14 miles isn’t a big deal to me as far as distance, but next weekend I’ve got 17, which I’ll take into the trails and be closer to MP+20% – MP+10%.  I’m experimenting but doing it responsibly.

For instance, this week is a cutback week with 2 days off so I can afford to play a bit, but next Sunday’s 17-miler kicks off 2 weeks without a day off and includes a 10k race in the middle, so I’ll be more circumspect about pacing.  I also won’t be hitting quality work warmups as crazily as I did for Saturday’s tempo (I was having fun testing the waters).

Weight
I admit that after the debacle that was the Philly Half last month, I had a couple weeks of bad attitude with the weightloss.  Not really bad, I still didn’t buy any junk or eat a whole lot more, but I had some “what am I doing this for?” mental poop going on.  Still, I continued to jot down my daily calories (while eating a little extra here and there) but eventually got back to my routine.

Then I was sticking around 115 and was beginning to think that’d be my last stop on the weight-loss train, only because I’m not willing to eat less than I have been (around 1900 calories). But the fun thing about tracking and making a cute chart in Excel is that patterns emerge.   What I’m seeing is I’ll land on a new weight, then for the next 3 weeks, there’ll be ups and downs fluttering around that number, then it’ll go down to a new number with more fluttering.

Today I fluttered into 113 land!  113.8 to be exact.  That makes 10 lbs lost since July 23rd.

Sleep
All my sleep problems from the summer disappeared when the weather improved.  Now that I can go to bed at my normal time again (12:00-12:30) and wake up when my body says to, I’m getting a full 8 hours and even 8.5 sometimes.  Huge relief.

Newsletter
I have been So. Bad. on that front.  Someone asked me a couple weeks ago if I had her correct email address since she hadn’t received one in ages.  I embarrassingly told her no, it wasn’t her email, I just haven’t gotten around to sending one out in forever.  I almost removed the link entirely thinking my newsletter career was over, but for some reason I haven’t given up all hope.  I just have to start looking around for things that interest me enough to share.   Sorry for being such a slug about it.

Yesterday’s blog post was put in action today and boy, do I have great feelings about this!  Forgive me Facebook folks, this is basically the update I just posted but I’m so pleased, it deserves blog detailing as well.

Today was a tempo run: 9mi with 6@HP.  61 degrees with 10mph wind.

Implementing my old style, instead of doing my usual slow couple miles before the workout, I left the house with pep in my step.  I wasn’t shooting for anything special, just wanted to feel energized.  So with huge surprise, my first two miles were 7:53 and 7:45 (a full minute faster per mile than my usual warmup miles). I was looking at my Garmin thinking “Girl, you are going too fast” but since my heartrate was averaging 158, I said screw it.  I did have a thought that maybe this peppy beginning might make my tempo miles harder but figured at least I’ll know for next time.

Once the tempo miles started, I had some dodging and weaving thanks to the Dragonboat races on the river which brought a ton of people out on the path.  I was going for 7:10s and Garmin told me I was doing that (going as low as 7:03s), but once home, when I added the real splits off the bike path, it came out to 7:13s, oh well…still cool by me.

The cooldown mile home was 8:11.  That one surprised me the most. I was thinking that my cooldowns will be slower from here on in, as in, actual cooldowns…but I ran what felt right and that’s what it came out to.

Of course, this is just one run but it now holds a place as the fastest pace I’ve averaged for a run in a non-race situation (7:29s).  Neat-o!  Though no worries folks, I’m not going to race my training runs, heart rate will be a major player in keeping it all “legal”.

So we’ll see if picking up the pace here and there ends up picking up my pace as a whole.  I can’t see how it won’t.

I haven’t felt too interesting this week, thus the silence on blog posting, though the forum I frequent has been hopping with fun stuff so I’ve been making trouble elsewhere.  But now I’ve got something worth talking about.

Going Through My Logs
Today, I began investigating the differences between how I ran last year when my times were better and how I run now.

One glaring difference is that I always used to use McMillan’s calculator to get my easy and long paces, whereas for the past year or so I switched to being effort-based, thinking it was a more organic way to run.  This idea comes from hanging out in the marathon forums with the constant refrain “make sure you run your easy runs slowly so you have the energy to do your hard workouts”.

Not to take away from that – after all, when you see many of the paces listed for fast dudes in that thread, some of them go so surprisingly slow compared to their workout/race paces and in fact, most of my fast pals in the 3:20 thread run their Easys at extremely low heart rates and paces considering their race times.  So I was thinking that of course I should be doing the same and I’m getting brownie points by not worrying about my easy runs, it’s all the other stuff that matters.

But I’m not marathon training and my legs never feel wiped out so do I really need to be treating non-quality days so gingerly?

Comparing Then And Now
While dissecting the difference between heart rates and paces from the previous year and remembering how my easy runs used to feel effort-wise, this is what I discovered:

I used to run my easy runs at around a heart rate of 160 (75% HRR) but then I got all twisted looking at other people’s numbers and thought “oh my, that’s too high, I need to run them at a lower effort” and “slower means better” so I’ve been running my Easys closer to 150 (68% HRR) for months.  That’s a substantial difference.

I’ve also made a habit of starting every run with a couple slow warmup miles and making every Easy run into a progression run, whereas in the past, I would just take off at pace and there would be more variation throughout the run.

Now, the book-smart part of me says the progression thing is a good habit to have, it’s very Pftizinger, but the logician in me says maybe that’s not the greatest habit for general aerobic runs – if my legs aren’t tired when I begin, what am I “saving” myself for?  I think I’ve gotten used to a certain breathing pattern upon start-up and it’s simply become habit.

What’s The Fallout?
I think my slow starts are doing me a disservice for racing and hard workouts.  This larger gap between comfort and effort means it’s more of a shock when the workout starts – that’s why you’re supposed to do strides before a fast workout, to get your heart rate up and prepare you for moving quickly.  But beyond that, my logs bear out that when I was running my best, I had a smaller gap between easy and workout paces.

McMillan, I’m coming back to you
So here I’ve been ignoring McMillan’s recommended paces for a year, thinking I was getting extra-super points for “listening to my body”, but my body, if left to its own devices, would be happiest to amble along indefinitely like the lazy ass it really is.

Thus, I’m beginning an experiment.  For the next few weeks I am going to start running my easy runs pretty much on pace from the get-go.  No more “this is fine and dandy” slow starts.  I’m also going to wear the heart rate monitor more regularly and zero in on 160 for those regular aerobic-paced runs, which means I’ll be running them faster as a whole.  Because if I want to race like I used to race, I may as well run like I used to run.

It was a hard, yet satisfying interval session: 5 x 1000 with 2min. recoveries (I jogged the first two, walked the second two).

Before I began the session, I followed Audra’s (aka Doggie Poo’s) swell advice to mark the path with duct tape so I would know where the hell to stop and start.  It worked a charm, thanks Audra!

Cut to the chase, my splits were:
4:19 (6:56/mi)
4:09 (6:40/mi)
4:18 (6:55/mi)
4:13 (6:47/mi)
4:20 (6:58/mi)
Average 4:15 (6:50/mi)

Finally, I am hanging out with the Sixes!! Woohoo!!

On top of this, remember yesterday I mentioned that sub 1:40 Half thread I joined?  In there is a wonderful guy, Mick, who’s deep into Heart Rate monitoring and analyzing the results…the guy knows his stuff.  In looking at my HR data and the fact that I reached 192 at the end of the last interval (supposedly 98% of my Max) he thinks my Max is higher than I’ve been calling it.

I established my max from my first race when it hit 193 and then added a couple points, so 195.  From the HR graph of today’s workout however, he thinks it’s probably 200.  This is wonderful news!  It means that some of the guilt I feel for not holding back enough on easy runs is for naught.   My monitored runs will now be accompanied by a clearer conscience.

As for my current Half plan, I had a fun time last night messing around with the schedule.  As you know, I’m doing a Hudson-type plan (“type” because he’s all about adapting it to suit instead of doing it exactly as written).  I was still hemming and hawing on the next few weeks, because at this point in his plan, he only requires short fartlek stuff for speedwork when I’m capable and wanting to do meatier stuff.

Out of curiosity, I thumb to the 10K plans section of the book, because I have a 10k coming up in 3 weeks.  Lo and behold, it works out perfectly to take the last 3 weeks of the 10K plan and plop them into my current schedule.  Now I feel I have some meat to play with.  What more could a girl want?