Baby steps

I felt rubbish today, but it made me feel better.

I went for a short 2.5 mile run, the first in 8 days. I still felt a bit tired, it may not have been the ideal thing for my body, but it did wonders for my mind.

I am still rather snotty. My throat is still quite sore. However, I've lost the chesty bit of the infection with all the horrible stuff coming up, which I won't go into (chewy!). My resting heart rate is back to near normal, 38bpm, and has been this for 2 or 3 days now.

The tricky thing now is how to build back up to my 40+ miles per week quickly without injuring myself.

I have to listen to my body. I just hope I can hear it!

I'm in!!!

I've called this Blog 'Running towards London', but until yesterday I wasn't actually sure that my entry had been accepted. I had a reasonable idea, as my cheque was cashed in the first wave on the 29th October. Despite me bequeathing my entry, this was a strong indication that I had been selected in the first ballot - useful source of info those Runner's World forums!

I have my own theories of how the ballot is done. A purely random ballot would result in a natural peak of finishers around the most common finish time - I'm guessing this would be around 4:30, maybe less. Far better would be a steady stream of finishers with no large peak, to avoid congestion at the finish and en route. Your estimated finish time is declared on the outside of the envelope. It seems reasonable to assume that this piece of information is used for the ballot. I'd imagine there are quotas for each time slice. If you put down a fast, less popular, time then you stand a better chance of getting in.

I've been exceptionally lucky as I've got in through the ballot 3 years in a row. Last year I missed out in the main ballot, but got in through the second ballot - even luckier! This year I'm aiming for a faster time - 3:30 if possible, but I'm aiming for at least (or should that be most?) 3:45 to get a 'Good For Age'. My declaration of 3:30-3:45, code D on the entry envelope, may well have been a factor in my ballot success. Hopefully by achieving 3:45 I won't have to go in the ballot next year, having achieved a guaranteed place.

As you've probably gathered by now, my acceptance letter arrived yesterday.

Flora London Marathon April 17th 2005

I'm in baby, I'm in!!!

Drink plenty of fluids

Have you ever thought this is an odd thing to say to someone with a cold? Let's look at the dictionary:

flu·id
noun (plural flu·ids)
1. liquid: anything liquid ( not used in technical contexts )
2. physics chemistry liquid or gas: a substance such as a liquid or gas whose molecules flow freely, so that it has no fixed shape and little resistance to outside stress

Could this be any more non-specific? Even "Drink plenty of liquids" would be better advice. Has anyone considered that plain old air is a fluid?
"Luvvy, I can really recommend a good swig of Domestos - it kills 99% of all throat germs, you know!"
"Darling, I always like a daily shot of motor oil - it keeps me regular as clockwork!"
Yeah right!


I've resolved that breathing is probably a good thing. As I can't actually get any through my nose, I will definitely be drinking in that lovely oxygen fluid.

Bah humbug. I hate being ill. Three days so far without training, and a race looming at the weekend. Why oh why did I post: "Relief! I have a cold"?

Relief! I have a cold

Technology can be a double edged sword. Outdoors I run with a Polar S610 heart rate monitor on one arm, and a Garmin Forerunner 201 on the other. You can see what can be done with the S610 in my previous "Progress" post: I have all my runs' and gym sessions' heart rates (HRs) recorded in detail on my PC. The Forerunner too is a fantastic piece of kit: it tells you how fast you are running, how far you have gone, it will pace you with a 'Virtual Running Partner' and it will even show you the way back home, something which came in very handy a few nights ago when I was left to find my own way back to the Leisure Centre from a new training venue.

So on the one hand you have the positive reinforcement that training is going well, when you can view HR plots such as my previous post, but you equally know instantly when things are not going quite as well as you hoped.

Yesterday I ran the Gosport Half Marathon as a training run. I have the Hayling 10 mile race next week, which I am planning to race flat out, so I needed to ensure I kept Gosport nice and relaxed so that I'm in good shape for next week. I knew the target pace needed to keep my heart rate down, and set the Garmin Forerunner to pace me at a nice relaxed constant pace. I was only a mile into the race when I realised that things weren't quite right. Sure, my heart rate was low, but after recent training runs I was expecting it at least 5, maybe 10, bpm lower.

Was it race day nerves? I'd experienced that before, but I wasn't racing and felt relaxed! Maybe I was too warm? It was a much warmer day than expected after Saturday's arctic blast, and I had to strip off a layer after a few miles. Unlikely though!

Maybe it was the chatting? I can imagine the men out there nodding in disapproval, but many of you have yet to realise the true benefits of chin wagging during a race. Just as pumping your arms is meant to give benefits when pushing up a hill, wagging of the chin has positive benefits on endurance at the rear of a race field. It's true!

My friend decided that maybe the chat was pushing up my heart rate, but I wasn't convinced. Maybe she was too polite to just say "Shut up!"

I managed to do the race at an average of 127bpm which is 73% of my maximum, so a good base training run was achieved. It was still bothering me though that it should have been not much more than 120bpm. Next week in my full on race this could amount to as much as 20 seconds per mile - over 3 minutes difference!


This morning I awoke with the sniffles and a slight sore throat! Hooray! That is why my HR was high on Sunday. I've never been so pleased to catch a cold!

I just hope I'm over it by next Sunday!

Progress

Each Saturday I spend 90 minutes in the gym. The last half of the session is spent on the treadmill. For the last five weeks, I've had the treadmill set at the same speed - 9.6km/h - a gentle jog. I have a heart rate monitor which loads the data onto my PC, so that I can compare each session. As I know that the conditions of each run are identical in the gym, then any improvement in aerobic conditioning shows up as a reduction in heart rate.

I figured I'd see some improvement, but I never expected what I saw when I overlaid the last month's traces! Below are the heart rate traces from the following dates:
16th October 2004
30th October 2004
13th November 2004
20th November 2004


It's easy to spot which trace is which as each subsequent week is at a lower heart rate! I was not expecting progress to be this marked! There has been a 10bpm decrease in heart rate in only 5 weeks.

I haven't had much experience of treadmill running, so this may simply be that I'm getting used to the treadmill, however I am seeing similar improvements on the road. It's just that it is harder to make direct comparisons for road sessions, due to the variables of route, pace, wind, heat, gradient etc.

I'm convinced about the benefits of aerobic base training. Long may this continue!

Paula

I met Paula Radcliffe today!

I offer this stunning piece of photo journalism as evidence:


I think they got my best side!

The Lactic Enemy

Let me tell you about aerobic base training.

We have a nice little thread going on the Runner's World website

To fully understand the methods involved you'll need to read the article referenced on the second posting: Hadd's approach to distance training . Warning! It's good but it'll take at least 30mins to read it!

I will try then to summarise what base training is about. By all means send me comments (you can post on the Runner's World Base Training thread above). There may be inaccuracies that I'd want to correct. I am not an expert, but rather an enthusiastic amateur. I am just summarising what has been discussed in the various articles and threads. Hopefully I can give a flavour of what base training is about, and also to get to understand it better myself.

So taking a deep breath, here goes!

We have 3 basic energy systems (I believe there is a fourth, but this is a summary!)
Anaerobic
Aerobic
Fat burning

Dealing with the anaerobic system first, this is the one sprinters use. You know when you are anaerobic because you can 'feel the burn'. That dead weight burning sensation? That's the lactic acid accumulating in your legs. You are good for short bursts of this but you can't keep going for long at this rate. It's characterised by fast paces and high heart rates. Training of the anaerobic system is all about running fast repetitions. "To run fast, you train fast" is something you'll often hear (but read on - that one is a definite no-no!).

Your aerobic system, by contrast, is far more energy efficient: some 13 times more, apparently. This is the critical one for us base trainers. Even in distances as low as 1500m you are relying on 80% of your energy to be supplied by your aerobic system. As the distance increases, you rely even more on your aerobic system. At moderate paces and heart rates, you are in your aerobic zone, with lactic acid production under control. As pace increases you start to borrow from your anaerobic system. There isn't a sudden switch from one system to another, but there is a notion of an 'aerobic threshold' below which you are mostly relying on your aerobic system, and an 'anaerobic threshold' above which you are relying mostly on your anaerobic system. These thresholds correspond to particular heart rates, different in each individual unfortunately, but it is these heart rates which you will hear 'base trainers' referring to all the time.

A word on fat burning. You will hear talk of a 'fat burning zone' in some circles. Personal trainers seem to love this one. A heart rate below which you are burning fat. The slimmers dream! While it is true that at lower heart rates fat burning is a more significant energy system, again, it doesn't simply switch in below some magical threshold - it is simply more critical at slower paces. In fact marathon runners rely on it - without it you would run out of your aerobic fuel, glycogen, and hit the dreaded wall. And don't worry about being too thin and not having enough fat (if only!). Fat burning is a highly efficient energy mechanism, you don't need much of it! Hooray! Training of your fat burning system is characterised by long slow runs at low heart rates.

So the wisdom is, that if your anaerobic system only contributes a small amount to distance running, then only when you have squeezed the very last drop out of the other mechanisms do you really need to then concentrate on the anaerobic system. So that's what aerobic base training is about - getting our aerobic system (and to a large extent fat burning) to the best it can be, before working on the anaerobic side.

And there's a catch! (There always is, isn't there?!) Unfortunately you train your anaerobic system to the detriment of your aerobic system. Anaerobic running creates lactic acid which is very bad for your aerobic system. For every bit of anaerobic training done, you must do far far more training of your aerobic system to compensate. So for us base trainers, we like to keep the training strictly aerobic, in order to maximise its benefits. No speed sessions! All this is probably a bit alien to you club runners out there, so let me point you at an excellent piece by Ingrid Kristiansen.

So what are the main characteristics of an aerobic base training schedule?
Typically:
Daily running at slow paces, typically 70% of maximum heart rate. Build up slowly and try to get to doing an hour a day of running before moving on.
Patience is the key. Don't rush this. Set aside at least 6 months to build up the running.
No speed work! Keep racing to a minimum.
Once at an hour a day, some work sessions can be introduced, gradually, usually no more than 2 per week at slightly higher heart rates, but still aerobic, less than 80-83% of maximum heart rate.
A weekly long run can be gradually built up but keep it slow, <70% , but keep to less than 2 hours of running.

There is much debate about how you determine your maximum heart rate, which is unfortunate because it is quite important to know what it is! If you estimate a figure that is too high, then you run the risk of reducing the effectiveness of work sessions because they are at too high a rate, and worse, of injuring yourself because your slow runs aren't allowing you to recover properly.

John L Parker in his book 'Heart Monitor Training for the Compleat Idiot' (sic) suggests a formula of 205-age/2 as the most accurate for us athletes. Better, is to do a max HR test. Hadd suggests a method in his article (See link above) involving warming up, running 800m as fast as you can, short recovery, then running 400m as fast as you can and reading your heart rate at the end. Another method is to do 5 200m hill reps, pushing harder each time, until going flat out up the final one. Whichever method you use, it is important to get an accurate measure of maximum heart rate.

Typically, your daily easy runs will then be at 70% of maximum. The major comment from base training newbies is "This is way too slow - I have to walk to keep my heart rate down" If this is the case then maybe run a little quicker for the first couple of weeks. Eventually though you will find it easy to keep it slow and you will see your slow pace improving quite quickly!

I won't talk about work sessions at this stage - maybe a later post - in fact I'm a little new to them myself! If you are new to this, then you really shouldn't be doing work sessions anyway but trying to get your running to an hour a day at slow paces.

There will be more to come, including some personal remarks on how my training is progressing, and how I've interpretted all this. There may be inaccuracies in the above, in which case please correct me! Please don't shoot the messenger!

Happy training!

Ouch that's cold!

I've resumed taking ice baths after long runs.

The thought of ice baths may shock some people, but I reckon most have heard of Paula Radcliffe taking them and are now used to the idea. Well I thought I was used to them until Sunday morning!

The theory goes that they help recovery from training sessions. Any physio will tell you of the benefits of putting ice on an injury. Well if you consider the micro-tears that occur when you train hard (I can't help think of the Tiny Tears doll when I see that written), then it seems reasonable that if you treat them with ice they will respond in a similar fashion to a 'real' injury. I gather that there is also a flushing action that occurs when the blood vessels close down and force out accumulated toxins.

Well I 'did' the ice baths for last year's marathon training - a few kgs of ice in a bath of cold water - wearing several layers up top to keep warm - nice hot cup of tea - sit in it for 20-30 minutes - no problems. I had wondered though if I really had it cold enough as the ice melted almost immediately and the thermometer read a balmy 8 or 9 degrees. I felt quite comfortable sitting there listening to a favourite CD, reading a book or magazine. I came to almost enjoy them!

Then I saw Paula Radcliffe on the Frank Skinner show last week, and she said that she would tip an amount of ice "a bit bigger than that box there" pointing to Frank's props box next to his chair. "That's a lot of ice", I thought. She described how it was so cold it would make her bones ache! Hmmm!

So this weekend I thought I'd increase the quantity of ice. I have a domestic ice machine which knocks out about 1 kg of ice each hour. I left it running all day Saturday until I had a load of ice - enough to fill my picnic size cool box. Now factor in the very cold night, which meant that the water tank in the loft must have been a fair bit cooler than I've been used to, and this was going to be a new experience!

The bathroom scene that presented itself after my Sunday morning run was like something from Titanic. The ice covered the surface of the bath. I thought about waiting for it to melt, "to ensure the water was at its coldest", but in I got.

My God the pain! I certainly got the full Radcliffe! My legs went bright red. My feet felt like they were on fire. I had a magazine, but couldn't read it - I was too distracted by the indescribable cold. I had set the timer set for 25 minutes, but after 18 minutes I really couldn't stand it any longer. As I got out there was still unmelted ice in the bath!

I suppose it's a bit like banging your head against a wall. It's lovely when it stops! As the capillaries open and the blood flows in you can feel your legs recharging. All your aches melt away with the ice. It really is a nice sensation. My legs feel great today! I'm wondering though if it was perhaps a tad extreme for an amateur athlete such as myself.

Maybe a touch less ice next time?

Susie's first blog

I was wondering how to introduce myself to the blogging world, and have deleted this first line several times now and retyped it. So after several aborted attempts, I've decided to delay introductions and hit you with a thought I had while I was out running the other day.

This may explain myself, and the reasons why I go running.

Or it may make me out to be a complete fruitcake!


Supposing you had the ultimate training computer. This computer could determine for you the ultimate training plan. Each day it would determine for you the perfect training session. It would do this based on your ultimate goal (in my case the Flora London Marathon), tempered by a few constraints such as the need to work each day. It would have access to all your physiological data such as weight, height, body fat, heart rates, stroke volumes, blood chemistry, lactate, lipids, proteins, enzymes etc; in fact it would know each day exactly how you were feeling and what sort of training stresses it could put you under. It would advise on diet, and could determine what each meal should be in order to provide optimal nutrition.

Each training session would be the perfect one for you. Every meal the perfect balance of nutrients to fuel you. Ultimately, on race day, it determines the perfect race strategy, and you run the perfect race. At the end you will have performed to the utmost, running to the maximum you are capable of.

So what would life be like if such a device existed and you followed its instructions exactly?

Would the next 5 months be the worst torture you have ever experienced in your life? Would you feel like you were always on the verge of injury? Would you feel constantly drained, battling through the training, enduring pain and agony for the sake of your goal? Would the race be the most painful experience of your life, crossing the finish line in total exhaustion, completely destroyed by the effort?

Or would the next 5 months be the best running experience of your life? Every day you have boundless energy. Those little niggling injuries you've always suffered are a distant memory. You really get back in touch with what you love about running. Race day is a fantastic experience. You race for that line totally elated, astonished by the time you've just achieved.

So which scenario would it be?

Given that such a device clearly does not exist, is there a coach out there who is the next best thing, and what are his training methods?

Funny the things you think about when out running!