Tag: training

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Another quick experiment with WP-GPX-Maps, but also a quick report of using my heart rate in my running training.

First, here’s this morning’s run:

Roughly the same route as last time, except that instead of running back past the woods the same way I ran out I ran back on a path through the woods itself, and then I added another out-and-back through the prairie, out on the path we call the Low Road and then back on the Middle Way, adding a half mile or so.

(By the way, my heart rate ought to be showing up and isn’t. Part of the reason it’s not there is that it’s not being included in the GPX file that I’m getting from Polar. I was able to get a GPX file that included the heart rate, by exporting a TCX file from Polar and then converting it using TCX Converter, but that still didn’t work. The result was actually worse, in that it lost the altitude data as well. The map above is generated from the straight GPX file from Polar.)

I’m trying to train at my MAF heart rate, which I calculate at 127.

The theory here is that training at this intensity is best for improving your ability burn fat (rather than glucose) for energy. At higher heart rates you end up using a great deal of glucose, so you end up glycogen depleted and then have to eat carbs to replenish your stores. At this lower intensity your consumption of glucose is modest and easily replenished with even a low-carb diet.

With regular training, you gradually get faster at this low intensity (for a while, anyway), which means that you’re automatically training for both speed and endurance at the same time.

I have a heart rate monitor from Polar which works great, except that (incomprehensibly) the Polar app doesn’t have alerts to let you know when you go outside your target range. I’ve been trying to learn through trial and error to feel the intensity level that gets me to the target HR.

This time I got it just about exactly right.

Polar has its own idea of target range, and the closest they have to the zone I want (which is 117 to 127 according to MAF) is what Polar calls Zone 3 and pegs (for me) at 115 to 131. I did 92% of this run in that zone. And, judging from eyeballing the graph, a lot of it was just under 127, right where I want it.

I also squeezed in a 20 minute lifting session after my run. The HR data from that is also kind of interesting, but also doesn’t display with the WP-GPX-Maps plugin.

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I happened upon a post by Ragen Chastain, a writer and activist on size acceptance. She’s also a dancer and an athlete, and I mention her because a recent post on training resonates with my experience, without quite matching it.

She’s training for an IRONMAN race, and the post in question compares the difference between training skills versus training fitness. In training, for example, dancing, you’re learning stuff. It may be really hard, but once you learn a move, you’ve learned it: For a long time it’s hard and you suck, and then you get it and then it doesn’t suck any more. Running (and swimming and bicycling, but especially running) is very different:

One of the things that is interesting about training for the IRONMAN is that it is a process of constantly increasing distance and time (sometimes alternately, sometimes at the same time.) such that “progress” doesn’t necessarily mean that my workouts feel better, but that my general feeling of suckiness remains constant at an increased time and/or distance.

Case in point – Wednesdays are speedwork which means intervals at the highest speed I can manage.  The interval time has increased four minutes, and the speed has increased 5 minutes per mile since I started training.  I still feel like I’m going to die at the end of each workout but I’ve gone farther, faster, for a longer time period.  It’s the stasis of suck.

I totally get where she’s coming from: running as fast as you can (or as far as you can, or as long as you can) is hard. But my experience is different.

Especially when I’ve gotten out of shape, I absolutely feel the massive suckage of starting to get into shape again. Many times I’ve gone trudging around my old 1.5-mile loop near Kaufman Lake, gasping for air, thinking “I’m going to die.”

But after three, four, five runs—such a short time that I can’t possibly have made more than a tiny improvement in my fitness—my perspective is completely different. I’m still trudging around the same loop. I’m still gasping for air. But now I’m thinking, “Wow, I’m getting a great workout!”

Perhaps this is because I don’t have a coach. Maybe if I had someone carefully measuring my performance and matching it to a model of my theoretical maximum performance, that person could arrange for my experience of suckage to remain constant.

But I don’t really think so. A lot of the experience of suckage is in your head. With one mindset I experience the physical sensations of slowly running as far as I can as miserable, because it’s so hard. With a different mindset I experience the exact same physical sensations as wonderful, because I’m doing what I want to do, accomplishing something that’s difficult and yet rewarding.

That doesn’t suck, even if it’s hard and painful.

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I got a great comment on my previous post (thanks Ilana!), and started to reply in a comment there, but realized that I was straying into something that I wanted to talk in a post—training cycles that aren’t a multiple of 7 days.

Rereading my post, I see that it does look like my only runs are my long run and my fast run. That’s not the case, though. I try to include two or three easy runs each week as well.

In years past, my training schedule was pretty ordinary. Each week would include a long run and a fast run, each followed by a rest day. The other three days would each be a chance for an easy run. I found that I could just about maintain my fitness if I ran three times a week, but that I had to run four or five times a week if I wanted to improve either my speed or my endurance.

This summer my training routine has been complexificated by these very long walks I’ve been doing. It turns out that I need about two days to recover from a walk that pushes beyond the farthest I’ve ever walked before. Adding a long walk and one or two recovery days to my usual schedule pushes it out to a 9 or 10 day cycle, instead of a 7-day cycle.

The obvious thing to do would be to create a 9-day cycle—something like this: long walk, rest day, easy run, easy run, long run, rest day, easy run, fast run, rest day. One obstacle to that is that the various tracking tools I’m aware of all provide summaries for weekly periods, not for 9-dayly periods. (If you know of an exercise tracking tool that can produce useful summaries for training cycles of arbitrary length, let me know.)

So, I’m just winging it as far as a training schedule goes. Since it became clear that we wouldn’t get to Kalamazoo for the Kal-Haven trail walk this summer (we’re now hoping to do it next summer), we’ve eased up a bit on lengthening our very long walks, although we’re still planning to do 17 miles shortly. At these distances, it seems like doing each “even longer” walk ought to happen only every other week (with the long walk on the alternate weeks being comfortably within our established capability).

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Last week I was perhaps a mile into a short run when I felt a sudden, sharp pain in my right calf. It hurt quite a bit, and hurt more on each of the two steps it took me to come to a stop without falling down.

My brother likes to say, “Running is great exercise between injuries.”

I’ve had pretty good luck with injuries. I did get hurt the first time I took up running, back in 1992. When I pushed my long run up to 6 miles, so I could run in the Allerton Park Trail Run, I upped the distance too quickly, irritating my Achilles tendon. It took over a year to heal completely, and by then I was no longer a runner.

I’ve taken up running several times since then, without injuring myself. When I gave up running those times it was simply because winter came and I couldn’t make myself spend enough time on the treadmill to stay in shape. Spring would come and I was no longer a runner. Some years I managed to get back into running shape. Other years I didn’t.

After I hobbled back home, I did a good bit of internet reading about strained calf muscles. The injury is most often caused by sudden changes in direction, such as in racket sports. My scenario is the second most common: even a very easy run, when the muscle is tired—I had walked 16 miles the day before.

I rested and iced the calf, and it got a lot better right away. By the second day after the injury it didn’t hurt to walk, I was able to lift weights (skipping calf raises), and I was able to teach my tai chi class without pain. After another couple of days, I was able to walk five miles without discomfort. Once the initial pain and swelling had passed, I’d been doing some massage of the injured spot, trying to minimize the adhesions that seem to be a problem for some runners with recurring calf injuries, and that had reached the point of being pain-free as well.

That all misled me into thinking it was more healed than it turned out to be.

On the fifth day after the injury I tried to go for a very short run, just to see if it was going to be okay. And it was. I ran a few blocks—maybe a quarter of a mile—and then back again, all without pain. Then, when I tried to turn onto my street: ouch.

That reinjury seems to be even more minor. A day of rest and icing and I think I’m back to normal as far a non-running activity goes.

Today I’ll try a mediumish walk, going 2 or 3 miles to lunch, with the option to switch to the bus if my calf hurts along the way. If it’s not sore at all after lunch, maybe I’ll walk home as well.

One of the web pages I read about calf muscle injuries said that after 10 days, scar tissue is as strong as muscle tissue. I’ll hold off on more attempts at running until 10 days after the original injury, and I’ll make sure there’s a day of rest after any other strenuous activity before my next run.

Then we’ll see.

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I’ve been tracking my resting heart rate. As you become more fit, your heart becomes able to pump more blood with each beat, so most people will see their resting heart rate decline with training. Fitness books suggest that there are other insights to be gleaned as well—an unexpected jump in resting heart rate may be a sign of overtraining, for example.

It’s only true in general; it doesn’t mean anything to compare resting heart rates across individuals. But I’m one of those who does see a strong effect, so it’s been fun to watch my resting heart rate decline. It’s up in the low 70s when I’m out of shape, drops into the 60s pretty quickly after I start getting some regular aerobic exercise, then gradually declines into the low 50s.

Yesterday, though, my resting heart rate was 49. Since my resting heart rate tends to get stuck in the low 50s, that was fun to see. It’s also a pretty good indication that I’m recovered from Monday’s long run.

Just two weeks to the winter solstice, so just four weeks until the days are again as long as they are now. Then things start getting better. That provides a ray of hope as I stick with the treadmill running.