Running Notes by HJL

The temperature and wind forecast looks promising, 48F, no rain, and 7MPH wind at 6am, and 61F forecast for noon. Looks like we may have a little fog tomorrow. I drove the course this afternoon to refresh my memory and help prepare for tomorrow’s run. There was an interesting combination of thick fog at ground level and blue skies a few hundred feet above, with wisps of fog curling around the boundary between air coming from the ocean and warmer air coming from the adjacent coastal land.

I’ve been fairly casual this time around, compared with previous marathon training cycles. This will be my 4th outing at Big Sur, and I’m basically just planning to enjoy the run, probably something around 4:30 or even 5:00ish, depending on the weather and how interested I get in taking photos. I took a lot of notes and did a lot of planning the first couple of times on the course, but this time I’m relying more on past experience and being able to look back at previous runs there.

Looks like I’ve averaged something like 35-40 miles per week since the start of 2007 on this training cycle. The graph is slightly misleading as I’ve also been coaching my daughter’s soccer team for the past few months, and other activities which I don’t try to log, but in general I’m running at slower paces than a couple of years ago which tends to hold down the weekly mileage. This training cycle has been pretty similar to last year’s.

I still haven’t gotten any constructive resolution of my “mysterious breathing problem“, other than it’s not life-threatening, and my lung function is still testing in a “healthy normal” range. I find it psychologically challenging, though, in that I always feel like I’m working harder than the pace I’m actually running, i.e. it “feels” like I’m running 30-45 seconds/mile faster, based on my level of effort and heart rate from a couple of years ago.

This year I actually did log a single 20 mile run (versus last year’s zero 20+ runs) although I don’t feel that it’s making me any more prepared at this point. I generally try to stay at 3 hours or less for training runs, and I simply don’t go as far in a given block of time on my current (slower) paces. While we were on vacation in Maui a couple of weeks ago, I had the luxury of extra time and nice scenery, so I got in 10-12 miles along the ocean, several days in a row, and in relatively higher temperatures than I expect to see on Sunday.

The current forecast for Carmel this Sunday says 64 hi /51 low, partly cloudy, 10% chance of rain. A few degrees cooler, and that’s nearly ideal weather for the marathon.

Views like these are basically why I run at Big Sur:

I logged 20 miles on the treadmill at the gym yesterday, which will be my last long run before Big Sur at the end of the month. I did the whole run at 9:00 pace, with a water/bathroom/gel break at each hour. I think I’m going to plan for a little slower than that on the course, though. I did 16+ at 9:30-10:00 pace a couple of weeks ago during vacation in Maui where it was scenic, but around 80 degrees by the time I finished. Wasn’t planning on putting in 20 miles yesterday, but it was raining a little which got me to run in the gym instead of outside, then I figured I’d just run for 3 hours instead of 2+. I also started on the treadmill at about the same time as Waterworld started playing. It’s a relatively long movie which I’ve seen in bits and pieces, never had sufficient interest to rent it but interested enough to keep it tuned in instead of my usual treadmill fare of SpongeBob on the video screen while I listen to my own music on headphones.

I didn’t prep as thoroughly for yesterday’s run as I might have otherwise, as I didn’t originally plan to go that far. I discovered a few sunburned spots that got chafed at 3 hours that have been ok at 2 hours running time. I also didn’t trim back my toenails beforehand, so I have some blistering around one of them, which may end up falling off. No carb loading, so I ended up a little tired and hungry all day yesterday and today. On the plus side, no cramping, no joint or muscle problems, no blistering except around the slightly long toenail. The Hurricane 9’s have been OK during the long runs on this training cycle, although I would like just a little more forefoot cushioning / support. I guess I still like the Hurricane 5’s better, if only they still made them.

I’m still having problems getting my the Timex HRM strap working lately. It doesn’t give sane readings on the new Bodylink watch I got to replace the old one, and I get bogus data in the data recorder as well. So no nice charts and graphs. I may try doing one more round of changing all the batteries before I completely give up on it. It hasn’t really been useful since I ran Big Sur last year, I didn’t even bother bringing it on vacation to Hawaii. Using the old fashioned method of counting heartbeats, I ended the 3 hour run at about HR 164.

I’ve been putting it off, but it’s the end of January and tomorrow the registration fee for this year’s Big Sur Marathon goes up by $10.

I’m a bit ambivalent about it, mostly because I still haven’t found a solution to my ongoing mysterious breathing problems, and I’m not too excited about the resulting slow paces.

On the positive side, I logged a 10 mile run this weekend at 9:00 pace without any problems. I remembered to find the Vanilla Gu from the pile of last year’s training stuff in the drawer. Popped one at about 60 minutes. Wasn’t quite as sleepy afterwards as the week before without it, although my conditioning is probably improving slightly from week to week.

As I’ve written earlier, this year I wrote off my initial time goals due to training issues, so I decided to just enjoy the run and take some photos along the way.

I’ve posted these and a few more photos from the 2006 Big Sur Marathon in my Flickr account.

Logged another long run with hill intervals today, increasing the pace from 10:00 to 9:30 but staying with the 5% incline. The faster pace appears to have resulted in a 5-8 point increase in HR during the steady state portion of the run, ending up at around 145 compared with around 139. This is the longest run on this cycle

One of the reasons I like using the heart rate monitor and data recorder is to get a quantitative view of how training is going. The hill interval portion of the graph is more interesting to look at. Part of what I’m after at the moment is to get a better sense of what my current LT (lactate threshold) pace is.

One of the objectives for longer interval training is to improve the body’s ability to function in the presence of lactate. The higher level of effort raises the body’s energy demand beyond what can be generated through primarily aerobic metabolism, and the anaerobic systems become more important. The body’s aerobic energy systems are much more efficient than the anaerobic systems, but have a limited rate of energy release. Training for endurance sports, such as marathons or triathlons, focus on developing the body’s cardiovascular system to increase its aerobic capacity, and also on increasing the lactate threshold, which allows sustained physical effort at a higher, partially anaerobic level.

During incline or pace intervals, you’re moving the body’s energy production in and out of mostly aerobic and mostly anaerobic modes. It is important to select levels of effort that allow recovery to an aerobic effort and also pushes into the anerobic range, but without requiring one to stop. If you simply continued at an anaerobic level of effort, you’d have to stop fairly soon, but an interval workout allows you to spend more time training at a useful level of effort. The first few intervals typically feel easier than the last ones, but the goal is to find the level of effort is difficult but can be maintained. I usually try to do at least 3 repetitions.

The adaptation we’re after is an improvement in the body’s ability to buffer lactic acid. This increases the sustainable level of energy output for longer distances. If you spend too much time too anaerobic during an endurance event, you typically exhaust the readily available glycogen (”hitting the wall”, “bonking”) which is unpleasant and dramatically reduces the energy available to skeletal muscles. The LT pace corresponds to a level of effort that is faster than comfortable, can be sustained for an extended period of time (an hour or more), and if exceeded, would quickly require that you slow down to recover from O2 debt.

Part of my current planning challenge for this year’s Big Sur Marathon is that my physiological performance is very different (worse) than where it’s been over the past few years, so I don’t have a good sense of what my sustainable paces actually are. I also don’t have a clear sense of the root cause, other than some test data showing that my breathing is slightly off.

Based on today’s data, it also looks like I can hold 9:30 pace without any problems for two hours. The HR graph isn’t trending up, either, so I may already be able to manage 9:00 pace for two hours, especially if I’m not starting off with hills.

On this training cycle, so far I’m not having any sore muscles. All of my training issues (other than not breathing well) have been with mental fatigue and elevated HR. At my current level of O2 intake, I don’t think I’m pushing the muscles very hard. We’ll see what happens with longer runs and faster paces. Although allergy season is starting, I think the medication is helping more than the allergies are hurting.

Today I ran a set of hill intervals on the treadmill. I like running intervals on the treadmill since everything is completely repeatable and doesn’t depend on my ability to manage pace and effort. The data from the heart rate monitor is also relatively interesting to look at afterwards.

This is the first set of intervals I’ve run on this training cycle. I find it psychologically helpful to complete at least 2 miles of 5% incline (today I did 3 miles) on a hill day, as this roughly corresponds to the ascent at Hurricane Point, the longest hill on the Big Sur Marathon course.

I normally run my intervals for 5 minute duration, rather than by distance. For hill interval days, I pick an “easy” pace and only change the incline between 0% and something between 5% and 8%. Whether it’s hill intervals or pace intervals, I normally try to keep a fixed level of effort for each rep. A 5% incline seemed to work out ok today. Unfortunately, at the moment, my “easy” pace is around 10:00 instead of 9:00 or 8:30. Today that put my HR at around 135-140, while the last couple of hill intervals ended up close to 170.

I’m still baffled by my elevated HR compared with log data from past years, but at least I’m continuing to make progress on this training cycle.

In the Hong Kong Standard:

Heavy air pollution and a record number of participants were blamed for 22 runners being taken to hospital - two in critical condition - during the Standard Chartered Hong Kong Marathon.
…
The Environmental Protection Department said the roadside air pollution index was “very high,” ranging from 124 to 149.

The air is probably better if you get away from the major cities, but in Hong Kong, Beijing, and Shanghai, the air is pretty bad a lot of the time, not what you’d want for a long run. I usually stick to the hotel treadmill while travelling in a lot of Asian cities because of the smog.

Went to MetroSports today for their 1-day, 20% off sale to pick up replacements for my current shoes. The place was packed — apparently runners aren’t as focused on the Super Bowl and related festivities as much as some. I ended up with a pair of Saucony Hurricane 7’s and ASICS GT-2110’s.

I’ve been running in Hurricane 5’s and GT-2100s for a while. The Hurricane 5’s have worked well for me and I didn’t like the feel of the Hurricane 6 (too narrow or something) when I tried them on a couple of years ago, so I didn’t go with the update back then. Fortunately, the older shoes are still available on the internet (Road Runner Sports, etc), even though they’re sort of discontinued.

The Hurricane 7 has been out for a while and is about to be replaced with the Hurricane 8, so the 7’s are already being discounted. I’m not too concerned with getting the latest and greatest version of the shoe, but I’m not sure how long the 5’s will continue to be available. The 7’s seem to fit better than the 6’s, so I’m giving them a try. I’d like to find a current production version that works for me.

The GT-2110 is nearly indistinguishable from the GT-2100. Trying it on at the store, I can’t really tell the difference, so it appears to be essentially the same shoe.

The Hurricane 5’s were the shoes I selected when I first started running a few years ago. I wanted something with adequate support and cushioning to help avoid injury as I increased mileage. At the time I was 30+ pounds heavier and had much worse running mechanics, so I wanted fairly robust shoes. As my running has improved, I’ve gotten lighter and my mechanics have become more efficient and I don’t land as hard, so the shoes have lasted longer.

I started running in the GT-2100’s about a year ago, to see if a slightly lighter shoe would work for my improved running form. I like them, but have found that I start getting achy joints if I run exclusively with them after more than a couple hundred miles of wear.

Since starting running, I now own the most shoes I have ever had in my entire life. I typically get something like 300-500 miles out of each pair, after which they’re only used cautiously for shorter runs or retired for use for daily walking around. I ran one pair of Hurricane 5’s up to around 700 miles, but I think that precipitated a minor injury so I didn’t try it again. Shoes are cheap compared with medical treatment.

I find it a little strange to have so many pairs of running shoes which appear to be in good shape but which are too worn out for me to run in safely. I’ve been experimenting with aftermarket insoles such as SofSole and SuperFeet, but they’re a little heavy. They do seem to extend the useful life of the shoes once the midsoles are starting to wear out, though.

At the moment I’m still evaluating how things are going, but assuming things stay on track for Big Sur, I’d probably like to run in shoes with more than 100 and less than 200 miles on them. Last year I ran in the GT-2100’s, the year before in the Hurricane 5’s. Lighter is better, except I may end up going a lot slower this year if I can’t breathe very well, in which case having more support under my feet for the longer duration would be a good thing.

Continuing to cautiously ramp up mileage and longer runs. The heart rate monitor is returning better data now, after a new battery. Yesterday I logged 9.5 miles on the treadmill, at 9:00 pace. Taking out the warmup and cooldown, the HR data for the middle 80 minutes looks substantially better than a similar run a few weeks ago. I’m still starting out 10 points higher than my 2005 baseline, but I’m not getting the steeply increasing heart rate anymore, and it seems to be tracking about 10 points higher than the baseline all the way out now.

Some of the improvement is just adaptation to having resumed longer runs, but I’m starting to get some improvement in my breathing. It still doesn’t feel great, but it’s definitely not as bad as last month, and I’ve also stopped having random episodes of feeling out of breath while sitting at the computer.

It’s hard to gauge my current conditioning right now, but having the flatter, if elevated HR curves, is encouraging. I may try resuming a little bit of hill and T pace training if things stay like this, working from whatever VDOT seems to fit. The fallback plan will be to just continue on base building.

My goals for Big Sur emphasize having an enjoyable run, as opposed to going as fast as possible, although I’m still holding out hope for improvement over last year’s time (3:50:34). Last year I got beat by a 70-year-old (who turned out to be George Hirsch, founding publisher of Runners World).