Running Notes by HJL

Well, this year’s marathon training cycle for Big Sur has gone fairly miserably. Regardless, I look forward to running this Sunday. Big Sur is a hilly, but scenic course. Part of the reason I like it is because it’s simply a nice place to run, and the road along the ocean shore is closed only once a year to hold the marathon.

Since training hasn’t really gone as I’d planned, it’s time to assess where we are and come up with a plan to match.

Some shortcomings:
- Breathing and HR are still behaving strangely. The symptoms haven’t gotten worse, but haven’t gone away either.
- Weekly mileage maxed out in the low 40’s instead of low 70’s. Average in the high 20s to mid 30s, vs mid 40s to mid 50s. This is partly due to running slower paces, but I’ve also logged fewer hours on this training cycle.
- Longest runs in the low teens, no 20+ mile runs. Normally I would like to have logged 3 or more.
- Relatively little LT pace training compared to previous training cycles. This is partly related to the mysterious breathing problem, since I limited LT and anerobic training for a while, in the interest of being cautious while seeing how my body is behaving.
- Difficulty getting my mental game together this time around for training at what feel like really slow paces.

Some assets:
- This will be my 3rd time on the Big Sur course, so I have pretty detailed knowledge of the various hills that don’t show on the elevation profile.
- No major joint or muscle problems, partly because I haven’t trained that hard.
- No observed problems breathing while inactive, or at easy aerobic paces. Performance has been pretty consistent with running at altitude, or reduced O2 intake.
- I have no particular time goal, and am willing to DNF if something blows up.
- I have good data from two previous runs at Big Sur, along with training logs from this time around, which give me some confidence in how my body will perform.
- Had some good 10+ mile runs while on vacation in Hawaii. It’s much easier to focus on running without other things going on in the day.

Recent paces:
Aerobic: Most of my easy mileage has been at 10:00 pace, versus previous cycles at 9:00 or even 8:30 pace.
LT: I’m able to hold 8:00 for over an hour, versus something inside 7:30 or perhaps 7:15 at this time last year.
Anaerobic: Not useful for marathons, but I tried cranking up the treadmill and I can still turn over at 5:30 pace, just not for more than a minute or so. This is consistent with my theory that my performance is mostly O2-uptake limited right now.
VDOT: Being able to hold 8:00 pace for an hour+ (i.e. at or below LT) puts me at around VDOT 40, but I am also undertrained at longer distances. VDOT 34 corresponds to a MP of 10:00, which matches my comfortable training pace, so that gives me a range to think about.

Plan:
Run at 10:00 or whatever pace feels very easy. Don’t expect any problems in the first half, through Hurricane Point and Bixby Bridge. I usually find the hills around mile 19-22 mentally challenging, but at this point I know where and when to expect them. Will keep an eye on the HRM and see if anything strange is going on, in particular if I’m at an unexpectedly high HR. During training I have found it pretty easy to accidentally end up at a higher HR than I want, presumably because of the reduced O2 intake, and corresponding reduced outgoing CO2 rates. It’s also likely that I’m going to have a more difficult time after 3 hours / 18 miles or so, due to being underconditioned for longer runs, but it probably helps that I’ve maintained a base of 25-30 miles weekly for the past few years now.

Goals:
Primary goal: finish comfortably in around 4:30 (avg pace 10:18).
Fallback: finish under 5:00. (Course closes after 6 hours. Used to be 5:30, but they apparently extended it this year.)
In general, just enjoy the run and see how things turn out. I may stop and take pictures this year, since I have absolutely no intention of beating last year’s time (3:50).

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).

1/1/2006 through 1/7/2006 totals: 24.36 miles, longest 7.36 miles.

Aside from the mysterious breathing problem, I’m still evaluating how things look for this training cycle, getting ready for Big Sur in April, and shifting back to more running and less cross training. I’ve been logging more time on the stairclimber, elliptical, and rowing machine for a while. Just trying to get into a marathon training mindset at the moment.

I find Jack Daniels’ VDOT tables useful for setting target training paces. These can also be used to identify a theoretical target time for events at different distances, based on equivalent level of effort and training. The general idea is to quantify how fast you can go for a given rate of oxygen (O2) uptake. Higher numbers are better.

Some of the physiological contributors to the training improvements:

• Increased mechanical efficiency as your form improves
• Increased heart stroke volume (chamber becomes larger and stronger)
• Increased lactate buffering capacity (lets you sustain near-anerobic pace longer)
• Increased capillarization (you develop more capillaries which get O2 in and CO2 out faster)

Unfortunately, your basic starting point is largely genetically determined, and there’s a limit how much improvement can be obtained through training.

My ability to gauge paces is slowly improving over the years, but I’m remarkably bad at “running by feel”, which is one of the reasons I tend to rely on instrumentation. I also find it difficult at times to tell how hard a “moderately hard” level of effort is, which is where a heart rate monitor can be useful.

Right now, it seems that I’m getting less oxygen in than normal. I’m guessing that my present state is around VDOT 35, based on an 8:00 mile. I’m currently running no faster than 9:00 pace for daily runs, and am mostly going slower than that to stay in the middle of aerobic training range. In comparison, last spring I was in the vicinity of VDOT 46, based on a 6:15 mile pace.

The big question mark at the moment is whether or not I’m going to be breathing properly reasonably soon. During the first few weeks of the training cycle I usually just try to build up the mileage and don’t worry about speed at all, so it doesn’t make much difference yet. I’m not too excited about actually running the event in this condition though.

There is a much longer discussion of the VDOT model in Jack Daniels’ Running Formula, which I highly recommend.