I Am Curious Endurance

Truth! Beware of Dunning-Kruger!

Let’s talk about zones. Pace, heart rate, and lactate zones. There is a huge disparity of them and you need to be cognizant of this. When I got serious about running I trained by traditional HR zones, my Max HR has been about 174 for the last 13 years when I was 48. My last lactate threshold HR (ave HR you can hold for 60min) was about 160 BPM. Before Western States I could run a 22:00 5K. Now it’s hard for me to run a 23:00 5K. The common theory is keep 80
% of you training in easy zone and that’s what I’ve typically followed, I’ve gotten slower, and yes that could be age catching up with me, or gaining 15 lbs. But that’s not the point. Traditional HR zones tell me my Zone1/Zone 2 transition is a HR of 113 BPM and top of Z2 is 131. Joe Friel says my Z1/Z2 transition should be 136 BPM based on my LTHR. Phil Maffetone says my MAF or Z1/Z2 transition should be 180-my age+5 which is 124 BPM. The equivalent training VDot guide from Jack Daniels says my easy paces should be 9:03-9:57. So much disparity in what easy should be! There is a big new trend in coaching to look at metabolic function to set HR zones and paces. So I thought I’d try it out. The thought is that 80% or your training should be at lactate levels of 2Mmol/L and more threshold work just below 4Mmol/L. Today I tested my blood lactate level running at 130 BPM, faster than what Daniels said easy should be, slightly slower than what Friel HR zones said I should be at, Way harder than what traditional HR zones say I should be at, and a bit harder then what Maffetone would say I should run. But I ran way slower and easier than 2mmol/L (LT1 where 80% of your training should be) I was actually at 1.44 Mmol/L (when you do conversion from mg/dL). My easy is about to get harder and faster. When I get more test strips in I’ll do the next test, curious where is my LT2 is. The take away is there is big disparity in training models. We only have so many years in our life to blindly trust one training philosophy.

Running for 29+ hours will jack you up! 10 days before I was able to run a 5k at steady state pace of 7:20/ mi, 5 weeks after I’m running 5K’s at 7:30 pace with my HR near max. Not only do you get muscle and joint damage, but your endocrine, central nervous, and metabolic systems get damaged as well. I’ve been listening to a few podcasts related to training at certain lactate thresholds. 2Mmol or less for 80% of your training, and then lots of threshold training just under 4Mmol( the now popular Norwegian method) While Daniels and McMillan pace tables that most new coaches are taught to use work fine in a generalized sense, each individual is different. I’ve been in a decline I blamed on weight and age. But perhaps my easy is too easy (I do 80% at my Z1 or lower 130 BPM)), have done plenty of speed work for the central nervous system, and threshold paces to develop my lactate clearance, but all based on the paces and heart rates prescribed in the online coaching classes. I’m curious so I just bought a blood lactate tester to see what my levels are at what I thought was MAF(Z1/Z2 level) and what my lactate levels are at my supposed marathon and anaerobic threshold paces. I’m excited to transition to this training protocol as I complete the in the next half year and will share the journey. If you are interested in the lactate testing subject check out the last podcast with .

One hour slower than 4 years ago. Yes I could have shaved more time off at aid stations and potty breaks. I’m just learning how to deal with this mental side, when you get older you are rarely going to be as fast as you used to be. I giggle a bit when I see younger coaches giving workouts to their older athletes that they have absolutely no chance of accomplishing because they just don’t know and don’t care to know.

The latest podcast on the CTS Podcast is about training and mental health. I listened to it twice this week and have shared it with several friends. We are all going thru a tough time lately and psychologically first you need to establish physical safety, i did that running on a familiar trail this morning that i have moved a long way from , #2 is you need psychological safety, I did that by starting my run with a couple of Ft Worth friends just getting into trail running, after an hour they turned back, and I noticed there was a MTB race being staged, and of course my Leadville buddies were racing it. And I went out and had an awesome 3 x 20min workout, just knowing those guys were all on the trail for me. It wasn’t the plan that made it a great workout, it was knowing I was physically and psychologically safe on the trail to get in a good workout. And that’s something to think about when you reflect on your good and bad workouts.

Saturday I’m running the Hoka One One Bandera 100k. Last year I ran it with friends with a lingering knee injury from running R2R2R in the Grand Canyon, my knee pain became bad after 18 miles and I dropped after the first 50k. The last few years it’s been injuries that have caused me to DNF and with My dream race coming in June, I’m just using this as a test. My last post showed the results of my metabolic efficiency so theoretically I know how many calories to take in per hour and at what average heart rates I should be running at. That is one of the ceilings I’ll be running at. Last weekend I ran 34 miles of roads to see how my body held up and I had no major issues other than sore feet. The 60 year old male record at Bandera is 13 hours, I know someone that ran a 12:34 and have stalked her pace data on Strava. And now I have a plan, for nutrition and hydration, for average cumulative pace thru every aid station, I have a heart rate cap because I can only take in so many calories in an hour, and I know I can pull the plug at anytime because this is not my “A” race, I need to be healthy to be ready for Western States.

As we age our metabolism slows down, I’ve been having a hard time getting back down to my racing weight because of this. The Friday before I ran I was tested by for my metabolic efficiency point. I learned the next day I was very lucky and received a spot in . I read a blog post by Andrew Skurka about this testing and that’s why I had it done(google “Andrew Skurka metabolic efficiency “ if you are interested). I was surprised how low my crossover point of burning carbs to fat was, at a HR around 121 bpm. I was expecting it to be at 131 BPM, my calculated MAF or Aerobic threshold from my 174 BPM max heart rate. I want to move that cross over point further to the right so I am slowing down my training to make my easy efforts a lot more easy. This will still help build my aerobic fitness like i was running at my aerobic threshold. I’m also starting to use a .me to help me become more metabolically efficient. says 75% of metabolic improvements comes from diet and 25% from training. So far I’ve been waking up in the morning with a 3 or 4 score which means I’m still burning carbs when I wake. The goal is to get that down to a 1 or two where you are burning mostly fat in the morning. 6 months from my dream race! I’ll update after my next test.

The lesson learned: if you detect an injury coming on, just run easy. The taper! Never fail I always have little niggles during the two weeks before a marathon. I put about 800 miles on the two pair of Endorphin Speed’s during this training block with know issues. I fell for the hype the of carbon plated shoes and bought the Endorphin Pros and started mixing them in during my long runs and tempo workouts because my plan was to race in these shoes. After running in them I started noticing soreness at the bottom of my Achilles. I’d switch back to the Speeds and didn’t have the soreness. As is true with most injuries, it just takes one two many reps or miles to push you over the edge. That happened on the last 1k at 10k pace during my last sharpening workout 4 days before Boston. Hindsight is 20/20, I should have just run easy that last week, you don’t develop any new fitness in two weeks, I knew I had a potential issue because of the soreness but my stubbornness made me want to kill the workout for my own confidence.

Wisdom post: I’d be fibbing if I said I wasn’t disappointed in my Boston time Monday. 3:38 is not a bad time for a 60 year old but based on my training I set my expectations on sub 3:25 because that’s what doing 22 mile long runs at sub 8:00 pace told me from 38 marathons or ultras of experience. I knew this wasn’t going to be a great day after the first three miles, I’ve had lots of rough starts but they usually work out after three miles. It was warmer and more humid than I expected, I never got that spring in my step, my Achilles/PF got progressively worse, it could have been a miserable day. But as Boston always does, and most people aren’t aware of it, it reinforces the power of the smile. Smiling always gets you out of those dark places, when your confidence in your training is shot, when mentally you know you aren’t going to meet your expectations, when physically your foot is on fire because you were stupid in the last two weeks before your race ( more on that in the next post). But this Boston race is the only one I know of that has all the factors there to remind you the power of smiling. When you see friends at the start and on the course, when you see Santa , Big Bird, the Mandalorian on the course. During this race I had a lot of times when I was really hurting, and I thought just smile, and everything got better each time I did. I kind of thought that in the past, but at this race I practiced it so many times and I can attest, the smile is very powerful for getting thru rough patches.

Just thought I’d share my last two big weeks before I start the taper for Boston. From my past experience I know 60 miles per week is where I start riding the edge of injury. This is something I believe every runner needs to discover for themselves. If you can squeeze it into the schedule, what is that point your body can take before getting injured. This relates to my previous post that talks about volume being the #1 component of determining running performance. This week was all about race specificity, downhill running on Monday because Boston is a downhill course, then 25 miles of marathon pace or faster work out of the 60. That’s 41% deliberate practice near or faster than race pace, 59% easy running. The week before was about the long runs and I got a 22 miler and a 19 miler in. My deliberate pace work was quite a bit lower at 20 % of weekly mileage. Had a few knee issues earlier in the week but it was fine for today’s 5 miles at my goal marathon pace and I felt pretty good at that pace on tired legs. Time to Taper.

I ran across a post in Science of Sport that called this the most comprehensive study on running training analyzing elites vs National runners. Takeaways: 1). Weekly run volume is most important in determining an athletes performance. 2) the elites run a much higher percentage at tempo and short intervals (read that as strides at your 1 mile pace), then the Nationals do. So before you believe in the 80/20 rule it might be good to figure out what works best for you. I see so many people incorporating 30-60s reps in their training but they are running them at their 5k pace, that’s not accomplishing what the training is for, it’s not fast enough to improve the neuromuscular connection the training is for. I see a lot of athletes with very little tempo work in their weekly workouts. 2 x 20 min is the core Daniels tempo workout but so many runners never run anything hard longer than 5 minutes. In the RRCA coaching class I attended a few weeks ago the number one thing for a coach to do was look for gaps in their new athletes training. David Roche prescribes lots of short intervals at 1mile pace to his new athletes because he knows this is the biggest gap age group runners have. about what works best for you!

After Kalamazoo I had my eyes set on Leadman. Several of us planning on doing the Leadville 100 run were going to run Jemez 10 weeks before. I was planning on running the 50 miler with my friend Amy, Greg was running running the 50 K, and Michelle was injured for several weeks before the race and had dropped down to the 15miler. My knee went south after some steep running down a ski slope and I knew it wasn’t going to make it 50 miles so Amy and I dropped to the 50K and finished slowly. It was nice of her to stay back with me. Looking back I should have been aware of my knee issues that develop running downhill. After that race Michelle told me she had hired a coach, Jay Johnson, the author of Running With The Buffs. I did most of the workouts and long runs with her but also was riding my bike a lot instead of the shorter easy runs. I noticed he was prescribing fewer and easier workouts than we had done leading up to Boston. A few months later this book was published and we were basically doing the same workouts for a 100 miler that was in his marathon plan. Pretty cookie cutter. I just followed along, I did like that he pushed to make lunges and leg swings a ritual before every run, and a short strength and mobility workout after each run including lots of core work. But his plan was more about a lot of consistent easy runs and fewer workouts. He didn’t plan it for a 55 year old man, it was for a 37 year old woman.