Lucho chronicles

As I have stated here before, Lucho and I have been having a long conversation regarding training.  More specifically, my training and how to best accomplish the goals that I have.  I am going to try to summarize that conversation here.  It is not really easy, as Lucho and I have easily exchanged well over a hundred mails on this topic.  I had Lucho read this before I posted it, and he provided a few clarifying points that I have pasted at the end.

First and foremost, I need to thank Tim for discussing this with me.  Tim can come across as a pretty blunt guy and I think that turns some folks off.  I welcome his take, because I am not offended by his direct nature and more importantly behind it, regardless if you agree with the message or its delivery, is clearly a passion to see folks improve.

LUCHO’s BASICS

So, I think I’d summarize the back and forth conversation between Tim and myself below.  It is a summary.  With all that email, we have talked about a lot of things that are fundamental to training and performance success but that I don’t really get into here (for example, hydration).  That said, this is still a pretty lengthy post …  

1.)  Lucho strongly believes in deep and extensive development of the aerobic system first.  This aerobic development is the base or the foundation that other fitness (anaerobic) can be built on.  If you do not have a strong aerobic base, the amount of fitness you can demonstrate (performance) will also be limited.  Development of an aerobic base is done with with lots of easy running.  Specifically in my case, Lucho and I have targeted runs at the 140-150 heart beats per minute range as the level of effort tied to this aerobic development.  
2.)  Running at this HR does not specify a pace directly, but rather a level of effort  or intensity (easy).  Of course, if you are running at this HR, that translates to a pace, but the HR is what is prescribed, not the pace.   This pace might be slow,or  this pace might be fast – but that is all relative to a set HR.  For Lucho, running at this HR / intensity yields a pace of sub six minutes per mile right now (at Boulder like elevations, on flat surfaces) and a pace for me of 8 minutes per mile.  The thought here is that training

at this intensity will over time with appropriate volume trains the aerobic system to be running at faster paces at the same level of effort.

 

3.)  Running at this level of effort (intensity) teaches the body to utilize fat as fuel instead of glycogen.  Glycogen, which is used at higher levels of effort is limited in is availability, and generally we can only stored about 2 hours of this fuel.    Running at faster levels of effort teaches the body instead to use glycogen (Lucho calls this “burning matches”) and hinders the body to learn (train) to use fat instead.  Effectively this limits the aerobic development and detrains that system – also called by some “eroding the base.”

4.)  The thought here is this:  if you have two athletes running at the same pace of six minutes a mile and one is at 150 bpm and the other is at 170bpm, then which one is better equipped to pick up the pace and perform better – particularly in the latter stages of a marathon?  Obviously it would be the first of the two, as that athlete is further beneath maximal efforts than the second.

All this leads Lucho to this diagnosis of my fitness:  I am aerobically weak.  I am training at intensities that are too high too often and have effectively little comparative aerobic fitness.  If I spent more time training aerobically, I’d increase my fitness and would be better able to perform.  My training at higher intensities (working harder) is actually doing the opposite of what I am trying to achieve:  it is making me slower.

Lucho’s approach does not really stop there.  It extends into latter phases of training once the aerobic system is fully developed (demonstrated by showing a plateau in the pace run at the same intensity for some period of time).  Then higher intensity (higher HR) efforts are included, reflective of goal race and goal pace.  This could be the classic tempo run for the 10k runner, or for a marathoner, it could be a progression run starting with 10 miles easy, 5 miles at 10 seconds slower than marathon goal pace and then five miles at goal pace (if the athlete was ready for that).  For me, it could be long run finishing a 18 mile run uphill at goal pace / effort for something like Pikes.

MY HISTORY 

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Okay, my approach has generally been a.) based on perceived efforts (versus those measured by a HR monitor), b,) believing that I need to train different systems continuously throughout the year.  This means long easy efforts, climbing efforts, short hard efforts, tempo runs, intervals – effectively varying intensity.

 

 

I generally agree with what Lucho is saying but struggle with it on a few fronts.  The struggle is really  based on my experiences over the last 25 years of running – but that does not mean that I am right.

1.)  To get fit (fast) my training has always been basically built on four things:  run a good amount of mileage, run a tempo run each week, run intervals each week, and do a long run each week.  There are details to each of these of course, and it each has been modified over time (or even within a season) as goals (races) have changed but this has been the basic approach.  Simple.  Not easy.  It means getting out there probably every day.  It means making your teeth sweat during intervals.  It has meant in preparation for a race like Pikes also adding elements of running up and down hills and altitude training within those four elements.

Like I said, simple.  You do the training and the results will come.   But sometimes it does not.  I’d be remiss if I did not note that my 10k times have slowed by two minutes over the last two years.  My general speed as measured in the 200 striders has also slowed by 2-4 seconds.  My take on that has been that I have been doing too much mountain running – or running at speeds that are too slow (but pretty intense).   Some have proposed this is simply age, and there might be some truth to that, but the decline seems to drastic for me to accept that.

 

Part of this approach is based on what I have seen pretty much since I started running in high school (I was running before that too, but this is when it became more of a formal activity).  I see it still today.  Sure, folks have phases or periods of development, where they increase their mileage, “build their base” – but I think every runner I know is mixing the engagement of energy systems and intensities to some degree year round.  And generally, it seems to work.  There are some, in fact who seem to thrive off of intense running year round  A LOT.

2.)  I have also believed that to some extent my success at longer distances has had some correlation to my success at shorter distances.   When I could run a mile well, it translated well to a 5k.  And a decent 5k meant better success at a 10k.  I know that it is not an absolute direct translation (folks love to speculate what Michael Johnson could have done for the 800 with his 43 four hundred meter speed … or what a miler could do for a marathon) but there is some truth there.  If you can only run six minutes for the mile, you are not going to run twenty six of them consecutively at that pace.  When I ran Pikes in 2006 in 2:37 and change, I had run a 4:50 mile earlier that summer.  Neither time is zippy but the mile was a few handfuls within my best, and that Ascent remains my best.

SOME CONCLUSIONS?

Lucho’s response to these is pretty simple.  a.) How one performs at the marathon distance is less dependent on their performances at shorter distances than I like to think. b.)   all I need to do is look at my results over the last two years to determine if my classic approach is still working. c.) PE (perceived effort) is too subjective to measure.

Simple.  But not easy (to unravel 25 years of thinking).  And this is where Tim drives a great question:  is that thinking and approach still working?  Given the latest results I have had, and the decline in performance … not so much.

So where does that leave me in what I am thinking?  I am less than 2 months away from my goal race when I write this and Lucho has told me I need to focus on my weakness:  aerobic strength, teaching my body to utilize fat as fuel, lengthy runs that build.  Train long, train at an easier intensity. 

And I agree with that, but I cannot get my head free of feeling the need to run at a high intensity to be ready to race at a high intensity.  I think out of frustration in my stubbornness he has conceded a hard run a week (but put that in context of the hard stuffing being at the tail of a longer effort).  

I have also wondered how much this approach is a time investment.  Ideally I’d be training 12-14 hours a week with running (and perhaps a few more with other supplemental activities, like core, etc).  I get in about 10 hours a week, but it is often split up in smaller chunks of time (because of work, life, family, etc).  I think to maximize this aerobic development approach you not only need to increase your volume (safely, over time), but you need to make investments in bigger chunks of time.   If I could be getting in 10 hours a week, I think ideally 40% of that would come in 2 runs.  That would be a shift for me.  

And so I wonder …  If you only have 1 hour a week to train as a “far end” example, I think one gets better gains with an higher intensity approach.  But as that volume increases, a higher and higher percentage of it probably ought to be spent at lesser intensities.  I clearly get that, but I struggle with thinking that the mix for a 10 hour a week guy 2 months out of a goal race ought not let his HR get above 150 for the next four weeks.

And … the other part of this struggle is HILLS.  I am training for a hill race.  In watching my HR much more closely over the last three weeks, I have noticed how reactive my HR is to running up hills.  The HR will jump up quickly going up a hill, while the pace slows incredibly, and the PE becomes incredibly small.  Unfortunately, the converse is not true to the same degree.  HR drops on down hills, but the pace and PE seems need to be quickened greatly to keep the bugger up. 

Lucho proposes WALKING up the hill to keep my HR in check.  I have a real hard time with this.  Walking up a hill represents a mental break down, a weakness, a failure of the system.  I fear that by engaging in this practice in training, it promotes that as a weakness that could translate in a race.  After the Ascent in ‘06 I was shocked at how much I had walked.  I felt broken.  I felt a strong need to overcome that weakness.  There are still points where I walk up hills but I fight it.   I felt in the PPA last year, I was able to mentally get over that hump more than I ever had before (I think the weather sort of incented that a bit)

Finally, there are some days, when I just want to go.  Maybe it is a beautiful day, maybe it is a run with JV up some mountain, maybe it is something else.  This part has made me really question on how focused I am on a said goal versus the moment.  Call it the short term desire versus the long term reward discussion that so many of us have.

 

WHAT NEXT?

Post Mount Washington, I am going to really try to … keep things at the prescribed intensity for most (nearly all) runs, but with two runs where the intensity builds post an hour, or longer.  No intervals.  No tempo runs out of the door.

Otherwise, doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is just insane.  Right? 

 

LUCHO’S CLARFICATIONS

A few points I would maybe want to clarify...
It's "striking matches" and it's a term used in cycling.
When I propose walking up hills in the early part of aerobic training, this is done so you WON"T have to in the race. Remember that the pace increase as your aerobic strength grows. So maybe in the first 2-3 weeks you do have to walk an 18% grade. But then maybe on that 4th week you don't and your HR is still low. Then after 8 weeks you are running strong up the hill at the lower HR. As you get stronger you simply get stronger. I used to have to walk even smaller hills up here. Now I can literally push up the hills.
The low HR range might be "easy" to start. But it gets harder. So saying that you are running "easy" is a misnomer. To me, easy is a recovery run at HR 125. MAF (for lack of  a better term) is actually metabolically strong. The HR correlates closely to what you need to hold at Pikes, that's if you have the proper aerobic fitness. I think using terms describing both PE and HR simultaneously become misleading. HR ranges that I talk about are descriptive of metabolism and fuel usage. PE is descriptive of effort which has nothing to do with actual physiology. Kind of confusing. In other words- if I told a runner to simply run "easy" they may never elevate their effort to a high enough range, or a weaker runner will run too hard.