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dan.k

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Viewing 14 replies - 1 through 14 (of 14 total)

Posted In: David Goettler On Summiting Everest Without Bottled Oxygen

  • Participant
    dan.k on July 31, 2021 at 5:28 pm · in reply to: Training during bad forest fire season #56088

    Living in Hong Kong air pollution is something that we always have to deal with (especially in winter). The wind/weather conditions are much worse for pollution here in winter and cooler temps also don’t help.

    There are an abundance of apps here for keeping track throughout the day and some of them have global aqi info (e.g. Air Matters).

    I am personally pretty risk averse when it comes to running in mucky air. Ours isn’t from the same source as US/Canada so I can’t compare apples to apples but I generally don’t go out if it is anything more than “yellow” on the US scale (moderate).

    One thing that is also interesting is how all the different air quality indices are different. The index used by HK govt prioritizes short term health effects which basically means ozone is heavily weighted over pm2.5 which is much more a long term health issue. If you ever have the unpleasant experience of running in high ozone you will likely be at home afterwards wondering what that burning is in your chest (yuck). Ozone is much more likely to put some people in the hospital so the HK index is skewed to that. I generally look at the US index and primarily pm2.5 and pm10 but will also check ozone first. Ozone is nearly always worse later in the day when it’s really sunny.

    We don’t tend to get months on end of non-stop terrible air and so I make do with gyms and indoor bikes as a stop gap. We generally have sep to March as the worst months but it is not like every day is bad and mornings are usually better. I also have a number of high end air purifiers and AQi Meters in my home so I know what the indoor air quality is. I don’t know about in US but most indoor commercial buildings here seem to have very good air filtration. I have taken one of my meters to the gym and seen that the air was very good.

    But yes, if you don’t have any filtration and you have leaky windows and doors the indoor air quality will be surprisingly bad. It’s amazing how much just coming and going through the front door of the apt messes it up on a bad day.

    One thing that is worth pointing out is that indoor meters are pretty useless outdoors and not accurate but, unless your burning food in your apt at the time, if your indoor quality is bad then it’s likely that the outdoor is as bad or worse.

    I feel like I am very cautious compared to others I know here though. It’s not that I have an sensitivities it’s just that I don’t think any of it is good for you and due to the volumes of time outside that we do you are talking significantly more exposure than average person.

    I have tried running in different pollution masks (and I think they work to a degree) but they are mostly difficult to keep fitted correctly if your sweating etc. I have used an “Airinum” mask a bit if there is a reason I really want to go outside but usually I just feel like it’s more enjoyable/less hassle to make do with the gym and indoor stuff rather than try to do a long one wearing a mask. I actually purposely bought a cheap bike and a good turbo trainer primarily to give me a way to do indoor workouts at home when it’s bad. I know biking isn’t a great transfer to running but I don’t have space for a treadmill and being able to do something is better than nothing if we get a block of bad days.

    It is definitely super frustrating when you have been training well and your long weekend workouts get scuppered by pollution.

    Participant
    dan.k on July 13, 2021 at 7:45 pm · in reply to: Swim recovery after ME! #55714

    frnkr: I have definitely found a swim recovery to be much better than even a gentle run or walk. I was previously taking days to recover from ME workouts but when I swapped out the gentle run/walk with a swim I find my legs are recovered much much faster.

    I do a swim on the same day as the ME (in the afternoon/evening) and then a swim the following day instead of a recovery run. Initially I was finding that, if I did ME on Tuesday, my legs were toast on Thursday and still not great on Friday. Now I find that my legs are back to being able to do a pretty normal effort on Thursday (i.e. including some elevation).

    I don’t even do a particularly long swim. Generally have just been doing 20-30 mins each time (very easy) but the difference for me has been stark.

    After trying it once and being sceptical beforehand I have never switched back

    I would also add that I am not a “swimmer” at all…I haven’t swum much since I was at high school and even then not competitively. I can swim fine from a point of view of not drowning/getting from point A to point B but I am not a very efficient or impressive swimmer at all.

    Participant
    dan.k on June 14, 2021 at 2:41 am · in reply to: Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM) and Training #54834

    Hi Paul,

    Interesting, I occasionally had some skin irritation from the sensor patches but I never had any issue with infection etc at the site. I always used on the belly because, until recently, G6 wasn’t certified for use on back of the arm so I just stuck with the standard placement.

    About a year or so ago I suddenly started getting a bad skin reaction. I couldn’t understand what was happening and then I got an email from Dexcom saying that they had switched to a different glue and it was causing some issues for some people. I think previously some people complained that the sensor would peel off so I think the new glue was stronger. Again, it was just skin irritation though and it would pass within a day or 2 of removing the patch.

    I never did any sort of cleaning of the area once it was inserted but I would always clean the skin with alcohol wipes before inserting a new sensor but that is just the standard recommended procedures.

    I also showered, sauna’d, trained, bathed with it in without issue. There are definitely not any restrictions on swimming etc. The only thing you will see is that it cant communicate with your phone while your swimming and so it will catch up all the data once you get out of the pool and are close to your phone again.

    In relation to the comments above about prescriptions I do think it is harder to get in US than in some European countries (e.g. in UK you can just call Dexcom and order them directly with no prescription required).

    To a certain degree I think Paul is correct that you can wear for a period and then stop after getting a general idea of how your body reacts. However I quite liked wearing it as I found it really interesting its also a great behavior modifier…and it was not that unusual to see a reaction that I wasn’t expecting based on past experience which would then cause me to learn something new about my body.

    It is pretty expensive and I am not convinced it is a huge benefit specifically for endurance training. I don’t think you would neccessarily have actionable things you would do differently in your training except perhaps around fueling/refueling, which was were I found it helpful.

    Dan

    Participant
    dan.k on June 3, 2021 at 9:00 pm · in reply to: Anyone training for a 200 miler? #54599

    I have done TDG once before, although not when at all well trained. So I finished although not in any sort of amazing time. It is an absolutely stunning course and I can really highly recommend it to anyone interested in a 200 miler.

    I had a place for 2020 (although cancelled) so have a guaranteed place in one of 2021/2022/2023 so I am planning to try to re-run it in 2022.

    I would say that in the past I was very much focused on vertical, vertical and more vertical but I wasn’t really very structured in my approach (had not really planned to do it but then I got a place! 🙂 ) and didn’t incorporate anything like ME which I think would be massively helpful. I did a lot of aerobic volume and was very well fat adapted when I did it which I think was also helpful.

    Definitely keen to go in much better trained in the future.

    Very interested in peoples thoughts on specific adjustments to training.

    Participant
    dan.k on June 2, 2021 at 5:47 am · in reply to: Typo in specific strength hill sprints in big Vert? #54542

    Hi,

    Yes, that is correct. That is the Z4 training later in the plan but I am talking about earlier in the plan (week 4). The first 7 weeks have uphill sprints for specific strength (assuming your strength is good enough by the tests). It describes 7 weeks of workouts but if you actually look at the weeks in the calendar there is no week4 workout due to it being a recovery week so just wondering if people skip week4 or use the week4 program for week5?

    Participant
    dan.k on May 28, 2021 at 6:02 pm · in reply to: Legs after hill sprints #54430

    Ok great. Thanks.

    One other question. I presume if I do have super heavy legs from neuromuscular fatigue I shouldn’t be pushing through a long workout and should adjust/cut it short to avoid overtraining?

    Participant
    dan.k on May 27, 2021 at 7:23 am · in reply to: Legs after hill sprints #54379

    Thanks everyone! Makes sense now. I have actually used low dose (5g per day) creatine before and at that dose I didn’t notice large weight gain that I think you get with the super loading of 20g per day that people sometimes use. I will add that back in and continue to be aggressive with the refueling after.

    Participant
    dan.k on May 19, 2021 at 8:07 pm · in reply to: Training in the heat? TSS? #54154

    Hi Lindsay,

    Thanks for your reply. Yes, I also see moderately increased HR but I just feel that the TSS number that comes out at the end does not reflect the stress that I feel (i.e. hrTSS is higher because HR was slightly higher but I don’t feel like the difference is enough). This could all be psychological though 🙂 It could also be that due to sheer volume of sweat that on some of these occasions I was impacting electrolyte levels that would also make me feel like recovery was harder.

    Interesting that you feel like dry heat is better. I find that with dry heat the sweat at least does something…(i.e. evaporates and cools you) but with the heat and humidity my body pumps out huge volumes of sweat (and sweat volume definitely goes up after a couple of weeks of the summer) but unless there is a decent breeze it really doesn’t feel like it cools you down much. I get home looking like I have been standing fully clothed in the shower. I remember once I drank over 6 litres of water during a long session one day and still lost 4kg in weight.

    I should say that I have not consistently spent time in a dry heat location to be able to truly compare but I just feel like when I go somewhere like that in the short-term I find it a lot easier than the humidity. I think that in dry heat it might be harder to notice you are losing so much moisture though because it does all evaporate (and cools you) so perhaps making it easier, as you say, to get more dehydrated.

    Tks

    Dan

    Participant
    dan.k on May 17, 2021 at 10:46 pm · in reply to: Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM) and Training #54102

    Hi David,

    I have worn a Dexcom G5 and now G6 for a number of years purely for the reasons you suggest (health monitoring, reaction to foods etc.).

    As you say it is pretty interesting looking at how your body reacts and how that changes.

    Some of the things I have noticed:
    1. Sleep impacts how my body reacts to identical foods. I am far less tolerant of glucose if sleep deprived. I think this has also been shown in studies.

    2. If I eat relatively low carb for not much more than a day (which I do most of the time) I become much less tolerant of carbs if I add them back in. This appears to be a from of physiological insulin resistance and I think it is resistance in the muscles because they have been preserving glucose for the brain and relying more on fat. When I first did a 7 day water-only fast my blood glucose was around 55-60mg/dl (flatline) at the end and I ate a small amount of carbs via some sourdough toast (along with fat and protein) and my blood sugar went through the roof (250+mg/dl). I went out of my office and ran some sprints on a set of steps which helped :). I have seen this a number of times. If I have been quite low carb my muscles don’t want to take up the glucose but doing some very intense exercise (running up steps repeatedly) helps. This has also been shown in studies even over short periods of mild carb restriction but it seems to be very dependent on the person and doesn’t seem to happen to everyone.

    3. I also see the same as you. Long endurance runs I will not see any spikes although, depending on my glucose state before, I may see a slow trend lower over a number of hours but nothing huge. If you are so carb depleted that you are generating a lot of ketones whilst out running then I find that also surpresses glucose. Very intense efforts does also show up for me as a glucose spike but, as you say, that is expected from your liver dumping out glucose for more glycolytic workouts.

    4. I also find that what you eat when doing exercise if far less important than what you eat when you are just round the house at home. I don’t think you see the same large insulin spikes during exercise and I definitely don’t see the huge spikes in blood glucose even if I was to take something very high glycemic. I personally use UCAN a lot but also now use other more traditional gels when things are more intense for easier recovery and if I take them whilst exercising I don’t see a huge spike like you might expect. I wore a CGM whilst doing the Tor des Geants a few years ago and, as you can imagine, blood glucose levels stayed pretty low throughout regardless of what I was shovelling into my mouth :).

    I would agree that if your glucose level is stable it would probably suggest your liver is not dumping out glucose like you see when you are doing very intense efforts but just looking at the glucose number doesn’t really tell you anything about the flux (i.e. the amount the liver is putting into blood or the amount being removed). Although I do find that having the CGM overlay to a metabolic test is quite interesting. As you say, I think it likely makes sense that you see the change around your AeT but not sure how much you can definitively read into the single number through time if you didn’t already know what your AeT was (i.e. if the only number you have is your CGM number and you know nothing else whilst training I am not sure how much you can really assume from it). I definitely see variation in response depending on sleep, what I have eaten, when I ate it etc. as well as just the intensity.

    I think the big thing for me using a CGM around training was seeing how it was possible to eat much more carbs around exercise without spiking blood sugar (and therefore insulin). This has been helpful for me to more proactively replenish glycogen stores before, during and after more intense workouts whilst knowing that I haven’t triggered big moves in glucose. Taking extra carbs around exercise like this also helps me keep my muscles more glucose sensitive (at least that is what I find). For a long time I think I was running around with very glycogen depleted heavy legs because I wasn’t good enough at proactively getting extra carbs onboard before/during/after intense workouts.

    Obviously the N on these obervations is 1 although I have seen commentary from others like Peter Attia and studies showing similar observations in others.

    Sorry if this is a bit of a random collection of thoughts. Definitely interested to hear others experience.

    Tks

    Dan

    Participant
    dan.k on May 6, 2021 at 8:00 pm · in reply to: Treat Z3 Intervals as ME for TSS? #53741

    Hi Shashi,

    Thanks for your reply. Yes, I had seen that post but that person seemed to be referring to “all-out” maximal intervals which Scott was saying should probably have you tasting blood…I think a Z3 interval is a little different. I would think on those all out maximal intervals the HR would be well above AnT whereas for Z3 you are obviously below AnT.

    My gut feeling for Z3 was probably that I could just rely on hrTSS plus the standard vertical adjustment?

    Tks

    Dan

    Participant
    dan.k on May 2, 2021 at 9:10 pm · in reply to: Strength & Core workouts in Mike Foote big vert #53621

    Hi Scott,

    Thanks very much for the response. That all makes total sense. I tend to find myself taking things from TFTUA in combination with the training plan and tweaking so it sounds like Im on the right track. I am actually really enjoying trying to set/adjust/tweak the plan myself after having had a coach set things in the past. I suspect I will want to go back to having someone help when I have more specific events/goals in the future but given that 2021 is still a bit of a weird year with covid (and I have a fairly young baby) trying to do some of it myself (with the help of the plan) has actually been quite satisfying. That is especially true when I notice the difference in certain abilities across a number of weeks.

    Thanks again for setting up and supporting this site. I am a big fan.

    Dan

    Participant
    dan.k on February 26, 2021 at 8:31 pm · in reply to: Strength & Core workouts in Mike Foote big vert #51312

    Hi Jared,

    Yes, I had noticed that tftua also says that they generally do core as part of the warmup for one of the strength sessions.

    Probably makes sense to do as you suggest and just fit some core work in as part of a warm up.

    Thanks

    Dan

    Participant
    dan.k on March 31, 2020 at 2:21 am · in reply to: TSS for alpine days #40011

    Hi Pete, thanks!

    Yes, I did eventually find that commented somewhere and some other people asking similar. What I decided to do was use 5TSS per 1000 feet in any direction. This gives me 10TSS for 1000 round trip but also still works for point to point runs where the elevation change isn’t consistent. Also means things like riding up in the gondola and running down repeatedly will have some adjustment. 🙂

    Participant
    dan.k on March 29, 2020 at 7:41 am · in reply to: TSS for alpine days #39954

    Just to be clear on the vertical fudge factor.

    Do you add 10TSS per 1000 feet of gain and loss? That is the way I am reading this but I have seen in the longer article about TSS on this site it just referred to as elevation “gain”.

    i.e. If I ascend 1000 feet and descend 1000 feet during an aerobic run with minimal weight then is it correct that I add 20 TSS (10 for the ascent and 10 for the descent)?

    Again, sorry if I am asking a dumb question but point to point runs aren’t always equal ascent and descent and I have seen it just referred to as adjusting for “gain” in other places on this site which I thought sounded weird given that gain and loss are not always the same but loss has a similar problem of not being accurately reflected in hrTSS.

    Thanks

    Dan

Viewing 14 replies - 1 through 14 (of 14 total)
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