We have to work with what we’ve got. I’d do the 50% grade hill over and over again if the footing is relatively stable. Find a weight that prevents you from ascending at greater than 30 fpm. Perhaps slower than that would yield greater benefits.
Neil
Forum Replies Created
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ParticipantParticipantNeil on June 17, 2019 at 1:05 pm · in reply to: Can I Improve my Aerobic base with this regime? #23644
I just established that my LT HR = 150. My AeT is 130 which gives me a deficiency of 15% (ie. 150/130 = 1.15).
Now it will be interesting to see if the regime in the above post will result in any improvement. Not mentioned in the post is that I will be gradually and steadily increasing the total load.ParticipantScott, I didn’t take a break. Just pushed the lap counter on my device.
ParticipantScott and Steve,
When did you guys decide my name was Hugh? 🙂For sure I will post a report. Maybe a couple of interim reports considering this event will last an entire year excluding the training.
ParticipantWell, a 10 day event preceded by 6 months of intense training is completely different from a SYG. That said, I felt really good all throughout the 10 days.
ParticipantWow! Thank you for sharing your experience and thoughts. I’ve been going back and forth with Sue regarding her experience and started a very small private FB group with Sue and a half-dozen ADK “gridiots” (multi-year). My experiences with doing the 46 in 10 winter days and last winter’s single-season ADK-100 Highest have given me a bit of a window for understanding the prep and withstanding of these challenges. I will be fully retired 9 months before the start date so I should be able to prepare myself. I will do a couple of test months wherein I will hike all 47 peaks (ADK-46 plus McNaughton).
It’s easy to only focus on the physiology of these training cycles. However, for me the foundation upon which aerobic power rests will always be the connective tissues. Tendons and their attachments, fascia, ligaments, joints etc. all need to be toughened up to withstand the particular type of punishment that is meted out by the Adirondacks.
Regarding overtraining, I hope that doing the bulk of preparation while hiking up to 2-3 days per week and always being mindful of respecting a “552-peak pace” will be a key factor in preventing that. Whenever I train too hard I sleep poorly (autonomic nervous system?) and use that as a signal to take a rest day or two.
Maybe I’ll do some peaks in VT!
ParticipantIIUC: A huge base could mean that for the 6 months I will devote to training beforehand I would want to focus almost entirely on Zone-one training. Perhaps no more than 1-2 hours weekly of Zone 2.
I wonder about max strength gym workouts. My understanding is that the true value of these workouts lies in their ability to improve motor unit recruitment and get more units into the rotation. If this is so then during the project would I benefit from doing some max strength workouts if my down time exceeds, say 2 days?
I suspect that weighted hill climbs will also be very important in the overall scheme of things.
As important as pre-event training will be, my most important fitness goal might be to maintain my fitness (improve it?) during the year for the potentially extremely difficult December finish.
Of note, during my project of last winter ( 100 peaks in 13 weeks, including 40 off-trail) my fitness improved during the first 40% of the project and then there were two huge back to back days during which I lost fitness that I never got back.
ParticipantI don’t know if my approach is the best (especially in consideration of Scott’s reply) but FWIW, here is what I do during the general strength phase:
For each exercise:
10 reps per side
3 series
3x/week.I use a weight that barely lets me squeak out an 11th rep if I wanted to.
More series would perhaps be better but my tolerance for boredom keeps me to 3 series. I like to be out of the gym in no more than 1h15m. I used to do a lot of Turkish Get-ups but found that the training load was quite uneven on different body regions.While waiting between the exercise I integrated Killer-core exercises and yoga poses.
ParticipantNeil on October 26, 2017 at 8:46 am · in reply to: Lop-sided training weeks. Impact? Adjustments? #6492Thanks Scott,
In spite of this weekly triple whammy I definitely feel that I am progressing as the weeks go by. I think my saving grace is that the ME workouts are only of 2000′ elly and I don’t carry much weight (10-15 pounds, which is close to my winter day pack). Sometimes I carry no weight at all and ascend faster, always feeling like my legs are right at their limit.Also, the max strength workouts only involve 4 exercises (3 lower limb) and I only do 3 series.
I have felt some deep quad soreness now and again when descending and that signals me to insert an extra rest day. I either drop one ME workout or skip my weekly max strength session.
Less than 2 months before the big project!!
ParticipantNeil on August 23, 2017 at 6:50 am · in reply to: Heart rate/breathing says Zone 1. Body says Zone 2. #5928I decided to re-test myself briefly in the gully after 5-6 weeks of approx. 20 hours per week of training and hiking, including a 2-week hiking vacation with my wife, where we day-hiked almost every day and also did a 3-day backpack with plenty of ups and downs. The pace was always slow.
Instead of being stuck at 125 bpm my HR easily went over 140 on these 200-foot vertical ascents at a pace between 35 and 40 vertical feet per minute and by the 4th and final repeat was hitting 145. My times for each repeat were the same as when I did the gully 6 weeks prior. I was surprised at the difference in HR’s and the non-difference in times. I was not expecting such a large jump in the HR. My top end HR of Z1 as tested twice on a treadmill according to the protocol detailed here on Uphill Athlete is 130. The two tests were done about 3 weeks apart with no change between them. Last test was done a week ago.
ParticipantSorry about that. Looks like I made something simple complicated!
My goal was to start week one of base with 15 hours total. 20% of that would be three hours in Zone 2. That leaves 12 for zone 1/recovery. However I went hiking twice during the week for a total of 18 hours. This dropped the percentage of time in Z2 to below 20%.
This pattern could play out throughout most of my base period. (Especially for weeks 3 and 4 because my wife are going on a hiking holiday.) My feeling is that if I increased the Zone 2 and then the Zone 3 weekly hours to “fit” percentage-wise into the total hours I will wear myself down.
My question was whether I should hold my Z2 & 3 times down to less than 20% of my total aerobic training time because I hike so much.
Disregarding time in the gym in tallying up the weekly totals makes it all a lot simpler (and makes more sense). I was basing my times on the chart on p. 247 which includes the gym time. This raises another question for me. For weeks one through four what percent of aerobic training time is to be spent in each of Zones 1 and 2? Intuitively, I would go with 80-20.
Thanks and I hope this time it’s clearer!
ParticipantYeah, that’s what I meant. One very long max strength session. Not that I would actually do much more more than about 90 minutes, including rests.
ParticipantIn spite of being very active with endurance hiking I carried a bunch of useless blubber up and down the Adirondack mountains. Then I decided enough of this and lost a pound a week for 25 weeks. I found the book, Racing Weight to be very helpful and inspiring. In short what I did was: 1-create a (roughly) 500 calorie per day deficit via eating smarter and better and exercising (requires some easy on-line research to hit your numbers ). 2- Increase my protein intake to prevent lean muscle loss. 3- Cut back on carbs in all their forms. I aimed at matching my carb intake to what I burned while hiking and training. 4-Pump iron (think functional training) to further prevent lean muscle loss. 5- Eat big satisfying meals with plenty of fat and protein then forget about food til the next meal. No empty calories, no alcohol and so on. The weight came off like clockwork and I had no energy problems doing 10-12 hour rugged hikes with 5-6k elly gain. I read a slew of other books on the topic and what I gather is that after exercise the tendency is to over-compensate. Also, there is a tendency to think you only consume x calories per day when in fact you consume x + y calories, where y goes to fat. 🙂 Good luck with the weight loss!
ParticipantNeil on July 10, 2017 at 9:44 am · in reply to: Heart rate/breathing says Zone 1. Body says Zone 2. #5557Just read the section on ST and FT fibers. It sounds like the aerobic capacity of my maxed-out ST fibers was insufficient for processing the metabolites of glycolysis produced by the FT fibers. Lactate shuttle?
Later on in the training regimen, training of the FTa fibers to “go aerobic”, combined with max strength sessions, will give me a deep well of aerobic endurance.ParticipantNeil on July 10, 2017 at 6:54 am · in reply to: Heart rate/breathing says Zone 1. Body says Zone 2. #5556Thanks so much Scott! It helps a lot and I hadn’t thought about it at all with respect to fast twitch fibers. I’m going to read (again!) that section in TFNA.
It sounds like I need to find another hill until I’m further into base training. In the past I combined 20-25 hours of Dacks hiking and bushwhacking per week with 3 sessions of 10 repeats (12-15 pound pack) week in, week out. The hill is so convenient being 20 minutes from my office. I got so I could float up it.
The alternative is a much gentler hill right next to the gully of 400 feet of ascent. I can get into Z2 by jogging up.