I have found that in a race I can sustain a HR above what I could do in training, and at critical moments or challenging sections hit and sustain for a period of time HR values that in training would likely lead to blowing up. Also, it would be hard to determine what to set it at: for me, cruising on the flat at 5 min/km, HR is maybe 115 or so, and on a hard, reasonably long uphill push where I typically gain time and places I might be sustaining 145-150 (for me this is quite high, observationally my HR values and zones are seemingly very low compared to most others; your middle zone 1 is into my zone 4). Sometimes you also find that you are running in a small group that begins to split, and it can beneficial to stick with the fast train on that break when you sense those falling off the back would be too slow. If I were to stick to HR zones 1-2 then I would lose ground on the uphills and miss sticking with the right group. Last, I live at sea level, but have raced a few times at higher elevations (1000–3000 m), which adds complexity to setting HR values. Consequently I remain old school and have always relied in races on perceived effort – if I track HR, it is only for curiousity.
rich.b
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ParticipantParticipant
A couple important points to add some clarity. First, penmypaper is not in the least a reliable source of information – it is a paper-writing mill for students looking to cheat. For reliable sources of information, it is necessary to go straight to the research articles themselves. Second, based on the misguided source of information, there seems to be a misunderstanding by Cadmium what a plant-based diet is. It is not simply a pile of vegetables or fruit on a plate, but includes all plant-sourced foods including whole grains, seeds, nuts, pulses, legumes and more. Energy density is not an issue.
A proper, diversified plant-based diet, based on whole-foods, can easily meet the nutritional and energy demands of any outdoor athlete, but any healthy diet, whether flexitarian, vegetarian or vegan, requires some forethought and effort. A risk for some people switching to a mostly or all plant-based diet is that this is done solely by reducing/eliminating meat, dairy and/or eggs, rather than thinking about it holistically. There is quite a bit of research on vegan and vegetarian diets within sports science, which shows no negatives and possibly benefits (for example, the ongoing NURMI study, with several recent papers by Wirnitzer and co-workers), and more broadly within epidemiology that shows positive effects particularly regarding cardiovascular disease. There are also good reviews addressing macro- and micronutrient issues for vegan/vegetarian athletes (for example, Fuhrman and Ferreri, 2010, in Current Sports Medicine Reports), where, for example, B12 can be a concern requiring supplements. Game Changers has a lot of merits, I think they represented the science fairly well, but it is short on ‘how to’, so if you are unsure where to start, then having a discussion with a dietician/nutritionist could be a useful starting point, as suggested.
One person’s experience is only anecdotal, so the only personal note I will make is that I am in my late-50’s and have been vegan for more than six years, and it has not impacted my ability to sustain a training habit of 10+ hours per week and run ultras when I occasionally decide to. In all honesty it is impossible to state objectively whether I recover faster, have less inflammation, etc. – I have no reference ‘me’ to compare to. It is only fair to say I can train a lot and diet is not a limiting factor. With that switch I did and still do spend a great deal of time reading the research literature out of personal interest, and spend more time and effort cooking; more plants in the diet means more time at the cutting board, but also opened the door to seeking out new foods and new recipes. Importantly, by your description at the start of this thread, your current diet is not working so well, so there is only going forwards – and I wish you luck in your progress.
ParticipantShoe choice is obviously very terrain specific and then what fits your feet. That said, as someone who has run in the S/lab speed and still does and that running in the Swedish fjäll can be analagous to your fell terrain, I can relate to your question. The Speed are a great shoe for mountainous terrain where muddy, boggy conditions and/or steeper mountain terrain are encountered — although my criticism of particularly Speed 2 is they do not drain well, and I was unlikely to a second pair of those had they continued. The original Inov-8 x-talon 212 were the best, but they changed the last and materials and subsequent versions never fit my feet.
If not expecting much mud and thus mostly harder ground or rocky conditions, my preference is the Inov-8 Terraultra G270. The grip for me is very good and the shoe takes a beating. I’ve put a lot of km on my first pair. When the Speed 2 wear out (not so much the sole as the material due to wet, boggy running) I am looking at Inov-8 Mudclaw G260 as the next bog shoe. Sadly I have nowhere to try them on. I know VJs can be popular, but the fit haven’t worked for me. Hard to choose with the vast number of shoes out there nowadays.
ParticipantFinding the right PT is challenging for sports-related issues, but that will help identify where the root(s) of your problem lie.
Your description fits what I experienced this spring, with pain from the iliac crest across to the lumbar. Somehow made the wrong movement and the wrong time when I was tired. This occurred right before the summer when it was impossible to find an available sports PT but I had to do 10 days of fieldwork out of country involving carrying and lifting sampling equipment. Compensating for that problem set off a chain of issues. Although I had just had to let that inflammation calm down with time, an eventual visit to a PT confirmed my self-assessment that an (the?) underlying cause is an imbalance in strength and in particular for me the gluteus medius on one side – as you are suspecting. A by-product of all this has been an aggravated tensor fascia latae, which when aggravated after a harder run can cause tenderness in the ITB (and ultimately could impact stabilisation of the knee). Classic kinetic chain effect. This seems to be what you are describing, but it is useful to get help in identifying in your case what/where is the cause and what/where is the effect, so that the right muscles get targeted in a rehab program.
ParticipantMaking ‘good’ use of a coffee break, I spent some time searching the research literature on Web of Science. I was curious because the amount increase in HR seemed high (from the perspective of my n=1).
That said, most studies following detraining of endurance athletes often look at 2 week or longer intervals, and in those studies the average is typically 3-6 beat increase – but higher values like yours are also reported. Even with a taper HR apparently will increase.An older, well-cited review paper:
Zavorsky (2000) Evidence and Possible Mechanisms of Altered Maximum Heart Rate With Endurance Training and Tapering. Sports Med 29:13-26.Participantrich.b on September 3, 2021 at 12:31 pm · in reply to: Six months: Why am I not getting faster? #56749Aside from the other feedback, another consideration might be longer intervals and tempo runs (such as progression) rather than only 30/30s. The question is if training is too biased to Z1-2; that is, if you are doing more than 80-85% easy. Some speedwork is needed to become more efficient moving faster. At 10 hours per week running, then in theory you should have 1.5 hours total above Z2, and I would not think with the 30/30s you would get that total.
That said, 10 hrs/week is not unreasonable at 55 if you have a long history training. Obviously there is always a need to assess recovery, and be sure that is not a factor in your plateau.Participantrich.b on August 7, 2021 at 4:44 am · in reply to: Theoretical question: between person heart variability #56238Interesting questions. Although at a population level there are obvious patterns, at an individual level there is too much inherent variability. As an example, I included a figure from Whyte et al. (Int J Sports Med. 2007) showing max HR data for elite (Olympic level) athletes. Age shows up nicely, but at any given age the spread is pretty big. For that limited population group then, genetics must play a significant role in the variation. To exemplify further the inherent genetic component: I have a long history of endurance training and a normal week has long been 8-12 hours. RHR is typically 40-44 and max is <170 (clearly age related, but was never high to begin with) – not unusual values for lifelong runners, though on the lower end of the range. A 3-yr older sibling who trains maybe 25% of what I do, has an RHR still <50. Clearly an underlying genetic factor to our low RHRs, but with training history separating us.
So besides training history, there are age, specific phase of training (increased fitness lowers max HR), and genetics amongst other factors. As for inferences of comparing HRs between individuals, it is of course interesting, but not meaningful. An ultra running colleague and I once compared our respective paces required to hit the theoretical MAF HR (180–age+5) – I had to run >2 min/km faster than he did (done on flat bike path). He had to jog to stay below his value but I had to do a tempo run to get up to my theoretical value (and into zone 3 based on both RPE and testing).
cheers, Rich
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You must be logged in to view attached files.Participantrich.b on July 27, 2021 at 5:42 am · in reply to: How do you deal with depression and stress from injury #55988It is more useful to focus energy and attention on what you can do rather than what you cannot. I have had one broken collar bone and two episodes of plantar fasciitis that caused breaks in running. For PF this entailed about 5 and 3 months of no running, but since not training is not an option for me I jumped on my bike and put in the hours that way until I could transition back to running. I lost no fitness, and although not chosen the break from running was beneficial and each time the following year I raced better.
ParticipantRacing by feel requires discipline. It really requires knowing whether you can sustain the effort or if that effort is continued too long you will blow up. This is an experience question maybe. But as I wrote, I have found that my racing HR is just not relatable to training HR: what I can sustain for an intense hour uphill in a mountain race is nothing I can do for even a half-hour in training. So those numbers provide me with no useful guidance, and I have to go from ’feel’. But it requires self-honesty — if a break in a group happens you have to be really honest as to where to be. Admittedly my running pre-dates widely available HR and GPS watches (I remember when an 8-lap Timex Ironman was a novelty), so I am restrictive in their use.
ParticipantThis reflects only my own experience and view on HR and racing. I have never found training and racing HR to be similar: a HR where I am ‘redlining’ in training can be one that I can hold for an hour or longer in a race.
Skyrace-type events often have such variable terrain that I have to make tactical decisions on the spot that are based on how I feel, such as when the group around me splits into a slightly faster pace and slightly slower pace, and when and where in the race that split might be; whether I am on a steep, hands-on-knees 200 m climb or steady, semi-runnable 1000 m climb, what terrain follows that climb – if it is a downhill then I have some recovery time, but if it is a highly runnable section I do not want to come off the climb maxed out; is it 21 or 42 km (or longer), etc. None of these mimic training conditions and are not captured in training HR, so it would be hard to know what HR to use and at which points in the race to use it as a limiter (my racing HR can vary by ?60 bpm, and more if I include feed stations). The only time this approach failed was my first mountain race 11 years ago: it was awesome for 28 km and awful for the remaining 15 km. HR was not the problem.
In races when I have worn a HR strap, I look at HR only from a curiosity perspective (observations such as ‘wow, didn’t know I could maintain that HR for an hour’), and the race (50 km, ±3000 m vert) where I probably came the absolute closest to a perfect race in terms of where I think the limits of my abilities are, I took an old watch without GPS or HR.
Some discussion of this also occurred previously:
ParticipantAs you reason, all things being equal a 60 yr old ain’t gonna hang with a 30 yr old physically. Experience in a race setting — at least a trail ultra — can however pay off. Up to a point.
That said, that type of comparison is the inherent risk of getting overly caught up in metrics, which are useful to a point. With a decent level of experience, you typically know pretty well if you are putting in the equivalent work effort or not. My preference is only to track numbers occasionally as a simple check on perception, and I focus only on where I am at now.As for MAF, I would agree it might be fine for a newer runner, but thereafter the real numbers are very individual. Contrary to the experience of most who have to fight to slow down to stay below their calculated MAF, I have to speed up to reach it. So it might account for age, but not individual variability.
Cheers/rich
ParticipantStrength exercises are obviously a critical foundation, but they do not necessarily help with endurance skiing downhill. A routine I mixed in in previous years for mountain ultras and had just got back into early last fall to prepare for this winter’s skiing – until the fall covid wave shut things down again – is to mix some endurance into it by inserting lunges and jump lunges (holding a 10 kg plate) into a spin workout. 10-15 min warm-up; then about 10 sets of: spin interval (30 sec up to 2 min), jump off and do 10 weighted (jump)lunges, 1-2 min spin recovery, repeat; 10-15 easy to round it off.
Hopefully shall get back to these next fall.Participantrich.b on April 26, 2021 at 12:16 pm · in reply to: Using cycling to increase weekly aerobic volume when I’m a runner? #53404Your logic seems reasonable: cycling as a complement to add general training volume that you cannot get from running at present. Trail riding gives more than road cycling, which is too efficient (but great for active recovery); trails take more work. When your legs don’t yet have the ability to do back-to-back longer sessions, it is possible to do a long run then a long ride the next day (or vice versa), which I think is also good mental training that gets you at least used to being out for long sessions. So it can be a useful training tool.
Participantrich.b on March 23, 2021 at 1:22 pm · in reply to: Adjusting trail running plan for occasional ski touring #52314Hmm, adjust … No matter what my dog still needed his exercise, so a morning ski was always on the menu. What the afternoon run would be depended on how I felt, but at some point during the week (starting in early April) I tried to get in some tempo, whether fartlek, intervals or progression. I should add my ski tours were solo, so I could keep treat them more like long runs.
At the moment with schooling in a second dog with skijoring and building his fitness, I have both dogs along on the runs and the tempo sessions aren’t possible (lots of snowshoe hares around, and also some reindeer — so the dogs have to be on leash). Eventually I can separate some runs from them to get back an interval session and a long run — and maybe a couple quick ski tours before winter runs out. But to come back to the question of adjusting plans, I keep a long-term view and flex the details as need be. For a race in September, I would think your 2-day tour would be good base-building — and fun.Participantrich.b on March 23, 2021 at 5:52 am · in reply to: Adjusting trail running plan for occasional ski touring #52303First the caveat: this is only my own experience. Based on that, a goal race in September is a long way off compared to getting in a great ski tour now. Assuming you have an overall solid fitness and endurance base, I don’t think transitioning to running and preparing for a race 6 months from now is a challenge.
Last winter we had a great, long winter and my last ski day (skijoring and some local ski randonnée) was 22 May, and similar to you I kept running in my training mix but skiing was more hours per week. Most important from my perspective was that I was maintaining the total hours training per week that I normally would do when running was my sole focus (10-12+ hr/week). From 23 May training was immediately almost 100% running (with some bikejoring mixed in) and 3 hour ski tours immediately became 3 hour runs. There was no transition problem because my legs were still used to running and I had the endurance/fitness base. In July and August I did a few 50 km training runs with a peak week of 154 km. Plans for a 50 km mountain race in late August did not quite pan out (pulled muscle on a cold day), but preparation was great. So, again, I would not think a September race should pose any problems for you.
My take is that structured training plans are fine as long as they accommodate some flexibility (which I suppose is the advantage of a coach).