Luke Humphrey Running

https://open.spotify.com/episode/6teN9wjIT3MR9NH8jt4gAQ?si=25ZqS0rQSjiKXvicPCj-5w

If you have followed my writing for any length, you will know that you won’t find me prescribing workouts by heart rate any time soon. That’s not to say that I don’t think that using heart rate has no value. I just don’t think that heart rate is the best indicator of intensity guide for workouts. I just feel like there are a lot of factors that go into heart rate and as Jim Vance wrote in his book,  Run with Power, heart rate is like looking in the review mirror. It’s more reflective of what you have already done and not where you are in the moment. Now, I know what you are going to say, “Luke, you can say the same thing about pace!” To that, I say, you are 100% correct, but I still like pace better, and here is why. 

First, you are going to run a race, what are you trying to do? You are trying to run a certain time, or pace. You aren’t trying to run a race with a heart rate under 150 bpm. Don’t get heated, I am not trying to be facetious here. My point is, during the race, you are going to be more worried about the pace and if you are trying to monitor by heart rate, it’s going to be tough to do that. What I want my athletes to do is to use pace, but also learn how to use things like heart rate and RPE to “look in the rearview mirror” during training. That way they can have data to measure if they are gaining fitness, but they also associate efforts and that data to different paces. So, I guess my point is, that it’s not about just pace or just heart rate. It’s about how can I use these variables in a practical manner instead of just having a bunch of data. 

Second, the faster you run, the less your heart rate is going to have accuracy. If you are using wrist based heart rate (as of right now), forget about it. It’s not going to be accurate. What this means is that for hard workouts, SOS style workouts, pace is where I feel like you need to be. Where using heart rate for guiding your intensity does make sense is for your easy days. Especially if you are one to run too hard on your easy days, then use HR to keep yourself in check. 

Before we move on, I really want to drive home the idea that it’s not a pace vs heart rate or even add power into the mix. It’s about using the data that’s the most practical to our situation. To me, if you are planning on racing at a certain pace, then being comfortable with using pace as your primary training variable is key. That’s not to say that we just ignore what the other measure can tell us. We just then put that variable into the best position to give us practical data. 

Practical HR measurements

Resting HR

Establish a resting heart rate for a couple weeks when your training is light. If you just ran a marathon, give yourself a good week and then start recording this. Probably not the best to do in the middle of a segment. Resting heart rate has become pretty convenient to measure with apple watches, your running watch, sleep trackers. Heck, you can get a ring and just wear that now. 

With training, you are ideally seeing a pretty steady resting heart rate. This should be recorded when you first get up in the morning. A tracker will more than likely recognize this and you can just go in and check your data. Sustained increases mean something is going on. It could be illness, but usually, it is because sleep is disrupted (or just not there) or you aren’t recovering well enough. This is surface level stuff though, and you and your coach should probably dig deeper on this. Recovery could mean poor nutrition habits, poor sleep hygiene, all the way to not having enough time between workouts. 

Using in combination with pace and RPE

This is why coaches stress that athletes take a few minutes each day to fill out their training logs on Final Surge. Having raw data is great, BUT, it’s not a complete picture. 

Here is an example: 

Runner goes out and runs a normal tempo run. The pace was the same, but the heart rate was lower. If that’s all we had, then we would say that the run was pretty good. Maybe fitness is improving! 

However, during a follow-up, we find that the run felt a lot harder than normal and their legs felt dead. Oh, that changes our outlook on the workout, right? What we originally thought was a sign of heading in the right direction, now looks like it might not be looking too good. Now we need to look into what’s going on. 

Efficiency Ratio

This is a measurement of aerobic development that looks at an output measurement (pace) and compares it to an internal measurement (HR). What we are looking for is to take our normalized graded speed and divide that by the average heart rate for a given run. Unfortunately, this does take a little work on our end for now. If you aren’t familiar with NGS, it’s accounting for the variation of terrain. However, we need to get our speed, which is different from pace. Now, if you are a subscriber to Strava, you probably will have your NGP(ace). They call it GAP or graded average pace, but it’s the same idea. I did see that the Garmin IQ store had an add-on for a GAP data point. If you own a footpod, there’s a good chance you have that data. (If you want ideas, here’s a place to start). If you have your GAP or NGP we can calculate the speed. 

EF = NGS/Avg HR

NGP= 8 minutes/mile

NGS = 60 ÷ 8

NGS = 7.5 mph 

Yards/Minute =    220  (1760 yards x 7.5 ÷ 60) 

Avg HR = 150 (whatever your HR was) 

EF = 220 ÷ 150 

EF = 1.467

The number itself doesn’t mean a ton, but what you do is compare it to similar runs over the course of a training segment to see how well you are developing. You can also see how this changes over the course of a workout. What you are looking for is coupling or decoupling. If the EF stays within 5%, things are good. That is seen as being coupled. If the difference is greater than 5%, then that means we have an issue. If could mean one, or more, of the following:

Not fit enough to handle that workoutDehydratedNot recoveredNot enough sleepPossible stress (That’s a given, right) 

If you follow the HMM plans, this is a metric that can be checked every couple of weeks because you have a lot of similar runs throughout the schedule. 

These two uses for heart rate can be pretty insightful for monitoring your development and recovery. We are not, however, using it solely to monitor our training intensity. We are using it in conjunction with other metrics to establish a more holistic view of how our training is going.

Consistency is king/queen when it comes to development. What do you think is more important. A) doing two really good workouts over a 30 day period, but having to miss 5 days of running anything of significance after each one. Or B) string 30 days together of moderate training without interruption? You probably said B, but do you know why? 

Below is a graph of the typical response to an SOS type workout. You complete the workout and experience immediate fatigue that is noticeable. Gradually, over the next couple of days, your body recovers to get you back to that baseline fitness level. The kicker is, if you give it enough time, your fitness will actually continue trending upward, to a point. So, if you do another workout in the 36-72 hour window, that whole cycle repeats itself. Training is essentially repeating this cycle over and over, but with each time, that new baseline creeps up and up and up. Oversimplification, but you can get the point. 

The general workout cycle. For best results, your next running workout should be 2-4 days after your previous workout.

Ideally, your fitness is represented by a) in the second graph below. If we are over our head, it can look like b). We’ll have to save that one for another time. What I am interested in is c). What happens when we work out too infrequently? That’s what c) represents. You can see in the first chart, that if you don’t provide another stimulus, fitness starts to gradually decrease over 3-7 days. Now, don’t panic, it’s not disastrous if it’s a once in a while thing. I can also sense wheels turning and wondering what about tapering? You’re fine! That’s a different story. 

Ideally, every run workout you do builds on the last, which is represented in a). In b) we see how working out to frequently leads to excessive fatigue and probably burnout. The last- c), shows us how hard it is to increase our baseline fitness if we work out too infrequently.

So, by looking at this, you can see that if you don’t work out often enough, building that fitness can be a long and tedious road. Let me tell you from recent personal experience. I have been working out with LHR coach Alex Wilson for a couple of years now. This winter we decided that spring 2022 was going to be the spring of speed. So, we started laying out some groundwork and looking at some races. Then we started working out. We started out pretty low level and we were making progress. Then the wheels started to fall off. I had minor setbacks after minor setbacks. They weren’t big, but it caused me to miss a couple of days of running and then a few more easy days of running before I could do another workout. So, it would be anywhere from 5-10 days before I could do another workout. This happened three times over a two-month period! So, every time I started coming back around, I ended up taking a step back. It would take me two weeks to get where I was 3-4 weeks prior. I was c) on the chart- just fighting to get back to baseline. What was hard was that I could see where Al was getting to with his fitness. He was able to add workouts on top of workouts He was doing harder and harder workouts while I was scaling back. He’s already raced while I have had to reconfigure my schedule. It’s a real eye-opener because we convince ourselves that it’s not that bad, but then we see our training partner walk away from me in workouts and in week-to-week progress! 

The moral of the story is this. There are always going to be things out of your control, but things like developing injuries have steps we can take to minimize. Mor importantly though is that there are days that we don’t want to train and we convince ourselves ok, but that’s when the things we can’t control show up and compound the issue. Do everything you can do to get out there and get something in on the days that you just don’t feel like it. I am not saying that you should push through an injury, rather when you just have a list of 10 excuses and any one of them will do. Even if it’s just going through the motions, it keeps the fitness train inching forward and raising that baseline fitness. When the uncontrollable do show up, it makes the interruptions less damaging. 

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There’s the old adage, “easy days easy, hard days hard” and we see that is the case with the majority of the elite to competitive based runners. When you look at their training, this completely makes sense. Their marathon pace is anywhere from 4:45-5:20/mile at that level. So, it’s not a hard leap to assume that anything close to that on a daily basis is sustainable. The question is though, does that hold true if your marathon pace is 10:00/mile? What about 9:00? Does it make sense to slow down to 11-12:00 minutes/mile? 

My intuition says that it might not make sense to force a person to “run” that slow and I drawback to a set of past experiences doing VO2max testing. I used to perform VO2max testing on runners which included a graded exercise test. We would start them slow and progress them through paces until they couldn’t go anymore. I’d always make the protocol based on what the person’s race times were. The point is, you’d start really slow, and end up really fast! 

When we started the athletes we’d see the same thing every time. Their heart rate would shoot up and their stride would be awkward. It turned into almost a shuffle and a cross between a walk and a run. Then, after a couple of stages, their stride would smooth out and their heart rate would come down back to where we would expect it to be. From there, more textbook responses would occur and everything was fine. Ok, so what can we take from this? Why is this relevant? The main thing I take away from this is that there is a point where moving too slow is actually harder work than just running what your natural pace is. So, If we take a person who just naturally runs 10 minute miles and force them to run 12 minute miles, then it’s less economical, it may be more detrimental, and it might not allow them to run as far as they normally would because it’s actually forcing them to work harder.  

My experience has been that the people most affected are ones trying to run 4+ hour marathons. Like I said, once you start approaching 10 minute miles and above, lines definitely become blurred. With that, here are a couple of things you can observe in your form and training data that will help you determine if you are running too slow. 

The first is that your form becomes a shuffle. Your stride rate might actually go up and your stride length drastically drops. If you find yourself drastically altering your stride to force yourself to run slower, then it may be too slow. This would really be true if you find yourself having a hard time deciding if you are walking or jogging. The second would be your heart rate or effort. If you are seeing your heart rate at numbers that don’t make sense or your effort level way too high, then try opening up your pace a little bit. If you do and everything settles down, that’s probably your natural pace. 

Now, people who are faster than this will read what I said, and use it as an excuse to run their easy days harder- because it’s just my natural pace, coach! Ok, sure give it a go. If your workouts start suffering because of it, or in three weeks you can’t train without being wiped out, then don’t keep pushing it! 

But, for the four hour and above crew, I think we can say, for the most part, that your regular everyday running pace is probably going to be pretty close to your race pace. Our primary concern probably isn’t going to be speed, but really just being able to cover the whole distance. Your priorities are going to be different than a sub 3 runner. Now, I will say this, if you find that natural stride and are training consistently at 30-40 miles per week, I think you’ll be surprised at how much things will become easier. That 4-5 hour marathon time might just be naturally not where you are at anymore! Just some things to think about. Keep plugging! 

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A few weeks ago, someone in our Facebook group brought up the idea of using an infrared sauna for recovery. I hadn’t thought much about it, and you really see more about things like cryo for recovery and tissue repair. These two things are definitely different ends of the spectrum. Then, as I saw that, I began to notice that a lot of recovery places and gyms were now offering up the sauna as a perk for being in their memberships. So, as curiosity got the better of me, I started looking into it more. 

Today, I just want to look at an infrared sauna as a mode of performance booster and recovery module. As I looked, it was hard to find quality third-party data or research itself. If you go into search engines, I found I just got a lot of claims from sauna makers, personal trainers, etc. So, what do you do then? You start looking at the research that they cite. To be honest, it doesn’t seem like a lot is out there. Everyone seemed to be referencing the same couple articles. So, take this with a grain of salt and do your own due diligence, as well. 

The general listed benefits

Heat adaptation- easy one to buy into. If you subject yourself to a hot environment, you can adapt to those environments. Lung function- couldn’t find much on this. Not sure what the mechanism would be? From what I was reading into it was more improved immune function, respiratory illness type stuff. Direct performance improvements- Time to exhaustion improved 30% or 2% actual race performance. Personally, I think more due to the heat adaptation and what happens with any heat adaptations and endurance performance. “One of the primary factors in endurance muscle fatigue is this drop in blood volume,” says exercise physiologist, Dr. Stacy Sims of Stanford’s Prevention Research Centre. “Sauna training helps counter this by increasing EPO and, through this, both plasma volume and red blood cell count. It can be super beneficial for any endurance athlete… think of it as another natural, ergonomic aid in your arsenal, one that can provide a 2-to-3 percent boost in performance,” she says. Muscle growth- goes with the above. If you can do all those things, at the very least, you maintain muscle mass and set yourself up to add muscle mass through strength training. Free radical consumption- sweat toxins out of body?

As I am looking through all of this, I see that there might be potential. HOWEVER, I look at this and I also come to the conclusion that this should only be supplementary. What I mean by that, is that if you only rely on this, you probably won’t see much benefit. You still have to put most of the reliance on the basics like- proper refueling, getting enough daily calories in, making sure you are hydrated. In a sense, this adding another stress element to your training. If you can’t support that stress through what I just mentioned, then I think you potentially negate any potential benefit. Given that, I see two major situations where this would help. 

Heat Adaptation- in particular during winter months. The main theory behind infrared vs a traditional sauna is that the light creating heat is directed right into your body instead of just warming the air around you. The argument is that you can elicit the same effects as moderate exercise. As I write this, it is December and many people are trying to figure out how to train for a spring marathon without getting blindsided by a warm spring day. How can that be accomplished on these cold, sunless, winter days? It could also be an avenue for early adaptation to summer training, making that July and August marathon training a little bit more bearable. 

The second is dealing with an injury. This could be an opportunity to stimulate exercise adaptations while safeguarding yourself from rushing back too soon. I see a real benefit from doing whatever cross training you can without aggravation, and then enhancing that through a sauna session a few times per week. The other is that the deeper penetrating heat can promote feelings of well being and if it does promote tissue repair and hormone regulation then those are benefits, too. The key would again be to make sure you are replacing what you are sweating out, in terms of fluid and nutrients. 

Protocols: 

Heat Adaptations (From Purplepatch triathlon coaching)

Post workouts (key sessions)Hydrate/fuel as normal during a key sessionNo hydration during last 10-15 minutes of the sessionRefuel post workoutNo post hydration15-30 minutes in saunaShower post saunaRehydrate next 3-5 hours

Recovery (General recommendations) 

3-4x per week 10-15 minutes to start Build to 30 minute sessionsPost exercise ideal

Overall, It may be a good tool to have in the toolbox, but it shouldn’t be the only tool. If you can’t take care of the rehydration and nutrient replacement, quality sleep, general nutrition, this will be an expensive venture with little ROI. However, something to think about if you have access to one!

One of the biggest complaints I get from athletes following the book (link), is that there is no taper. They say that because they are used to going from six days per week down to 4 and their mileage decreasing from 50 miles a week down to 20 miles a week and they don’t do any workouts for two weeks. When they see a taper like that in the HMM books, they panic. Don’t panic! Let’s take a look at the variables involved and what’s going on in the body. While a taper can be highly individualized to the athlete’s current situation, there are some keys that can be universally applied. 

Volume or Intensity

The common thing to do here is to cut both. By that, I mean what I discussed above. The daily volume is scaled back, the number of days is reduced, and the amount of intensity is scaled back (or removed altogether). Does this sound like you? Do you end up feeling sluggish rather than ready to rock? This could be a big reason why. The thing with the taper is that we are trying to balance recovery and performance increases against detraining from doing too little. While you may be able to do this for a short amount of time (a week maybe), many people attempt to do this for 2-4 weeks. With that amount of time, you cross over from elevating performance to detraining. While this isn’t extreme, just think of it this way- if you are willing to spend a big chunk of change on a shoe that will improve your performance by 1-3%, you certainly don’t want to give those gains away by going too hard on the taper! 

Now, don’t take that as don’t cut volume for workouts and easy days. The same is true for the intensity. Find the balance that works best for you. If you find you really do need to cut back to extremes, then I would assess the training that takes you up to that point- especially if you never seem to perform to what your training suggests. 

Don’t change your routine

As Kevin and Keith Hanson always told us, the body craves consistency. Kevin would always make the analogy of sleep. If you are used to getting 6 hours of sleep and then all of a sudden you get 12, you tend to feel groggy the next day. We aren’t used to it. It can make us sluggish, make us feel heavy, and not ready to rock and roll. 

My advice is that if you run 5 days a week, continue to do so. If you do two workouts a week, continue to do so. Let’s keep the routine the same and just scale back the volume. 

Analyze where you are at 

As you enter the final stretch, it’s key to take an honest assessment of where you are at from a fitness standpoint. Look over your training- how much were you able to get in? Does it line up with your goals? 

The big concern here is usually, “have I done enough?” As I write this, we are about six weeks out from the start of the fall marathon season and it has been HOT! So, what I hear now is big concerns over “weather” they can hit their goal pace since their workouts have either been a struggle to hit goal pace or were slow for a lot of the big workouts. I discuss this specific scenario in other writings, so I won’t address it here. 

The big questions I would ask myself

Did I miss any significant amount of time in the last 8 weeks (1+ weeks of training) 

Did I get the majority of the workouts in? (90%+ over last 8 weeks)

Was I able to hit my paces (or weather adjusted) and recover between workouts?

Get to the line

At this point, if I am looking at my schedule and thinking there is no way I can run what’s on it, then do what’s best for you. Don’t confuse that with just reverting back to old ways that never seem to work out for you. However, if you are just wiped out, nursing something that could end up worse if you keep pushing, or just trained over your head, then recover. Get to the line by any means necessary. For those in the marathon mastery course, go back to the recovery module and hit up all the modes you can in the last few weeks. This doesn’t mean you’ll make that original goal time, but you can give yourself a fighting chance. 

Don’t overcook yourself

If you are at a point where you don’t think you have done enough, now is not the time to try and cram the fitness in. I have tried it myself and it just makes things worse. In all honesty, being a little underprepared is better than being overcooked. If you are underprepared, you still have a shot at that homerun. This is especially true if you are a little more seasoned. However, if you are overcooked, there’s little chance you’ll be able to mentally or physically find what you need to pull through that performance. 

At the end of the day, following these guidelines can help you individualize a taper that will work best for you. Whether you are using a plan from a book or online, you have to understand that the authors of the plan are trying to provide a template that will work for most people. So, it’s up to you to take the best information you can, mainly from your own body and training, so that you can apply specifics to the template. If you can do that, then you vastly increase your chances of nailing the taper and putting that hard-earned training to use. 

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I recently made a comment on my Strava log that I was making a conscious effort to make my easy days a little bit faster. This prompted a question from one of my followers who essentially asked what the benefits of running faster on their easy days would be. So… it depends, right? That’s the answer to a lot of these type of questions. Not every run should be your fastest, and as a coach, the problem is that if I give a range then the fast end of the is usually what is adhered too. So, to combat that a little bit, I want the focus to be on the easier side of things, knowing that the pace will creep up a bit. There are scenarios where we should go beyond the LSD style of running and that is what I want to explore today.

As we dive in I want to begin with adding more context to what I wrote in my log. If you have been reading my posts or listening to my podcasts, you know that I have been “treading water” as it comes to my training and fitness in 2020. As the year has wound down and I see some really great performances, not to mention the redefinition of age and performance, I have rekindled motivation for the next few years. I started looking back and reflecting on my training the last year, or so. It helps to really take an honest assessment of where you are coming from in order to determine the path forward. Prior to 2020, the vast majority of my easy runs were under 7:00 per mile. Most of this year, that number fell off substantially. I would say that the average pace of my easy runs was more like 7:15 pace. Now, to keep that in perspective, even if I ran 6:40 pace, that would still be a good 60-90 seconds slower per mile than my goal marathon pace. I am not making a set of rules for me and a set of rules for you! But, this was not a lack of ability, rather, a lack of just making the conscious effort.

So, looking at my goals, I realize that not everything can, or should, look the way it did when I was 25, or even 30 years old. There might be weeks where I need more recovery, but looking at this made me think about the cascading effects of “slacking” on my easy days. I don’t have any scientific backing on this, but to me, this was a cascading effect on the rest of my workouts. I was running significantly slower on my easy paces. When I went to do workouts, they just seemed so much faster than what they really should have been. Were they beyond my capability? Probably not, but mentally I couldn’t cross that bridge. Also, I have been using the word “averaged” a lot in this post and that’s important. Trust me, when there’s a run the day following a harder workout, I am going to go slower. At the very least, the first few miles I’ll let myself ease into it. I am talking about trends overall. If I have 4 easy days in a week, then the average might include 1-2 runs closer to 7 minute pace (+/-) while 1-3 will probably be a touch faster to 6:30 pace. So, don’t get it twisted that every single run is faster.

With a little bit of context now, when should you let it rip and when should you crank it up and when should you slow your roll?

Crank it up

When you take more easy days between SOS days. For instance, if you use a 9 day cycle or the alternator set up.

If you have gotten faster in races but your easy paces have stayed the same throughout.

If you are forcing yourself to slow down to be in the range and it’s causing gait change. Focus on running with a natural stride and increasing general endurance.

Slow it down

Don’t force the faster easy paces if you are trying to make a big jump in a race goal. Let effort dictate the pace.

You’ve tried increasing the average paces, but now workouts are suffering.

How I would start introducing more moderate paced runs, based on classic HMM plan:

Monday: Easy/Recovery- just coming off bigger weekend mileage that was more effort. Day before the SOS

Tuesday: SOS

Wednesday: OFF

Thursday: SOS

Friday: Recovery/Easy

Saturday: Easy/Moderate

Sunday: Moderate/Long

Over time, you might find that natural pace just becomes faster. Sometimes, we just have to convince ourselves first and then the body takes over. If so, let it roll. Just monitor effort and if you are whooped after a workout, don’t be afraid to take it easy. For me, it was a matter of convincing myself that I could still train pretty close to what I had in the past. For you, it might be convincing yourself that you are ready to take the next step. Either way, it can lead to big breakthroughs, given that you monitor data and physiological feedback. It also adds a little variety if you find yourself bored on easy days. Sprinkle ‘em in. See if anything happens!

It was 2008 and I was on the starting line of the New York City Marathon. I had just completed the best training segment of my entire life. Yet, here I was petrified, staring at the world’s best runners (Olympic medalists, world record holders, and past champions). Needless to say, I underperformed and left incredibly disappointed. Fast forward to 2011. I was on the starting line of the Rock n Roll Marathon in San Diego. Nothing in my training block had stood out. I was ready to accept whatever outcome happened, but I was calm, relaxed, and itching to run. That day I ran a new PR of 2:14:38. The difference? It certainly wasn’t the training. It was the same training I had done for years. No, the difference was my self confidence and that is a major bummer. Today, I want to explore the idea of self confidence a little more and how you can make sure yours isn’t going to be a factor in your next performance.

What is self confidence?

It is simply the belief in one’s self to successfully perform the desired behavior. From that, there are two types of self confidence- trait confidence and state confidence.

Trait confidence is the notion that self confidence can be seen as something that is more stable and part of one’s personality. An example of this might be that regardless of whether a runner is confident they will stick to the training plan. For the most part, I feel like this is me- when it comes to training, at least. It might not be true when it comes to races though!

State confidence is a feeling of confidence that is felt at a particular point in time, but relies on the current state of mind of an individual and may only be demonstrated momentarily. An example of this might be when a runner is normally very confident until it comes to a stressful situation. Then the person loses their confidence. This was me on the starting line of the NYC marathon!

The Four Sources of Confidence

Mastery:

By far the most dependable of the sources. If we continually see defeat, we tend to have lower self confidence. It’s not a lot of fun seeing a race fall apart over and over again, right? So we want to build in successful experiences to experience a sense of success. These are even more important for those with low self confidence in general- stemming from negative life experiences. Even small victories stacked on top of each other can gradually build your confidence.

In terms of running, say you are running your first marathon. You really aren’t great at long tempos and as you do longer and longer tempo’s, you continue to struggle and fall apart. Not good for the mastery idea and confidence, huh? So, as a coach, I might look at that and break those workouts up. I might find a way to build the person up in accumulating the volume at marathon pace, without throwing them into a weekly workout that they continually struggle at.

Modeling:

This is where a good coach and community can be a big help. Those with less experience are likely to have less confidence in themselves. Let’s use the first time Boston Marathon qualifier. They heard all the stories about the course and the crowds and are panicked a little bit. As a coach who’s run the course, you can help them by modeling their training after the course. You could provide your experience from running the race and how you handled situations. Another example is something very common in our community. People have my book, but it doesn’t look like a common training plan. So, they post their fears in our community looking for advice. Thankfully for me, dozens of runners chime in who went through the same experience and were successful. The runner can then model their training based on others' experience of the same situation.

Social Support:

This is another area we see a lot of in our community. A person posts a workout in our group in hopes to get a bunch of likes and encouragement. This can help, for sure, but the thing is, you really have to be sincere about the encouragement or many people will sniff out the bullstein. It matters most if the encouragement is coming from a coach, accountability partner, or anyone with a strong persuasive influence in the person’s life. It also is important for significant others, close friends, and family members to be providing social support because their credibility in the person’s life is more influential in helping a person become a better athlete.

Where I would be careful- just looking for support from people telling you what you want to hear and not the truth…

Physical and Mental Prep:

Nothing beats putting in the work. Part of this goes to having goals that require you to focus. What I mean, is that having a goal of running a 5k as a goal is great, but it allows you to be lax in structure, right? If you get out and run a few times a week, then you’ll be able to accomplish that goal. Nothing wrong with that, it just doesn’t require a lot of planning on your part. If your goal is to break 3 hours in the marathon, then that’s going to require a lot more work. If you did that work, then you will have a lot more confidence standing on the starting line than you will if you project that you did the work, but really weren’t that committed to the daily task of training.

Mentally, there are strategies, too. Like imagery, positive self talk, and things of that nature. These are all important, too. However, in my opinion, it’s all cemented together with doing the work on a consistent basis. Grinding out a hard workout builds your mental capacity to wrap your thoughts around a difficult time. If you can come out the other side of that intact, then you are in a much better position to convince yourself that you can do it again during a competition. It is a balancing act and an individual circumstance issue too. We don’t want to defeat a person who needs the workout victories, but we want to make some of those workouts to be “gut check” time, too. In the end, it comes down to how well you can build a person up to a point where they can handle that gut check without having it turn into a confidence nose dive.

Conclude

Overall, when you read through this, I hope the big takeaway is that you can’t do it alone. Having people you trust is crucial. Surrounding yourself with people who support is invaluable. Having a team prepare you physically while having friends and family being there to support you can go a long way in an individual sport. Luckily, that’s one thing that the running community provides, for the most part. We can find those people in a Facebook group or the community run club. I feel like many of us think we have to go it alone. I know I felt that way for a long time. This is true with anything we want to grow and excel at in life.

So, if you are lacking in the self confidence department, how should you proceed? The first thing I’d do is make sure what you are doing makes sense. I realize I am a coach, but I am not saying you need to go out and hire me or anyone. I think a great way to get good advice and be part of a community is getting involved locally with your running shops community runs. It’s a great place to start. Research philosophies that are out there. See what makes the most sense. If there’s a training group, think about joining it. Find an online community. I know these can be tricky, but a good group will police itself from the jokers. The people with real insight will emerge. The bottom line, surround yourself with people you trust and who will give the answers you need to hear (not necessarily what you want to hear). Seek out help from people who have been where you want to be. Lastly, I think recognizing that a good or a poor performance doesn’t define you. How you carry yourself through both is what will define you. Letting go of that can do wonders for releasing the power of your untapped potential.

During this time of uncertainty, it can be tough to have a plan. Many of us have been training a little aimlessly, myself included. It’s been hard to have a plan when there isn’t a definite end point to that plan.

So, today, I want to give you the 30,000 foot view of training and work it down to a single day.

That way, even despite the uncertainty now, we can ensure that we are still making progress towards our long term goals.

Admittedly, my 2020 was as haphazard as many of you experienced. I ran the Houston Marathon in late January as a last ditch effort to qualify for the Olympic Trials. I was tired and had spent too much time chasing the standard over the last couple years. I was tired. It didn’t go well and so I just needed a long break. Besides, I had all of 2020 to race, right! Needless to say, that wasn’t the case. Like many of you, I started training for a race and in self denial just pushed forward because races said they were just postponing, right? So there was a lot of starting and stopping. Finally, I “committed” to racing two 5k’s. I did find a race around Halloween and then did a 5k time trial with my workout buddy Alex Wilson. However, when I say committed, I mean I ran every day, but there was no concrete plan. Did I make progress towards 2021? Well, I guess it was better than a complete lockdown on my training, but I would say it was more like treading water.

Ultimately, I did get a bit of a kick in the backside though.

My time trial on the track woke me up a little bit.

On the one hand, I didn’t reach a loose goal of breaking 15:00 in the 5k. On the other hand, I came pretty close at 15:20 with about 80% of the training that I really wanted to do (in the plan I had in my head). So, while it could have been a time to just say “oh well, it’s 2020” I became motivated again. If I was that close with the minimum, I can get there with an actual plan! And so, this post is a culmination of that realization. I’ll work through my big picture view and how that relates to cycles of training.

The preface:

I turn 40 in April of 2021, so that is essentially an opening to a whole new career for the next few years as a competitive masters runner. Personally, I also have some feelings about how long we can be competitive and even improve into our 40’s, so I want to put those thoughts to the test on myself. The Big Picture goal for me is to qualify for the US Olympic Trials again while in my 40’s. It’s a fun goal for me and I am blessed with the time to train hard.

So, the question is, how do we get there?

Unfortunately, what many of us simply answer with “train harder.” Maybe, but sometimes it’s other things and we could talk about those things forever. For today though, I want to talk about mapping the timeline out.

Starting small, we have the microcycle.

Typically, this a 7 day cycle, or your weekly training. However, something we have been doing and has gained popularity, is extending this out to a 10-14 day cycle. I personally find the advantage of this as I feel like we try to cram a lot in over 7 days when it might not be as beneficial as making sure you can recover sufficiently between workouts. Regardless, with a microcycle, you are looking at a 7 to 14 day cycle. The key here is that no single workout in this cycle will provide significant increases in fitness, but a bunch of them done consistently, will promote the specific adaptations we trained for.

This leads us to the mesocycle.

This is a cycle of 4-8 weeks. While the microcycles individually don’t increase fitness, a bunch of them added up will. This is what we’ll often refer to as a training block- a block of specific work to elicit specific results/adaptations. If you follow the HMM, you’ll see these as the base, speed, strength blocks. How long you make these depends on several factors, but in general, if you are lower mileage or on a longer microcycle, then you’ll probably want to make this cycle longer. For example, if you do a tempo run every week, then in 6 weeks you’d get 6 tempos in. If you go on a 10-day cycle, then you’d get about four in. So, extending to 8 weeks would get you to that 6 specific workouts. Now, it’s not that 6 is the magic number, it’s just to show you that you want to get a certain number of workouts in to see the reasonable adaptation.

Stacking a few mesocycles together will get you a macrocycle. This would be the summation of your training plan for a race. If you do a 2-week base, 6 weeks of speed, 6 weeks of tempo, and 2 weeks of taper, then you gave your macrocycle. The only issue is that macrocycles are typical can be defined as a 12-24 week block of time, but can also include time frames of 1-4 years. This depends on the cycle of your training. For example, the Olympic cycle is every 4 years. Your age group goals may be on a 4-5 year cycle. When working with my athletes, I try to get them to think in 2-3 year blocks. Maybe we should make one more category- the megacycle to encompass these?

Big Picture.

Ok, so going back to my big picture goal. In reality, this is maybe a two-year goal for me. In two years, I hope that bigger races will be occurring again, the Trials qualifying window will be open, and if we don’t hit it then, I still have time to hit reset and go after it one more time.

So, let’s say by the end of the year 2022 I want to be able to hit a qualifying time for the Olympic Trials. That’s the endpoint of this macrocycle (mega?) and means we need to work back from that. In this case, working back from there, I would start a marathon segment in September. Over the summer, I would do a half marathon segment to really develop my lactate threshold before switching to marathon training. This backs me up to June. From March to June, it’s prime spring 5k racing season and would make sense leading into a half marathon segment. Working back from March, I am in the middle of Michigan winters. Here, making sure I have a good base down and am fully invested in strength and mobility makes absolute sense. Just like that, I am at the beginning of 2022/end of 2021. Since at the time of writing this, I am a year without doing a marathon, I’d like to get two in. Closing out 2021 or Beginning 2022 with a marathon would be a good position. This means something like CIM or Houston in early January. Michigan is pretty solid until the end of December to train in. Then the wheels fall off. So, to do that means I’d be training by the end of October. So, that makes perfect sense to train for a fast half marathon from July through October. It’s been a long time since I have run a fast half and there’s a lot of great options in the fall. If I back up from there, we are mid-2021, or when everyone is saying things will start returning to normal. I still want to break 15 minutes in the 5k and I’d like to do it when I am 40. Since I am close and local 5k’s have a better chance of going off in the spring, I am going to put my eggs in that basket. This gives me June and July to attempt this. However, I will be coming off a marathon, so we’ll see. If it’s a tough recovery, I just focus on being ready to go for the fall. I am going to run Bayshore at the end of May in 2021, so that’s set. Since it’s been a year, I really want to get back in the saddle. I’d start training for that in March.

Phew, that puts me into the present time!

I have December, January, and February to figure out. Looking at what I have laid out and where I just came from, it’s a toss-up. We will be heading into the winter, so a base makes practical sense. However, I have kinda been building base all year! At the end of the day, I have some things I need to work on- strength, mobility, and nutrition, so this might be a good time to make sure those habits are reinstalled. If the opportunity to race arises, then I can assess where I am at and see if it makes sense.

There ya go, from strictly a calendar standpoint, that’s two years to my MEGA goal. In two years, I’ll get a couple of chances to test where I am at with the marathon, but it won’t be the entire focus. Everything else I am doing is going to lead to another. I am always going to be working on other aspects of my running. I won’t completely abandon shorter races. I might not like it, but it will help me preserve my speed and my overall ability.

Everything has a purpose.

The other thing to take away is being practical. Mainly, what fits around me. Marathon training in the summer is pretty brutal, so I am optimizing that time frame. Plus, it’s summer vacation time, so fewer miles with a shorter race segment will allow me to train without having to sacrifice family time. Also, January and February are tough going in Michigan, so I optimize what’s practical to make those months successful. Lastly, while we are still in a time of uncertainty, there’s wiggle room. The next several months are definitely written in pencil, but it’s written down. It’s the plan, but it has to be flexible. If this gets screwed up, it doesn’t mean the end goal is out of the question.

That’s really the big picture view, broken up into cycles. Hopefully, with this time of uncertainty, you can work on the big picture of a 2-3 year window from now. Then as we work back, we can stay focused on that long term plan with some intermediate benchmarks. In turn, it helps you to stay motivated in the short term when plans have to be in pencil. Knowing that what you are doing today will impact that big goal can help immensely with staying motivated. You just might have to remind yourself of that constantly. Whatever you do though, have that plan. Even if it’s in pencil for now. Have those calendar days filled with missions to accomplish and progress to be measured. What I found out the hard way was that a plan in your head means it’s easily changed through internal bargaining and compromise. Here’s to a race filled 2021!

How many of you have run a marathon only to find yourself with a head cold or sick within the few days following the race? Yeah, me too! The truth is, we know that hard training and racing makes us more vulnerable to sickness.

Right now, training hard with a suppressed immune system could spell disaster.

We are told that exercise is good medicine when it comes to immunity, but there is a window of time where our immune system is suppressed before bouncing back. There’s also a big difference between general exercise and training hard.

It’s a tough balance, but we have options. I came across a recent article in the Sports Performance Bulletin that discussed this, although it was post race specifically. It looked at supplementing marathoners with probiotics and measuring their blood markers and development of upper respiratory tract infections (URTI). What they found is definitely valuable for our situation.

History/Recap

First off, before I discuss the results, let’s recap what we know. We know that long term supplementation of probiotics helps reduce the development of URTI in endurance athletes. This is important because we know that hard training from volume, intensity, or both creates a depression in immunity post exercise.

This creates a particular susceptibility to viral infections.

So, the idea was to supplement these subjects for 30 days and see how their blood looked right before, right after, and then again in 5 days post race. They had 27 male marathoners and randomly split into two groups of supplement and placebo.

Both groups saw an increase in immunity (through different cell production) before the race. This would have been due to the taper decreasing their overall workload. They then all saw a decreased post race and then a return to normal levels. Now, the probiotic group showed a decrease in the pro-inflammatory cells after the race, while the control group did not. It was also shown that the immune cells CD8 and the T cell were not suppressed like they were in the control group (showing that the immunity was not as compromised with the supplement group versus the placebo. So while statistically, there was not a difference, the trends were definitely headed in the right direction. The authors admit that the 30 days was probably not long enough since it’s been clearly shown that any differences to take place in a significant fashion that it will require several weeks of supplementation.

If you decide that you want to give probiotics a shot, here are some general tips.

Take on an empty stomach, at least 15 minutes before eating.

This is not a quick fix. I’d recommend taking at the start of the segment. That will give you time to build the gut flora and help you through the peak of your training, too.

Definitely take probiotics after coming off a round of antibiotics as medical treatment.

While this winter going into 2021 is particularly important to fight off viral infections, it does shed light on staying healthy during hard training. Keep your immune system high and you recover better, you stay more consistent, and your fitness continues to improve- even during this uncertainty.

If you are interested in giving probiotics a shot, here’s what we use. You can try for 30 days with no hassle and this link gets you 25% off. There is a vegetarian option, too.

It is interesting how our experiences shape our philosophy over time. My earliest example was when I started running cross country in high school. I ran track in junior high but wasn’t bothered with cross country. My coach, Mike Noll, was very pace-oriented with an emphasis on negative splits and since it was really my first experience, though that’s how it was supposed to be. The kids that ran in middle school were basically taught to blast off and see how well you could hold on. They were able to get away with it because the distance was a mile and a half. In high school, the distance doubled, which meant that there was twice as long for things to go wrong.

We have all gone out way too hard before and recognize that the time you can lose is on an exponential level!

Needless to say, my college coach was very similar, as are Kevin and Keith. All have different nuances to their approach, but the bases were all very similar. Fortunately, I thrived under those theories and have taken the same approach to all of you who listen to me. When I was a part of the ODP, I had many, many teammates from all different types of programs. And like anything, people struggled with adapting to this type of philosophy, while others thrived. Truth be told, I feel like the people who thrived were the people like myself.

We were moderately talented but really had to execute perfectly if we were to compete at the level we did. So, we had to learn paces by running paces- over and over and over again.

Now, a couple of years ago, I made a post saying as much. A prominent runner replied, “Why not just train them to race?” Now, to be fair, I really don’t think they were being facetious. I genuinely think they were asking as a type of “well why wouldn’t you just do this? I thought about it for a long time. At their level, they could train to win a major race. I was not there, and most of my athletes aren’t at that level. Many of you are training to beat yourself or to qualify for Boston. Things like that. I was trying to run PR’s, qualify for World teams, and those types of things.

So, I sense it already, “aren’t you selling yourself short?”

No, I don’t think so and that is really what I want to cover. I don’t feel like I did, because I feel like when the situation did arise, I had the killer instinct and disregarded pace when I was late in a competitive situation. But it was because of knowing where I was at with pace that put me in the situation, to begin with! I will give you two examples of races, both of which were in the same training cycle.

In 2011, I and a couple of teammates were on the training cycle. Our first race was a half marathon in Naples, Florida. I had never heard of this race before, but somehow everyone and their brother were at this race! So, it was still kinda early in our block and we were training for a pretty fast go. We were all trying to run under 1:04 for the half- pretty close to 4:50 pace per mile. At Naples, I tried to race the crew. There were some guys there like I described at the start. Go out hard and hang on. I was naive and thought it might work and I wanted to race the competition. I knew we were fast, but I disregarded it. By 10k, I was fried. I spent the second half of the race watching people pull away from me like I was stuck in peanut butter. It was pretty disheartening because it was a wasted opportunity.

Now, about four weeks later, I was in New Orleans for the Rock n Roll half marathon. I had two other teammates who were trying to get Trials qualifiers by running a fast enough half time. So, I went in more fit than I was previously, but having no intention to race the leaders. This time the gun goes off and we settle into the pace right away. This time it felt like a jog, but we were dialed in. The two leaders had jumped out early, but by four miles the lead had stayed the same distance. I knew we were on the pace and it felt comfortable. So, I started dialing in just a little bit. My 4:55 miles crept down to 4:50, then I hit 10 miles and I was at my PR! I think it was 48:35 at 10 miles. I hadn’t quite caught the two leaders at this point and it was a critical junction. I thought- Do I have enough gas to get them? Do I have enough time to catch them if I stay at this pace? My decision/reaction was I felt like I was just off the edge enough to push for 15 more minutes. That’s about what I had left to race. So, I buckled down, caught the two leaders, and dropped the one. Then it came down to a sprint the last 800 meters. I was nipped at the line, but the guy who beat me was an NCAA champ, so it wasn’t like I let him have it. The result: A new PR of 1:03:58.

Two races, within a month, with two dramatically different results. 

I know what many of you are thinking- this sounds like I am making the case for training by feeling more than training by pace. To that, I would disagree. I really feel like because I knew my paces inside and out, I, as The Gambler used to say, “Know when to hold'em. Know when to fold 'em. Know when to walk away and know when to run.”

The reason is that regardless of the data you use- heart rate, pace, or power, what are you really measuring? You are measuring an intensity level, or how hard something is. I prefer pace because it’s what I have always used and at the end of the day, many of you are training to run certain times, so pace you need to be able to run a certain time for a given distance. But here is the problem.

We put so much emphasis on the data, that we don’t internalize how that effort feels.

We get so wrapped up in hitting the splits that so many of us just say, “Well, I hit that pace so I’m good for the marathon.” The opposite is also true. Or they get into a situation of just going pedal to the medal because they feel that they can, or should.

The point here is that running paces and sticking to paces lets you internalize better how those paces feel over an array of circumstances. For me, I have been doing it for decades and so I know pretty close (without the help of a watch) if I am over the target, or not. But, it was decades of adhering to pace, adjusting as I progressed over time, and then listening to my body on how those paces felt that helped me “race” when the time came. I learned how long I could extend an effort for before I was going to pay the price. I could make better calculations on what moves to cover or when to let it play out. You might get lucky once in a while when just throwing eggs against the wall, but most of the time they are just going to crack under the pressure.

A couple of last things I want to mention here. One is that I am aware that there is a time to really push a workout. To take yourself to the well a little bit. For us, that was always The Simulator and the second half of the 2x6 mile. For you, it might be one of the 16 milers and one of the 10 Mile tempos.

The problem is that you can only go to the well a few times before the bucket comes up dry. Do you want that to be during training?

Probably not. The second is that I like the other data like HR and Power, but I am yet to be convinced that they should be your training guide. Where I like them better is data that you can look back and reflect on. Where you can see trends and aid in adjustments. That’s just me and I know many of you have your own strong feelings.

Ultimately though, as a coach, I want to get you as an athlete to be at this place in your training- Allowing the pace to be dictated by the effort and not the other way around. Easy runs are the perfect example. Let’s say your easy range is 8-9:30 pace per mile. Yesterday you did a hard workout, had little sleep, and are stressed from a project due at work. In an ideal situation, you’d run at an easy effort and if that landed at 9:15 per mile, so be it. Where many of you are at is you see 8:00/mile and force that pace even though the effort is significantly higher than easy.

To get to this point, I want to teach new runners to learn control by strictly adhering to paces, especially early in a training cycle when things are easier.

This means no cheating down your easy runs or any of your workouts.

The temptation is there, but resist! This does mean you have to pay close attention to the data. Things like setting up your ranges on your watch to annoy the hell out you may be a necessary evil. But, this only works if you begin to pay attention to your body, how you feel, and what’s going on internally to begin associating how you react to the paces. Then, over time, you begin to know if you are creeping paces down. If you are running faster, then it’s a conscious effort, not because Right Said Fred is blasting your ear pods. As you are more experienced you can shift the reliance on the technology to reliance on your effort and be really close. If you can get to that point, then that’s where you can really make breakthroughs in overall pacing and being more competitive. You will be able to make much better race decisions and have confidence in yourself.

Is this clear as mud?

Learn your paces by internalizing efforts. The end result is that you, over time, can put less reliance on the technology measuring the intensity and putting it in the best computer ever made- your brain!