ThinkRunning

This last week has been a good one regarding training. Highlight of the week has to be the XC Championships in Blackburn. It was a long drive but well worth it to take part and see some amazing runners. I have learned a fair amount this week about myself and training.

Heart Rate

I understand a lot of people are skeptical about how much good monitoring your heart rate actually is and that different monitors can give different readings. I think this is what I am finding out. However, I think as long as you adjust accordingly then use the new device as a yard stick it still is a useful tool to enable people to see when they should rest, when they could have run harder and how hard they are working in racing and training.

Lately my heart rates seem to have fallen quite a lot for  a given pace. Could this be since I had the new Garmin? I was thinking maybe until of course I realised that I have been training consistently well over 40 miles per week now for about 8 weeks or more. By now I should be seeing some training adaptations, the most obvious one from experience is that the heart rate for pace drops and the recovery rate to normal heart rate post exercise is quicker and resting heart rate is lower. I have noticed all of these markers, the latter of which is exemplified by the photograph.  Just a few weeks ago my heart rate at rest sat here mid morning was 58 bpm.

Therein lies the distance runner’s paradox. The fitter you get, the harder it actually is to get near your maximum heart rate. This could explain my frustrations at not being able to get HR up in races. It makes me feel like a lazy runner and I do need to get more used to getting out of my comfort zone. The irony is that the more training you do, then the harder you have to work to get the results you want. I’m fairly happy though and I’m looking forward to my next half marathon where I will then see if my fitness is where I want it to be.
I do feel like I’m missing the cycling now though. I have neglected it since the end of September when I tentatively started to run again. I will give it a week or two for the weather to improve a little more then I will start to put some miles in on the bike too. Cross training definitely helps.

Cross Country

Despite the seventy five mile car drive each way I enjoyed the Northern Cross Country Championships. It was rather daunting to think that I was going to race take part in a race where the whole field were good solid club runners and the sharp end would be some of the best in the country! Once I had started racing though, despite it being brutally tough I felt honoured to be part of it. It was great to be lapped by the truly fast runners who simply glid past at a ridiculous rate of knots. There is a world of difference in athletic talent and ability between The Good and The Great runners. The Great ones are on a completely different level. I am in constant awe of them. the Ladies race started before us and Suzy from our club was in it so we had a good amount of time to watch before the Men’s race at 15:05. The winner was Hatti Dean running for Hallamshire Harriers – it was fantastic to watch her dominate the field from start to finish. Suzy of course ran a good race despite turning her ankle several times during the run.

I can’t help feeling rather insignificant against such a strong field of competitors. However, on reflection I think I did quite well to do what I did considering it was my first ever Northern Champs race and I never knew what to expect. I was quite surprised at how hilly it was to be honest. I counted eight hard climbs during the race and all were nice and sludgy, getting worse as the race progressed.

I was placed 379th from 602 runners, completing the 7.3 miles course in 56:58 so really, I can’t complain about that. I certainly learned a lot!

Hill Running Technique

I learned on Saturday about racing strategy and how to race cross country. To me it is completely different to fell or road racing. In a cross country race you simply have to run your heart out from start to finish. Starting off confidently and holding on to a lead is the name of the game or you quickly become swamped by the pack which of course is what happened to me. It is much harder work there because you are in constant danger of being trampled. Each time I hit a hill it got harder and at one point I was reduced to what felt like a half defeated trudge up the hill in a line of runners. I was accepting my fatigue and accepting the hill.

Me demonstrating how not to run up a hill

Then the faster runners came past, simply bounding up the hill with alarming speed and vigour. I decided to see if I could emulate their bounding technique that looked quite easy. I realised then that I could run up the hills, passing people but also that it took more strength than I have. Each hill I could attack now and pass runners every time. I hung on to very near the top and I simply ran out of steam each time. It is more hill sprint training I need because I very quickly recovered when I went back to the slower, accepting technique and then of course the legs cam fully back to life on the down hills. So, it takes guts and faith in your fitness and of course having enough fitness in the first place but to get up the sludgy hills or get pace up over sludgy terrain you simply have to run your heart out and know that you will recover on the slightest of down hills. It is a sort of loping gait I saw most use and that seems most effective in those conditions. It is hard to explain how you do that but I think it is some kind of subconscious adjustment to he decreased rebound you get due to the soft ground soaking it up. I did notice that concentrating on picking my feet up out of the mud helped enormously too. This aligns well with my running technique anyway and also I found that holding form no matter how tired you are is paramount in XC otherwise you will just get beaten by the terrain. I love it though, I’m not brilliant at it by any means but I love it because it is so bloody hard and the satisfaction you get having done an event is very great indeed.

To summarise my performance I’d say I need more hill training and lactate tolerance training. I need to get in the burn zone more often and get used to holding it there. Something a little alien to a long distance runner to be honest, well maybe not alien but it’s not something I do for long enough in a race. Short races are going to help me with this. I think the key is to hit short races as hard as you possibly can and keep going. Gradually you get better at doing it and learn that actually you can do much more than your brain tells you you can. Verging on Central Governor theory here too. Fighting the natural safety mechanism that I happen to believe in and training it to accept higher and higher levels of discomfort in races.

Goals

I only have two for 2010. I have signed up for Stratford Half Marathon which is the same day as London Marathon. I will be running as hard as I possibly can to see where my fitness is. After Shakespeare I will assess the likelihood of me running a marathon this year. I would like to do one but it all really depends on my fitness, how well I respond to training and how great the threat of injury is really. All being well I will run an Autumn marathon and hit a new PB.
Everything else is either just for fun or for training. This means I will probably attend many races. It doesn’t necessarily mean that I will be racing them all flat out though. It all depends on what they are distance wise, and the timing of them related to my two goals.
I am likely to be seen running a fair few fell races this Summer.

iPhones

My interest in programming the iPhone is deepening. I find it quite soothing in that it allows me to focus on one activity that I enjoy and calm my head down albeit temporarily, forgetting anything else that may be weighing heavily on me.

Summary of the Week

I am happy with my training for the week and I think really it is the only thing that has kept me sane what with the Fishpond Disaster and Work Hell. Somehow I managed to run nearly 60 miles for the week, 7.34 of which was cross country racing. The rest of my training can only be described as base miles at various paces and some off road running thrown in. As yet nothing too structured; I’m just watching my RPE, HR and just doing one good hard session (race) per week for now. It is so nice to be back running and getting somewhere with it!