Scott Johnston
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The ways you are suggest combining these workouts will work very well. The only other thing I have sometimes done is to do a hill sprint session directly before one of our gym ME workouts.
I hope this helps
Scott
Selim:
As much as one can make general recommendations I would say that linear scaling is not going to be the best. Think of the marathon. Often training volume is 80-100miles for this 26mile event. So I think a 50miler will need 75% of the volume as a 100miler. That’s probably a good place to start.
Scott
Great question that shows a good understanding of the training theory we use. The short answer is “YES”, adding either or both hill sprints and strides into the early weeks will help keep your nervous system tuned up and result in more muscle activation. This will help as you transition to more aerobically challenging faster running later in the program.
As to why they are omitted from the early part of the plan: Our stock plans are by necessity a one-size-fits-all plan. We have no idea the level of the athlete who will be starting this plan. Many will have a serious aerobic deficiency and for them just running at and below AET for the first phase is the best use of the time. From the sounds of your history you’ve been training pretty well in line with our philosophy and are entering this plan in a different place than they lowest-level athlete this plan must accommodate.
I suggest adding strides 1x/week to a Z2 run and 1x/week of hill sprints during a Z2 run.
Scott
Dylan:
What a bummer to have this problem and not know what it is or how to treat it. The thing that I think all 3 of your possible causes have in common is the effect they have on your Central Nervous System (CNS). Recently I have been reading about a promising treatment for long COVID that involves transcutaneous (non-invasive, through the skin) Vagus nerve stimulation. The vagus nerve is part of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) that ramps up the parasympathetic side of the ANS. Small electro-stimulus devices are on the market that specifically target the Vagus nerve which is close to the skin surface in the neck and ear. They boost the activity of the nerve which in turn ramps up the parasympathetic system and turns down the sympathetic. You should google this as there is a ton of information and studies on this subject. My reading has caused me to wonder if this same treatment could help with OTS.
I’m sure by now you are getting pretty desperate for help. I encourage you to investigate this and make your own decision. There are a few devices that are FDA-approved for this treatment and are being used for long COVID in many major institutions like Harvard, Mayo etc
Scott
Selim:
With that much vertical gain/loss in your target race I think the Luke Nelso plan scaled down a bit in running volume will work well for you.. While you might want to reduce volume don’t skimp on the special workouts built into that plan.
We’re very glad to hear that the Mountaineering plan worked well for you and think you will find good success with Luke’s plan.
Happy training,
Scott
Jim:
Good for you to do this experiment on yourself. Definitely core temperature has an effect on heart rate. We see this all the time with athletes who are forced to train in hot weather conditions. I’ve talked about this a great deal in the past, but here it is in short form: as your core temperature goes up your body attempts to dump heat through the skin, the capillaries of the skin dilate so that more blood can be shunted to the surface area where you lose heat via: convection and radiation. This greater volume of blood going to the skin means that there is a lower volume of blood available for the muscle work. As a consequence, your cardiac output needs to increase to sustain the same level of work. Cardiac output being the product of stroke times heart rate. At this low heart rate intensity, this happens with an increase in heart rate.
Nonetheless, the heart rate drift is a reflection of a shift of metabolism as well. We see this all the time with folks with ADS using our training protocol and it can be verified in gas exchange test in a laboratory. As to which mechanism, heat or metabolism is most responsible for the upward drift and heart rate, I don’t have a good answer, but I don’t think it’s quite as simple as the article you referred to. Otherwise, we wouldn’t see the metabolic shifts we do using these methods.
Now, let’s move on to your question: With the above explanation, you can see that it’s unclear which factor has the greatest influence. A faster pace with your higher heart rate will definitely give more training stimulus down at the metabolic level in the muscle because you will be engaging a greater volume of muscle fibers to do this work to run faster. just as I would for any runner forced to train in hot conditions I would recommend using the method you just did as much as possible for your training. I think you’re going to be putting a lot more stress if you try to train at 140 when you’re hot
Scott.
Martin, thanks for writing in with your great question. It’s not a simple one to answer though so much on the individual athlete that the best I can tell you is you’ll need to try it and see if it works for you. In theory, I don’t see anything wrong with stacking 2 Z3 workouts into a day. The benefit is that you can have slow speed and high speed endurance training because training at 3mMol/L in each of these workouts will result in quite different speeds on these repetitions. The only recommendation I might make in your example is to put the shorter faster workout in the morning with the longer somewhat slower eight minute repetitions in the afternoon/evening.
I hope this helps,
Scott
Antonio:
Thanks for your kind words and also for writing in with your question. when the paste to heart rate ratio is negative it indicates that the second half of this run’s pace increased relative to heart rate. just eyeballing the graph I can see that that happened. I can’t explain why it you sped up. But, just scanning your heart rate pace, chart from the workout I can see that you definitely sped up and heart rate remained quite constant. My best guess is that you need to try starting at a higher heart rate. since you are training for a mountaineering event, it might make sense to do this on an inclined treadmill hiking if that is the way you’re going to be doing a lot. However, if you plan to do most of your training, running on the flats, then this is probably the way you should determine your aerobic threshold.
I hope this helps,
Scott
Congratulations on your 5:45 mile. I’m sure there are still a lot of improvements that would be possible for you if you had given more time. If you redid your aerobic threshold test, you may now find that your aerobic threshold running pace and heart rate have increased above the 9:30 you most recently hit. I agree that most of your aerobic threshold pace and heart rate improvement has come from the aerobic base training you’ve been doing. You shouldn’t cut back on that volume in order to add more intensity. I would continue to keep the hill sprints and strides in your weekly training.
There are several ways to maintain that 6 minutes per mile with one workout per week. The simplest one would be to do one tempo run each week at about 85% of your current 1-mile best time. Run as long as you can at that 85% and notice when the speed begins to drop off. The next week, do the same thing. You should find that you’re able to hold that 85% for 30 to 60 seconds each time you do it. You could do this during your long weekend run.
Another way would be to dedicate one workout a week to doing mile repeats at about 90 to 95% of your current best mile time.
I hope this helps,
Scott
Brian, I don’t think you should concern yourself with heart rate. After all, the race is won by the fastest athlete, not the athlete with the highest heart rate. You have seen significant improvements in your pace even though this year, in January, February, and March, each race has gotten longer. The whole point of training for endurance is to improve your performance irrespective of what your heart rate does. I can’t explain the variability in your maximum heart rate that you see, but I just don’t think it’s relevant and that you should just focus on improving your performance and not fixate on heart rate.
I hope this helps.
Scott
I think you might want to consider planning for a race in the fall rather than in the spring. With illness being much more prevalent in the winter, this would at least give you a chance to have a clear runway with health up to your race date.
I don’t really see how you can mitigate the effects of missing 3 to 4 weeks of training four weeks out from your race I don’t think there’s any special training that could offset the loss to aerobic fitness that occurs with that long of a layoff.
I hope this helps.
Scott
Felix:
Thanks for writing in with your question. The gym ME program will make your legs stronger for the uphills, but where this program really pays off is in preparing people for downhill running. The eccentric loading in the jumping exercises helps build fatigue resistance in your legs. Walking lunges are a great exercise for glutes and hamstrings, which will help you. However, the gym ME does include lunges done in a more dynamic way. with as much vertical as you have in that race, where you will be hiking steeply for much of it, I would add weighted uphill ME work as well. If you do not have access to steep hills, you can use a stair machine in a gym to very good effect for this and for high volume unweighted aerobic volume. Evoke coach Jack Kuenzle trains a lot this way on stair machines and holds many mountain fastest known times.
I hope this helps.
Scott
It depends…..Stair machines like the Stairmaster (escalator type) are great aerobic base training, and especially if you run hills a lot, the stairs will transfer over well to uphill running. They probably won’t make you faster on the flats though. But they are a great way to add non-impact foot-borne aerobic training volume. More aerobic base training volume in a modality this close to running will help improve aerobic capacity. Don’t expect it to make you much faster as a runner except uphill.
Scott
Mike:
Regarding the race’s final weeks, there are several different directions the training can take, and their relative value is open for debate. In this case, there is no “right” answer.
The purpose of the longer sprints is to keep the ME stimulus going a bit longer in a more running-specific modality than the gym. As you probably noticed, that plan was written by Mike Foote. He felt this was a useful training stimulus to put the finishing touches on power and muscular endurance. I have used it with runners myself, although it is not my preferred method.
I recommend rolling from the ME block to longer, more aerobic uphill Z3 running. This also helps keep the ME stimulus going in a more running-specific modality but at an intensity that is more similar to the demands of these races.
If you choose that second method, I would keep the 10-second sprints but move them to 1x/10 days, giving you more time to add Z3 runs.
As with many training questions, there is no right or wrong, and you need to experiment with what works for you.
Scott
Ty:
Great question! On the days you are feeling really good, push the HR and speed up into the upper Z2 range. Those days may take a bit longer to recover from due to that mechanical load you are referring to, so don’t push this effort if you are tired. On most days, stay in the lower half of Z2. On those days when you can tell you’re tired, drop down into Z1 or shift to a non weight bearing modality like cycling.
I hope that helps.
Scott
