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Scott Johnston
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Thanks for the kind words!! Great question too.
Yes, the aerobic base training needs to be muscle-specific to be most effective. How do you build an aerobic base in the upper body musculature? Well, swimmers and cross-country skiers do it by a high volume of aerobic work with the arms/chest. That’s a big ask for most people though. Here is something you might try rather than doing thousands of pushups each day. I have used this with many military athletes who have to be able to do a high number of push-ups in 2 minutes. I put them in a Max Strength program with push-ups. Low volume but high resistance. They use weight vests and also weight plates on their backs. Doing sets of 5-4-3-2-1 with increasing weight from 85-100% of 1RM. They can know out 5060 in 2 minutes. IN your case you cold then rest in the pus-up plank between sets of 10-20. I think you could do this for sure.
Scott
Risto:
Great question. It was a problem of space in the book and what would be most helpful to most people. In my experience, most mountain runners and ski mountaineers don’t do ANY strength training. To suggest max strength training to people with minimal strength training background would, I thought be risky and irresponsible. So we focused on very basic exercises and Muscular Endurance.; Including a real strength training block can be useful for many mountain athletes. But a weak athlete will see good strength gains from doing an ME block even without a max strength block preceding it. If you choose to add this I recommend focusing on single-leg exercises like the Bulgarian Split Squat and Box Step Up rather than traditional lifts like deadlifts and squats.
I hope this helps,
ScottMike:
Great questions and I am preparing an in-depth article that will touch on these subjects. But here is my take on what you experienced.
First let me say that pacing in an event eating many hours is much harder than pacing in a short race. In a 1okm race if you are running a few seconds/km too fast you will feel it in within a few minutes and the feedback will tel you to slow down before too much damage is done. So you get almost immediate feedback about your pacing. In an ultra the effort should be so easy for you in most of the race that you will be tempted to push too hard in the early stages. But, a pacing mistake of say 1min/km in the early stages will not make itself known until hours later, late in the race when it may force you to slow by many minutes/km.
Its sounds like you might have done just that kind of mistake in the 100k race. But the heat complicates things a great deal. It might make you feel a little better to know that even the top pros I coach see a steady drop in HR during the race. For instance: a 1 hour 17% climb early at UTMB HR can be 150 at an RPE of say 5. A similar 18% climb late in the race might only see a HR max of 130 and have an RPE of 7 or 8.
In the 48mile pacing you probably were not as jacked up and excited so controlled the pace better. Any we can’t discount the cooler conditions. The HR decline is again quite normal.
I hope this helps,
Scott
A.J.
Thanks for writing in. Keep in mind that as your aerobic capacity increases not only will your AeT HR and speed go up but so will RPE at these speeds. So, while currently AeT feels like an RPE of 4, when AeT moves to 155 or 160 the RPE might feel like a 5-6.
Even at the same RPE the long runs will take more out of you due to the duration.. They just beat you up a bit more. It is likely that you may need to spend more time in Z1 on these longer runs. That’s going to depend on how long they take to recover from.
I would suggest doing the longer runs at the RPE 4 and the shorter Z2 runs can go up to RPE 5.
I hope this helps,
Scott
Krizz:
The only explanation I can think of for a 15bpm drop in HR is some sort of glitch with the monitor. Did your perceived exertion stay the same during those 3 minute periods as it did on the rest of the test. It seems that even if you exclude those 3 minute drops in HR you would still get no or only a tiny amount of upward HR drift and perhaps the HR average would 160.
If you have been diligently training in Z2 for 3 months since that last outside test it is not at all unlikely that your AeT HR has moved more than 3bpm. If I were you I would start using 165 as the top of Z2 for the next few weeks and then test again.
I hope this helps,
Scott
Thanks for your great question and good luck in your FKT attempt.
Rather than lying in a supine position for your leg raises you might want to try using a slant board or a bench, one end of which is elevated 12 inches or so. This will increase the load on the hip flexors through a range that is more specific to hiking or running. Hanging leg raises are another way to up the ante. While side lying leg raises like clams etc definitely target the glute meds I would try adding in single-leg Romanian Dead Lift as a more running/hiking glute med exercise.
I’ll also ask some other coaches to chime in here.
Scott
Tim:
Thanks for writing in with your very good questions. It is good to have this background and you do sound like someone with a good aerobic training history. It is just that a lot of it was in the higher-intensity zones. You will find even more speed and endurance once you put a better aerobic base under that top-end.
ME: There are many methods you can use to get a good ME training effect. I have tried many over the past 30+ years and all will work. I settled on the Gym ME program you are currently using after having very good results with it for mountain runners. If you are seeing good gains with it I suggest staying with it. It is a bit more load each workout than the original Verk ME with 2x/week. But our ME 1x/week allows more time for running training which I think is still important for its aerobic benefits. Verk’s guys were 800-1500m runners so lower aerobic running volume.
Lastly, congratulations on coming back to running from what could have been career-ending injuries. Keep going.
Scott
Kyle:
What kind of warm-up did you have before they started taking lactate samples? I do not see how we could call AeT 160 since your lactate never stabilized and lower heart rates. It rapidly rose from the get-go. Normally one will call the AeT the point either where LA goes above 2mMol/L or where its initial rise of 1mMol/L occurs.
I strongly suggest you do the HR Drift test as described here: https://evokeendurance.com/our-latest-thinking-on-aerobic-assessment-for-the-mountain-athlete/
Do that test hiking on a treadmill set at 15% and use 135 as the starting HR.
From the chart you have sent 160HR indicates a LA of 3mMol/l. That is well above any definition of AeT. Based on this test I would call AeT 135ish because that is where LA started climbing.
The above comments on this test are null and void if you didn’t have at least a 10min gradual warm-up.
Scott
Adam:
Thanks for writing in and wow! A broken neck! You’re one lucky guy. Understandably, you are struggling to figure out the best path forward. What follows is my best guess. It is not medical advice.
You do not sound like an OverTraining victim however I can’t say this for sure. Continue to track your morning RHR. That is as good as, maybe better than HRV for monitoring recovery state and OTS.
Is your lifestyle contributing to the frequent illnesses? Getting enough sleep, eating well, taking Vitamins D and K2 and cutting all alcohol will all help give your immune system support. I don’t normally see folks with OTS getting sick more often.
Given your self-confessed personality type, it is quite possible that during your illnesses you get rested and well-recovered. This might cause you to come out of the gates too hard when you feel well enough to train. This might in turn cause you to overdo things and drive your immune system into the tank. Your brain remembers what it ‘should’ feel like to train at a normal load, but your body has lost that work capacity during this on-again, off-again thing you’ve had going on. Doing that a few times will keep lowering your base fitness and work capacity.
Whatever the cause, what you are doing is too much for your body right now. You need to be very gentle with yourself and very gradually add training load. Even if this means missing the mountaineering trip in November. You can’t bludgeon yourself into fitness.
I hope this helps a bit and good luck.
ScottGreat conversation. Seth is right on the combo of ME and hill sprints and you, Kevin, have experienced the gains first hand. With reference to Luke Nelson’s ME training before his top ten at the Tor d’Geant 300+km race: Luke did 13 of the gym ME workouts over the course of 16 weeks. Some work and training interruptions always happen. We then shifted to 1x/week of steep uphill intervals for 6 weeks before tapering. We used a hill that Luke has trained on and affectionately named “Stupid Steep” because the average gradient is 35% or so. Each of the 3 reps lasted about 15min when we started which already very close to Luke’s PR on that hill. Each session his time kept improving and by the end he was doing 3 reps all about 2min after than his old one rep PR. I chalk this up to the fact that as the weeks went on the lingering fatigue from the gym ME wore off.
Scott
Ralfm:
Yes, that kind of session is going to be very typical for most people’s Z2 work and it will get the job done.
Scott
Christian:
This is news to me and I do not have any experience with this device nor the ability to track core temp and HR. I wonder if some studies are showing this product in use.
Scott
Ralf:
If the goal is to improve your aerobic capacity/elevate your AeT then you need to train below your AeT. The drift test tells you whether the STARTING heart rate was at or below your AeT. Your AeT does not drift up during a long ski tour.
Scott
Doug:
Based on what you have said I think you can trust the results of this test. I suspect that your starting HR might have been lower than 130 since HR bounces around a lot. maybe try averaging your HR data for the first 5 or 10 minutes. If you do want to retest I would hold the starting HR for longer to allow it to stabilize.
Scott
