Aerobic Base Building: Week #3
Aka the time I need to commit
There are two things I have committed to for this half marathon build: The plan that I am going to follow (and which doesn’t have 100 mile weeks because what was I thinking?) and the name of this project.
I was listening to the podcast of Olav Aleksandr Bu (The coach of Kristian Blummenfelt and Gustav Iden) with Rich Roll. It was full of great insights, but 1 thing stuck out for me. Rich talked about people considering low intensity Zone 1 work as junk miles and Olav responded by saying something along the lines of There is a difference between quality and intensity. If you run your Zone 1 runs at the correct intensity, then it counts as a quality session because you gain the intended advantage from it. The same applies for a Tempo Run. (definitely not his exact words, hence no quote marks).
This was quite interesting because I often see people do sessions way beyond their race pace/way faster than what the session should be. While, I understand the feeling of power and the feeling that you might get a few extra Strava kudos, we often neglect the fact that going too hard (often beyond race pace for most people) almost translates into doing a race per week(if you do 1 session a week; more if you do more). Races have different recovery times than training sessions, the TSS(total suffer score) for a race is much higher and while it might feel great to be all-out every single session, you end up improving a lot less. I’ve learnt that from learning guitar pieces. E.g. the solo for Comfortably Numb has complex and easy sections. The fast sections need to be learnt slowly, to get all the correct notes. But when you play it with the easy sections, it is almost imperative that you play the easy section just as slow, so that you can nail the timing.
Also on the Rich Roll Podcast was legendary music producer: Rick Rubin.
He talked about art and how stupid it is to say “My art is better than your art. It is like saying my diary entry is better than your diary entry.”
I feel in this Strava culture, we need to remind ourselves of that. Much like art, your training is subjective to who you are as a person, how you feel at that moment and what you are capable of creating. It doesn’t depend on what others think, your creation is unique to you and has value because you worked for it. It doesn’t matter if you run 100 miles per week or 50 or 10. It is what you were able to do, and if it is not the best version of what you could do, then you can take time and build it up. Don’t feel the pressure in this world dominated by messages of instant gratification and athletes mentioning how being motivated is “not enough”. Yes, we can all be better but do we really need to judge others who aren’t taking that journey? I don’t think so.
Monday(16/01/2023):
I ran slow and I ran very little. Not much to say about this recovery run other than the heart rate seemed a bit higher than usual. But I didn’t sleep that well last night. So, that’s that.
The sunrise was interesting, and I figured out an easier way to fit the phone back. I just ran with it in my hands. I mean, it was a 4 mile run at 9 minute pace. Who cares.
Kettlebell workout this evening.
Tuesday(17/01/2023):
Today, I decided to wait until lunch to run. So instead, I headed to work at 07:15 in the morning and the roads were almost perfect. Anyways, so I got to work and I knew I would be late for my 12 pm run because I was in a meeting with someone at 11. Of course, people have no consideration for the time because they started the meeting 15 minutes late. And it ended 15 minutes late.
Then I found out I had left my earphones upstairs, while still having the case down in the locker room. I went up, and found out that the left earphone’s battery was dead. I put it back and decided to run without music.
I stepped out and there was sleet. More like frozen rain than snow. And I was wearing a pair of cloth gloves, which got soaked in the 1st 3 miles. I kept trying to get my mind off the fact that my hands were really hurting and just stayed in the moment, except for the last 2 miles when I was really in the headwind and freezing rain. Then my mind was just in survival mode. No thoughts.
BUT! I didn’t get angry EVEN ONCE! I am so proud of it. And my aerobic zone has shifted another few bpm lower! Maybe that’s why I am less angry? Not really.
10 minutes under a warm shower and got the feelings back in my hands. And then we had proper snow:
Oh, and through the suffering I finally figured out how to solve a major Microsoft issue for my tenant! So, totally worth it!
Wednesday(18/01/2023):
Got a chance to run in a group with Jake and Joan. The initial plan(on Sunday) was to get some threshold work done. Then it snowed; which in Lausanne quickly turned to slush. So we dropped the initial plan and decided to do some aerobic base work instead. And then, it snowed some more. With that amount of slush, we decided to abandon all plans and just get a run in.
While sliding on the slush, Joan mentioned his new plan for marathon training and we discussed how to best introduce intensity into your marathon build. I mentioned how as I am not a professional athlete, I am designing a new metric for training load.
If you have used TrainingPeaks, the preferred metric there is “rTSS” (Running Total Suffer Score.) A more detailed article is here; but roughly accounts for all variables in your run: Your intensity, your gradient, duration of the run and what percentage of your threshold pace was your current pace, and it gives you the effort you expended.
Logically speaking; the rTSS for a recovery run should be low and rTSS for a threshold run should be high.
I use the same but I add another factor into this: General Stress
I calculate it using the following metrics:
1. Work Stress (1–100)
2. Sleep Score (1–100)
3. 7-day mood score. (1–100)
4. Heart Rate Variability (HRV) (ideal range 72 ms to 86ms)
The thing is, I am not a professional runner and I have commitments to other parts of my life. I might end up doing 2 tempo runs in 2 weeks; one at 3:20/km and the other at 3:25/km. But one is not worse than the other. Because it might be that my sleep score was lower, HRV is lower, both indicating high fatigue. Or my work week might be completely shit.
These factors impact my training and it doesn’t make any sense for me to break my body and run a 3:20/km session for 40 minutes especially on days where the circumstance don’t allow me.
*anyways* while I was admiring Jake effortlessly gliding over the ice (he has one of the most graceful running forms I have seen), he mentioned how his brother-in-law broke 2:20 for the marathon. Instead of going for 2:20 and failing over and over again, he first aimed for a 2:30 marathon (Which was fairly easy for him but he got it done); then aimed for 2:28, 2:26 and then 2:24. Slowly chipping away at a goal made his brother-in-law come closer to it instead of his clubmates, who kept aiming for 2:20, running the pace for 30k and then DNFing.
I then expressed my desire to break 69 for the half marathon and Jake told me “You will run a good half marathon and you will run a good 10k. You will slowly chip away at your PBs and get closer to the PBs you deserve.” That is one of the most moving thing anyone has ever said to me.
Here’s the thing, I spent most of the last few years trying to break a huge chunk of this massive goal and working hard, maybe too hard. I put all this pressure on me and I failed over and over again. Failure is a good thing but to keep repeating your mistakes is also not a good thing.
What Jake said to me is the exact opposite of what a rather unhelpful physio told me. He didn’t tell me to stop working hard, or to take it easy. He told me keep chipping away at my goals. Taking small chunks off the time and making small improvements. To keep faith in myself and do the work.
At this point, I ran a 73 minute half marathon in October. Maybe at current fitness I am a little faster. Truthfully, I don’t know and until I don’t do it, I cannot put a number on it. All I want to be just 1 second faster than my actual PB of 1:12:28. And I will slowly chip away to 69, 68 and so on.
This build, from today, will be known as “Project 1 step better”.
1 last thing: That’s why you should not plan. Imagine if we had run tempo today, we would’ve not had this communication and my perspective would’ve remained the same.
Thursday(19/01/2023)
As I laced up my shoes for my afternoon run, I put on the Carbon shoes thinking at best I can run a threshold run. It was sunny outside and while it was still -2C, it felt like I can manage to run fast.
Heading downhill really triggered my fight or flight response, it was treacherous and icy. There were too many teenagers walking on the streets, leaving no room for others. I finally made it to the lake, decided to do a tempo run(at around 10 sec/mile slower than my Threshold pace; given how much my nerves were frayed and how cold it was) and immediately was faced with the problem of dogs without leashes. I kept running until i reached a ~2k loop which was relatively dog free, and looped it 3 times before heading back.
Physically I felt fine, but mentally these runs are taking a lot out of me. To concentrate so hard on staying upright, it is difficult to get into the flow state. Anyways, glad to have a nice tempo run in the bag.
Foam roll in the evening.
Friday(20/01/2023):
Had my chiropractic adjustment today. I popped like bubble wrap.
After that, I wished ChatGPT could write Powershell scripts because I was stuck writing one for 30 minutes because my colleagues have no intention of respecting my breaks.
Headed down by the lake and did a nice recovery run. Less icy today, felt good to run slow. I love to run slow, I don’t know why people don’t do it more often.
Got some core work in the evening.
Saturday(21/01/2023):
The plan called for 8 flat strides and 6 uphill ones. As I headed down, I felt my heart rate was much lower. In my head I was praising myself for being “fitter.”
And then I turned, a huge blast of headwind hit me and my “fitness” flew out with it. Man, it was COLD! -2.3C, real feel of -8 with 20 kmph winds. Not ideal. But got the flat strides done, started running uphill and was feeling good about the uphill strides.
Until number 5.
Number 5 was 12 seconds like the previous ones. But on 15% gradient, and I had stopped before to get a good 12 second run-in. So I went hard on it.
Much like Chemical X from Powerpuff girls, lactate flooded my muscles. I went hard on the 6th one too, but then had to lean against an advertising hoarding to get my breath back. But again, glad to get some sun and some speed.
Stretched after the run and then went for a family walk to Morat, to see the Festival des Lumières.
Sunday(22/01/2023):
I was literally praying for company. I did not want to run alone, especially at the end of long week, especially on the long run, especially on a day again at -2, with 20 kmph winds. And thankfully, I had good company. Jake, Molly, Marco, Joan, Phoebe and another person. Plus they wanted to run at Zone 2, which I was more than happy to oblige.
The conditions were a tad icy again but no one fell. And we got it done. Overall, a wonderful week of training. I am hoping I can return to morning runs again and the conditions become a little less dangerous. If they don’t, most probably I will try to cut down the mental stress of running workouts at specific paces and adapt my training to the conditions.
