Thursday, March 24, 2011

Thursday Day 4- 7019 ft of climbing.

7129 ft total today. Bringing my 4 day total to 27000+ of climbing.
 Run before the bike. Used my Powertap for the first time today. I'll post pics of all the electronical thingies later.

 No Powertap download. I get an error message trying to download the software (I don't have the CD so I was trying to get it off Saris website.) Typical. Wattage on most of the climbs hovered in the 200-250 range with a HR max of 148 (LT is 175). HR average was 136 for the ride.

Run

Bike

4 comments:

Russ said...

Hi - first I love your blog and the pictures of the mountains. They make a city dweller like me feel very jealous.

Now the er question: you and lots of other coaches bang on about running slowly. Low HR stuff.

Why, and yes I know it supposedly makes the body burn more fat but what I want to know is:

What physiological changes are happing? (and why)
Who did the studies on this and where were they published?

Run slow run slow run slow - I only have time for 2:30 or 3 hours of running a week, I want to run fast run fast run fast and then faster.

Lucho said...

Russ- I have never and will never advocate running slow to get fit. It doesn't work. Running with a low HR is what I "bang on" about. Running slow with a low HR means that one is aerobically weak. My best MAF tests have been 5 miles at 5:50 pace with a HR average of 145... that is not slow running.
If you only have 3 hours to work with and you want to run fast and then faster then do that. With such a small amount of time to run then it's probably better that you just enjoy what time you have.

Russ said...

OK but how to run 6 min miles or less at 145? Surely I'd end up doing lots of slow mileage to get there?

(not trying to get free coaching here, I'm just curious about all the apparently contradictory advice - I read in Triathlete (I think) Simon Lessing would do everything super intense or he'd stay at home, nobody could hang with him - and it seems nobody has ever done any studies to verify any of it)

Lucho said...

You run at HR 145 until your speed drops and drops and drops. And yes, when you are aerobically weak you do have to run slow to keep HR down. But simply ignoring that because it sucks isn't going to make you a better runner. And if we simply want to ignore fitness then why don't we all just skip training and just run our goal times regardless of our fitness? You can't. You must build fitness from the ground up, not from the top down.
You become efficient at what you do the most. So if you run hard all the time then you will be slow when you run easy. BUT- if you get fast at a low HR then you will be faster at a higher HR. You can't put the cart before the horse.
I've trained a ton with Simon and that is true. The guy runs hard every time he steps out the door. But he failed miserably at Ironman (he had one good race) because he never took the time to build aerobic endurance. Running too intensely all the time meant he couldn't run 26 miles very well at all. Simon is a perfect example of how to not train for a marathon.
If you are training for 5ks and 10ks then the aerobic component can be fudged, but not for long races.