heart rate stuff + all ur base training are belong to us

All my life, I've been fascinated with understanding how things work. I've also been an athlete in some form or another for almost as long as I can remember, so it's probably not surprising that I have a long-running fascination with what exactly is going on in your body to make you faster/stronger/more coordinated/etc. & thus better at your sport of choice.

Running track and cross country in middle school & high school, my understanding was pretty basic (running tears down your leg muscles, which makes them grow back stronger; breathing hard tells your body you need to transport oxygen faster, so it makes more red blood cells; something something mitochondria), which satisfied me for a while. When I started participating in long-distance road races as an adult and actively trying to improve my times, though, I wanted to know more.

And WOW, what a Pandora's Box that turned out to be. As someone who never took chemistry beyond AP or biology beyond the 9th grade, I very quickly found myself out of my depth and needing to fill in some pretty serious gaps in terms of understanding the finer points of metabolism and respiration. But I still found it fascinating, and the more I learned, the more I wanted to dive even deeper.

One of my biggest "a-hah" moments was learning about the body's different pathways for fueling activity and their connection to heart rate and perceived exertion.

(Super-Quick Overview You Can Skip If This Is Not News to You--

Every cell in your body runs on a chemical called ATP, which is created by your mitochondria out of fat, glucose (blood sugar), protein, & oxygen. When your cells need energy, they can get it via a few different pathways:

• Pathway 1: Stored ATP / creatine phosphate. We have ~2-3 seconds worth of ATP ready-to-go; after that we can very quickly turn creatine phosphate into ATP, which gets us maybe ~6-8 more seconds. This is an anaerobic pathway (ie, no oxygen required) & the system you'd use to, say, run a 100m sprint.

• Pathway 2: Aerobic metabolism. ATP created from some combination of fat & glucose (an aerobic pathway since burning fat requires oxygen). Preferred by the body because we have basically unlimited fat stores, but slow because it's limited by how quickly your body can get oxygen from your lungs to your muscles & clear out the CO₂ (respiration). Used for low-to-moderate effort activities like sleeping, chilling, walking, and--surprise!--90-99% of your distance running.

• Pathway 3: Anaerobic glycolysis. Glycogen (stored carbs) => glucose => ATP, with lactate as a byproduct cleared out of the bloodstream by the liver. Much faster than burning fat because no oxygen is required. At aerobic effort levels, lactate is easily cleared by the liver, but harder effort => more anaerobic glycolysis => more lactate. Eventually there's a tipping point where there is more lactate than the liver can keep up with (lactate threshold or LT). At that point you're in the anaerobic zone, & if you stay at that effort level, you'll eventually reach a point where burning muscles, labored breathing, etc., will force you to slow down.

LT is usually given as a percentage of max heart rate. There are field protocols for estimating it, but to know it exactly requires lab testing. Very fit endurance athletes have a high LT, because they can stay in the aerobic zone (ie, not relying too much on glycolysis & also clearing lactate effectively) at quite high heart rates; less fit people have a low LT, meaning their heart rate can't get very high before they're in the anaerobic zone.)

Of course I know that one of the most common Sins of the Recreational Distance Runner is doing easy runs too fast (ie, even if you're not technically running in the anaerobic zone, running hard enough that you're letting glycolysis do too much of the work & letting the aerobic/fat-burning system coast). While I don't think I've been super egregious about this, I know I've been guilty of some of it in the last couple of years & let those aerobic systems atrophy somewhat. And it just kind of seems like a waste to train for another marathon without investing some serious time in fixing that first.

Enter:

WHAT U SAY !!

I feel you, Captain; I made that exact face at first.

I don't know yet when my next marathon will be, but I'm in no rush; I might as well take the time to finally do it right. So for the next couple of months at least, I'm planning to do nothing but sloooooooow, easy, low heart rate runs and maybe two days a week of a few super short (ie, ~30 seconds) hill or bike sprints (more on that later).

I've also decided to go back to wearing a heart rate monitor every run, for a couple of reasons.

First, I suck at running slow and am really really good at talking myself into believing that "This pace is *totally* super easy, NO REALLY." Numbers (mostly) don't lie, so having them right in front of me should force me to be more disciplined about *actually* taking it easy.

Second, having a record of the numbers makes it easier to see improvement. Back in 2011 I ran with a monitor almost all the time, and over a long enough time period, you can actually see your aerobic fitness improving in the numbers, which is pretty cool.

18 weeks of HRM data from easy runs in 2011. Shit works.

But what's that you say? Heart rate monitors suck, you say? What ofthe unsightly blood & mangled skin in the chest area, you say?

I'm glad you asked, because that brings us to point three. I've finally jumped on the Mio bandwagon thanks to Jen & Kimra, which, believe me, is the only way I could talk myself into wearing a monitor every day.

(I am not kidding that I have what I'm pretty sure are permanent scars on my chest from the days when I wore the chest strap every day. Ick.)

I'd actually intended to use my heart rate monitor this whole past summer, which is why I got the Garmin soft strap back in May. Alas, just a few runs were enough to remind me why I gave that shit up the first time and question whether there is a strap in the world soft enough to make any noticeable difference.

That time in 2011 when the chafing was so bad
I was augmenting band-aids with duct tape. Screw that.

I've only been using the Mio for a couple of weeks, so I'll try to post a review sometime in October; so far, things are promising.

Now. Before I say anything else about heart rate training: I have educated myself enough to know that there's approximately a metric tonne of bullshit out there about heart rates and heart rate zones and how they relate to exercise & endurance training. Gird your loins should you start googling about it. Plenty of ink has been already spilled on this topic, so I will not rehash all that here except to say:

• I'm not a doctor, but I have a heart condition so I have had a lot of conversations with heart doctors about heart rates and exercise.
• I've had my max heart rate & tons of other heart-related stuff tested, multiple times, in a lab, by actual scientists & doctors, so I'm not guessing about my own numbers.
• If you don't know your max heart rate, it's difficult to do any meaningful sort of heart rate training.
• Your max heart rate is not 220 minus your age. If I only I could cast this abomination of a statement into the Fiery Volcano of Hateful, Propagated Lies for all time and never have to hear or read it again. Don't fall for it! Alas, MHR is a biomarker that has so far defied meaningful prediction by any formula--there's just too much variation that isn't correlated with anything measurable.

So. I really do want to spend a lot of time putting in lots of miles at a super easy effort. While I believe whole-heartedly in the spirit of Maffetone, I just can't really do it full-on; I tried back in '10-'11, & while I know everyone says "OMG THERE IS NO WAY I CAN TRAIN THAT SLOWLY," I'm pretty sure I had a whole other level of "this is never going to happen" going on, since 1) Maffetone uses a formula that doesn't take max heart rate into account (!) and 2) I have an insanely high max heart rate. (Not kidding, my GP thought I was making it up and/or stupid until I showed her the lab report.)

The glorious Phil Maffetone. You didn't know he was also a singer-songwriter, did you?

Like really. Supposedly my "MAF number" (the heart rate you should be shooting for on your easy runs) is around 142ish, which let's be clear, is brisk walking for me. Walking uphill it's like 150. I mean I may have some work to do on my aerobic system, but I just refuse to believe it's THAT bad.

These last couple of weeks with the Mio, I've faithfully slowed my easy runs, way, waaaaay down, from the 8:00-8:30ish range to around two full minutes slower. Although it varies some depending on the temperature, so far I've been able to average in the 150s in terms of heart rate for most of my runs, as opposed to the usual ~175-180ish (the spirit of Maffetone being that, over time, you should find yourself speeding up while maintaining the same low heart rate). I think that's just going to have to be good enough.

STOP JUDGING ME LUCIUS MALFOY I MEAN PHIL MAFFETONE

(No but really, the resemblance is kind of creepy, right?)

Right now I have a loose plan to do only that & the occasional short-burst intervals for the next two months, then add in one progressively longer weekly marathon-pace run for the next two months after that. I love love love data & statistics, so I'll be sure to record everything & report back.