Ingrid's recipe

No, not for Christmas cookies :-)

Although my main focus for the time being is uphill running and leg strength training, I haven't forgotten all about flat running. Every now and then I like to do a long run, but there haven't been any short or fast runs recently.

Still I want to build a basis for the street races of next season, and I have stumbled upon some interesting advice from the Norwegian multi-distance world champion Ingrid Kristiansen. In her blog, she gives a winter treadmill schedule for setting a 10k PB in the spring. She indicates the speed of a progressive 50 min run, which should feel very easy at this point. But she will increase the speed as the winter proceeds. Her initial advice is for advanced runners who want to do 10 k below 40 minutes, and this is how it looks: start with pace 5:55. Every 5 minutes, decrease the pace 10 seconds. The last 5 minutes are at pace 4:25.

Now, my goal would rather be to manage 10k at 50 minutes or below, which means exactly 1 minute slower per kilometer. So, it is very easy to change the suggested paces to what I think fits for me: start at 6:55, and decrease 10 seconds every 5 minutes, ending at 5:25 for the last five minutes. Ingrid also gives a heart rate indication of how the pace should feel. Her heart rate at start is around 140 and at the end 160, well below her threshold.

To test this on the treadmill, I translated the pace (min/km) to speed (km/h) since this is how a treadmill works. I ended up with the following schedule, changing every five minutes: 8.7 - 8.9 - 9.2 - 9.5 - 9.8 - 10.1 - 10.3 - 10.6 - 10.9 - 11.1. It looked really easy compared to what I manage normally. So far so good. But I had forgotten how boring I find treadmill running, and how hot I get when I run indoors.... The heart rate started out even lower than what Ingrid suggested, but it ended up higher at the end.

In general, I do get a higher heart rate when I run indoors, which I think is due to the temperature. No matter where, I always find the indoor conditions too hot to run on the treadmill. I suppose a training studio holds at least 20 degrees C and of course there is no wind.... If I were to design a studio, I would keep a separate room for the treadmills, set the temperature at 14 degrees, and install some fans to simulate pleasant wind. In fact, perhaps every treadmill could be covered, like a glass bubble, and one could set the temperature as low as one wanted inside there, and the sound as high as one wanted and played one's own music without using ear plugs. I wonder if such mills exist. If not, perhaps I should apply for a patent... :-)

Anyway, so treadmill running is no fun, and I must admit that I am not sure I will be able to follow Ingrid's recipe after all. Perhaps I can rather do it outside, on a flat stretch. I found it very pleasing and motivating that it is such an easy workout, so I do want to follow it up in one way or the other.

What I do enjoy much more, are treadmill intervals at Barry's Bootcamp. I owe a lot to this kind of training, which brought me up to shape to run my first half marathons. But I haven't done it much after I got the taste of outdoors training. I do regularly go to Barry's Bootcamp still, but normally I have either personal training session with Ketil, or I do a pure strength training session, called double floor, which means that one skips the treadmill part of the class and stays on the floor throughout the entire session. This week, though, I joined two sessions with treadmill running. I had forgotten how fun it was! And I realized that I'd lost a lot of sprint speed compared to before. So I'll definitely do more of this through the winter.

The rope jump competition is also very useful for running form it turns out. I have read that many top athletes rope jump several times a week to keep their ankles strong, their tendons soft, and to increase their calf strength. I can now do 2:15 at a time. And I really feel the increased strength. It is so great to have friends who initiate such games to combine fun (there is a lot of incredibly funny discussion every single day), competition, and increased strength and form.

Play hard, win easy! .... or the opposite... whichever inspires and motivates you :-)

Working on the uphill form

The Blåman races showed that my uphill form had declined a lot since last year. OK, so I was still in post marathon recovery period, but come on: for the last 11 months I had mainly been street running, most of it flat. When I resumed strength training after a break of about 6 weeks, it became also evident that I had lost quite a bit of strength in my legs.

But all that is going to be fixed now! First of all, fortunately the post marathon fatigue is finally gone and my energy is back! The Blåmann races inspired me to move most of my training to uphill running and walking. During the long training period towards Amsterdam, there were several spectacular mountain hikes during beautiful weekends that I could not join due to the 30+ km runs in our training schedule. I now realize how badly I had really missed the mountains. It feels wonderful to be in the low season and not to have to train towards a particular goal (yet!), so I simply pick the training sessions that I feel like participating, and these days the offered menu contains mainly uphills. 

One of the things I've been wanting to try all the way since last year is the long uphill intervals of Fjellgeitene on Thursdays. They are as long as 8 minutes! And there are six of them! Scary enough just the thought of it. It took me more than a year, and many conversations with and encouragement from Lars the chief goat,  to mentally get ready for these. Finally I tried them this week! Yey! And it was not even that scary! Between the 8 minute intervals are 2 minute breaks. In the breaks, the group jogs downwards. To compensate my slowness compared to the rest, I rather walked uphill during the breaks. In the end this worked out a bit too well; I got further than everybody, and followed Jonathan Albon (!!!) all the way to the top of Rundemanen. Next time, I think I can allow myself to either stop during the breaks or perhaps even slowly walk down.

Fjellgeitene also inspires in a very fun way when it comes to leg strength and plyometric training. I think we can call it the annual winter challenge. Last year, there was the daily toe raises challenge. How many toe raises can you do without a break? You stand on a step with your heels hanging on the outside. You lower yourself slowly, then raise yourself on your toes slowly, and repeat. This year's challenge is rope jumping. How many seconds can you rope jump without a break? It has to be done in a speed of about 100-120 jumps a minute, and the rope has to pass under your feet between every single jump (no double jumping). It is surprisingly tiring! So far my record is 60 seconds, but fortunately the challenge continues until February, so there is still time to improve.

All this is of course not enough to get my leg strength back. As promised, I have returned to my weekly personal training sessions with Ketil, and my goodness it was about time! After the first session I could neither sit down nor get up for several days; my legs were incredibly sore. The good news is that strength comes back pretty quickly. Also the running form is coming back. The best indicator for this is the Hordnes forest runs of Melkesyre every Monday. This course is pretty hilly, with a lot of ups and downs, so even the prescribed easy pace of 6:30 can feel challenging. At least it did two weeks after Amsterdam. It felt like a race. Since then it got better and better, and last Monday it was finally as easy as it should be.

But don't think that I have forgotten all about flat running. I have something new to test out. I will tell you next week :-)

What are cramps and how to avoid them

Cramps be gone!

I wrote last week that I learned a lot from Bergen Fjellmaraton due to interesting new experiences, like cramps. In fact, I learned even more afterwards, thanks to many useful comments from friends upon publishing the post. And I got so intrigued by what cramps are and how to avoid or get rid of them, that I read a lot about them this week.

Interestingly there seems to be no common agreement among doctors, scientists and trainers about what actually causes cramps during a race. However, many athletes swear that they are helped by immediately taking tablets containing minerals, especially salt, when the cramps occur. When we sweat a lot, in addition to losing water we also lose a lot of salt. Water and salt are essential for the signals from the brain to reach the muscles. So, it seems to be an easy explanation that if you lose a lot of water and salt, cramps might happen.

And boy did I lose a lot of water and salt during that race! I drank about 2.5 liters during the race, and I kept drinking the whole evening. I even got up during the night twice and drank half a liter each time. Still, when I got on the scale the morning after, I was 3 kg lighter than I was on the morning of the day before. So I must have sweated like 6 liters during the race! Is that at all possible? It turns out that it is; under hot and strenuous conditions a person can sweat 2-3 liters per hour. Since the race lasted about 3 hours, the math adds up.

It seems to depend from person to person how much salt you lose when you sweat, and an easy test is to taste your sweat. If it is salty and you get a crust of salt on your face afterwards,  then you lose a lot of salt when you sweat. Exactly what happens to me! So I was happy to have found the answer. I simply lost too much water and salt. I was also extremely happy to have received advice from friends about the remedy: it turns out that there are a lot of tablets and mixtures you can take before and during a race to prevent cramps! You can even take them as soon as the cramps start coming, and they will go away, as several friends experienced during Bergen Fjellmaraton.

Still, I kept searching for more explanations. Some experts do not agree that loss of salt is the (single) explanation of muscle cramps during a race. A study on all athletes participating in an ultra-triathlon showed no significant differences in salt levels between athletes who experienced cramps and those who did not. This study concluded that muscle fatigue is the main reason for cramps. But how do you measure that? The problem about finding out what causes cramps is that they happen at a time when several things happen in the body simultaneously; muscles get tired, you lose water and salt, and even your brain gets tired. So it is not easy to know which of these things cause the cramps. For almost all athletes cramps seem to come during long races, and in the second half of such a race. This supports the muscle fatigue theory. I think common sense and my own experience, as well as most experts, suggest that it is a combination of both.

Recall that I had almost no terrain or mountain training in the months prior to the race. So my muscles were not prepared for that kind of race. All experts seem to agree that you should train in similar conditions of the race that you will participate in. What all experts also seem to agree on is the importance of plyometrics, or jump training, for runners. In Bergen I used to do quite a lot of jump training, both during my personal training sessions and also during our Monday sessions with Fjellgeitene, jumping a lot on stairs with both legs, single leg, several steps at a time, etc. I am definitely going back to this kind of training! To start preparing for my return to Norway, I have also taken up forest runs here in Istanbul.

And no matter how well I train and how prepared I might feel, I know what I will have in my pocket during Amsterdam Marathon: Crampfix!

Stay strong, stay hydrated, stay cramp-free.