Never change a winning game

And don't ever suppress your inner compass...

For the last three months I have been doing the opposite of what I was preaching during the whole last year. Why?? Heaven only knows... I wanted to try something new. As a result I ended up wearing myself down, and not getting enough recovery for at least two months. Now I realize that I won't able to run Bergen City half marathon next week...

It all started so well. 2017 turned out to be the year of my best performances ever. Thanks to deep conversations with and great advice from my friend Mats (whom I miss so much!!!), I had a great winter training season with quickly improving form. The recipe was reconfirmed by our test coach Dag: all running should happen either in zone 1 or in lactate threshold zone, nothing in between! That resulted in my best performances ever in every course last year.  Six half marathons in total:  1:56 in Fana in April, 1:57 in the hilly Bergen City a month later, 2:48 in the mountains in June, 1:53 in Tromsø later in June, 1:54 in Trondheim in September, and finally 1:52 and current overall PR in Oxford in October. And in between, a PR of 14:05 at Stoltzekleiven.  I had the recipe! It was working!! And I ruined it all by completely changing the game...

Why? After Oxford came a period of quite a lot of travels and rest, followed by an unusually cold winter with a lot of snow, ice, and freezing temperatures. At the same time, I was losing a little bit of motivation after all the achievements of last year: "Am I now simply going to repeat it all?". On top of all this, it was a busy period with family visits, celebrations, and significant changes concerning work. I was not being very disciplined in my training, so I thought it would be a good idea to have a strict training program to stick to. In January I entered a program which I ad read a lot about and many people had a lot of success with. On the background of my performances so far, it instructed five days of running every week: two interval sessions, two moderate runs, and one long slow run. Nothing special so far; this was anyway more or less the amount I was running before. However, the speed of the runs were quite different from my previous regime. The intervals were slower than my previous intervals and the moderate runs were faster than my previous zone 1 runs. I think those moderate runs were what "killed" me. They were easy enough to perform, but not slow enough for recovery.

It is hard to imagine that someone at my level, with a program that on paper looks pretty moderate and reasonable, can actually end up becoming overtrained, but I am afraid this is exactly what happened. I know it might sound ridiculous, and that's also exactly why I never thought of this option on the way, until my body stopped functioning. In retrospect, I should have seen it coming. I was simply too dedicated in following the plan. I never missed a single run. I did it early in the morning if I knew I would be busy in the evening. I did several in a row if I were going away for the weekend, sometimes two per day. I  also had two hard strength training sessions every week. My legs were tired and stiff most of the time, but I was able to conduct everything as planned, and that gave a certain feeling of achievement and satisfaction. There were clear signs, though, that I should have taken more seriously. I could see that my heart increased over time, when the pace was the same. Also my resting heart rate has been increasing steadily. I was somewhat worried about all this, but I comforted myself thinking that all this was simply about getting adjusted to the new regime...

The first serious sign came during Easter. I did a hard interval session in the morning, before leaving for the mountains for the Easter, which went well. Then came several days of skiing, and that all went in pleasant pace. But during one of the longest skiing sessions I felt really exhausted already from the start and did not really feel well throughout the entire day. It was strange, since we weren't going fast at all. Even Frank got worried and suggested that perhaps I should see my doctor. But I thought I was just having a bad day. Right after Easter, another hard interval session. Then a couple of days rest before a half marathon in Fana, just outside of Bergen, two weeks ago... I ended up not finishing that half, my first DNF ever. My heart rate was high, my speed low, my legs heavy. After this, I started to do some serious thinking. I had to quit the plan and take a couple of days off. I was feeling down, and to regain the joy of training I went running with friends just for the fun of it. A short (200 m) relay race and a great hike to Stoltzekleiven just last week felt really good. So I thought I was over the though days. So I just had a little too much training and a little too little recovery. Nothing that cannot be fixed with a couple of days taking it easy! Well, unfortunately it turned out not so. Although Stoltzekleiven was great and I felt wonderful, the next three days I could not take a single step. It was a wonderful sunny weekend, but I stayed at home the entire time, mostly sleeping. My body would simply refuse to do anything straining, and I listed to it and let it be.

Then came Monday and I felt ready and fresh again, and eager to train. Still I wanted to be cautious, so went for just a slow run with friends. Although I was at the back line with a friend who had completed a 10 hour ultra race a couple of days earlier, and we were going really slow, it still felt though and my legs were stiff already from the start. How could this be? After three whole days of rest?? I realized that it was time to seriously figure out what this was. I was at the doctor's and got everything checked that can be checked with blood tests. According to the results, there is no lack of anything that can explain this very strange behavior of my body. Then I started to Google the symptoms, and came to the conclusion that I simply got no recovery at all during the past two, three months. This lead to the situation I am in now, which cannot be repaired by just taking off  two or three days from running, or by simply taking it easy.

What now? Well, nothing, simply nothing. No running, biking, rowing, swimming or strength training for at least a week. Then, wait until the resting heart rate comes down to normal. Hopefully, I managed to catch this early enough that I won't need a very long time for recovery. (In bad cases it can take a year to recover, but I hope that only applies to serious athletes training much much more.) Then I will start very cautiously with very slow short runs. And then I will take it from there. And for sure, whenever I am ready, I will go back to my winning game: everything either in zone 1 or in threshold zone. Nothing in between!

On the other hand, if you never try, you will never know....

Slower the training, faster the race?

Embrace the break, break the record! 

Seasonal break, periodic training, alternating workouts,... all these highly recommended things sounded difficult to plan and fit into a busy life just a few weeks ago. But now suddenly they are all happening automatically!

I have been traveling a lot since Oxford Half. With the result that I have been feeling quite exhausted for the past few weeks. When the trips were being planned long time ago, I naively thought that they would give a good opportunity to recover from the race. However, it did not work out that way. I think I underestimated the effects of flying, sitting and walking a lot, little sleep, combined with more than normal alcohol consumption.

During the trips I did in total just three very slow runs. In between, I only had time to join a few of the scheduled Melkesyre training sessions, and other than that I again did mostly slow runs. I even did not have the energy to do much strength training. In the days just before and just after Oxford, I was planning to participate in a couple of 5k races this past and coming week, but I did not (and still do not) at all feel up to it. So all in all I have been taking it pretty easy, and there: automatically a period of serious cut in the training effort, almost a seasonal break!

During this time, somewhat to my surprise, I was not really stressed by the thought that I might be losing form. But I did find quite a lot of comfort in reading about smart training. We know it, but it still helps to read what all experts write: the slow runs are the most important. And they have to be really slow. There should be no more than 2-3 hard effort training sessions (intervals or tempo runs) in a week, and the rest should be all in zone 1. Anything in between is called "junk mileage" by many coaches. And you might as well just drop it. In fact, several coaches and athletes advocate that dropping it is actually better for your form.

I have found a lot of inspiration in reading about Deena Kastor recently. She is the US marathon record holder for women with 2:19 in 2005, and ten years after that in 2015 she broke the US masters marathon record with 2:27 at the age of 42. She explains that her continued success is probably due to cutting down on mileage and concentrating on quality. Her mileage now is about half of what she used to have 10 years ago, and this adjustment has enabled her to continue to be better than all her peers. Of course her current mileage is still way more than most of us, around 120 km a week, but hey after all we are talking about 2:27!

Another study I have read was comparing short and max intensity intervals to longer threshold intensity intervals. Tested on two groups of otherwise equivalent athletes, the study showed that intervals that lasted 5-10 minutes (rather than 1-4 min), and had a lesser intensity than those of the shorter intervals, enabled the athletes to race faster at the end of the test period. So no need for those short sprints!

Maybe it's all in my head, but reading all this, and getting finally enough sleep during the weekend, I feel like I am doing just the right things at this point in time. Ok, so I still don't feel like street racing, but do I really need to? There are no important street races coming up soon, whereas the uphill season is definitely here with two Blåmanen races in the coming two weeks, the Little Christmas Whisky race in December, and then the Fløyenkarusellen starting just after the new year. My training, except some of the really slow runs, has been mainly uphill in the past weeks, with a peak this last week with several uphill (short and long) intervals. They say periodicity in training should also involve doing different types of runs so that your body does not get used to the same thing which leads to stagnation of improvement. So there, with almost no effort suddenly I have also achieved variation between street running and uphill running in separate periods!

The most important thing is of course to have fun the entire time. And when having fun coincides with what seems to be the right way to train, it feels pretty good. Another thing that Deena Kastor strongly believes in for success is the power of positive thinking. In fact she has just written a book about this which will be out in April 2018. For example, she finds great comfort in reading her own training logs before a competition, seeing all that good training before her eyes, and having confidence that it will give her the results that she is after. So who knows, perhaps believing that you are training in just the right way is as powerful as actually training in the right way?

Listen to your body, and make your mind listen to you.

Negative split at last! (Bergen City Halfmarathon)

Listen to your heart.... 

Yes, you know that all my training is about keeping the right heart rate these days, and little by little, it is giving more and more results. Just a quick recap of the recommendations (first from Mats and Christian, and then from Dag): all training happens either at zone 1 or at threshold heart rate, even the intervals. If anything happens in between, then it is progressive training where I start from zone 1 and work my way up to threshold HR, increasing speed at regular intervals. Already before the mentioned recommendations, I had started to not exceed the threshold heart rate, following the blog of Ingrid Kristiansen, but I was not good with zone 1 runs then. Now I have a lot of zone 1 in my training, not always by running but also by mountain hiking, swimming or biking. 

OK so what are the results? Not that they are very impressive (yet!) but still motivating: 10k PB in January, PB in the Fløyenkarusellen uphill race in February, my second best half marathon time ever in March, and PB of the Bergen City half marathon course two days ago. The improvements are small, mind you, but set into the following perspective, they are really uplifting: injury and no running in the whole of 2015, and falling behind of most my previous records during 2016. I am still VERY happy with 2016, as it gave me so many new experiences with a whole bunch of running buddies in Istanbul plus the euphoria of completing a marathon decently. But in 2017, I am finally catching up with myself of 2014! :-)

I won't bore you with the details of the race on Saturday, but I have some observations that I found interesting and that you might find helpful in your training. After the fitness test in March, Dag told me to start a long race well below threshold heart rate. On the other hand my threshold HR had fallen down to my zone 3, so I knew that there was no way to get a good half marathon time that way. So, three weeks ago I participated in a local, low profile half marathon just to test what I could do. I was not at all well rested for this race, but I managed to keep the pace I had decided beforehand very evenly until the end. The interesting part is that I was already at threshold HR from start, and after half way, although my speed was the same, my HR increased by about 10 beats. It was great to experience that I could go with much higher HR than I was told, and this helped me a lot during the Bergen City half marathon. For the first time ever in a race, I finally achieved negative split! My average pace was 10 seconds faster per km in the second half of the race compared to the first half.

I think the best way to become better at half marathon is to race more half marathons. In 2014, although I was faster in a sense, I did not at all have the same endurance as now. At that time, participating in a low profile half marathon that goes inside a forest was something I would not be able to motivate myself for. But now I can just join a race whenever I feel for it, without particular preparations, and this was actually my goal all the way from the start. When you race more, you get to know your body and your heart better, and you get to test how much you can push and when. My experience is that every half marathon feels easier than the previous, in fact quite pleasant. To keep the motivation throughout a race, I have acquired quite a few tricks which work really well for me:

Music. I just started with this recently, during the preparations for Amsterdam marathon. It was not easy to keep the motivation and the spirits high during the last long training runs, and I discovered how much better I felt when listening to music. My music list is very embarrassing, containing a crazy blend of old and new, oriental and pop songs, a complete mix of genres, but all fast and very rhythmic. Pick whatever works for you and try it out, especially if you have problems with motivation or losing speed during a long race.

Positive feedback. I find giving positive feedback to others during a race extremely rewarding. You get even more positive response back, and I always feel a rush of energy and increase of speed after such incidents. It is of course best if this comes naturally, but if not, perhaps you can even fake it until to you make it. ;-) I get very emotional during races, and whenever I see something or someone that moves me, I give a cheer, a clap, a thumb up, etc. This time, first it was the lady who was running inside a huge logo of the main sponsor of the race. I had read about her in the newspaper, but when I saw her at about the second km, I was surprised by how huge and impossible to run in her costume was. I clapped, cheered and gave her a thump up, and her response was invaluable! I repeated this whenever I felt for it: racers in wheelchairs, racers with strollers, slower marathoners who were still in their second round, ... Their response was so rewarding, and I immediately felt the increase in my speed. I was also fortunate to have many friends along the course who cheered me, Melkesyre with their kettle bells at the worst hill as always, Stian the world champ who ran with me along Fjellveien, Kari and Caroline who showed up surprisingly at unexpected places, and then the Melkesyre gang just 200 m before finish again. It helps, and it also proves that it's all in the head.

Nutrition. I always stop at every drink station. Whenever I did not do this it got back at me, so now I never skip one even if I feel good to go. About 200 m before a station I take a gel, and then I take two cups of water which also help clear my mouth and clean my sticky hands. Although one looses about 10-15 seconds by this (stopping means slowing down or walking), I think it pays off as better pace during the next few kilometers. At least for myself, I always feel a surge of energy and increased motivation after this. It is also a nice rewarding scheme; whatever the distance you are running, you can concentrate on the next drink station, promising yourself a short rest when you reach that point. It makes it easier to push when you have milestones.

Not exactly advice from an expert, but sometimes experiences of a peer might be more valuable than expert or elite advice. Last but not least: If you're struggling, don't forget that going easier on training might turn frustration into fun and improvement.

Total decline

Numbers don't lie...

I have been implementing threshold training in a quite disciplined way during winter. However, the values I have based my training on were from a test I took in August 2014, so I wasn't entirely sure that I was actually training at correct intensity. This week I took a new test and got my lactate threshold and VO2-max values measured. Unfortunately, all values had gone down since 2014.

Good news first. Among the values that had gone down were also weight and fat percentage! :-) 2 kg lighter and 5 points less percent body fat compared to 2014, on the very same scale. My VO2-max had not changed much, around 52, which is still better than that of 99.5% of women my age, and better than even that of 96% of 20 year-old women. And the best news of all is of course Dag Hilland, the conductor of the test. It was so nice to see him again, get loads of information, motivation and advice. No matter how the results come out, the test itself is an incredibly rewarding experience, thanks to Dag. Both Dag himself, and not the least his wife Rebecca, have improved their forms impressively during the last few years, and Dag says it is all due to very disciplined threshold and zone 1 training. So I have been doing the right thing, but with a little too high HR than I needed to.

Not so good news. My heart rate zones are now quite a bit lower than what I thought. My zone 1 is really slow, and my threshold heart rate is about 7 heart beats lower than before. This corresponds to about 0.2 km/h slower speed at this HR. Recall that threshold HR is the point where your body starts producing so much lactic acid that you cannot keep going more than about an hour at that level. So this will have quite a bit to say for my half marathon time. Interestingly, the speeds that I can keep at various heart beats are still the same as before, but my body starts producing lactic acid earlier now than before.

To be honest, I was expecting this. But perhaps still hoping for better results. At the end of 2014 I was in really good shape, and then almost the whole of 2015 was characterized by injuries. Although I did a lot of uphill training and had a new record at Stoltzekleiven in 2015, there was almost no running, so my running form must have declined quite a lot during that time. Then in 2016 there was a lot of running but without paying attention to HR zones at all. It would have been nice to know where I was just before Amsterdam Marathon in October 2016. After that I lost a lot of form, and it is first recently that I started to feel some improvement again.

On the positive side. No matter what, it is good to know the real values and train accordingly in a dedicated way. Anyway my recurring injury in the hamstrings does not really make fast running much fun these days, so the slower zones fit me much better now. My new threshold zone is actually what I thought was my sweet spot, and it is quite pleasant to run in that zone, even for pretty long intervals or tempo runs (up to 10k). My new zone 1 is so slow that I can do it even when hamstrings and legs are complaining, and I can transfer some of my zone 1 training to biking and swimming, making sure to have even lower (10-15 heart beats) lower HR then. So in a sense, the new values will make my training easier and even more pleasant than before.

Boosted dedication. I have been reading everything I come across about threshold training, but there has not been a very clear single advice. I have been applying what Ingrid Kristiansen advises: never above threshold during training, only at competition. Dag's advice is very in line with this. Never ever train above threshold, not even during short intervals or uphills. The advice was very clear: a lot of zone 1 training, as much as you can get done. Then 2-3 times a week, training at threshold, either in form of intervals or a not too long tempo run. I must admit that although I was very careful about not exceeding (what I thought was) my threshold, I had not been doing much zone 1. My runs outside of threshold intervals were somewhere in between, and I have now adjusted all those down to zone 1.

Why threshold and zone 1 training.  Dag and Ingrid say that training at threshold has the same effect on your form as training at maximum heart rate. You train your heart to be stronger by pushing its current limits. If you instead train at maximum intensity, then the impact on your form will be the same, but you will wear down your body much more and accumulate a lot of lactic acid. You will need much more time for recovery so your total training volume will decrease. Keeping your intensive training to 2-3 threshold sessions a week allows you to train every day, as long as all your other sessions are in zone 1. Zone 1 training seems to do wonderful stuff to your body, your cells, your blood vessels, and your mitochondria (some tiny stuff in your cells that convert calories to energy). It also helps to keep you out of injury.

So I now have a clear recipe to follow and a lot of renewed motivation. But things are unfortunately still not so straight forward. My legs won't let me run as much as I want these days, so I have to resort to swimming and biking. I have no idea how this will impact my running form, but in any case I need this kind of triathlon training. I have also started seeing my physiotherapist Ane the angel again. Within my body's limits, I think I am doing everything I can.

The rest, I leave in the hands of the universe ;-)

Marathon training I : Following a program

Come October!

I must admit I am getting a bit fed up with marathon training. Sometimes I wish the race was already in a couple of weeks. I had heard other people mention that it takes quite a bit of sacrifice to train for a marathon but I had not really understood. In the end, my friends and I are all running several times a week, so what is the big fuss about training for a longer distance? Well, it is exactly that: the long distance.

I have very big respect for the 42 km... The respect makes me disciplined about following my training program. Yes, there is actually a program. Although it may sound from my recent posts that my training towards Amsterdam is going somewhat ad hoc, there has been a program all the way since March. On one of his trips to Istanbul, Frank brought me a booklet prepared by Kondis for training towards Oslo marathon. The first part looks quite a lot like this.  As Oslo marathon is in September, while Amsterdam is in October, I started to follow this program one month behind. So in March, I started to look at what the program suggested for February. The suggestions fitted perfectly with what I was already doing at that time. Running three times a week, one medium length, one interval session, and one long run. Of course the length of the runs was very short then compared to now.

The booklet has two types of programs, one for novices (first time marathoners) with running three times a week, and one for experienced runners with running five times a week. As time went, I placed myself in the middle, and kept a schedule of running four times a week. Always one interval, always one long, always one medium run, and then one more run depending on what my friends were doing. As the summer arrived, the lengths of the runs increased, and so did the air temperature and humidity. Even during the summer holidays I managed to keep the training schedule, albeit with much reduced speed.

After coming back to Bergen in August, I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out how to fit all the things that I wanted to do into my training program. In the end, I converged to eliminating all other bigger competitions and rather focusing more and more on specific marathon training. I have now advanced to the experienced runners' program with running five times a week, if my legs permit. I am still very cautious about injuries, and from time to time I take an extra day of rest if I feel exhausted or I feel pain in an ankle or a hip. Sometimes I have to skip the marathon training intervals and I can join Melkesyre uphill intervals instead, which is a wonderful bonus.

It is a great help to be in a group of several friends who have signed up for Amsterdam marathon. Without that kind of motivation I am not sure that I would be able to keep up. We have now a common program, very similar to my Kondis program, that we are following altogether:
Day 1: 10-14 km run
Day 2: Intervals
Day 3: 10-14 km run
Day 4: Intervals
Day 5: Long run (20-35 km)
I still adjust the rest of my week depending on the length of the long run, because I always need a day of rest both before and after a 30+ km run. I also get the programs of friends from Istanbul training with a coach, and I take ideas from their training. Having a common goal is a great way of keeping in touch from a distance. On the other hand, to spend time with local friends who are not going to Amsterdam, I do some of my moderate runs with them.

The Kondis booklet also recommends strength training at least a couple of times a week. As often as I can, I do my HSR exercises to keep my hamstrings strong and try to stay out of injury. I have also restarted squats with heavy weights. Studies have shown that runners who do this in addition to their running program, become faster than those who only do the same running program. During a long run, after 25 km, shoulders, arms and back start hurting, so I try to focus on these areas also during strength training, in addition to trying to never let my core get weaker.

It all takes a lot of time. All my time outside of work goes to training, and even that is not enough. I constantly feel behind schedule. I should definitely be doing more strength training and more sleeping...

Come October!!!