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 ;-)

Numbers don't lie

Do the math, run your path.

One and a half years ago, just before the Oslo half marathon 2014, I took a fitness test to get my oxygen volume and lactate threshold values measured. It was an amazing experience, and it taught me so much about how our body works. I learned that my lactate threshold at that time was reached at heart rate 162, or at 11.4 km/h running flat. I was told that I could keep going at these values or below for a long time, but if I went above these values, I would most likely hit the lactate wall after about an hour. This did not fit my plans too well, because I really wanted to finish the half marathon in 1 hour and 50 minutes, which corresponds to an average speed of 11.5 km/h. Then I thought "So what? If I can do 11.4, then I can do 11.5 as well", and I went ahead and followed my own plan. It worked for 18 km, but then the last 3 km were so painful and slow that the overall time ended up being 1:55. If I had listened to the advice and kept 11.4 instead of 11.5, I would have finished in 1:52.

Of course, being quite inexperienced yet, I did several other mistakes as well. For example, at that time I did not really watch my heart rate. I did not wear a heart rate monitor, especially not during races. Nowadays I almost never train or race without a heart rate monitor.  I have been using the values I got from that first test ever since, but now I feel that it is soon time for a new test. First of all, I was injured and not running for so long that those values probably decreased a lot during that time. Now, however, I feel that I can run as fast as before, so it would really be good to see how the numbers match. On the other hand, for the first half marathon that is on my list this year (in Bergen in just three weeks!) I really want to go with the feeling and enjoy the race as much as I can. So perhaps I will wait with the test for a while still.

I think the biggest mistake one can make during a long race is to start out too fast. It is unfortunately the most common mistake as well, especially among new beginners. For the first half of a race, you feel so good, it feels like you can keep the speed going for the entire race, but when you reach the half, you already start getting exhausted, and then the end becomes really tough and painful. All experienced runners and on-line coaching sites advise negative split, which means that you run the first half of the race slower than the second half. For a new beginner, this is very counter-intuitive. It is so easy to think "Let me just get as far as I can as fast as I can while I have the energy, who knows what will happen in the end?" The problem is that the probability of something bad happening at the end increases a lot when you start out too fast. I have heard the advice that when you reach 2/3 of the distance, you should still have half of your energy and power left. Again, this is not so easy to measure for runners who are not yet that experienced, but I think it is safe to say that starting out not too fast is a good idea no matter what. If you know your threshold values, and you monitor your heart rate, it is easy to see how you are doing, and whether or not you are running too fast.

Also when training for a long race, most of us make the mistake of running too fast for too long during practice. Of course, running fast is good training, and it eventually decreases your heart rate for that speed. But it also wears out your body unnecessarily, and the effect can rather be achieved by shorter intervals. The biggest loss, though, when you always run fast is that you never get to run slow. Running slow, at heart rate zone 1, has countless benefits. It teaches your body to burn fat, and it initiates a tremendous flush of human growth hormone. It teaches your body eventually to run faster and faster at that low heart rate. It builds up your blood vessels, it strengthens your ligaments, joints and tendons, and it gives your brain the signal that long runs are not dangerous; in fact quite enjoyable. Such positive traces in your brain are said to be very important during a race, when things start getting tough.

The marathon season is here for full. Good luck everybody with your training and your races. And most importantly:

 Don't forget to have fun!!!

Smart training: find your sweet spot!

Find your sweet spot and stay there.

I have been reading about smart training. As I am now slowly increasing my mileage on flat runs,  I have been looking into ways of training smarter both to recover from my hamstrings injury completely, and to avoid injuries in the future. But to be honest, the main reason why I have become so interested in sweet spot training is because I have been finding it hard to get my running speed back. When I focus on speed runs, I get exhausted and disappointed, and I now realize that this kind of training is not helping me at all to increase my speed and endurance. Instead I find it much easier to focus on heart rate, and heart rate turns out to be the key to smart training. But don't be mistaken; although sweet spot sounds incredibly nice, it is a completely different place than comfort zone.

Of course I do not come up with these things by myself. Being surrounded by a lot of much faster and more experienced running friends, I try to learn from them what they are doing right. Several of my friends have told me that they never train for a long time at their threshold heart rate. They stay about 10 beats lower than that. To me this has been difficult to understand and follow. I thought that by training at your threshold you increase your threshold speed. This is true in some sense, but I now realize that it is true for intervals and shorter efforts like that. In fact, as I understand it, your sweet spot is around 10 beats lower than your threshold heart rate. When I heard about sweet spot training for the first time from my friend Lars, all previous advice finally made perfect sense to me.

Most probably you do not know your threshold heart rate. I took a lactate and oxygen volume test last year and found out that my threshold heart rate was 162. At that time this corresponded to running flat at a speed of 11.4 km/h. I am afraid the speed is much much lower now, but I think the threshold heart rate is still correct. It is the heart rate at which you can go for about an hour before you start getting stiff by too much lactic acid in your muscles, and it worked for me during the uphill races of this fall. At shorter competitions (like Stoltzekleiven) or at the end of long competitions (if I have any power left) I can go all the way up to 169-172. You could calculate your threshold heart rate from your maximum heart rate, you could take a lactate test (It is really a lot of fun!), or you can for example look at the following chart and try to match it to your values:

From this I conclude that my sweet spot corresponds to about 154 in heart rate. It fits with how I feel during training. When I try to run at the speed I could run before my injury, I very quickly go up to my threshold and beyond, and thus get tired. Instead, if I run at my sweet spot, I can go for much longer time. So why is this spot sweet? The next chart explains it. If you train at a heart rate that is above your threshold, you don't improve that much. In fact training too hard has exactly the same effect as training not hard enough! I have been thinking that since I have participated in a lot of competitions this fall, I have got a lot of good training. And then I have been wondering why I have not noticed a more significant increase in my endurance and speed. And now I finally understand it: competitions are not training! Competitions do not build our form, they tear us down. And if we always train at competition heart rate and speed, the improvement will be minor.

The line "Training effect" shows that the optimal effect is achieved at your sweet spot, which is a little bit below your lactate threshold heart rate. What we normally do is to push it as hard as we can at every training. When you are completely a new beginner, this is fine. Your form is anyway far below your limitations and as long as you are not training too often, you will gain a lot from pushing yourself hard. However, as you get faster and in better shape, you might experience that although you are training hard you are not improving anymore. And the reason is most probably because you are training too hard. Just watch your heart rate, stay below your threshold on the longer sessions, and most probably you will see an improvement pretty soon.

So this is now my training regimen for the next couple of months: Two interval training sessions per week, where I go up to lactate threshold during the intervals. One or two tempo runs where I try to stay in the sweet spot for 30-50 minutes. A long and slow run, where I do not care about the heart rate, the distance or the speed, but just run for a couple of hours. A recovery run at zone 1 (for me: heart rate between 120-130) for about 40 minutes. It will be an interesting experience to see whether this will bring me back to my old speed within a couple of months. And I will be strict about one or two complete rest days a week; no running or strength training on those days. Restitution is a very important part of building form! If my form does improve, I am wondering how it will affect my heart rate zones and sweet spot. I assume that I will be able to run faster at the current heart rate zones. But will my zones stay constant, or will I have to go up to higher heart rates?

Stay tuned and we will find it out altogether!

GPS sports watch functions - what and how to use?

GPS sports watches offer so many options on what to display during training and competition. But what to choose during various kinds of activities?

I have a Garmin Forerunner 410 which is already a few years old.  On my watch I can have four displays between which I can switch with the tap of a finger. On each display I can show up to three things, where one is displayed big and the other two small. Until the summer of 2014, I used only one of the displays, and on this I always had in the big field the total elapsed time since start. In the two little fields underneath, I had current speed (km/hour) and total distance since start. Nowadays, depending on what kind of training or competition I am doing, I use different functions.

As I was used to knowing my current speed due to a lot of running on the treadmill at Barry's Bootcamp, I used the current speed function a lot before, but nowadays I prefer to watch my pace (minutes/km) rather than my speed. Since, like many women, I find the heart rate belt uncomfortable, I did not use it much before. But after I took a fitness test last August, I use the belt and the heart rate function every single time. Here are a few examples of what I like to display and watch during what kind of activity:

Uphill intervals with Melkesyre: I display "lap time" in the big field in one of the displays, and "heart rate" in the big field in one of the other displays.  Since during these intervals we run simply as fast as we can, I do not see the point in watching the speed, but I like to see my heart rate every now and then to make sure that I reach the same maximum HR at every interval. The advantage with lap time is that whenever I push the button a new lap starts, and thus I know exactly when every interval and every break starts and ends. I push restart as soon as I hear the run command, and I push lap stop as soon as I hear the stop command. I don't care so much what the little fields display, since they are anyway too small to see during such an intensive training.

Stoltzekleiven: I simply watch one display and it shows the total elapsed time. The course is so short and intensive that for me it is not possible to keep track of anything else.

5 km race: I display "pace" in the big field. My goal is to manage this particular course under 25 minutes, and I know that I should then have below 5:00 in average pace. Until now I have been displaying current pace, but at the next race I plan to display average pace. In one of the small fields I display the elapsed distance and in the other the total elapsed time. However, I must admit that during such fast races the small fields are not so easy to see.

Uphill races, like Blåmanen races, Fløyenkarusellen: In one display, I have the total elapsed time in the big field. In the small fields of the same display I have the distance and the elevation. Since these races are not as fast (for me) as flat races, it is possible to follow even the small fields. In another display I have the heart rate in the big field. Speed and pace are not so relevant for me in uphill races, as they normally apply to flat running, whereas in these kind of races there is even quite a bit of walking every now and then.

Longer lasting uphill races, like Skåla Opp and Fjellmaraton: During these two races I had exactly the same displays as the uphill races above, but these two races took place before I started paying attention to the heart rate. During longer races (more than 1 hour) paying attention to heart rate becomes really important, so that one does not go above the lactate threshold too early. In the future I will try to more actively pay attention to the heart rate during longer runs.

Long distance races, like half marathons: In one display I have pace in the big field, and total time and total distance in the two small fields. In another display I have heart rate in the big field, and the average speed and average pace in the small fields. Normally, during such a race (or training for such a race) I have a goal time, which prescribes a goal pace, which I like to follow.  At the last half marathon I participated, I also made a pace wrist band which showed what my total time should be after every km, and I could compare this to my watch.

Training: Normally "heart rate" and "pace" are the most important information during training, depending on what the goal is. Especially for restitution training, watching the heart rate is of utmost importance, to make sure that it goes slow enough. Also for harder training where the goal is to improve the form, watching the heart rate is important, this time to make sure that the heart rate is high enough. For longer runs where the goal is to keep a slow or moderate pace, watching the pace is a very good way to stay in control.

And of course every now and then I just go with the feeling without ever looking at the watch. But I always wear it and start it so everything is recorded. I upload every run to Garmin Connect so that I have everything gathered there, and I can share it with my connections who also have Garmin gear. Recently I also started to use Strava so that I can connect with friends who do not have Garmin gear.

My next watch will be one I can use during swimming, too!

Fitness test at SIB Testlab

Now here is something that was really fun to try! I had my fitness level tested at a lab in August this year. For a few months I had been reading about running and paying attention to terms like VO2 max, heart rate zones, and lactate threshold. These are indicators of how good physical shape you are in, and I was curious to find out my values. There are plenty of online calculators for VO2 max and your “physiological age”, but somehow I could not trust these as the information they ask for seems too shallow. So one day, during a personal training session, I mentioned this to Ketil, and he immediately suggested SIB Testlab at Vektertorget in Bergen. He had himself been there and taken the test. (This guy is unbeilevable; he has so much knowledge and experience on so many things, in particular all the things that I am interested in and curious about. Whatever I want to try out, he has already done it and can give me tons of advice on the topic. More about personal trainers later.)

I made an appointment at SIB Testlab and showed up there not knowing exactly what would happen. I knew that I would be running and sweating, so I was in my indoor training outfit, but I had underestimated the whole procedure. It actually turned out to be a full workout! The day before, I had been doing some interval training so my legs were tired, and I had a sore throat, which made the test day not an optimal one. For the VO2 max test, one really needs to push it to the limits, so if you’re on a bad day, you might end up not being able to complete the test.

I was welcomed by Dag Hilland who conducted the test. He is a great motivator and I really enjoyed doing the test with him. First I was on a scale and my weight was registered. Then I went on the treadmill for the lactate threshold test. From my age, how many times I run every week, and what kind of performances I had on previous races, Dag calculated a starting speed of 8 km/h on the mill which was at a slight incline. I ran at this speed for 10 minutes. Towards the end of this round I had to breathe into a tube (like the one on the picture) for about half a minute, and at the end I got a short break, where Dag pierced my finger for a blood sample. Then this whole procedure was repeated with the speed increasing by 1 km/h every 5 minutes.  My test ended when I completed the round at which the speed was 12 km/h (and all fingers of one hand had been pierced). Although I was not at all exhausted, my lactate threshold was reached. Already at this point Dag could tell me that my threshold was probably around 11.4 km/h. After this came the VO2 test. During this test, I breathed into the tube the whole time (but no piercing of fingers). This time the mill started at a bit more incline and a speed of 10 km/h. After every minute, Dag would ask whether it was OK to increase the speed by 1 km/h, and I would indicate yes or no with my hand (as I was not able to speak due to the tube). We continued without a break until we reached 15 km/h. After 60 seconds there I had to say no to a further increase of the speed as I was barely managing. But my VO2 max was not reached yet so Dag asked if I could go on for another minute at the same speed. I indicated yes to that one. Fortunately by the end of that minute we reached the VO2 max (I was watching it on the screen, it has to increase until it starts decreasing, and that’s how you know that the max is reached). During this whole procedure Dag was incredibly helpful, shouting and cheering me on to continue as I was getting more and more exhausted. He was exclaiming enthusiastic comments about the values I reached, which was extremely motivating.

My VO2 max value ended up being 52.6, which is supposed to be pretty good even for younger females, so I was happy about that. I was a little worried about my threshold speed of 11.4 km/h, since my aim for Oslo would be to run with an average speed of 11.5 km/h (which would give exactly 1:50 as finish time). In the end my worries came true; I could keep 11.5 km/h only for 18 km, and got very much slower at the end. Wiser now, I think I should have planned an average speed below my threshold, like 11.3 km/h, which would perhaps be possible to keep for 21 km and would give 1:52, better than the 1:55 I ended up with. (If you've never competed, I know what you're thinking: "1:50, 1:52, 1:55... why on earth does it matter?". But once you start competing with yourself, believe me: every second counts!)

Later that week, I got a full analysis of the test by email from Dag, and I could find my heart rate zones for training. For example, my threshold of 11.4 km/h corresponds to heart rate 162. So I should be doing my hard and very hard training (like intervals) at and above this heart rate, whereas my zone 1 training (slow and recovery runs) should be at around heart rate 123.

I think this test will be a great way to compare where I am now and where I will be in a few months, when I am planning to take the test again. If you’d like to try this out I can really recommend SIB Testlab. I saw a newspaper article about this test recently; it turns out that major gyms offer this test, too. However, the SIB prices seem to be the most reasonable of them all, and I cannot imagine a more motivating test coach than Dag.

I’ll be back at SIB in April/May 2015!