Back to Base Building

After miserably failing to reach my time goal of sub 2h on the half marathon I'm settling down and going back to base building.

In my previous post 5K Race to Half Marathon Target I compared my 5K pace run time to two different running calculators. According to the projections I got my finish time for the half marathon should have been between 2:01:09 and 2:01:57. With four weeks of additional training I wanted to test if I could finish in under two hours. Reality hit me in the face and my finishing time was 2:19:33. The pace calculators naturally didn't account for he difference in heat. The race was run in a temperature of 31°C or 88 °F, significantly warmer than the 5K or any of my training runs for that matter. The difference in heat made some real difference. I ran further at a faster pace on training run in May than I did in the half marathon race in July, with a whopping 25 bpm difference in average heart rate. Difference in heat? 31 °C, sun, no wind and humid versus 10 °C, rain and windy. But the time estimate shouldn't be that much off anyway, should it? So why did I fail so miserably?

Poor aerobic fitness. With longer distances the importance of the aerobic metabolism grows. Shorter distances can be run with higher oxygen debt than longer. So the conclusion must be I'm lacking the proper aerobic base. Well, hello, of course I am. With only four months of training it should be obvious. Most of those past training runs were done too fast and too anaerobically. My ego had the better part of me fooled for a while there.

So what I'll do next is to build that aerobic base. I'll use the MAF-method, running at or below maximum aerobic function. As pinpointing the accurate MAF requires extensive testing I'll go with the 180-formula developed by Dr. Phil Maffetone. Subtracting my age from 180 and subtracting an additional 5, as my training has been inconsistent over the past two years. I thus arrive at a MAF of 144 bpm (180-31-5=144). I should the do all of my base building at or below this heart rate. I'll create a range of ten beats for my heart rate monitor (134-144) and stay in that range for all of my training, except even slower warm up and cool down.

For how long? I'll asses my MAF by doing monthly MAF tests. The MAF test is done on the track, after 12-15 minutes of warm up, by timing one mile splits on a five mile run at MAF heart rate. As long as the one mile splits improve, MAF will be kept the same. At some point I might delete the 5 beat subtraction and go with 148 bpm (as I probably have turned 32 by then). Time and MAF tests will show when. I don't really need any anaerobic conditioning to run over the Alps - which after all is the main target with all this training. So my only exception to MAF training will be races. Races will be done with an all out mentality. I'll reserve the right to change this plan later though.

The benefit should be greatly improved aerobic fitness. This kind of low hear rate training supposedly minimizes the productions of free radicals in the biomechanical system and it should enable me to sustain higher training volumes than training at a faster running pace (with a more anaerobic heart rate). And it should be way much healthier.

To educate myself on the philosophy of low heart rate training I ordered The Big Book of Endurance Training and Racing by Dr. Phil Maffetone. So, one more book report might be coming up in the future.

Until then here are my initial MAF test results from Friday 8.7.2011. There should be plenty of room for improvement.