Al Andalus left me with shin splints and I have not been running much since the race. This week my physio gave me the clear to run on all surfaces, and there are some “second half of the year” races/goals including a 50km ultramarathon and a sub 4 hour marathon on the books. I’ve been hitting the gym hard since the race, so my legs should still be pretty strong. Here are the goals:

1. No zeros: (lifted from Gordo) the idea is to train every day this month and it can include swimming and the bike, but ideally would be running every day. Sadly there were already two zeros on the first weekend of the month due to a very late-into-the-morning wedding.
2. Eat well, lose weight: I’ve eyeballed myself at about 15% bodyfat; at 75 kilos that means I have 11.25 kilos of fat. Isn’t that a fun thought? The goal is to get down to 10%.

And that is it. There are some lesser goals, like running two-a-days and the like, but basically I’m on a ‘no-plan’ month and just going to listen to my body and ease back into volume.

It is worth pointing out that these are bigger goals for the month. Each workout has its own goal, be it in the gym where I’m working on various issues and muscle groups, or on the run where I’m looking to mix in interval training with some easy runs and 5k test runs.

There, with that published I can get on with it and hopefully have the Al Andalus report up shortly.

Before I get into that… Physio today – Monday, one week before the race – to do some aggressive work on the muscles followed by another session on Thursday to loosen the legs right up. I also have a bit of my cough back after a couple of poor sleeps about ten days ago. I have been able to hold it at bay with vitamins and rest. Fingers crossed.

One last thing before getting into the meat of this post, this will be the last post on this blog until after the race. I have set up a race specific blog for Al Andalus, and will share the link here once it is up. If you subscribe to this blog (email signup in the sidebar) you will be automatically signed up to the new site. Okay, on with the show…

Training

The main theme of my training has been a progression of building endurance from 1 to 4 hours together with building strength in my legs to handle the pounding of the steeper technical downhills typical of trail races.

This mesocycle (periodization speak for a phase from prep to peak) lasted 22 weeks, consisting of a prep, base-1, base-2 and 3 base-3 phases followed by a taper and peak (see the plan here – weeks 6 thru 25). When I began – during the prep and base-1 phases – the focus was short runs of an hour and 1-2 strength sessions per week in the gym. This morphed into longer easy runs and 1 session in the gym per week for base-2. During Base-3, I phased out the gym work and gradually brought in more specific strength work such as long sustained downhill runs (2 hours downhill) and some shorter faster runs.

The gym work focused on eccentric exercises to strengthen the hamstrings, quads and glutes along with the calves and soleus. We also did some agility drills and ankle strength drills.

With respect to running, I had two long days of 45 and 42 kilometers each with over a kilometer of climbing, and did 3 camps where I grouped together 3-4 days and structured my life so that I could get in high volume and build some experience for what a stage race would be like.

What worked

• The training camps worked well for putting in big mileage in a short period of time, learning what my legs could do even if they feel like crap and to do stage race simulation.
• The gym work during the prep and base-1 phases translated very well to running the tecnical downhills. Where in January’s race I was hesitant on the downhills, the gym work together with a week of runs (3 out of five runs) on long downhills build the strength and then transferred it well to the hills.
• Top loading my days with food and thinking that on bigger days I needed to eat two of each meal. The former allowed me to get a headstart on food for the day, and the latter was a good intra-day measuring stick for evaluating if I had eaten enough food: Have I eaten 2 breakfasts, 2 lunches and 2 dinners? No? Eat more.
• High fat food such as avocados and macadamia nuts helped to get in some good calories when eating lots of veggies and fruit was hard.
• Running slow and long paid off; when I started during the prep and base-1 phase I was running at 130-135bpm and about 7km/h. Now I’m running about 8.5km/h at 125bpm during comparable temperatures. There is room to improve here, both in applying this (another phase of slow running) and after I taper. I think I’ll be even faster at the same HR after I taper, although this will be hard to notice in the heat, which spikes the bpm.
• Using maltodextrin and fructose to make my own gels. This worked great, as it was cheaper then buying gels. Using gel flasks, I can vary the amount of each carb to find what measure my stomach could handle per hour at a given temperature and inensity of effort.
• Running consistently. Put in many straight days of running and after a while, when I thought I was at my limit, I was able to do more.
• Resting and recovering. Contrary to the previous point, putting in some proper rest once in a while saw me put in PRs on three occasions. The rest weeks in my schedule worked well.
• Heat training. The verdict is still out on this with respect to the race, however in training I have found that I’m adapted well to the 30C heat in our area. I have trained almost exclusively in long Skins tights and a sleeveless compression top below a long sleeve top. When I do train in shorts and a single top layer (a full sleeve Skins top) my hr seems to be close to normal now (at low 30’s temps).
• Compression top. Whenever I wear my skins full sleeve compression top my hr seems to be lower. Maybe its mental, maybe its my increasing fitness, but I’m seeing it several beats lower and the extra compression must be doing something?

What didn’t work

Most of the points below limited my training volume.

• Not getting enough rest. I think this was the main limiter for me in terms of mileage. Were I able to get in more naps, I would have run more mileage.
• Not stretching. I didn’t get into proper – and almost aggressive – stretching until later in the base-3 phase when it became necessary in order for me to be able to run properly and consistently. This point is another volume limiter as when my legs felt rough I did less volume.
• Not eating enough. This was surprisingly hard; the fact is if I ran 20k I needed to eat for me and my wife that day. Rarely did that happen, but here during the later base-3 phase I have been much stricter with my eating and I’m able to put in more volume. Almost a linear correlation.
• Using active recovery. While my rest weeks seemed to work well, I didn’t do enough active recovery and frequently blew off riding days because I was busy with work.
• Running myself into the ground. On two occasions I found myself run down to such a degree that it affected my thinking. Both of these were just prior to recovery weeks and after gym sessions.
• Not resting enough during recovery weeks. I often used recovery weeks more as a way to get ahead in other areas (work, preparation, physio) and didn’t get in enough naps during the hours when I would normally be training. The idea was to do some easy work on the bike (maybe 30 minutes) and then nap. That never happened.
• The long days. While they will be good for my confidence, I found that the long days – one of 45kms and another of 41 kms – took a bit too much out of me in terms of time required, mental and physical fatigue. I think next time I would prefer consistency in the form of 3 20km days rather than a 40k day followed by a rest day and a 10k day. Or, maybe take two rest days prior to a big day and one after to accommodate for other commitments and physical rest from normal training.
• Running later in the day. This was harder than running in the morning predominantly because of digestion. In the morning I could eat two eggs, have some liquid carbs and a shot of coffee and head out the door. By the afternoon, however, I had eaten quite a bit and found that unless I was very careful I would have stomach issues. It is hard to eat properly (i.e. eat a lot) and eat so as to have a 2 hour food-free window in the afternoon.

I was made aware of Skins via a tweet from Ben Saunders just as I was in the market for a pair of compression tights, having previously purchased a set that weren’t much to my liking.

After some mix ups with my local run shop I finally put in for a pair via the Skins website and they arrived at the moment I was out for my longest training run in preparation for my first ultramarathon.

I returned to my in-laws after almost 6 hours out in some light winter rain. My body ached, my knees hurt, my quads were fried and my calves shredded.

The family was about to sit down for lunch, there was a nice fire going and I opted to skip the shower and sit down for lunch first. I washed up a bit and, excited to have the new gear, decided to toss on the A400 full tights and see how they felt. Little did I know what I was in for.

Lets just say that compression tights work. After a few minutes the tendon pain and ache in my knees were gone; my quads felt solid, the soreness was gone and I actually felt human rather quickly.

The A400 full tight

I have put approximately 80 hours of running into these tights. I have had running tights in the past but these compression tights are another story. They are much tighter than normal tights and actually change the way your muscles feel. My legs felt more solid and less achey during the maybe 100 hours I have used them.

They have flat-lock stitching inside so they are very comfortable. I wear the tights ‘au-naturel’ and have had zero chaffing issues at all, even at the end of the 75km I completed in January.

Comparing them to my CW-X compression tights, the Skins seem to compress in all directions; there is no loose bit that you can slide around when applying shear stress with your fingers.

The material of the Skins is also much thinner than the CW-X, which feel thicker then your normal tight. While my CW-X tights were better than normal tights, they don’t compress as completely as the Skins and the pair that I have don’t have flat-lock stitching.

As for breath-ability, my skin actually feels cooler with the Skins on. I’m not sure what’s going on there, but if you put them on and just sit around in them, you’ll notice that your legs feel a little chill.

One last bit, I have used the Skins A400 tights at the gym for some of my more demanding leg workouts when I was already carrying some soreness. This worked out well. As they breath so well I wore a pair of training pants over-top of the tights.

The RY400 Recovery tights

Truth be told I have been wearing these almost every day under my jeans since my wife surprised me with them for Christmas.

They don’t appear to be much different then the A400′s in the cut and paneling, but they are not quite as tight and perhaps more flexible around the joints; this makes them easy to wear underneath other pants. They work; they simply leave you feeling more solid after beating yourself down during long runs and high volume weeks.

The most shocking thing I have seen from these tights, though, was upon returning to our hotel after I dnf’d my first ultrarun. My wife dropped me off and headed out to the finish line to pick up my gear bag, including my tights.

I hopped in the shower, shivering and cold. Despite staying in there for some time, legs up and the water nice and hot, I was still shivering when I got out. I crawled into bed and snuggled with the hot tortilla sandwich we had ordered from the hotel.

My wife returned with the gear about 15 minutes later and I was still shivering. I changed into some compression socks and the recovery tights and bam, stopped shivering.

A believer in compression, a believer in Skins

Both of these products have been fantastic. Washing is easy, hang and they dry quickly. One interesting thing to note is that they are cooler than other tights I have had; they seem to breathe very well.

Also worth noting, the RY400′s are not as tight as the A400′s. I imagine this allows some extra movement, and this is useful when wearing the RY400′s under a pair of jeans.

Lastly, after a recent training camp where I was recovering from a virus and with a cold, I put in record training volume. In the last two days my legs were feeling the volume, and thinking that maybe the extra squeeze of the A400′s would make a difference, I switched from using the RY400′s for recovery to using the A400′s (which I wasn’t running in due to the 30+ heat). This worked. The second to last day I was thinking about resting, but the A400′s had my legs feeling good. That mental boost of my legs feeling good helped me to get out and put in another 4 hours over the last two days. That is priceless.

So that’s about it. Be sure to check out the image gallery below. Looking forward, my wife has surprised me with a full sleeve Ice Top which I will use for the AAUT. Next up will be to get some shorter tights for the race!

Skins A400 and RY400 image gallery

The photos below were done with my iPhone outside on a sunny day; the tights are actually black and charcoal in color.

Before I get into the links, a buddy in Facebook posted this line this morning:

I’m going to do something today, that you won’t, so tomorrow I can do something you can’t.

And now for the links…

1. Get Inspired by Slater Fletcher: he raced the The Tantauco Exploration Race and he and his partner won, burning some matches along the way and learning what it takes. A great recap from a guy who did the Aloha Triple. Part I, part II.
2. Detraining Timeframes: How quickly we lose fitness is something we all need to know, and its a quick read.
3. Fat Burners and Sugar Burners: This is an old one but really important. I’m looking for some more information about how we can eat to encourage fat burning over sugar burning. Asker Jeukendrup, nutritional advisor of Haile Gebrselassie has indicated that elites burn fat better than we mortals.

And one last video, passed to me by Reuben Hutton. Check out the numbers he quotes at the end of the short vid!

More or less a marathon per day, in the hot hot sun!

I’m starting to think about how to prepare specifically for my A race of the year, the Al-Andalus ultra trail. So lets dive in and look at the race…

(Be sure to check out the photo gallery at the end of the article!)

Lets start with a blurb from their website

Al Andalus Ultra Trail 2010 proved to be a very tough race and many seasoned competitors said it was the toughest they had ever done. The course was demanding, temperatures were high (35-45C), climbs numerous and long, and the trails scenic. Over 90% was off-road, mountain, and desert tracks with the majority of tarmac in the final kilometers when approaching the stage village finishes.

There are some clues in there about this race, and to support the idea that this race is considered a pretty tough challenge, have a look at the field. Ultra people will recognize a few names in there, and one that isn’t there but seems to be going (according to Facebook) is 4 time winner of the Marathon des Sables, Mohamad Ahansal. Last year’s winner was his brother, 10 time MdS champion Lahcen Ahansal. Lastly, there is word that one of the Kenyans that is going runs a 2:16 marathon.

So epic conditions and epic competitors; this should be an epic learning experience. Not only getting to watch these folks run away from me every morning, but the race is semi-supported and we will be running from campsite to campsite on each stage. Runners bring their own food and our gear is transported for us. Now lets look at the course.

5 days, 220km

The course outline includes some useful Garmin data for each stage. The first thing to note is that we’re basically running a marathon per day with one long day of 60 kilometers.

11 kilometers of 8% average gradient to start the race.

The next thing worth noting are the hills:

• The first 11 kilometers of stage one work out to an average gradient of 8%.
• The first 11 kilometers of stage two work out to an average gradient of 5.6%, not including that nasty looking spike that I believe is known as “hell’s path”.

I haven’t done any math on stage 3, but I’m not sure the calculator knows how to spell pain; I do believe my legs will be familiar with the word.

There are no profiles yet for stages 4 and 5, the race organizers doing their best not to scare away the competition.

How this affects my training plan

While I am at the moment very concerned with endurance, I definitely need to get some serious hills into my training. Once I can do a coupled 2 hour endurance run I planned on moving that to 3 and then four hours. I am still going to do that, as I think I have the time to develop it. That 2 hour mark is also going to be the point where I begin to work in some higher intensity workouts on the hills.

Looking at the 2010 results table, I can look at the group from #30 to #45 and see that I’m looking at 5-6 hours days with a possible 9 hour day on the big one, day four. So my idea of training for 6 hour days – 4 hours running and 2 hours walking – seems about right.

Photo Gallery

These are some of the excellent photos they have on their website. Credit and copyright James Goldsmith.

Decoupling is the answer

A little story to explain the concept. Back in the winter of 2000 I was training for IronMan Canada 2001. I was putting in high volume on the bike, maybe 15 hours a week of easy riding. On Saturdays I would strike out on my own after the group ride for an extra 2 hours; one day a friend came along with me. On our way home I noticed that he was no longer talking much and really sitting in. I looked back and saw his face covered in sweat, drops dripping off of his nose. I was riding along – steady and aerobic – at 145bpm. He was decoupled!

Decoupling is a concept I have learned from Joe Friel. The concept involves comparing power (on the bike) or speed (when running) to your heart rate.  I am going to quote Joe’s description from his article but I strongly encourage folks to go and read it:

While there is little on this in the scientific literature, the limited research available appears to indicate that when aerobic endurance improves there is reduced heart rate drift relative to constant outputs (power and speed). And, of course, the reverse of this is that when heart rate is held steady during extensive endurance training, output may be expected to drift downward. This parallel relationship between input (heart rate) and output (power or speed) is referred to as “coupling.” When they are no longer parallel in a workout as one variable remains steady while the other drifts the relationship is said to have “decoupled.” Excessive decoupling would indicate a lack of aerobic endurance fitness.

In the context of the training ride I mentioned earlier, having added an extra 2 hours to his normal volume, my buddy’s HR rose while we kept the speed consistent and so his speed/hr began to decouple.

So lets see, if you run on consistent terrain, maintaining 135bpm for 2 hours, and your speed slowly decreases over that time, you are seeing decoupling. If you can stay at 135bpm and keep you speed constant, (all other things being equal – terrain, nutrition & hydration) you are coupled. Sounds simple but it’s not. Read on.

Applying it to running

Joe talks about how to calculate decoupling for running in the article, and I also asked him about it on Twitter:

Compare avgSpeed/avgHR for the 1st & 2nd halves of the run. (S1/HR1) – (S2/HR2) = X. X/(S1/HR1) = % decoupled

Okay, so it’s not that hard but… Besides the equation, we should make sure to control terrain and what we are carrying during the run. We should also pay attention to nutrition and hydration. If I’m measuring decoupling for a 2 hour run, I’d like to do it on a 1 hour loop, refilling at the end of the first loop.

So for ultra runners, what length of run becomes our target run? And what level of decoupling should we be targeting?

Joe says to try for below 5% decoupling, and that for longer events a 2 hour run should be used. But he is talking about triathletes, who at most are running a marathon.

Ultrarunners can be out on the trails for much longer than a marathoner, so should their baseline-decoupling-measuring-stick-run be longer? I think it can, and it probably should if one has the conditioning to do so.

Applying decoupling to training for the Al-Andalus

Discarding the one day of 60 kilometers at Al-Andalus, I am preparing for four 6 hour days (it is a 5-day stage race). These are not particularly long stages; in fact they are more or less 4 marathons. With hills. Lots. And very hot. So I don’t expect to be running the full 6 hours. If I was it wouldn’t be 6 hours, so I think my baseline run is going to be 3 hours, and when that is achieved I am going to push for 4. If I can get that done and there is some time left to train, I’ll begin to move more of my focus from endurance to muscular endurance.

Further Reading

• Aerobic Endurance and Decoupling, by Joe Friel
• The Science of Decoupling, Alan Couzens gets all technical over at Endurance Corner
• Intervals, Tempo and Decoupling presents some more advanced ideas on training and working with decoupling.
• Negative Decoupling?, this thread in a forum post discusses scenarios where we may see negative decoupling.

Last week (week/yr 12 on my training plan) I started out a little tired, with a cough and some achilles pain. I nailed the first two workouts and then on Tuesday, mistakingly thinking that the upcoming week 13 was a big week, I decided to take a nap instead of run. It ended up being one of those long, growth hormone happy naps and I woke up ready to “eat the kitchen of food”, similar to what I have read various times thru the years following Gordo. As luck would have it, I was in an email exchange with him at the time and asked him about it.

His reponse was a serious “D’Oh!” moment for me:

“It’s pretty much always a combination of excessive stress and depletion.  So I need to dial back life/training stress as well as eat smarter.”

I sat down and realized that I had more signs around me that I was reaching my limit:

• I forgot which training week I was in
• I was tired
• I was starting to make poor eating decisions (pasta vs. veggies)
• I was getting cranky
• By the end of the week I managed to get a stomach virus!

And now here I am in the middle of my recovery week, recovering from a stomach virus on top the other recovering that needs to happen.

This is really reinforcing the training log for me. Things like this just make it easier to try and stay on track.

As I said to a friend on Twitter last week, “there should be no ‘oops’ in your training”. Little did I know that I was about to hit my own oops.

So the training log is now going to track mood on the day, and an overall nutrition score. More on the latter later, once I figure it out. Right now though, it’s time for a nap to try and get myself back in order…

It spoke to me because it hit home; my previous (and first ever) ultra was a DNF, and honestly I didn’t have much of a plan. Run easy, run far, run often. Unfortunately I didn’t succeed at that last point and trained just under 250km of running for a 93km race. With a 5 day 220km stage race planned for July, I realized that it was time to get serious.

Screenshot of my Annual Training Plan up until mid-July, 2011

Behold my 2011 Annual Training Plan (ATP)

Before going into the details, here is the plan. Because I am new to this, the plan will change and evolve as the plan crashes into reality. Having linked to Joel Friels’ how to do a plan, now I’m going to write about why this is my plan.

Limiters, goals and objectives

As a rookie ultra runner, my main limiter is endurance. I need to build a huge endurance base given the time I have before the race. Once a semblance of that exists I can begin to work on muscular endurance; this is a limiter in the scope of the race itself, which has some punishing hills along with the punishing heat. And that leads to another limiter: performing in the heat. So enough of this babble, let’s get a list going:

• Endurance (I want to finish each stage of the race and train to burn fat)
• Muscular Endurance (I want to run some of the hills)
• Heat acclimatization (I want to run the race and survive)

This simple list reflects that I am a rookie ultrarunner. In a year’s time I should have a (relatively) huge endurance base and be able to work on some specific ME issues in the later base phases. Which bring me to my next point.

To Build or Base?

If you click through to the plan you can see two Base 2 phases in there and one Build phase after Base 3. This reflects the emphasis on building an endurance base over anaerobic threshold training, for example. Also, keep in mind that with my limited mileage I may not yet be biomechanically sound enough to launch into harder training. Sure I could just go out and run fast, develop shin splints, plantar fasciitis and some stress fractures.

So the plan is to take a longer 8 week session broken up with a recovery week (where I am at the time of publishing this post) to focus on building a large endurance engine and gradually converting strength gains from the gym onto the trails. Base 3 will incorporate more specific strength work (hills) while maintaining volume and intensity (endurance). The build phase will be used to get some more race specific efforts into long, hot, energy sapping runs.

So how does having an ATP keep me from plucking a workout “from my arse”

It’s all fine to have a plan, but what do you do when you lace up the shoes or hit the gym?

Without a proper coach, I need to rely on experience. As a rookie ultra runner I don’t have so much of that but the key for me at the moment is to run consistently focusing on endurance and then to build strength and work on injury prevention in the gym, while not wearing myself too thin.

I have a trainer in the gym handling the two weekly workouts and do my best to keep him up to date on my training and fatigue levels. I do an easy run, gradually increasing the duration and a spin on the bike when I’m tired. At the moment it is easy.

In the end the phase will always be the guide. There will be key workouts (at the moment the long run and the big day at the gym) and they will be focussed on the goal of the phase.

It will be interesting to read this post again in 4 months time…

The Base phases: The time of year when you train to train.

The importance of the base phases of training are revealed in their name: Base. Without the base you can’t build a solid structure on top.

Looking back through the years I cannot recall a time where I built a proper base, rested, and then built properly on top of that. In order to build a proper ATP for myself, I did some research to really nail down what the base phases are and should do. Much of this comes from Joel Friel and his website. I’ve provided links to relevant sources at the end of this article.

Base 1

The Base phase requires a minimum of three low intensity workout sessions per week; four workouts per week tend to provide the best return on investment¹. When we train, we want to stress the body thus causing adaptations to the stress. In Base 1, we want to apply stress in the form of duration of session, not intensity.

As ultrarunners in this phase, we are looking to build a deep aerobic endurance base when running ². High intensity gym work will be used to create strength gains for adapting into running (muscular endurance) in later phases.

Base 2 (19-20 weeks before your A-priority race)

Friel writes that in Base 2 gym based weight workouts move from strength gains to maintenance mode, and that sport-specific muscular force training begins. Base 2 starts to incorporate more specificity and forays into mildly higher intensity, although the focus is still on aerobic endurance and indeed we increase that base thru longer endurance sessions.

Base 3 (15-16 weeks before your A-priority event)

Aerobic endurance sessions continue as in Base 2, however weight sessions can be dropped in favor of more muscular endurance sessions. Friel has mentioned in other areas that older athlete should maintain gym based strength sessions.

Some bits worth noting:

• Note the muscular endurance sessions discussed here.
• Get to know Zone 2 HR zone (pdf).
• “As long as the intensity is low (to be described in Part 3) workout duration can be high at this time of year. It’s all about stress. The idea is to gradually adapt the body to high levels of stress by starting with long-duration workouts and gradually shifting toward race-appropriate-intensity workouts as the season progresses.” (#)
• “Aerobic endurance is the heart of training for endurance sports. Until this is well-established there is no reason to move on to the more advanced abilities (muscular endurance, anaerobic endurance and power). These workouts are done at the or near the aerobic threshold which is usually about the 2 zone using my heart rate or pace system…” (#)

Sources

• Base 1 Training, Part 1
• Base 1 Training, Part 2
• Base 1 Training, Part 3
• Base 1 Training, Part 4
• Training in Base 2 and 3

1. I have been sorting out my ultrarunning training plan. I’ve had to relearn a lot.
2. I have been sorting out this blog, and indeed the whole domain (have a peek around; there are perks for people using Safari, Firefox or Chrome).
3. I have been trying to get a good training log going!

The Training Log

With respect to number three above, I have setup another section on my site to handle my training log. I looked around at online solutions but I needed somewhere that I could write. This just makes sense to me; three weeks in things are working well over there.

Each week is a post, with the title reflecting the yearly week and then training phase. Tags – a.k.a. Topics – in the sidebar help for classifying the weeks; if I was sick that week gets tagged sick, if I’m training for the AAUT2011, it gets tagged AAUT2011. I think I wrote more on the about page so if you are curious, have a look.

Email subscriptions

There are a small handful of people interested enough in this blog that they have subscribed to receive new posts by email (see the sidebar). You very fine folks will notice I have moved this service to MailChimp as it allows me much more control over the design then Feedburner.

And now back to work. I’ll be posting and outlining my training plan this week.