I guess a better question to you is: have you seen improvement using the 117 HR as a ceiling for aerobic training?

Yes, I have seen improvement. In 2007 I trained at about 125-127, did my usual HM in the summer and Marathon in October - had to DNS in a marathon in December because of a bad sinus infection. In 2008 I trained at 117 or below.. when the HR rose to 120 I just slowed a little to get it down. My mpw went up easily... maybe 15 average mpw more than 2007. Starting in mid-February at about 20 mpw run-walk at 117 HR, in 7 more weeks I could run 3 hours at 117 HR. Two weeks after that I had a 73 mile week. In the summer HM I beat my 2007 time by 22 minutes, with a good negative split, and my legs felt far better than in 2007. Oddly enough, In the October marathon I beat my 2007 time by 22 minutes, with an 8-minute negative split (strange coincidence, for sure... 22 minutes both times.) FWIW, I ran the first 7 miles or so of the marathon easy at 112-114 HR and then let it trend up to 117 by mile 12 or so. Let it get up to 125 HR for a lot of the second half. Felt great afterwards... with refueling and a good night's sleep I could've done another marathon the next day (didn't feel that way in 2007.) I think a lot of the improvement was due to the increased mpw, but of course that was possible only because of the LHR training right at (or below) that 117 HR.

The information on this thread is a little difficult to understand - perhaps especially for those of us who have never had those tests done or who have never seen an actual graph like the one described. Jimmy and GMoney, is it the famous fig 3.12 in Noakes? Re-reading Gino et al's posts this morning made me realize the importance of tinkering with your MAF until you start to see improvements in your MAF tests. One could be running at a modest MAF yet be 3-5 BPM too high and continuously be running the head into a wall and not seeing the improvement that would occur if the MAF was adjusted 5 BPM down - or in Gino's case 3 BPM down from 120 to117. Gino your improvements from 2007 to 2008 are rather drastic and impressive to say the least. It is difficult in hindsight to know if the difference had to do with laying a solid base all through the year of 2007 and then coming into 2008 taking off from that platform. We want to draw the conclusion that it was the downward adjustment of the MAF that made all the difference, right? But was it? How do we/you know? I am not trying to be devil's advocate - I am genuinely interested. If your running success could be copied we would all be willing to pay money for "the secret".

You know, re-reading that chapter from Maffetone gave me a nutty idea: If only 40% of our metabolic energy goes to production of ATP while 60% is dissipated as heat, what we REALLY ought to be doing is training our muscles to be more efficient at producing ATP regardless of the fuel. More ATP + less heat = easier running. Is that 40% muscular efficiency trainable? Sadly, I think the answer is “no,” but I’d be interested to hear whether anyone’s studied it. OK wild tangent aside, I think the difficulty I am having (and maybe a number of us) is that since Maffetone derived the 180- formula from RQ data he garnered from athletes in his research, how do we know that it’s correct for any of us in the individual case short of having a full blow RQ test done. I think the practical answer that we’re learning through this thread is that, in short, you don’t know with any certainty. However, as a practical matter, if your results in MAF tests are improving then you can be confident that your exercise is at the right level of intensity and other stressors aren’t holding you back. If you are regressing then you are exercising too intensely given the other stressors in your life. If you can reduce non-exercise stressors (dietary, emotional, etc.) you may be able to regain progress at the 180- number. If you can’t practically eliminate non-exercise stressors then stop worrying about them - stressing about stress is always the last to go - drop the 180- number and see what happens. Now if you don’t want to waste time futzing around with tweaking your 80- number, then go to a lab, lay down the coin, and get the test done, but you may find the test only serves to reconfirm the 180- number. Using race times as a gauge of your proper aerobic training pace using the Maffetone table is not a good idea for most of us due to the variables. The race time table can, however, be used as a diagnostic to see how our MAF test pace and aerobic development are proceeding. Does this sound like a fair summary of the conclusions thus far, Jimmy? Flower, the Noakes figure 3.12 and the related discussion deals with a study that was done by a graduate student in Noake’s lab. As I understand it, she took 61 equally-performing, recreational cyclists and measured their RQs at rest and at different levels of activity. By plotting the number of cyclists on the vertical and the RQ level of each on the horizontal, she developed a curve that showed how the cyclists RQs lined up at each activity level. What she found was that there was a wide distribution among the cyclists’ RQs at all levels of activity, but that the general relationship among them (i.e. the shape of the curve) remained the same for each separate level and, at each level of activity the entire curve moved to the right (toward higher RQs across the board). Only a small number had an RQ of 0.7 (100% fat burn) at rest and none of them did at higher levels. Some were burning very high amounts of sugar even at rest. Noakes uses this data to postulate, I believe, that some of us are genetic “fat burners” predisposed to be better at burning fat than others, while others of us are genetic “sugar burners” who have a genetic preference to burn sugar. As I recall he suggests that this should impact the training and nutritional strategies for the different types of people basically they should train and eat differently. If that’s the case then Noakes’ position seems to be almost the complete opposite of what Maffetone would say. I think Maffetone would say that there’s not as much to it genetically and that if the so-called “sugar burners” were being held back by poor choices in their nutrition and training. If they addressed those matters properly (i.e. by following “The Maffetone Method”) then, I think Maffetone would say the "sugar burners" would alter their RQ and become more like the “fat burners” and, surprise, they'd no longer be the "equally performing" recreational cyclists they were at the start. The former "sugar burners" would actually be performing at a higher level than the "fat burners." Now, this is not to say that either Noakes or Maffetone would look at it as an all-or-nothing proposition. I think both of them admit that genetics, diet, and training all interplay and that the relationship is far more complex than a simple either-or. My question (assuming, of course, that I’ve generally understood Maffetone and Noakes correctly here) is whether there are absolute personal limits for each of us in how low we can get our RQ at rest and whether that makes a difference in our performance. If the best I can ever do is get an RQ of 0.8 at rest, then can I ever expect to achieve a respectable marathon performance or is my body just better suited to train for the 800 m (my event of choice during my teens)? It’s probably just a deeply theoretical issue at best, since the real point is to stay healthy and have fun, but one I’m interested in hearing thoughts on. Apologies for an obscenely long post.

genetics _ I will be very brief on this, since this is not a place... science was getting it all wrong and only recently, some enlightened science groups are getting it partialy. various genes do not mean much, each geen has an ON/OFF switch, science has no idea why and how and when teh switch goes On or OFF. Person is born with some genes switches ON and some OFF and this was regarded as genetical life sentence, however now they are starting to see that these switches could be reset, activated or deactivated during life, during childhood, during preganancy etc. How You can swith the genes ON or OFF is not known to science yet and will not be know to science with its currrent aproach for quite a while. There is lots of techniques how to set up genes switches teh way You want, all of them... however outside this forum topic. so genetical lifesentence simply means that person does not Know about this does not the techniques or could not be bothered.... ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is not related to previos stuff I was allways typical sugar burner, racing in all sprints type of sports as kid, allways about speed and holding the speed, playing soccer, running sprints on very high high school level, fascinated by 200m and 400m distances and to a degree 800m, racing 1km at high school, challenging others in short swimms and on bike doing sprints and short ITT's, I could never ride a bike at slow constant pace for few hours. I remeber 1 day a friend ask me to go with him for a fat burning ride of 200km (what the F*** ?) so we went, first 20km I showed him few sprints to top of hils to the nearest tree etc, He was really pissed off with me talking about staying in fat and some other to me foreign garbage. After 20k I burned all my sugars and had to sit on the side of the road, after that it was dragging in a pattern - few hard sprint and intervals to nearest pub, shop etc, refule sugars rest few more hard intervals etc... late afternoon he put me on a train home and he road on his own 100km home, I was never invited to fat burning ride since ? My running as adult was based on training 400 reps and some long hills long intervals, I was good at short stuff getting worse with each longer distance and never c ould complete marathon in proper form crashing midway and shoufling to finish walking, thinking _ I would train even faster an harder, so next marathon when I run out of energy I would be closer to finish line and eventualy I would be able to run all teh way - of course I was injured and overtrained ending with chronic fatique destroy imune and hormonals systems etc. In my 50's getting brains finaly I have made complete 180 (hehe) turn and with strict training in fasting mode changed completely within few months. so sugar burner was not my life sentence, it was my childhood-teenage and my coaches stupidity, missinformation from the exercise physiology science of that era, any coachuing seminars and coaching acreditations (I have 3 levels in T&F) were based on anaerobic intervals models as missunderstodd from Zatopek and based on some East German "experts". Now, I am finaly free

Gino, good informative post, thank You for that. This again as many times before gets me thinking about Lydiard : when he experimented he increased his miles per week to much higher than 100, but since he was feeling very tired and was slowing down at ITT or races he abandoned teh idea and stipulated that 100 miles is optimum and more than that is no good. That was a premature conclusion in my view. What if he was staying with much higher than 100 miles volume for long time for months, disregarding teh racing slowing a bit at sessions and just waiting for body to adapt, What would happen a year or 2 later, how would teh adapted body be able to respond to perhaps lowering teh vlume and increasing teh pace following years ? I have a racewalking example (sorry runners, but wiggling teh bum is a real sport). the world record at 50 km - Nathan deaks. years ago australian athletrics gave a job to former east german elite walker. The ideology of his - simplified of course was - volume is everything in training. do teh volume at whatever slow pace so You can hadle the volume. Nathan Deaks was for few years coached by this guy and doing 300 km walk per week. 300km = 6 x 50 km. I am not saying that the training schedule was as simple as walking 6 days 50km each day, but it illustrates the point. It could have been 1x50 or 30+20 or 40 + 10x1k etc. Of course in sucvh a schedule there is no way of being able to walk 50K in 4 hours, my guess would be realistic 5 hours. so imagine training Your main activity for 5 hours each day and on top of it, doing gym, swimming pool, easy jogging and easy bike, stretching and phsysio, massage etc (remeber the day has 24H and You have teh whole night as well on top of it ) Karnazes did only 50 days of marathins and made a big deal out of it. Nathan survived the 300km a week walk system , than teh national coach job was given to different person, he cut teh volume for Natghan right down but used that enourmous base and teh body ability to foce faster pace at lower volume, pace whcih was faster that usually acceptable in normal walking training system, since the body was doing only 2/3 or perhaps 1/2 of the volume. What I read in between the lines was something like : what would otherwise be an anaerobic pace, was still aerobic for Nathan, so he was able to absorb say 2km intervals at higher speed than others and ih still high volume of intervals kms per week, absorb the uphill training session at high effort etc. That is how You cook the world record at 50km racewalk and from my understanding of Aaken, he was keen in prescribing 40km a day for marathon runner - seems very similar to me, and from some other forums it seems that this is something JPN marathon system is all about, session of 60km in 1 day nothing special. The moral to me - slow down as much as is needed to be able to build up the volume as much as possible. Currently the new bread of american young ultrarunners is doing something similar, running 4hours trails each day although I am not following their blogs closely ( Anton Krupicka ? at all )

Man, reading all these post shows me this group has come a long way! Here's my take on the whole HR training thing....it is almost all just pointing to trying to get us to not train too hard for most of our training. Keep it low, the magic is how low? My numbers in parentheses) Maffetone says to run at 180-age and if you've been running for awhile injury free add 5. (my number today is 128) Mark Allen is with Maffetone. Mittleman, who had a lot of success with Maffetone as his coach says it's OK to add 10, but also you can go by visual and audio effects around us. If you feel like you're in a 3D world, hearing the birds and wind you're burning "mostly" fat, if you feel as if you are in a tunnel, separated fro the world that speeding by, you're burning "mostly" sugar. ( 133) Hadd says to do most of your training at around 50 bpm below your max (136) Ernst Van Aaken (back in the 60's) said to run between 130-150 bpm. All of these numbers point (for me) to basically 60% of my max. That is very easy running and is what these coaches are trying to get us to buy into. Now let me give you a good example of when these formulas and such "don't" work! My wife and I started on Maffetone at the same time back in late 2003 after reading Training for Endurance. I could do some jogging, with lots of walking, which eventually came to all running except for the largest hills. My wife struggled early and often, never able to run at all! So we went out and over several weeks, had her do a Max HR test (I did as well). My max came out to be 186, hers 206. We both have a resting down around 50. So what does this tell you, her, me? Maffetone had her running at 135 bpm. Mittleman at 140 Hadd at 156 Not even close! So we figured out her approximate 60%, which came out to 143.6, 70% was 159.2. (most coaches will tell you to train at or around 70% for all of your aerobic running). Hadd had her closer to 70%, so she settled on that and was smiling from then on... These days I'm trying to stick with 130 just to see what happens, much like Jimmy is doing. It feels ridiculously slow to me and i had to walk a lot during my 6 mile run today (windy and hilly), but I am hopeful that in time I will be running faster at 130 Anyway just to summarize what I was saying above...I think you cannot say that I am going to run at 180-age and that will be correct, most likely it is not but it's a good place to begin. Talking about tests to find some definitive answers, while reading Slow Burn again last night I saw and remembered the PH litmus oral test where you spit on litmus paper. If your saliva is acidic, you're sugar burning... Sometimes i think we get too anal about our training...I like to run easy, my body likes it when I run easy, therefore I run easy...plus it fits well with Ultrarunning. But I will add that when I was running sub 2:50 marathons 25 years ago, I was a Van Aaken follower and ran all my miles slowly, we just didn't have monitors then. I'll bet I was still running too fast for my today thinking... Steve

Wow. 25+ years of running, Steve. You are indeed my running elder. I've been running 6 this month! Interesting look at where all the HR methods put you and your wife. Mine would be: Maffetone-- 128 (minus 5 for being aerobicless) Parker-- 154 (70% HRR--Karvonen) Hadd --145 70%MHR--139 Pfiitzinger--163 Except for Maffetone, none of the others take into account how well you have been progressing, whether or not you've been injured or sick a lot, regressing, etc. Probably because Maffetone dealt with a lot of broken athletes, and he did use RQ tests along with his practice. Currently, Steve, I am a sloth on valium with no job at 128 bpm, but as encouragement, there was a time I was at 9:00 minutes per mile at that HR, about 4-5 minutes faster. --Jimmy

...Gino, how old are you?

Oh, yeah... time to update my profile and add a year (etc.) Marathon Maniac # 970. Thanks for that letsrun thread link. It'll take some time to get through it.

I'm very certain that slowing down and running easier in 2008 (HR 117) is responsible for my being able to run more miles without injury. In 2007 (HR 125 or so) I just couldn't have added the miles. In 2006 (HR 127-131) I might have had a decent marathon if my legs hadn't cramped horribly at about mile 15 (due, I'm sure to not enough training mpw plus lack of electrolyte replacement in the race.) I didn't lay down any particular solid base in 2007. Sorry if the following is Too Much Information... just history to illustrate why I think 2007 was not that great a year... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In 2008 I started in mid-February training at HR 117 doing maybe 20 mpw. I just kept increasing the mpw, drinking nothing but water (and sometimes an Endurolyte capsule or two) on my runs, which were done in a "fasting" state (no food/calories of any kind for at least 12 hours.) Most of my running was on trails, including 3 of the 5 20+ mile runs. No leg cramping in the marathon. Felt good. Anyway, I'm convinced that running easy at the right HR allowed me to boost the mpw and stay uninjured.

Gino, I think your experience and your explanation of what happened is very interesting. I am sorry about cutting the middle of your post out. What interests me is how certain you are that it was the slow down - lowering the HR ceiling, MAF to 117 BPM - that enabled you to increase your weekly mileage without getting injured. Did you see an improvement in your pace at 117BPM while you were building your mileage? You mention your fasting 12 hrs prior to your long runs and drinking water only during the 20 mile long runs - was this a new way for you to run? Had you previously not fasted before your runs? Did you fuel on carbs before you changed to 117BPM? I guess what I am getting at is, how many changes did you make all at the same time to your way of running? Was the improvement due only to the lowering of MAF or was it also influenced by not using carbs/sugars for fueling during and prior to your runs? Furthermore, I am interested in more details about how you increased your mileage from 20MPW - how did your weekly schedule look, how many rest days, did you run the same mileage every day, did you use hard/easy in terms of time spent/mileage per day etc?