A friend,who walks, did  it this year. My sister and her traveling buddy did the tour this year. I dislike the cold. I  plan to do the tour but not the race sometime in the future.

I am actually going to sign up for the waitlist for that. By the time I get to go, the polar caps might have melted anyway, sigh.

 

Ran 5 on the TM.  Super easy HR.

5.2 mile walk.

11 miles HR 116 / 133.  Run / walk.

Congratulations, SD!  Sorry about the stomach issues, but excellent time!

Sorry I've been MIA.  Busy last week at work and then the TM just died at Mile 5 of my LR on Thursday.  We went to PR for a wedding and to visit family and managed 12 miles on the hotel TM looking at the beach (at least).  Used the work TM for my 7 miles on Monday and managed to get some shin splints from using those two different TMs.  Feeling better now.  Did 5 miles yesterday between outside running and Orange Theory.  Marathon in Seattle this weekend, and of course, it will be hot.  Sigh.

Oyyyyy!  Great time with all those issues, awesome!  I have no advice not being a really experienced racer.  Do you think you were a bit too attached to a particular outcome?  The anxiety of hitting a certain time is plenty to cause GI issues.

https://blog.isportsanalysis.com/letting-go-of-attachment-to-outcome/

Marathon

 

Time:  3:06:56

Pace:  7:08

 

Boston Qualifier.

 

Was not a very good race for me.  I had some serious GI issues and had to stop and "Go #2" twice.  One time I couldn't wait and tried to hide behind some trees.  I didn't drink or eat for the last 10 miles because I knew that if I did that I would immediately soil my pants.  I've never had this happen to me before.  I had practiced fueling including breakfast, gel flavors, same flavor of gatorade that the race was handing out, etc during all of my long runs in the last month before the race.  Does anyone have any advice on this?  I'm wondering if changing my diet the last few days before to a higher percentage of carbs than I normally have had anything to do with it (coupled with race nerves?)

 

Next planned races are a half marathon on July 8th which obviously won't be a problem followed by the St. George Marathon in October.  Hope to have it all figured out by then.  Looking forward to learning more and enjoying the journey.  Really looking forward to running in Boston!

I run around 8-10 months on the TM (once we hit 86F and 74 dewpoint, I'm out, I mean in!).  It depends on the TM, so no idea how to get used to it.  My TM is in front of a big screen with every movie the premium channels have ever made and I also run with music.  A big fan and I'm ready.

Ok regression continuing this week and I don't think it is just the heat.  Resting heart rate is way up compared to a month ago.  So my strategy has been the following:

1. Running Mon-Sat, Sunday rest.

2. Running for 30 mins and increasing by 2 mins per workout each week.  This is less than 10% per week so I though it was safe.  I'm up to running 38 mins per run this week now, and planned on 40 mins beginning next week.

3. Resting heart rate reached a low of 64 bpm about a month ago, but now it fluctuates between 68-72 for the past couple of weeks.  I was still improving but now I am actually regressing.

What I am thinking about as a possible solution:

1. Running Mon-Fri, rest Sat and Sun.

2. Running 48 mins instead of 40 next week to maintain total weekly mins.  This would be a substantial increase for my daily run, but not to the weekly totals.

3. Using resting heart rate as a measurement to what my goal heart rate during the run will be.  If I see it go up, I will try and target MAF minus 5 and just play with it.

It's been a frustrating 2-3 weeks to say the least and it really takes the joy out of the process when you aren't seeing improvement fairly consistently as you all know.  I'm open to your suggestions based upon all of your experiences which I don't have only having done this for 3 months or so.

Matt

Ok headed to the TM for the entire week and I'm gonna make certain that I am keeping 135 bpm or below in a very strict fashion.  I looked at all the data and I think the regression is because portions of my runs are over Maf plain and simple.  Sometimes as many as 5-10 beats or more near the end because of the heat.  On the TM at the gym with the fan blowing on me it is a much more controlled environment so I think it is safer for the time being to do the majority of my runs there and then do Maf Tests on the days that weather permits.

Hmm, I'm no expert on this but in the final months leading up to my marathon, I introduced more and more steady runs at higher speeds than MAF.  My RHR actually went down from a very consistent 47 to a solid 41.  However, I also cut out alcohol (for the most part) and my weight dropped as well.  I basically found my MaxHR, set my watch to display %MaxHR and ran approximately 80-83% MaxHR.  For some people, this happens to be their MAF.  For me, it's much faster than MAF which is an equation that does not take into account your individualistic maximum heart rate.  However, it was still nowhere near anaerobic and I saw some pretty strong improvements including my resting heart rate.  In other words, I don't think that going a few beats over MAF is going to impact your RHR or your performance at all.  What it may do is slow your improvement.  But that is only true if your MAF is truly accurately calculated.

For what it's worth, the only anaerobic running that I did in the entire training cycle was a single event in which my sole purpose was to calculate my MaxHR.  I followed the process in the sticky on this forum and it was extremely hard running.  This also did not stop progress (may have slowed it slightly but the world will never know ).  The 80-83% MaxHR range was still significantly slower than marathon pace on a flat surface with no wind.  HR_Marathon was 88%.

Bottom line is that you can be as strict about following the process as you want to be.  It's your training and your race.  No one seems to have all the answers and there are a ton of theories floating around out there.  The most common thread I've seen is that running easy to build an aerobic base seems to be a universal truth that pretty much everyone accepts.  MAF is a nice estimate that prevents you from running yourself ragged and out of breath.  However, if it's SO slow that you can't even really run, I'm reasonably sure that you can just run to a set pace target or by feel or whatever you feel like doing and you should still see gains.  Eventually, I would think you'll be fast enough at MAF for it to still be running.  I could be completely wrong but that's my two cents.  

Well I think the biggest difference between you and me is that you have a strong aerobic base, in fact a life time base that you are building from.  I really don't at all so for me, it is more "costly" to push over the max aerobic heart rate consistently.  I ran on the TM today and made sure I was at or below and I felt really good and in control.  Even after a few months of doing this my cardiac drift is pretty significant even over a 3-4 mile run.  I usually end up a good 1-2 mins/mile slower in the 3rd or 4th mile.  I might even build to 45 mins per run and stay there for a month or two and make slow gains at the same amount of weekly time before increasing.  I'd like to level out the cardiac drift before moving on to the next challenge.

 

Hmm.  I'm not sure if having a solid aerobic base or not really matters?  I honestly have no idea.  I know that there is a lot of room for improvement on my base for sure.  I've seen nothing but consistent improvement as long as I run a vast percentage of my time at an easy effort.  I think that's the true moral of the story behind low HR training.  Honestly the biggest gains I saw was after switching my workouts to somewhere between 60 and 90 minutes of continuous, easy effort.  Supposedly that is where the aerobic system gets the biggest bang for it's buck.   The only time I saw actual regression of speed vs HR was after 20 mile runs probably by being on my feet TOO long.  After scrapping the 20 milers I was able to see continuous improvement.

Just another thought I have on your situation is maybe include planned walk breaks?  I know that settles things down pretty dang fast.  It would be very easy to extend your workouts that way.  I'm positive that walking can improve your aerobic engine as well.