Three Solid Weeks (And I need to take more pictures)

Let me start by saying that I am tired. 

The last three weeks have been as solid as I could ask for, punctuated by three separate, excellent longer runs. I’ve stuck entirely to not eating carbohydrates before I run. I have also stuck for the most part to 180-age heart rate according to what is being called the Maffetone method. I’ve let myself off the leash, so to speak, four total times in the past three weeks, and I think I’m seeing good results. 

Two weeks ago on Saturday, I had what is probably my best run since moving to Minnesota at Afton state park. Roughly 30 seconds after I started running, the skies opened up and the rain came pouring down. Within a minute, I was soaked to the skin, grinning like and idiot, and, though my legs had felt a bit heavy just seconds before, I knew it was going to be a great run. 

I didn’t push the pace at first, but I felt good enough that the miles seemed to flow from one to the next as the rain waxed and waned. But after completing the north section (10.5 miles or so) of the 25k loop I’d planned for the day, I still felt good, so kicked it up a couple notches for the flats along the train grade along the river. I must have really cruised, because despite the minor inconvenience of a downed tree across the trail, I still managed fourth overall on the section. 

Still feeling good, I pushed up and over the Meat Grinder and onto the snowshoe loop. I didn’t quite PR for the entire loop, but since I didn’t push the pace for most of it, I feel pretty good about it. 

The following week it got hot. Sticking to the 148 heart rate was difficult, and required an extreme drop of the ego, but I managed it, and on nine straight days of running felt good going into the weekend. 

Friday night was stormy and rainy, so I ran on the bike paths around the River Gorge Loop on Saturday, running one at a quick pace, and the second at an even faster one. Despite 75 degree temperatures with 75% humidity (ow), I ended with 5.5 miles in 38 minutes. It felt fast, but not painfully so. 

Following that up on Sunday, I ran 10k in Battle Creek, attacking the uphills and relaxing the rest of the time. This park is an entirely different place in the summer, with lush prairie grasses almost overcoming the trail at many points. That little detail led to a certain paranoia regarding the number of ticks I was sure I was picking up. Even so, it was a gorgeous site, with early summer wildflowers in full bloom. I caught one young buck deer less than ten feet from me, hidden up to the neck in tall grasses. At my feet, I kept getting little flashes of brown and black as what I assume were shrews or voles dashed across the trail in front of me. All in all, a second excellent run for the weekend, and all the better training for taking place on tired legs. 

Another consistent week of training, and heat adaptation, followed. I took Monday off, but ran seven on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and 5.5 on Friday for a good total heading into the weekend. Saturday I headed out to Afton again, hoping for a solid, three hour run, picking up the effort a bit on the hills again. 

But this run had a twist: I wanted to run without gels. To replace that, I had exactly 1.25 ounces of beef jerky. 

Added to the top of that, it was hot. 

I opted to run the north half of the 25k loop twice, or near to, seeing where I was when I reached the bridge over the campground trail (if you don’t know the route, this is probably confusing, but if you’re a trail runner in the Twin Cities, you probably get what I’m talking about). From there, I’d see where I was time wise and either head up the campground loop or shortcut to the car. 

The first loop around went really well, all told. I felt powerful on the uphills, quick and relaxed on the flats, and smooth on the downhills. Before I knew it, I had cruised up to the top of the campground loop and was filling my water bottles. As a side note, I highly recommend the new Body Bottles + (a Hydroflask product) sold by Ultimate Direction as a complement to their vests. The big mouths make filling them easy, they fit well in the vests, and they are much more comfortable than the normal bottles. I was a little concerned about how easy or difficult it would be to get them in and out of the front pockets, but it turned out to be very easy. 

At this point, my watch usually shows about 10 miles. I had discovered that morning that packing the night before works really well, as long as you remember to pack EVERYTHING the night before. I had forgotten to pack my watch, so was relying on my phone. At this point, it said 9.5 miles gone. I am pretty sure the watch is more accurate, or at least I’ve used it there more times and it is pretty consistent. 

Nevertheless, having filled my bottles and wetted down my cap, I took off again for my second loop. Somewhere in the trout brook loop, I briefly felt a little off, but miraculously a few bites of beef jerky seemed to do the trick, and I continued to feel good all the way down, and then up, the dirt road and over the hump. 

In fact, I felt good the whole day. While I could feel the fatigue set in, this being after all my longest run since the Icebox race, I never felt horrible. And though I didn’t get in a second campground loop, at the end of the run my phone said 18.7 miles and 2:56. With the fudge factor, I’d give it 19-19.5 miles, for a very solid three hour trail run. 

That, I picked up my brother at MSP and opted to spend time with him instead of taking a follow-up run today. While that would have pushed my weekly mileage over 50 for the first time in a while, spending time with my family is always solidly more important than any single run to me. 

Now What?

(Note: I started writing this a week after the Superior 25k, and finished it much more recently)

With the Superior 25k over and done with, I actually have very little on the horizon in terms of racing. I have the Warrior Dash on July 11, and the Superior 50 mile on September 12, and that’s all at the moment. I have my sights on the Border Route Trail still, as well as Eagle Mountain. 

So what now? 

Back to base period, I think. 

50 and 65 miles are so much farther than I’ve ever run before (15 and 30 miles farther, to be precise) that I need a strategy to cope with it. 

Changing tacks a little bit, I’ve seen quite a bit of research and writing lately on training your body to more efficiently burn fat. There are a number of strategies for this, ranging from the mild, and likely less effective, to the extreme (and nearly impossible). 

At its simplest, you simply make sure that your heart rate stays low throughout your whole run. The usual formula for this is 180bpm minus your age. For most people, this also requires a significant ego-check, as it often requires walking up hills, and a significant reduction in overall pace. 

Chris McDougall, in his newest book “Natural Born Heroes,” suggests a much more extreme method, put forward by Phil Maffetone. This method requires you taking carbohydrates out of your diet entirely (or as much as is possible) for two weeks, while keeping to the 180-age heart rate method. This is intended to reset your body’s desire for carbohydrates while simultaneously improving its ability to metabolize fat for fuel while running. 

I chose to take a middle of the road approach. I run in the morning, so rather than taking carbohydrates out of my diet entirely, I simply do not eat any before I run in the morning. Supposedly, this should start me in a carbohydrate-depleted state, allowing my body to more immediately switch to fat-burning. 

Let me tell you, this is hard. Not in the sense that it’s difficult physically, rather it is really important to stick to that target heart rate maximum. For me, that’s 148. Supposedly, since I’ve been training regularly for more than 2 years and am improving my PRs still, I have a 5 bpm fudge factor. To be certain I’m not tapping into any carbohydrate fuel, though, I have been staying below 148. 

This has required me to drop my pace a bit (not as much as I had feared, but still significant). This is particularly true now that it’s getting hot again, with the corresponding increase in heart rate that implies. Sometimes I find it hard to keep the heart rate low enough even on flat, paved stretches. And I have been required to set aside my ego, both on the run when people pass me who might not normally do so, and afterwards on Strava. 

I am not sure if this is working yet. I fell off the bandwagon a bit when I did not bring my HRM on a trip with me. I may alter this somewhat, shifting it to one “cheating” anaerobic workout each week (hills alternating with speedwork, perhaps). But I can say one thing: my recovery from the Superior 25k was better than after any other race I’ve run. After a decade or so of longer races, I have finally found a recovery method that works for me.