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.