The purpose of this test is to 'Determine Your Capability'. That's in Mike's words:
"To find your base level; for the next 21-28 days run 7 miles a day over the same course as fast as you can, making sure that you can recover from the effort (generally it will be about one minute per mile slower than your 5K pace or about 10-15 seconds per mile slower than marathon pace). This test works the most easily recruited fibers (1-5) and test their output efficiency and recovery ability."
More on this can be found in Planning a Stamina Build up with the Lydiard Method and in A Model for the Lydiard Method.
Today will be day number 9 into the test and I have to admit that this is probably the toughest running experiment I have ever put myself through. In my case it means daily running at about 83% HRmax or close to where I think my ATS level is. Others would call that a tempo run, daily! That's when you start counting the hours recovery left before you go out to do it again. My muscular recovery seems to be holding up for now. It actually feels like it's improving a little. Can I already get used to this sort of daily pounding?
But not only muscles have to recover. There's the cardio vascular and the skeletal system and my mental health as well. I was worried a little about the former in the beginning. I wouldn't call it chest pain but I sometimes feel a slight pressure in the heart area which always goes away within 24h. In order to keep an eye on this I run with an HR monitor. If my heart rate blows out or behaves funny in any way I'll pull the trigger on the test immediately. To my relieve my average heart rate now starts dropping while being able to keep the pace.
Bones and tendons don't complain much yet but I expect some sort of revolution when I hit the halfway mark in a couple of days. Mentally it's getting tougher day by day. What keeps me going is that I am very surprised about my results which I'll post here soon and that the test does not necessarily have to last 4 weeks.
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5 comments:
Ingo, good luck with the experiment and with the blog. Thanks for the email letting me know about you and your training.
While I would like to take credit for the two posts on my blog that you link to, they are both the work of "Mystery Coach", the other poster on my blog. He first emailed me in June and he's been advising and coaching me pretty much since then. He kindly accepted my invitation to become a contributor on the blog, and I enjoy his posts and his wisdom every bit as much as you seem to.
I think it's great you are giving yourself enough time to accurately assess your current level of fitness with this experiment. I'm excited to read about how it goes, and I'm anxious to hear what it will do to your marathon PR down the road.
Thanks Mike and sorry for mixing up who to give the credit to. I'll fix this.
The exciting fact about the interim results so far is that it looks as if I am rather 'undertraining' than 'overtraining'. But it's only day 9 today. The breathing becomes easier but the legs feel a little heavier than usual.
Let's see how things look around the halfway mark.
Mystery Coach said...
Ingo, Most runners miss this line "making sure that you can recover from the effort". To me it sounds like you are just a bit above your steady state. Try backing off 15-20 seconds per mile (you'll find you'll gain this back by the end of experiment). Remember you're trying to find your true steady state not force yourself into one. Good luck.
I forgot to mention that the heavy leg feeling shows around 10 days into this experiment but will be gone in 5-7 days.
A comment from the coach himself! Many thanks mystery coach and I think you're spot on. On day 7 it happened that I took out my current 10k PB by 2 sec and I guess that's not what this test is supposed to be about. But it got me very excited about my 'capabilities'. Backing off a little before going into the crucial 3rd week will make me sleep much better at night - not only from a recovery point of view. The adjusted pace is close to where I'd have pinned it down prior to the test. There's no cutting corners, is there?
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