So, I’m back on the road to New Jersey this spring. Training hasn’t been without issues in this first 6 weeks and I am battling a head cold that’s been with me for over a week now. So I’m changing things up a bit. I’ve been reading Christopher McDougall’s “Natural Born Heroes” and it’s inspired me to try a new approach. If any of my readers hasn’t picked this book up yet, I encourage you to make time for it. He has an amazing way of blending in World War II history, ancient Olympic history, Parkour and running theory in one entertaining and sneakily educational package.
But back to me… So I’ve almost finished Natural Born Heroes and have really taken his lessons to heart. He trained with a coach who produced some of the ultra world’s best athletes and revealed the two-part system that has helped so many before him. There aren’t a ton of details in the book and it’s certainly not intended to be a guide book but I figured I’d give it a go. Worst case, I miss two weeks of my marathon plan and best case, I have more sustainable energy, lose some weight and hopefully re-set my blood sugar, maybe stabilize my hormones and possibly lower my cholesterol.
So here goes nothing. For the next two weeks (actually I started yesterday…) I’m changing things up with both my diet and my running. First the diet. To re-set my sugar I’m eliminating all sugar, including fruit, dairy products other than cheese and all grains and processed foods. I can have all meats except pork, all veggies other than the starchy ones like potatoes and corn. Eggs and salsa are also on the “good” list as are avocados, coffee (but without sugar…) and dry white wine. I think I can do this for 14 days!
That’s the diet part, the running part is to help your body use its fat stores for running fuel, rather than the emergency stores of glucose which burn hot and fast and then leave you depleted. The way to do that, while you’re eliminating sugar from your diet, your exercise has to remain at or below your fat burning heart rate. Luckily there’s an easy formula for that heart rate, 180 minus your age… There’s also a performance handicap for those who have been training so I added back 5 seconds for a target heart rate of 137 (180-48+5=137). So the idea is, don’t go over a heart rate of 137 for any workout for the two weeks. How I’ve decided to adapt this to my marathon training is to take the total mileage for this week and distribute it evenly over the week, and then I’ll do my scheduled long run. So, other than the long run, the rest of the weekly mileage comes out to 25 miles so I’ll do 5 miles each day, Monday – Friday, making sure to keep my heart rate at or below 137. I’ve done two runs, 6 miles on Sunday and 5 miles today. I was able to maintain the low heart rate pretty well on the flats, but any hill, either up or down, was a challenge for sure. I did have to walk up all the hills but I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to run up the hills by the time my two week test is up.
The logical question for any runner would be, how does running slow help you run faster? The idea is that as you train your body to tap into your fat stores by exercising in the fat burning zone, your body will be able to perform better at a lower heart rate. So the idea is by the end of the two weeks, I’ll be able to run continuously and not walk up the hills while still keeping my heart rate low. Then when the two weeks is up I can resume my training but with a more efficient fuel source, my (seemingly endless) body fat.
My purpose today is to document where I’m at health wise at the beginning of this trial. I’m 145 pounds, my average pace for an easy run has been at about 10 minute pace. My average pace for the first two heart rate runs has been 12:10 and 12:24… Let’s see if this changes over the trial.
I’ll check back in after a week and give a mid-trial update. Should be fun!