Training. An Act of Patience.

For those of you who follow this blog, you know I'm a believer in training principles espoused by Phil Maffetone.  The key objective to this type of training is to teach your body to burn fat for fuel. The method to achieve this is built around training at a lower heart rate (180 minus your age +/- your own history). The biggest challenge to this approach is having patience. Patience NOT to go fast when you feel like hammering, patience NOT to sprint up a hill when you know you can and, yes, patience during training runs to let go of the hunger to push your body to the brink.

Of course this approach to training has its critics. The famous British runner Sabastian Coe once said that "...long slow distance produces long slow runners." Emil Zatopek, winner of three gold medals in the 5k, 10k and marathon in the 1952 Olympics was quoted saying "why should I practice running slow...I already know how to run slow. I want to learn to run fast". Zatopek is considered to be one of if not "the" pioneer of interval training.
   

Maffetone's principles are very similar to the training principles taught by the legendary running coach Arthur Lydiard who coached many Olympic champions. The difference being Maffetone (who coached mostly triathletes vs runners) stresses the use of a heart rate monitor. Both approach training with a mindset that the athlete has to build his/her aerobic conditioning before they begin to introduce anaerobic conditioning to the training regimen. The point here is that both the Maffetone and Lydiard methods incorporate anaerobic work. It's just that they don't drool over it like so many of today's athletes do.
   
A friend of mine once said that you can't shoot a cannon from a canoe. What he meant was just that. You can't shoot a cannon (high intensity workouts designed to develop speed) from a canoe (a runner with no base). I know from my own experience that when I start working out on the track doing intervals, several things usually happen. First, I get faster. My turnover becomes quicker, and my cruising speed increases. Second, my body starts to crave sweet things. Sugary, starchy foods. The stuff that it burns when my heart rate gets way up there. Third, I start to notice aches and pains a lot more. Annoying twinges remind me I'm walking on the razors edge between great fitness and the brink of a serious injury.

Mark Allen, the six time Hawaii Ironman champion and student Maffetone, trained up to 38 hours per week during the "push" stages of his season. Allen used intervals to fine tune his training, but not to define his training. When asked about speed training under Maffetone, Allen said...“He looks at the whole picture while most coaches and trainers look at isolated elements even with, for example, speed work. You need it and he prescribed it for me but it is not the only thing you need, just to use one simple example. Certainly there have been many schools of thought about the best method to train...I look at all of them and I still do not think any of them are as good as the basis {Maffetone} uses to determine optimal aerobic heart rate training.”

This year I did zero interval training. Whether that helped or hurt me is a difficult question. I know I could have developed a little more speed if I spent time on the track. But at what cost? I also know that my aerobic training paid some pretty good dividends. I finished six ultras in six months this year, including three 50 mile, one 100k and two 100 mile races, placing top ten in half of these (at 48 years young, mind you).  Many of these races were only three weeks apart so I didn't have a lot of time to recover. I didn't sustain any debilitating injuries (knock on wood). In some of these races I felt stronger in the second half of the race than the first half, passing many other runners in the process.

If you are interested in getting more information on these training concepts, I suggest you read this interview with Mark Allen,  this article on Lydiard's training methods, and this article on the definition of aerobic training by Phil Maffetone.

Like my grandfather used to say.......patience jackass..........patience.