V02 Max Challenge

[Scott 2]

@ebast - Novel runs are always fun. I like the travel strategy.


Today I hit one of my year end training goals. I finished this loop in a local forest preserve:



There was not heart rate or pace goal, just a plan to finish. I mostly wanted to see it.

We finally got cold weather to kill off the bugs. However, I woefully underestimated the trail. Where it was steepest, the finer gravel had washed away, leaving golf ball sized rocks. Much of the trail had sections of marble sized gravel. The barefoot shoes I wore were completely inappropriate. It was also hillier than my normal forest preserve trails:



Fortunately, the strategy of "don't stop" worked. Even when a pack of high school girls passed me, going twice my speed. I might revisit the trail in boots. I had plenty of heart rate capacity available. My feet were the limiting factor.

The other target is a 9.5 mile loop I've done on my bike. That one is fine crushed limestone and will be substantially easier than today's effort. Because of accumulated aches and pains, I've switched cardio strategy. I'm mostly cross training, then opportunistically picking off my running goals. At some point, a prolonged no-impact period is required. But I want to make the most of what could be a lifetime peak.

Depending how October finishes, I may attempt a significant 5k PR in early December.

The Garmin insists my v02 max remains at 46.

[ebast]

First, congrats to Scott on achieving a long run goal. A lot of up and down in that and I somehow never can run quite as fast on that sort of gravelly stuff.

My long runs meanwhile have been coming in a little short. But this coming week will be my max mileage week and am finalizing my thinking on target pace. If this seems like an awful lot of agonizing over running hard, I think most endurance runners have a story (often a first or early race, or for me: all of them) of coming out fast feeling great, and promptly "hitting the wall" or "bonking" two-thirds in and feeling like they were crawling to the finish.

It looks like my workouts have been consistent with my goal pace and it may even be possible to bump it up 5s/mi. I keep reminding myself my primary goal is motivated by experience: even or negative splits (I would like my pace to be steady throughout the race or it can pick up toward the end.) Wisdom from experience is nice.. and then there's greed: I start thinking about getting the fastest time possible. Tricky, because pacing long distance endurance runs seems like such a black art to me. Here, I'll show you what I mean.

Here's Brad Hudson on specific endurance tests to see if you're where you need to be to run your target pace for a 10k (selected in case it's helpful to people running those here):

My preferred spec test for the 10K is also identical to the peak-level 10K specific endurance workout, save for longer rest periods. Run 4 x 2K @ 10k goal pace + 1K @ maximal effort with 3-minute jog recoveries (instead of 1-minute jog recoveries). As with the 5K spec test, do this 10K test (or run a 10K tune-up race) once every five or six weeks to see how close your fitness level is to your desired peak level.

A little technical, but this is executable and basically makes sense. For a half marathon, his explanation is lengthy but he suggests you use a heart-rate monitor to find your heart rate at current half-marathon pace and watch what pace you can sustain at that heart rate, which should hopefully improve throughout your training period toward your goal pace:

...after a thorough warm-up, run for 20 to 30 minutes at your half-marathon heart rate. Stop after the designated test duration has elapsed ... Repeat this test once every five or six weeks. You should move closer to your goal half-marathon pace each time.

Easy enough. So what do we do for marathons?

There is really no way to perform an effective specific-endurance test for the marathon.

Well, gee, thanks Brad. He goes on:

Performance in the marathon is almost always determined by what happens in the final 10K, after 20 miles of race-pace running are completed. Either you hold pace or you fall apart. Challenging marathon-pace workouts can give you a good sense of your capacity to hold your goal marathon pace for 20 miles, but no workout can tell you what will happen in the decisive closing 10K on race day. The best you can do is look for consistent improvement as you follow your specific-endurance workout progression throughout the training cycle

Either you hold pace or you fall apart. There's a physiological backing to this since in contrast to even half-marathons, marathons are just long enough to ensure your body has consumed its available glycogen and you will be taxing your fat-burning systems, which motivates talk about the first half of the race being 20 miles and this phase transition... Even having done it, it's all sorta irresistible to me, as in the allure of an altered physiological state: what will happen after I burn off my glycogen stores? What's it feel like to run after the wall? I think this, in addition to subverting my life-long preference for sprinting, is the biggest lure drawing me to run these things. Any of these one-way transformations that feel like cresting the hill to see what's on the other side, these liminal transits that promise you will be a changed person in somehow indescribable ways: long runs, vision quests, enlightenment, death, surviving an apocalypse, contracting herpes. I mean look, you're reading a forum on a website exclusively devoted to quitting your job by assuming an extreme lifestyle redesign frequently accompanied with epiphanic analogies about leaving caves or rabbiting up levels to where the concerns of your old self are all but unrecognisable, so one can see how you might have some curiosity about what it's like to run twenty miles up to some imaginary wall and then: keep running. Now of course, in practice this turns out to feel less like some enlightened revelation and more like exhaustion: you're disoriented, all you were promised seems still further and harder than you thought and all the goals you thought you had seem acediastically meaningless now while you daydream about giving up and going home again--if you even could but you can't even do that because of how far you've managed to get yourself already. And there you are. (I mean for running, not retiring.)

But enough on that cheery note, how about a run report on how to run a medium distance from quite far away:

Weekly mileage: 30mi (!) [should have been 43]
Long run: 15mi (!) [should have been 20]

A few interruptions this week. Was too sick to run one midweek session, and then curtailed my long run due to schedule pressures. Fortunately it was a delightful long run as I had another opportunity to run a different locale, traveling to a well-loved secondary city for a professional conference and chance to whack felled trees with an adze, and having my long (20 mile) run coincide with my stay there, I had ambitious plans to take 20 miles running up their waterfront there toward a scenic bridge and back but unfortunately I didn't get going in the morning until it was almost 6 and having a can't-miss performance to attend later that day was gradually coming to terms with the impossibility of having enough time to finish my run at pace.

I had to get going and decided I'd figure out what to do along my way. It was upsetting to me as I was running along the working waterfront past several wretched hives of scum and villany, as well as the warehouse where reputedly skilled metalworkers once fit up an enormous reflective jelly-bean (it's, um, art), but as I went I grew upset with my upset and resolved to have a good local run: my training schedule can survive this, I don't need to see some engineering marvel as isn't there something to be said for a chance to witness and enjoy some of the local neighborhoods and rhythm of daily life? Maybe feed into my web of goals, even.

WoG #1: Now, I know this is the VO2-Max, not the Something For Nothing log, but we've made it this far, so first stop was a flea market. I generally try not to interrupt my runs this close to racing and at 6 in the morning only a sliver of vendors were there, much less set up, save for Doña Julia, a gracious woman with the stalwart smile and maybe the hint of sadness around the eyes of Violeta Parra, whose booth was already at that hour set up pristinely, items arrayed neatly, where I knew there would be treasures awaiting. Score #1 for running: I would never have gone that early but so I did and so I found an induction stovetop she sold me for ten bucks that would have been snatched up in short order. Now, the catch of course is that it is all in Chinese, I still haven't found the instruction manual, and later learned pressing what I'm pretty sure is "fire cut," which you would think means cut off the heat, instead sends it into some spiraling flashing error mode with a display full of 6s, incessant beeping, deeper rumbling, and an intimation it's going to go into full Magneto/Professor X oscillating seizures and vibrate into smithereens everything within an 80m radius, but at the time I was just excited to get an induction burner to play with. But now what? Is there any way in induction hell I could run 20 miles with an induction stove, cord flapping in the breeze? Or instead would I have to jog back to my home berth to drop off an induction cooktop, of all things, and then turn around and at what point finally get started? Available time was shrinking and I envisioned the entire run falling apart. But the the deleterious effects on running form of carrying an induction stove are well-understood so I had to take it back before beginning my run in earnest.

WoG #2: I finally got going for real and since I do this without digital maps I meandered my way by dead reckoning and smell toward one of the central parks there with a decent 3 mile running course, where I figured as if I were some interplanetary satellite I'd do a partial loop, slingshot into one neighborhood or another, muddle about in there a while and come back for another loop and see if I had time for more. That worked pretty well, and on my second iteration around the loop, other runners had made it out. What a friendly, convivial, anything-goes running culture with everything from shuffling your feet ahead of you in sweatpants to full-out interval sprints. A striking woman with the poise and form of an Ethiopian distance runner passed me, a tall, light, and silver fox clad all in cerulean blue left me on my left with I think a twinkle in his eyes (blue, of course), and I was grinned at on two separate occasions by oncoming gingers. Well, okay, it was the same redhead, just progressed a half rotation around the course. Of course I tried figuring, but with the course a lopsided cardioid, I couldn't quite tell who was advancing on whom. But still, two things: 1. this running is not such a lonesome an activity as it might sound. 2. I'm really glad I wasn't carrying an induction cooktop.

[jacob]

Even having done it, it's all sorta irresistible to me, as in the allure of an altered physiological state: what will happen after I burn off my glycogen stores? What's it feel like to run after the wall?

Personally, I think it sucks. Don't runners follow a regular feeding regime while running specifically to avoid hitting the wall? The only two times I hit the wall (while cycling) was when I screwed up by either eating too much or too little. Too much was actually worse: The GI system just wanted to purge while the legs simultaneously were unable to get me to a toilet any faster. I still made it, but I wouldn't exactly classify this as an alluring state

I speculate that there are different kinds of walls: one for each energy system. Unlike, the aerobic wall, I weirdly enjoy breaking through the strength based ones. A lot of this in mental, because the mind has a strong desire to give up when running into the wall. A half-decent metaphor might be sailing faster and faster trying to climb the increasingly steep bow wave. Yet if one can get over the wave, one is suddenly planing or surfing. The body just goes even if it felt like it should have stopped. It's a feeling of super-strength.

I've mostly experienced this when there has been a limit in some complex movement. This could be grip strength in kettlebell swings or core-strength in push-ups, say. There comes a point in training when that limit is simply gone. That changes the experience of the entire exercise set. It hurts just as much, but the muscle doesn't give out anymore. It's the mental equivalent of getting stronger. The weight is still just as heavy, but now it moves!

Returning to the energy systems, something similar happens when a move goes from ATP to glycolytic and maybe even aerobic as one becomes stronger.

[Scott 2]

Today I completed my longest goal run for the year - the local forest preserve. I did the 9.5 miles in 1:45, then went ahead and made it an even 10. 11 minutes per mile:



1. My longest run to date

2. My fastest logged 10k - 1:08:32

3. Halfway through, I ran 10 feet in a couple inches of water. I was worried, but there was no extra blistering.

4. The handheld soft flask worked great. Much better to carry than my hard flask with a phone pouch.

5. Around mile 8, it suddenly got easy. My heart rate was still high, but moving felt effortless. I was confused and didn't want to stop.

6. This was not a maximal effort. I heavily considered another 3 miles, to log my first half marathon. I decided the injury risk wasn't worth it.

7. The people passing me, were part of a Boston Marathon training group. So I'm keeping good company and running in the right place.

8. My Garmin estimated v02 max remains at 46

The tentative plan remains to attempt a 5k race PR in early December.


For $100, I could race a half marathon in two weeks. I considered this and decided against it. If I gutted out a 2:30, it would be near last place for my age group. I'd always have the finish, but it's not a particularly good time. And I never wanted to run that far. The race has a 7am start, with packet pickup meaning I have to leave home at 5:15. That's getting up at 4am, which I also don't want to do.

Thinking it through - for a half to feel compelling, I'd need to expect a sub 2 hour finish.

[J_]

Interesting topic. I have noticed that reaching high levels of vo2 (adjusted for age) are making me vulnerable for getting colds or influenza. Just as my condition reaches a peak I have to remember myself to reign in.
Instead of vo2 max I focus on elegance and good technics by cc skiing (as long cc skiing is still possible) and speed by skiff rowing in short intervals. Last week I reached 12,9 km/hour over about 100 m on my Garmin. Top skiff athletes reaches 15 km/h over 2 km.

[C40]

Huh. Over my years of sometimes training a lot and sometimes not at all,... my resistance to getting sick has seemed linearly linked (or even exponentially linked) to my fitness level. (The higher my fitness, the less I get sick)

[jacob]

(The higher my fitness, the less I get sick)

Interesting. I suspect it's not linear though. Overtraining depresses the immune system. I've experienced that. When I was at my fittest (~800kcal burned per day), I also had the most sick days.

[C40]

Ahh. I don't think I've had any overtraining issues (not overall CNS ones... I have messed up a tendon very gradually over many years.) I Also don't do extremely long durations (nothing significantly longer/harder than I'm already used to, by increasing volume and intensity gradually). And, I'll note that the times I'm in the best shape, I was eating very healthy

I know it's common for people to do some very long/hard effort which they aren't accustomed to and then get sick almost immediately

But having a reduced immune system from over-training is something entirely different than fitness causing sickness. The latter idea is just wrong with exceptions only in some rare specific cases

[ebast]

Jacob: I like the bow wave analogy, although if I sense through it I have to acknowledge the bit of queasiness I get at the crest and the insistent preference I have for climbing, not planing afterward. at any rate think I have noticed that transition you describe, most recently in squats where what was a challenge of strength and mental focus became an almost third-person-like enjoyment of and confidence in the motion.

Scott II: Thinking about the half, based on the times you're hitting and your recent streak I bet you would beat 2:30 handily. To come in around 2 hours, I'd want to be close to handling something like 8 mi @ 9:10 pace in training runs which is a jump. Meanwhile, endurance-wise I think from your trail run you know you have the endurance to do it so it's just getting the speed up. So yeah, first-time, two weeks away, 4 in the morning, it's a bit much...you've had a hot hand recently but there's some chance of a disappointing blow-out.

From a perspective toward hedging downside risk (which I'd likely take due to what you could chalk up as risk-aversion but more precisely is a preference toward lengthy private preparation and self-assessment followed by few public tests: "presenting as competent," versus a no less valid or enjoyable strategy of integrating frequent public showings as part of my growth trajectory: "learning in public"), if you picked a race further out and had some time to set out a plan to train up for it, starting from the solid base you're at right now you'd be virtually assured of at least making significant progress toward your goal time and so even if you didn't hit it would receive some encouragement from the progress and motion toward. And maybe not have to get up at 4 in the morning.

at least that's how I think never having raced one and having my own issues sticking to a training plan...

[ebast]

Weekly Mileage: 32mi (!) (Scheduled: 52mi)
Long Run: 23mi

I guess the thing I like about logging these sorts of things in public is that amidst all that sounds well and good and achievable in theory, once you start, you can't hide the trainwrecks. What was last week's patient tolerance of occasional and inevitable misses on training schedule has become for me this week's irate frustration with an onging major lapse in training, regrets over a botched peak week, and fears of prematurely tapering. The mileage miss itself doesn't even capture that a lot of it was slow and almost none of my race pace-oriented miles happened this week as a result of two interruptions: early on I had a schedule swap I graciously agreed to but could not overcome to find running time and then I had a last-minute unscheduled work trip overlapping two runs, only one of which survived and in stop/start non-paced form. I have one week before taper, one week to make this up. Partially, anyway. Two unforeseeable issues arising from the work trip which impacted available running time were: 1. work was expected to be accomplished 2. meetings in which work was not accomplished were accompanied by prodigious rosters of distinguished Italian wines, whose effect on running form the next morning are well understood.

Fortunately I managed my long run, which is my third and last long run over 20mi, and even at 23 miles felt quite strong (how could I not? I barely ran this week) to the point of being able to take the last six miles at a nice clip. I will use a variant of this strategy for racing in order to achieve my conservative goal of good split times while still allowing for a little boost at the end.

In any normal year I probably enjoy travel about as much as Jacob or Henry David Thoreau, but maybe this does give me a chance to round out a little triptych of enjoying novel running trips with here a last report about running as I did through an occasionally quaint riversided city of some renown. In this case I got a hand-drawn map from a colleague who generously depicted a tour of his city in ink featuring, as is a new fondness of mine, several bridge transits. I appreciated that he spent no time giving me turn-by-turn directions, necessary I knew even to find the crooked pedestrian approaches to the bridges, and neither did he give me any sense of scale or direction as all was substituted with an attitude of, eh, you'll figure it out. Well, here's how I figured it out.

Nearly dark by the time I got going, I headed straight over to the river and turned south where I found myself in a constant flow of runners. These were fast runners, well-appointed, not one overweight, not one dogging it, and in multitudes, oncoming fast at an average rate (I checked) of one every six seconds. With the constant patter of shoes passing on concrete, after two miles which running anywhere else would otherwise find me just coming out of a slack-jawed warmup daze, I was already exhausted, I think from the foot traffic, and I still had yet to see anyone running slow. I was only passed once or twice so if some principle of symmetry holds I was doing alright, but they were serious, they were set, and they weren't stopping.

Across the river, meanwhile, the sun was setting, the evening star drooping and shedding her sparkler dims, and if you are maybe thinking of your Melville right now, of crowds of water-gazers, fixed in ocean reveries, well you're the only one: these people were running. Not a one was gawking at the lights twinkling on the other bank, and why would you? Over there was who knows what, all bears and assholes and you probably had to take a bridge or a tunnel to get there if you even wanted, which you didn't because over there is where they send you when you can't keep up.

As I got to the southern section, the course quieted and cleared up a bit and I caught up to a runner about my pace who I followed as he seemed to have some idea where he was going and I had none. There was nowhere any such thing as dedicated paths for runners, this was scrappy city running: he took from the sidewalk dipping nimbly to the gutter to pass, then diagonally across plazas, through ferry lines, neverminding the bollards, dodging rope lines, past outdoor dining tables with oysters and glittering dresses, past planters populated with pot-smokers, kicking back out to the bike lanes in the parts where bikes had room and back up to the walkways where the pedestrian traffic died down, and all of this was over sidewalk, curb, and street, over cement, stone, and brick such that I missed the tender cheeks of asphalt as I wore more through my minimalist running shoes made for soft dirt and gravel and realized: this bunch is the most hard-soled, hard-driving, hard-headed (hard-hearted?) I will ever run with.

Fortunately it was time for me to leave that group as I found the bridge to escape for a more bucolic warren for a bit and then found another bridge by which to come back, this one jarring & apocalyptic to the senses. Below, boats or maybe helicopters were passing, trains screeching horribly next to me, things in the shadows loitered, and I even got passed close on the bike lane by an actual motorcycle, and amidst the excess of this all, the only refuge was the rhythm of my footfalls. If Bill Plotkin can go off into the desert and stare at a wet rock for three days, I wonder if you couldn't find something in this: the sheer overwhelming terrifying sublime backside of the systems of the overbuilt megalopolis.

As I looped back to my start, it caught up with me: motor traffic routing to bike paths, the just-enough of the ill-maintained train tracks, those lights below belonging to vessels taking peoples' shit from one side of the city to the other, all the curbside black garbage bags leaking representatives of every global cuisine over disco rice, the men pissing in doorways, the rats running in herds, all of this and almost any other example of filth you run across are reminders that if entropy-wise this place will always run as a grotesquely expensive open system, some of its inhabitants are scurrying busy to close every loop they can find. Life finds a way.

I can't wait to go back.

[Scott 2]

if you picked a race further out and had some time to set out a plan to train up for it

It was a good call to stop at 10 miles on Saturday. I'm still walking funny today. My muscles are good, but my tendons are not accustomed to the work. They simply have not adapted as quickly.

Something I'm mulling over right now - do I value performing at a race? Like I'm ready to log my first sub-hour 10k. Is it worth spending the $50 and driving to a race this weekend? Or do I just go hit the trail and capture the time on my Garmin?

I think setting a target date to train for is different and worthwhile. But even then - do I really need to pay someone and be in a place at a time? I can appreciate the running party aspect of it. But I never liked a party.


The long run sounds awesome.

[J_]

But having a reduced immune system from over-training is something entirely different than fitness causing sickness. The latter idea is just wrong with exceptions only in some rare specific cases

I was discussing the first idea C 40. Striving to vo2 max can be risky, is my point.
I agree of course that a well trained body helps one’s health.

[C40]

It's only risky if you're making significant mistakes. If you want, you can make that problem go away.

There are various ways to identify and prevent over-training. If you haven't read it yet, Joel Friel's book(s) have decent information. I read it in his "Cyclist's training bible" book but I believe he has others, probably with the same concepts. (a few things I recall right now: observation of resting heart rate,.... checking heart rate upon waking, first laying down and then standing... feeling of recovery upon waking,... performance while training (power/speed/output vs perceived exertion and heart rate,... (lack of) HR drift at same exertion over training,... bodyweight fluctuations... ability to sleep well... [these aren't explanations - just a list.. so if you're not familiar with them/haven't used them, you might get good use out of learning them] )

Aside from the obvious elements of training volume and intensity, other factors like rest, nutrition, and overall stress are very important. When the recovery side is decently optimized, and fitness is built gradually with a good strategy, one can work up to quite extreme levels of volume and intensity without any overtraining issues.

[Scott 2]

Something I'm mulling over right now - do I value performing at a race?

I've been mulling the question over. What am I doing with the v02 max work, so it's not just a number? I think it comes back to video games. Specifically:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartle_ ... ayer_types

I'm predominantly an achiever / explorer. I'm not looking to beat anyone. I don't much care if someone else sees my experience or a stranger cheers for me.

So if I'm going to spend $100 to run 13 miles, I'm better off investing in someplace really fun. Maybe go one way along a coast line, grab a meal, and then Uber back to my starting point. $100 makes for a sick day trip.

Or if I'm going to spend $50 to run a 10k, put it towards annual access at the local arbor, where I can then run many novel 10k's.

This especially holds true for races an hour plus away, with early start times. That same energy can offer so much more in the explorer quadrant.

I'm still up for a target date race, using other runners to achieve a high score. But that's a very specific and infrequent scenario. At a minimum, it requires a strong training PR to baseline against.

And there's a place for a social race, say put on by my local animal shelter. Collective effervescence is still valuable, but I want more in common with the group than a bib number.

[jacob]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartle_ ... ayer_types

I'm predominantly an achiever / explorer. I'm not looking to beat anyone. I don't much care if someone else sees my experience or a stranger cheers for me.

However, killers are generally added to a game in order to make achievements meaningful. This is how we know whether a 6hr marathon is an achievement as a runner or a [long] walk in the park. It's popular to "only compete against yourself" but with that metric, it's impossible to know whether "better" is actually any "good". Essentially, competition sets a standard. It's a measure.

[Scott 2]

I agree. I think it's important to respect what makes an event good for the other quadrants too. Make space for the killers to run their 15 minute 5k. Acknowledge to them how impressive it is. If you think you age group medaled, stick around for the socializer's award ceremony. Maybe even hang out just to clap a little.

I'm mostly concerned about being discerning around which new experiences I pursue. Another angle on increased v02 max offering more options, is I can't say yes to everything.

[J_]

(overtraining:) It's only risky if you're making significant mistakes. If you want, you can make that problem go away.

Agree: it was precisely my point, therefore I am extra diligent about my health when pushing my vo2

Essentially, competition sets a standard. It's a measure.

Yes, therefore I compare my skiff-speed with real speed reached by athletes. But I am aware I am not an athlete and in an other age segment. The speed I got (12,9 km/h versus 15 km/h) says something that I have reached out to the technical skill of skiff rowing of competition rowers. The time a can keep such a speed is a measure for me if I am improving or not.

[Scott 2]

2000m row test - 48.77

Finally beat 46. Not well fueled, a positive split, and I haven't been practicing rowing.

My score breaks 50 before year end.

[J_]

I haven't been practicing rowing.

I am talking about real rowing on the water in a skiff. Are you on an indoor rowing machine?

[Scott 2]

Rowing machine. I have no illusion that pulling an 8 minute 2k means I could go 15km/h on water.

I've never been in a skiff. There's a rowing club by me, but I didn't pursue it. I believe there's a monthly fee and skiffs aren't cheap or easy to transport. They do host a learn to row event that I eventually hope to make.

From what I've read, experience rowing on water would completely change my perspective on how to use the rowing machine. A lower stroke rate, with a longer recovery and more explosive stroke. Apparently it's also hard to balance?