Hello from the coal chamber!
I decided not to post in March and April while training for this year’s Vancouver Marathon. I was experimenting substantially with my training approach, and wanted to stay focused on that training without writing quickly-dated posts about what I was doing. I wanted the freedom to shift gears without having to possibly explain away something I was doing just a day or a week or a month ago.
I feel pretty good. I have trained more this past couple months than I’ve been able to in any month since I began seriously endurance training so many years ago. I’ve avoided soreness, even though I’ve certainly have carried substantial fatigue for days or weeks at a time.
Until this weekend, for which I planned two total days off, I had aerobically trained on 56 consecutive days. I had no problem getting to the gym or the park and working on any of these days. Worst case scenario, I was somewhat tired, and just took it easy with the session.
A couple weekends ago I logged my longest uninterrupted workout ever by time, at 4 hours 26 minutes. On several of these long workouts I was comfortably able to (at least briefly) run at threshold pace and effort over 3 hours into the workout. In prior long workouts I’d have slowed badly by this point with fatigue and sometimes pain, and doing such a thing wouldn’t have been possible.
Still, I am going to wait and see how it feels to run Vancouver this next weekend before doing a full writeup on what exactly I’ve done in training. For all I know, this still ends up being a brutal fall-flat performance and there will remain a lot more work to do. So I don’t want to parade this as an ultimate solution for anyone in advance, when the experiment has yet to conclude.
I don’t intend to run the marathon hard or all out. Much like 2019 after coming off a prior DNF, the goal for this one will be to finish strong, as well as see how well I hold up through the longest run.
I have done far less specific running, but far more low-zone aerobic cross training, yet have spent much more time on my feet than I did while training last year. The average volume has been a lot higher. The average intensity has been a lot lower. All the running I’ve done in the last month has felt much better than the average of how it’s ever felt before. Usually, before, high volume of running would gradually wear me down. I haven’t had a bad run in over a month.
The basics of what I’ve been consistently doing:
- Every work day morning, I get to the gym by 6:30am and train until just before 8am, when I head to work. This is mostly easy aerobic cross training, some running where applicable.
- There are some days where I’ll head to the park instead, weather permitting (though for the most part this winter and spring in Vegas, it has not), for a run. Usually though I go to the gym.
- Most afternoons, following work, I go back to the gym and lightly train for 20-30 minutes before heading home. Occasionally I go to the park and run, but again weather and circumstances haven’t allowed much of this.
- After all of these training sessions, I briefly stretch before leaving.
- On Saturday, I train long, 3+ hours, cross training and some running.
- On Sunday, I run a couple easy miles outside, whatever intensity I feel like but usually pretty easy effort.
- I strength train in the morning once or twice a week, before cross training or running.
- I have intermittent fasted almost every day, not eating a meal until noon or so. At work I will have coffee with coconut oil and marine collagen, but other than this no nutrition until noon.
- I have a large meal around 6-7pm and get to bed by 8-9pm. I pretty much eat the same dozen or so clean, whole foods now and stopped getting any kind of takeout (the only exception being use of Xact nutrition in long workouts for training, as the Marathon will be supplying it on course).
- I nap a lot on the weekends.
I used to go out for coffee on work day mornings and stopped doing that, having coffee when I get to work instead. The local coffee industry took a hit, as I even stopped going out for coffee on the weekends! I got back to french pressing coffee on weekends (plain, though; no oil or peptides). When I go for coffee in Vancouver it’ll be the first time I’ve gone out for coffee in weeks.
The impetus for changing all this actually wasn’t for my running or to save money. It just felt better! I noticed a clear difference in my energy levels during the day, workweek or weekends, and decided it was important to me to adopt these routines. So sticking with them was much easier than before.
I just wanted to check in and let everyone know I haven’t disappeared, that I have been training a lot and just decided this time to keep quiet about it. I’ll have more to say on the nuts and bolts when I debrief Vancouver and know how it all did (or didn’t) benefit me.