The body is a good computer. Sometimes it needs a little help with its display.
Chad asked the other day what good heart rate monitors and other new-fangled tools like GPS units are for running. I'm with him on both the need for numbers to show the effect of such tools and his general skepticism about the magnitude of their impact on actual race times. But these things are notoriously difficult to measure. To really do that you'd have to randomize people to wearing or not wearing a device, and even then you'd have the issue of how do you interpret the effect of the device versus the effect of training itself, and determining which training changes would only have been made with the assistance of the heart rate monitor.
I think Jack Daniels' skepticism in the latest edition of his Running Formula book is well put; the human body is an amazing computer and you can learn a lot by thinking about how you're feeling when you're running, how effort corresponds with pace and the like. When I first got a heart rate monitor one of the things it helped me to do was slow down at the end of recovery runs. As I warmed up I would slowly increase the pace and the effort. It was all very unconscious. This slowly increasing effort showed up on the heart rate monitor, and I learned to identify the other signals that I was doing this. In other words, the monitor alerted me to signs the body was already sending the brain.
Here's an anecdote that reveals the sometime utility of the heart rate monitor, and how sometimes it tells you to push on, rather than hold back.
The joy of all those tracks/trails in Wellington took me to 102 miles on singles a couple of weeks ago (5-11 February). Probably a weekly record on singles. And by the end of the week I was really done, really tired, and due for a recovery week. Really, I was due my recovery week a couple of weeks ago, I could feel that, but I stretched out the effort, felt a little tired on the trails, and did another big week so I could have a recovery week coincide with a week I didn't have much time for running. But it did confirm something I'd thought last summer, that in the base phase I can string together 5 big weeks before feeling like I need a rest. That's one thing I've learnt from listening to my body—that I can get in 5 weeks of base training before needing a cut-back.
How do I know that? Well, in the sixth week I just felt more tired. I didn't need to look at the watch or my heart-rate to know that. I no longer felt the need to charge up the hills, there was no late-run unconscious surge for several runs. One easy day was not enough to recharge me for another hard effort. But I pressed on, I over-rode what my body was telling me ("take a rest").
And then I had my recovery week. I ran 41 miles (actually, I still log mileage in kilometres, and put down 66km for the week). By Wednesday three days jogging on flat grass and dirt trails beside vineyards and sheep paddocks had me feeling fit and fickle, and I did strides and felt good. I took an unplanned, but not regretted, day off and spent time with my grandmother. The next day I felt great on the 40 minutes I was able to get in, running strongly when I came to hills.
Recovery week all going to plan, right? Well, the next day I started off feeling great but late in my 14km (8.75 miles) my legs felt really crappy. Sunday's 20km run felt no better on the legs though I timed myself through a 2km stretch on a Melbourne bikepath in 8:20 (6:40/mile) not really feeling it in the lungs. Back in Minneapolis, after a day off (spent largely at Los Angeles airport, not eating enough) I did my 22 miler and felt weak and sore some of the time. Picking it up for 5km late in the run I split 20:35, again without it feeling too hard in the lungs. But oh my, the legs still felt not there. Not what you expect after a recovery week, right? Even after two easy 5 milers on Monday, this morning's 11 miles was not great. My quads were sore, and we [should] all know that sore quads and a slow pace are one of the first signs of overtraining.
I was a little worried, but given that I'd begun to feel a lot better after the first 6 days of my recovery week, and other indicators of being fatigued were not there, I wondered. As I mentioned, the running felt OK in the lungs, my breathing felt right for the pace but the legs were sore.
So for this evening's run it was out with the trusty heart rate monitor. And I clipped through 13km in 59.30 (after 2km warm-up the last 11km were at 7.15/mile pace) keeping my heartrate in the 140s, on the low end of my steady training efforts. The legs also continued to feel better though I was getting to 31km for the day.
What the heart rate monitor helped me confirm was the intuition that if my breathing felt right for the pace, that my legs felt better going uphill, and I was feeling better each day after Saturday this was probably not overtraining. Probably it was legs getting bruised at going back onto concrete and asphalt after two weeks nearly exclusively on trails and grass. But the legs adapt in a few days. When it thawed after Christmas and there was no snow to run on, 85 miles on asphalt felt bruising too.
Telling people to "listen to the body" can be a coded way of saying "slow down, take a day off, stay well inside the envelope" but it doesn't have to be. Sometimes the body is saying "keep going, persist, I will adapt" and it does. This was one of those times.
Posted by robe0419 at February 22, 2006 9:12 PM