I'm 70, now what?

I guess I enjoy writing my own training plan for the same reason I used to write music. The difference there was the social aspect. I did compose a couple of pieces just for me, but what I really enjoyed was figuring out what to put down in the score to get musicians to create a unique and satisfying experience.

At first I had very specific ideas about what should happen. I wanted to control every aspect of the sound. To accomplish this I piled on lots of dynamic, tempo, and articulation marks, as if any time a musician were to execute what I notated perfectly, the piece would sound the same.

I think it was during a summer music festival between my sophomore and junior years that I had a profound insight. I was not treating the performer as an artist. As an equal. A good performance will always be a partnership between the composer and performer. I began to see composing music more like writing a play. I create the core and the musicians embellish, in much the same way as actors and directors, costume designers and set designers give a fresh rendering of a play.

I am beginning to see where coaching is a lot like composing. And, having said that, I can see how different coaches with different styles may not enjoy developing training plans as much as I do. Who knows, maybe when I retire I should give coaching a try.

My latest project is how to accommodate the changes that normally take place as we age. I read Joe Friel's Fast After 50 when it first came out, but never really absorbed much of the details other than the need for more recovery time. When I took on the challenge of long course triathlon I purchased one of his plans designed for older athletes. It worked well and I might have done better had I stuck more closely to his plan. When I did not get the results I had hoped for I became an 80/20 convert. I must admit the Matt Fitzgerald plan I followed last year worked well and I had my best race ever, by far. I was following pretty much the same plan since February this year when a series of setbacks resulted in me deciding not to do Honu this year. And, as you know, Honu was eventually cancelled anyway.

It was while I was struggling with my eyesight issue and my poor marathon performance -- I saw more doctors this winter than I typically see in a decade -- that I realized that turning 70 was a significant event. I decided to go back and read Fast After 50 again. This time I paid closer attention. The result has been a complete shift in my approach to training.

Before I get to the specifics I must point out that Friel's book covers much more than how to schedule workouts. He has gathered an enormous collection of facts and study results that pertain to the senior athlete, and includes many guest authored sidebars that shed more light on what it means to be old and remain active. In short, if you are past 40 and an endurance athlete, you need to read this book. Someone (not me) asked him on Twitter if he was considering a sequel, like Fast After 70. I thought that was a great idea. Joe replied that he had approached his publisher with that very thought, but his publisher thought the audience was too small! (As I write this I see hints he is working on a book about coaching. Hope that comes true.)

Early in the book Friel points out that senior athletes typically fall into the habit of doing exclusively long and slow workouts, often referred to as LSD (Long, Slow, Distance). This results in a significant loss of aerobic capacity, as typically measured by VO2Max. We cannot stop the natural decline in VO2Max, but we can decrease the rate of decline by doing regular workouts at high intensity. Specifically, intervals with equal duration work and recovery segments, at or near VO2Max effort (meaning very hard).

In a similar way, the senior athlete often experiences a loss of lactate threshold. And, as with aerobic capacity, he describes in great detail how to perform interval sets to stimulate LTHR and FTP. There is no getting back to being in your twenties, but there is a lot we can do to hold onto what we have an keep going strong.

A third category of workout is good old LSD. He classifies these workouts as aerobic threshold. Harder than a Sunday bike ride with your family, but not much harder.

Last but not least comes strength training. The aging athlete will struggle to maintain muscle mass due to the natural decease in testosterone and other hormones. Lifting weights triggers the body's natural muscle development process and increases the levels of the hormones that contribute to successful performance. This is not go to the gym and get pumped strength training. He gives specific examples, and there is more in his Triathlete's Bible.

Next he goes into dose. How much work to do. He simplifies this beautifully by creating three dose ranges, high, medium, and low. For high intensity workouts the variable is reps. For aerobic threshold it is duration.

It is at this point that his genius really comes through. He assigns each workout type a priority based on the length of the target race and the training period -- base, build, peak, etc. All of these ingredients are arranged in easy to use tables. All you have to do is determine which period you are in, the priorities that apply based on the duration of the race, and lay out a week. This gives you three or four key workouts every week. After that it is up to you to fill in some additional low intensity work. Note that he does not specify which sport to use. He does explain when cross training works and when it does not. Above all he stresses the need for recovery. To reap the benefits of these hard workout days we must allow more rest time than we did when we were young. That is why senior athletes drift into doing LSD exclusively. A well done aerobic capacity or lactate threshold workout will leave you feeling drained for at least a day.

What I am trying is an alternating emphasis. I use a three day mesocycle, two hard weeks followed by a week that starts with plenty of rest and finishes with performance testing. I make the first week run intensive and the second week bike intensive. I do the anchor workouts in the featured sport and fill in the easy stuff with the other. The exception is the aerobic capacity workout, which for now is always done on the bike to reduce the risk of injury. Later, during build, if the run will be hilly I will do these as hill repeat runs.

In my last post I mentioned that some workouts are better done on the turbo trainer. To be useful, the high intensity workouts need to be done at just the right intensity. This is hard to control on the road. The low intensity workouts can accommodate some variability, and spending too much time on the trainer results in a loss of bike handling skills. Besides, it is much more enjoyable to get out and ride, and here in Hawaii we can all year.

Here is an example of a run intensive week in the late base period.

Priorities:

1. Aerobic Capacity
2. Aerobic Threshold
3. Lactate Threshold
4. Strength Training

I put ST workouts on Monday, AC workouts on Tuesday, LT workouts on Thursday, and AT workouts on Saturday, regardless of dose. How much of each to do -- the dose -- is based on the priority for this period. So in this case ST will be low dose, AC will be high dose, AT will be medium dose, and LT will be low dose.

Fill those in and the week looks like this. (The encoding is mine.)

Mon
    ST-FB-LD (FB means full body)
Tue
    gdC-AC-HD-01 (do AC on bike, even in run week)
Wed
    nothing yet
Thu
    gdR-LT-LD-01
Fri
    nothing yet
Sat
    gdR-AT-MD-130
Sun
    nothing yet

For a bike intensive week the Thursday and Saturday workouts are of the same type as above, just done on the bike.

The next step is to fill in some swim workouts and recovery workouts. For a run week the recovery workouts are done on the bike, and the reverse is true for bike weeks.

There is great temptation to fill up the schedule the way a typical triathlon schedule looks. Especially those Sundays. But the foundational idea is that senior athletes need more recovery time. Keep doing two-a-days and long weekends and in a month or two the wheels fall off.

I don't have a race to train for, so this is a perfect opportunity to try this out. I am just getting started, so stay tuned for progress updates.

Now that the season is gone ...

Unless you have been living in a cave on the island of Kahoʻolawe you have heard, repeatedly, stories about the upheaval caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in the world of sports. Nowhere has the impact been greater than in the realm of Olympic athletes. They only get one chance every four years. There is no getting around the fact that age is a critical factor in sports. In another four years we can expect a wave of fresh young athletes to sweep aside many of today's best.

When the IOC announced the postponement of this year's games they -- or was it Japan? -- promised to hold the games next year. One year is better than four, but is this a reasonable expectation? As I write this, discussions about what comes next are headline news. There is no consensus. On one extreme we have scientists who predict that our lives cannot return to normal until we have an effective vaccine that is available to all, and we should not expect that until Fall 2021 -- more than a year from now. On the other extreme we have anarchists protesting against government imposed stay-at-home orders, people who believe their intuition and gut feeling is all they need and explicitly reject the advice from scientists. Running back and forth between these extremes, changing direction so fast and so often it makes my head spin, we have our President, who justifies his decisions with magical thinking. The man who thought we should have business back to normal by Easter. The Easter we just had. I am on the side of science, so I doubt we will have anything looking like a normal athletic season until 2022.

The last time I posted here I was working to correct my double vision. My optometrist had suggested I go back to contacts. The results were not good. A real disappointment. I loved the wide angle view and the opportunity to use the visor on my Rudy Project aero helmet. But, as before, roughly an hour into the ride my double vision would show up, and get progressively worse, to the point where it was not safe to continue.

Some friends had suggested I see an ophthalmologist, so I got a referral and had an exam just as the COVID-19 stay-at-home order was taking effect here in Hawaii. The result? Yes I have double vision and contacts were no help. I also found out my Rudy Project sunglasses corrective lenses are too strong, which is why I never had good vision from the beginning. The fix is to add a prism effect to the right eye. This will lift the image just enough so that the eye muscles are not constantly struggling to align the images. We decided to try to implement this first in a new set of lenses for my sunglasses. The project it on hold until social distancing guidelines allow me to see the optician.

In the meantime I do most of my bike workouts on the turbo-trainer. Which is not a bad thing, since two a week are designed for that. I still do long rides on the road. Just not as long as I might otherwise, and I take a break when needed.

In my next post I plan to explain why two bike workouts a week are better done on the trainer. That and a whole lot more. For now I am going to head down to my sailboat and visit Kahoʻolawe, just to see if there really are any caves on the island. We can still sail, right?

(No, I don't actually own a sailboat.)

New eyes, and zone troubles

I'll begin by announcing my return to contact lenses. I cannot recall how long it has been since I last tried contacts. Ten years, maybe? The big deal then was that I could get lenses that corrected for astigmatism. They worked well enough under everyday conditions, but on the bike they were, well, unpleasant. If you want more details, see my last post.

This time around I can get a useful amount of close-up focus, plus the material is thinner and more porous. Hopefully this will make them less of a challenge. Wore them last Tuesday on a run around Diamond Head. Also wore my Rudy glasses with clear lenses. Good thing, as the wind was strong. The close-up correction is not quite enough for up close reading, but the Rudy bifocal lenses makes reading my watch easy. Without the corrective insert the Rudy Ryder glasses are light enough for running. Tomorrow will be my first long bike ride with them. We'll see how it goes, pun intended.

Now onto the other subject of today's blog, zone setting. A perennial challenge.

I paced today's long run by RPE and Stryd power. I knew my Stryd zones has not be updated since December so I was not relying on them as much as watts, but most of the time when my watch indicated power zone one I felt like I was in zone one, and likewise power zones two felt like two. There was even a stretch on the second lap when I knew I was going too hard and sure enough, the Stryd Zones Connect IQ app indicated zone three.

Back at home I reviewed the data and saw some big anomalies. The TrainingPeaks HR zone graph looked good compared to how I felt, but the power graph was off. It had me running in zone four. I know I was not running that hard.

The new Stryd website makes it more difficult than ever to enter a baseline value manually. I call it LTHR, they call it CP; same thing. Stryd insists on computing it. On automatic the site reviews data for the previous ninety days, sort of like WKO. On manual the site asks for a recent run result or their special test result, and again, they compute it. Frustrating, because I want to use Jim Vance settings, which are a good match for Joe Friel's work. I cannot find a way to just set my own CP.

Just for kicks I switched to auto and Stryd came up with 144. Hmm. My last test gave 143, but I was sure it was too low. Obviously Stryd is looking at the same run. Is that really the value? Now what?

Well, when in doubt, look at WKO. The new version does a nice job of separating run and bike results. I let it update, and the hero bar gave me run mFTP 147. Hmm.

Let's come at it another way. Today's run from 40 min. on felt like a solid zone two -- 2Z. HR was in fact a solid mid 2Z. It was power that seemed wrong. So I got out my zone calculator, which I programed using Jim Vance zones, and started plugging in run FTP values until I got a mid 2Z for today's power. Guess what? I got 148. I actually do not like backing into threshold settings this way, but it is a useful method for validating test results.

So, what to do? I will adjust my TrainingPeaks run power threshold from 143 to 148. Not a huge difference, but enough to help reduce my confusion and perhaps make my future workout efforts more productive.

Now I hope it doesn't rain too much tomorrow. I want to ride with my new eyes.

Seeing better is better

In my previous post I wrote about my vision issues. I worked more on this issue, culminating in extensive testing on last Sunday's ride, and I have identified a major contributor. When the corrective lens is too close to the eye, chaos ensues. That is all this post is about, so if you are not visually challenged you might want to skip this post.

A brief history of my eyeballs

When I started riding I was already wearing contacts, only for cosmetic reasons. All I needed were some sunglasses to keep my eyes from drying out. When I figured out that cheap, dime store sunglasses didn't cut it I tried a fancy pair of Smith sunglasses, with interchangeable colors. Picked them up at Surf N Sea in Haleiwa after one of Pattie's triathlon practices. Better, but dry, burning eyes were not banished, so in time I moved on the a full frontal wrap design by Oakley. Probably saw them used at the Tour de France. Still had problems.

On a typical ride I would develop dry, painful eyes around thirty minutes in, followed by a period of excessive, blinding tears, then settle down for an hour or two. On long rides the dryness would return, making the finish miserable due to pain and blurred vision. Several times the tearing was so intense it washed the lens out of my eye. Lucky for me it always stuck to the back of the sunglasses lens and I could retrieve it, but I considered these episodes a crash condition. Not good.

Eventually I gave up riding with contacts and just used my everyday glasses. It wasn't long until the entire ritual surrounding contacts seemed out of place in my life, so I gave them up.

I think it was when I started doing triathlon that I decided my eyes needed more protection from the wind. Rudy Project began advertising about corrective sunglasses, so I looked into them. (No pun intended, but, hey, not bad.) Turned out my correction is too high for their corrective lenses, but they did offer an optical insert that fits behind normal sunglasses. I went for that, and yes, they cost a pile of money.

One more cool thing about Rudy Project: readers. Bi-focal lenses. I had been disappointed to learn I could not read my Garmin head unit with my sunglasses -- a set of reader colored lenses fixed that. More money.

There was always a problem with my Rudys. The correction was never quite 20/20. I never did a test but I would guess they were around 20/70. I took them to my optometrist and he said that on his measuring tool they were spot on, but on me they did not produce the same sharpness as my regular glasses. Plenty good enough to see where I was going, but it was hard to read street signs or make out people's faces. I could make the image sharp by moving the glasses further away from my face. Further than the nose piece could accommodate. Not a viable solution.

Another issue that turned up every now and again was double vision. Typically at the end of a long ride. The road center-line would split into two diverging lines. Manhole covers would be doubled, one on top of the other. Blinking helped. Closing one eye -- either eye -- would eliminate the shadow image.

On my tri bike in aero position I had another problem. The top edge of the frame cut right across my field of vision. When I fiddled with the nose piece to raise them, the double vision struck with a vengeance. Last year I was able to adapt, as I recall riding Pineapple Hill and Honu with no vision issues. I think it was more a case of putting up with it than fixing it.

At the start of this season I went on a campaign to find a solution. Roka was highly recommended, so I wrote to them and was informed that their corrective road glasses did not go that high. Oakley corrective glasses cost a small fortune, and they too do not support my numbers. I hit a dead-end.

During my break from training I rode with Pattie's group, and since we were going slow and stopping to look at stuff I decided to wear my regular, everyday glasses. Wow, it was so nice to see everything so clearly! This is what I wanted from my sunglasses.

Then inspiration struck. My Rudy aero helmet came with a visor. I did try it once, with my Rudy glasses, and it would not fit. Not even close. But what about my everyday glasses? That was the testing I did last weekend, using two different pair. The results were conclusive.

With the visor I was immediately pleased with how large my field of vision was. No blocking line across the top. At first I thought the glasses fit fine, until I began to feel an unusual pressure on my nose, above where the nose pads normally hit. I figured the visor was pressing against the glasses, pressing them back and up a little. It wasn't long before double vision showed up.

Back at the car I made some adjustments, eventually removing the visor. My eyes felt better, and no double vision. Without the visor I fear than the wind will be an issue, but for now, this is the best solution. I also tried my not-so-aero helmet, and that was good, too.

To summarize, the Rudy sunglasses always had the corrective lens insert too close to my eyes. Everyday glasses with the helmet visor also caused focus issues due to the visor pressing the glasses back and up. Everyday glasses in the correct position work best, but wind may be an issue. I'll know more after tomorrow's time trial.

That's it for now.

Looking ahead

Yes, that is a trick title. This post is about future plans, and just as much about my eyesight.

My big "A" race for 2020 is Ironman 70.3 Hawaii, a.k.a. Honu. Even back in December, as I began laying out my self-made training plan, I knew I had a challenge. The cost. Doing the race the way I have been the couple years is mighty expensive. In the past I had enough saved up that it was not such a big impact, and, frankly, I enjoyed the simplicity of Pattie and I being on our own. The condo I rented last year was ridiculously enormous, and just as expensive.

For 2020 I had an ace up my sleeve. Friends who live in Waikoloa, a short drive up the mountain from the Fairmont Orchid. Alas, I found out last week that the deal fell through. My first reaction was to mentally "pull the plug." I decided I would keep training as if I were doing the race, but skip it this year.

A week has passed, and now I am not so certain. I'll just leave it as I'll do the race if I can find a much cheaper place to stay. You know, that old saw, "Never give up." And there is my credo, "I do it because I can."

My annual physical came right at the end of December and I used the opportunity to discuss my disappointing marathon. Dr. Berman's initial reaction was that there was nothing wrong with my heart -- he says the only thing that will kill me is walking in front of a bus -- but after a moments reflection decided to schedule me for a treadmill stress test. For that I saw Dr. Ted Leon at Queen's. Everyone said I would ace it, and I did. Got way farther than most men my age, but near the low end of athletic types. That matches perfectly with my race results. One thing Dr. Leon noted was unusually high blood pressure during the post-effort phase. The white coat guys were tossing around "post stress hypertensive response." Something to consider, but Dr. Leon assured me it was not enough to warrant intervention.

Dr. Berman also asked me to do my own test, a fast finish run all out uphill. Best if twelve miles in hot conditions. I did that today. I waited until well after sunrise, but even then the temperature maxed at 82F. I knew I could not fit a twelve mile run into my schedule, but I did a couple of laps up and down Kahala Ave and finished with an all-out run up the Shitty Little Hill. In the lab test I made seven minutes and stopped at 155 b.p.m. I thought I could keep going, but they were cheering me on to make seven so I stopped there. But, seriously, I was exhausted. Today my 1 minute HR was 153, 5 second 157, and max 159. Woo-hoo! And, I did not feel as exhausted. I suspect this is because today I produced these numbers running, whereas the treadmill test is walking.

This leaves me to contemplate a mystery. While training for the marathon I felt great. During the marathon I felt great until mile 12. For the next couple miles I kept trying to run, but each time I did my heart rate crept up to 145 and above. When I started walking a few miles lated I felt great again. Tons of stamina. The endurance and muscular endurance were there. I just couldn't run. Was it the heat? Maybe.

Now for the eyeball part. I swapped by run and ride this weekend so that Pattie and I could do the Chinese New Year shopping Saturday morning. That put my ride late on Saturday afternoon. I got rolling at 5:00, an easy ride Kahala to Hawaii Kai. If I had enough time I would finish with a loop around Diamond Head, but it got dark too early.

All the way out I was battling gusty headwinds. I was on my tri bike, so this was great practice for the ride to Hawi. Almost from the start I was fighting with my Rudy Project glasses. As I have said before, the correction with these has never been good. At their best I can see big stuff like cars and bikes, but I can't read road signs or make out faces. And that is when they are working well!

At first they just kept slipping down. I could see my Garmin fine, and the front wheel, and the white line along the shoulder. When I would look up to see the road ahead I was looking through the rims. I stopped and adjusted the nose piece. The problem there is that when I get them too high my double vision gets worse. Things were better, but the wind was drying my eyes and my double vision struck with vengeance.

A funny thing about double vision. You get used to it. Sometimes I close one eye, but most of the time I ignore the second curb line that splits more and more the further ahead it is. But on the way back, looking straight into the setting sun, it was really too much. Not enough to slow down, but enough to demand I do something about it.

This morning I checked out Oakley. Why not wear the same glasses as Jan Frodeno? Under $200. Oh, wait. Prescription lenses double that. Yeah. $497.50, plus whatever. No thanks, I'd rather ride with my eyes closed. But wait. These top out at -5. My correction is more than that. (People have said that I have so much trough because my correction is so high.) And to add injury to insult, they don't have a close distance option, which means I could never read my Garmin. At least my Rudys offer reader lenses.

Then I recalled that my Rudy aero helmet came with a lightly tinted visor. When I first got the helmet I tried it with my Rudy glasses and it did not come close to fitting. Today I tried it with just my everyday glasses, and it works. I think. My hope is that the glasses give me great vision while the visor keeps out the wind. Maybe I'll take the bike out tomorrow for some tests.

Is that a cool look, or what?

2019 Marathon race report, part 2

In Part 1 I described my race. Here I will describe the training I did.

A typical marathon training plan is pretty straightforward. A long run on the weekend that builds in length to a longest run three to four weeks before the race, then a gradual reduction in duration. There is a lot of debate about how long the longest run needs to be. Hal Higden insists that 20 miles is perfect. Others go for 25. A few take the position that running more than the goal race makes the race distance feel easy. During the week a beginner plan will have three days of easy runs, while advanced plans will include some speed work and a couple more foundation runs. Really advanced runners will do two-a-days. The key metric is weekly mileage.

The problem with this approach is getting to the start line healthy. Eighty percent of endurance runners report dealing with a run-related injury. Not being hit by a car, or bitten by a dog, or tripping over a crack in the road. The most common type of running injuries are repetitive stress injuries. Running all those miles, day in and day out. Too many miles, not enough recovery time. And, bad news for me, the older we get, the more recovery time we need.

Why do we run so much? I can think of three reasons. First, to build endurance. Second, to build muscular endurance. And third, to develop skill, to practice the movements of running in order to increase efficiency. What, I hear you ask, is the difference between endurance and muscular endurance? I use these terms the way Joe Friel does, which may or may not be common throughout sports science.

Endurance. The ability to persist or to resist fatigue for a relatively long duration.

Muscular endurance. The ability to produce the required force for the required duration in order to achieve the desired goal.

The quality of endurance is primarily about the cardiovascular system's ability to sustain activity. Doing some form of exercise for a prolonged period of time. Muscular endurance, as the name implies, is about the muscles, but also the nutritional delivery systems that impact how long a muscle can perform.

Endurance is developed by long duration, low intensity workouts. Muscular endurance is developed by moderately high intensity efforts for moderate duration. High intensity workouts often incorporate intervals to increase the total work period by dividing it into manageable sections with recovery in between. Runners often use a tempo run to achieve the same result, running at a pace well below threshold that they can hold for an hour -- their 10K pace -- without any recovery periods.

As we progress from developing endurance to muscular endurance to skill the nature of the work -- the way we move -- becomes increasingly specific to the goal activity. Riding a bike will not do much to improve your running skill. On the other hand, most of the endurance gained on a long, easy bike ride will be just as useful in the run as endurance gained by running. Does it matter? Yes, because long bike rides are much less likely to cause repetitive stress injuries.

I see myself first and foremost as a triathlete. Like many triathletes I also enjoy events in just one sport. I do not consider myself to be a good runner, yet for the last decade I have been just as determined to do run events as triathlons, and the only running event I really care about is the marathon. This year was my seventh. I missed 2013 due to a hernia, and I spent about two years preparing for my first in 2012.

For my early attempts I followed a traditional marathon training plan. Lots of running, little else. It was I think in 2017 that I first tried a blended approach after reading an article about it on TrainingPeaks. The idea was to move much of the long run work to the bike. My finishing times remained unspectacular, but I was in much better position to start training for triathlon after the race. The problem I had with this approach was a complete lack of detailed training advice, much less a plan. I made my own, as best I could, but never was satisfied.

After Honu this year I started thinking about how to train for this year's marathon when it hit me that athletes who do a full Ironman run a marathon. Instead of cooking up my own plan, why not start with a full Ironman plan? Besides, I was curious if I could survive training. I selected an introductory level plan by Matt Fitzgerald, one with a goal of just finishing. I used his 70.3 plan for Honu so I understood how they work. I followed the early base period as written, but after a bit the swims became longer than I could fit into my day, and since I did not need to swim I just did my own swim at the plan time.

Back when I was following traditional running plans I found myself out on the long run for hours and hours. So long that I was useless for most of the following week. It was from this experience I learned that coaches recommend a longest run time of around two and a half hours. They say, with studies to back them up, there is little benefit to going longer, and a much greater risk of injury.

Why did these training plans prescribe runs of four to six hours? They didn't. They are based on distance, not time, and assume the runner has some skills. Consider this: An 18 mile run at an 8:20 pace will take two and a half hours. That would be a 3:38 marathon. Those are the kind of numbers real runners can do. I run at around 18:00, so that 18 mile workout will take me about five and a half hours, and I'll be lucky to be ready to run again the following weekend.

The Fitzgerald Ironman plan I followed began with medium long runs on Saturday and long bikes on Sunday. During the build period both got too long to do back to back, so the long run moved to Thursday. Only that did not work for me because the night before was spin class and I did not want to run on tired legs, so I moved those to Tuesday morning. After the Saturday run reached two hours and moved to Tuesday morning the progression was 2:15, 2:30, rest, 2:40. At the same time the Sunday bike had reached 5:30 and progressed through 5:00, 5:30, 3:00, 6:00. You can see how endurance is being built on the bike, with as much running as possible and still be safe. I am happy to report I arrived at the start line without injury, strong and full of energy.

Throughout this same period the plan called for regular doses of muscular endurance workouts. As a rule this meant running cruise intervals or tempo runs on Tuesday morning and Dorian's spin class on Wednesday afternoon. When the long run moved to Tuesday the speed work was cut back, an example of how workouts become increasing race-like as the race day approaches.

Cycling and running require development of force, the aspect of muscular action that involves strength. To be efficient that strength must be combined with movement skills. These movement skills are best developed by practicing the specific activity. Cyclists need to ride a bike. Runners need to run. Even swimming requires some force development, particularly due to the weakness of the shoulder joint.

Carefully applied strength training in the gym offers a way to develop force specifically required by an activity while significantly reducing the likelihood of overuse injury. If strength sessions are monitored by a physical fitness expert they also provide an opportunity to correct movement flaws. Let me assure you, I have an abundance of flaws, starting with a left leg that wants to turn out like a duck and run without flexing, and a right shoulder that wants to cave in and do the work the back should do. Those are the top two in a long list. Fortunately I can work the the gym twice a week with Dorian Cuccia.

Every athlete will benefit from this type of strength training, but as we age it becomes increasingly important. Muscle development is supported by hormone levels, testosterone in particular. As we age our hormone levels decline. Doing the same workouts at fifty will not produce the same muscle response they did at twenty. Doing two strength sessions a week allows me to develop the strength I need to perform well and an opportunity to correct movement flaws, while avoiding the overuse injuries that are likely to result from struggling to develop strength through more running.

I used an 18 week training plan, which started the week of July 15. Here is my TrainingPeaks Performance Management Chart for that period plus a bit more. The sag in late September is when I had vertigo and had to cut back on my activity.

In a perfect world the conditions would not have been so brutal on race day and I would have a better assessment of how my approach worked. As it is, I cannot say how much of my inability to run was due to the heat and how much was a lack of preparation. At the time, passing outbound through Kahala, I genuinely feared there was something wrong with my heart, because I never felt that way in any of my training. My annual physical is coming up soon and I will discuss this with my doctor. I guess I should consider it a good thing that I made the adjustment, because if I had not, if my heart had not failed me I might have ended up with heat stroke. Nobody wants to end their race in the medical tent.

2019 Marathon race report, part 1

Honolulu Marathon 2019 was my chance to finally have a good outing. My spring "B" races, Hapalua and Honolulu Triathlon were OK, but I saw them as stepping stones to my big "A" race, Ironman 70.3 Hawaii, a.k.a. Honu. Honu was a big improvement from prior years, but there remains unfinished business. My Honolulu Century Ride was disrupted by a round of vertigo - it was all I could do to ride out to Hawaii Kai with Pattie's cruisers. That same setback set back my marathon training, but I was reasonably certain that there was enough time remaining to minimize the damage. That left last Sunday's marathon to make something of the year. It didn't happen.

In Part 2 of this series I will go into more detail about how I trained. For now I will focus on the race.

Peter Sagan has this to say about plans: "One of my mantras is that it’s good to have a plan, but plans don’t always work."  Sagan Peter. My World (p. 136). VeloPress. Kindle Edition. My preference for planning a race like this is two make two, one a stretch and one more reasonable. I do this because I tend to hold back. Call me the reluctant runner. Having an aggressive plan pushes me out of my comfort zone.

First, a bit of history. People keep asking me how many marathons I have run and I can't remember, so here it is, for the record. Including this year, 7. The data in the table below is a bit iffy as it comes from my Gamins and TrainingPeaks. Nothing official but plenty good enough to make comparisons.

I started out to examine the usual splits, 13.1 and full. This works well on a flat course, but the disruption in pace caused by Diamond Head - 18th - Kilauea distorts how I was running on flat ground. The 10K point is near the entrance to Kapiolani Park. I could have used 7.5 mi, the start of the climb up Diamond Head, but that seems like an arbitrary number. I'll did deeper into these numbers in a future post.

	10K				Full
Year	Time	Avg Pace	Avg HR	Max HR	Time	Avg Pace	Avg HR	Max HR
2012	1:45	16:49	140	148	7:51	17:40	140	155
2013	*				*
2014	1:41	16:11	139	145	7:26	16:59	137	146
2015	1:40	16:10	139	146	7:37	16:53	136	148
2016	1:47	17:12	139	145	8:20	18:25	128	149
2017	1:45	17:06	141	156	8:10	18:29	130	157
2018	1:47	17:22	143	156	8:08	18:18	137	159
2019	1:51	17:48	137	151	8:28	18:01	129	158

* - DNS, hernia

Plan A. Aim for an average pace of 16:00 min/mi which should have me finish in a squeak under seven hours. If I could get even close to that I would beat my PR from 2014. That sounds like a crazy goal, but I have been training well all year with no running injuries, running well, and except for that bout with vertigo feeling great. No flu, no pulled hamstrings or wonky knees.

Plan B. Aim for an average pace of 18:00 min/mi which will get me in under eight hours. This felt totally doable because I have been running this pace regularly on my long runs.

Running with a power meter adds a whole new dimension that compliments the more traditional heart rate and pace. My first run with Stryd was October 3rd, 2017, so I do have some data to look back on. For now I'll just say that for Plan A my target power was 143 - 149, mid zone 2 to low zone 3. For Plan B, 133-135, the very bottom of zone 2, which is where I paced my long run workouts. I had done multiple runs in excess of two hours at that intensity and felt fine at the end and able to go on and have a normal, productive day.

I planned to do the first few miles as a gradual warm-up. Walk the first ten minutes, just like a workout. This is a brisk walk, not a stroll through the park. From there on I would use the same 10/1 run/walk method that I had used in my long runs. My pace would be Plan B until, maybe, we get back to Ala Moana Blvd. Or maybe sooner, along King Street. When I felt well warmed up and settled I would approach Plan A and see how it felt. At this point in a race I tend to go too hard, so I wanted to be careful to sneak up on it from below.

In the past year I read a couple of interesting books on the brain's role in regulating effort. Endure, by Alex Hutchinson, and Brain Training for Runners, by Matt Fitzgerald. My takeaway from these is that the brain has more to do with when an endurance athlete slows down or stops than the muscles or the fuel. Bonking is still a popular notion, and indeed getting your nutrition wrong will compromise your performance, but the body does not slow down and stop when it runs out of fuel, not like a car or a smartphone. Without fuel, your heart would stop beating. Since bonking does not result in death, there must be something else in play. Nobody knows for sure what that is, but so far most evidence points to the brain trying to keep you alive.

The Hutchinson book is a fascinating read (highly recommended!), whereas Fitzgerald goes more into application. He even includes training plans for 5K, 10K, half and full marathons built on his belief that carefully progressive workouts teach the brain that long, hard efforts are not going to kill you. The brain learns to stop complaining. He makes the point that you can't count on forcing yourself to overcome these survival instincts, but if you understand the mind's role you can push yourself to go harder than you would otherwise. I think this is something Ironman athletes figured out a long time ago. What is different now are studies that quantify this effect. As I trained for this marathon I worked both ends of these theories, doing the long runs and bike rides to teach my brain that long hard work is no big deal (!), and practicing how to push myself out of my comfort zone.

My Garmin 935 provides a wealth of useful data and TrainingPeaks displays it beautifully. (And let's not forget WKO, which does even more!) What these tools do not make obvious is how I was trying to run the first 10K. This is due to constant variation caused by dodging slow runners and walkers, not to mention so many people stopping to take pictures of every Christmas display and distance flag. I don't mind that. It is all a part of the crazy marathon party. I see me hitting 16:00 whenever I can after coming up Nuuanu and turning east onto King. That holds all the way to the park, which meant Plan A was a possibility even if hitting an overall average of 16:00 would require a crazy fast negative splits. Remember, 16:00 was not an absolute goal. It's not as if I was trying to hit a Boston qualifying time. It was intended to be a very high bar. My average from Nuuanu to the park was 17:30, well under my Plan B and I was seriously holding back. I felt good, and when I saw my time I felt even better.

I always struggle with the Diamond Head - 18th Ave - Kilauea section. I learned the hard way not to run the steeper sections, and to hold off a little longer before starting to run again. I did this section exactly as planned, at an average pace of 18:34, only a little slower than Plan B. Not too shabby! I was a bit concerned that coming down 18th I had sweat running down my face. It was then that I noticed how clear the sky was. I stopped to take some pictures to show why I felt so hot.

No clouds, no wind, lots of sun.

It was while coming up the long false-flat climb on Kilauea to the Aloha gas station when I began to feel in trouble. This was supposed to be a recovery section after the recent ups and downs, but when I tried to run I soon felt exhausted. My nice 10/1 run/walk deteriorated into a 1/1.

I was pacing myself primarily by power, with an occasional check on pace, leaving heart rate to do its thing. I set my Garmin to display the new Stryd Zones Connect IQ app on page one, time, pace and average pace on page two, and heart rate and zone on page three. As I came up Kilauea I was telling myself that things will get back to normal when I out onto the highway, but I also started looking more often at page three. Sure enough, my heart rate was high and topping zone 4 whenever I felt like I had to stop running.

When getting past the gas station failed to bring any improvement I tried a new plan. (Remember what Sagan said.) I would do my run/walk based on heart rate. I would run until my heart rate just reached zone 4, then walk until it just fell into zone 1. I kept this up until the halfway point, where I finally realized that this was not sustainable. In three miles I had done a dozen LTHR intervals, with insufficient recoveries. I was slowly dying.

Not literally, perhaps, but I actually was concerned. I get a physical every year, and although my doctor says I am as fit as anyone could be I do have a heart murmur and my heart is more likely than average to miss a beat. It seemed to me that my heart was misbehaving. Nothing like this happened in those eighteen weeks of training. Why now? What was different? I had no idea. What I did know was that to continue running in this condition could result in me finishing in the ER.

It was at this point I switched to a new plan. Just walk, like everyone around me had been doing since Diamond Head. The deal I made with myself was that I would walk as fast as I could. I was concerned that because I did not practice this way my muscles would give out. Nothing could have been further from the truth. With my heart now under control I found that I had a lot of strength. I was passing a lot of people and nobody passed me. Hydration and nutrition were fine. I felt good.

When I sat down to  review the data for this post it wasn't long before I spotted something. Temperature at the start was around 80 and remained there until we turned onto 18th. Remember it was there that I suddenly felt sweat coming down my face? Temperature shot up to 88. When I was doing my ultra-short LTHR intervals it was hitting 90. Later, on the way back over Diamond Head, it reached 100! And all this time, no wind. No wonder!

I had some hot days on my long bike rides, but we must not forget that the bike creates its own cooling breeze. My long runs were all early morning. During Base and Build-1 on Saturday morning starting a 6:00. In Base-2 the Saturday runs and Sunday bikes got too long to do back to back without an intervening recovery day, so the long run moved to Tuesday mornings, starting around 5:00AM. In eighteen weeks I never ran for long in this kind of heat.

That about does it for this race report. In Part 2 I will go into more detail about how I planned my training, and if I ever get to it, Part 3 will look to the future.

One small thing to be thankful for. Along with no cramping or sore shins, I did not lose a toenail. Yet. But I see no sign of trauma there. I have Danny Abshire's new shoes to thank for that.