Maffetone 180-formula and HRM-based treadmill training

Since I've started using the Maffetone Method for training, I've run exclusively on a treadmill; specifically, a Life Fitness T3-5. I've had it in my house for five years, and I really like it. It works very well with the Maffetone Method, since my pace can be controlled via heart rate.

I've recently changed my routine just a bit, for three reasons:

1. I haven't been following Maffetone's 180-formula, and I'd like to get closer to it.
2. The way the Life Fitness heart rate control works puts me even farther away from the 180-formula. It allows me to go 3 or 4 beats per minute faster than my set target without slowing me down; this happens often near the end of longer runs.
3. Although when I started I was skeptical of the practicality of 180-formula for me personally, the improvements in my maximum aerobic function surely allow me to run at a much lower heart rate than when I started.

In short, I've targeted a heart rate of 138 beats per minute, compared with the 180-formula's 127; the Life Fitness treadmill bumps me up even more to about 141 or 142; and my improved fitness will now allow me to run at a lower heart rate.

Between 12 Feb and 22 March, my pace at 138 beats per minute dropped by about 58 seconds per kilometer (just over 1 1/2 minutes per mile). The main reason I didn't use the 180-formula to begin with was that my pace at 127 beats per minute would have been very slow; almost a walk. It probably would have been a walk at the end of an hour, although I admit that I didn't actually try it.

Rather than abruptly change from 138 bpm to 127 bpm, I'm doing it gradually. Before I was keeping my heart rate at 138, but bumping up my speed once I had been able to maintain a given pace for two days. I'll continue to do that; but I'll also drop my target heart rate by 1 bpm as well.

This has slowed my pace progress a little; I'd been speeding up every two days like clockwork for more than two weeks. My last two up-ticks in pace, along with a down-tick in heart rate, have both required more than two days to maintain. I'm currently at 136 beats per minute. I don't know if I'll ever get all the way down to 127. Before I get there, I'll probably have moved from Maffetone's category B ("inconsistent [training] or are just getting back into training") to category C ("training consistently"), which will move my target up 5 beats per minute.

Maffetone Method

For about a month, I've been training using principles of the Maffetone Method. I mentioned this indirectly; at the time, though I knew a little of Dr. Maffetone, I really hadn't read much of his work.

That didn't stop me from jumping in and start using the one part of his method that I knew -- at least, I nearly used it. I fudged a little.

You can read about it on his web site. In particular, here's a page describing how to pick an appropriate heart rate for training. He dismisses the usual "220-age" formula that you may have seen, and has his own formula. It is mainly based on age, but makes some adjustments for health and fitness. What it does not adjust for, which seems strange to me, is the rather wide variation in maximum heart rate. My own max rate, for example, is fairly high for my age. I haven't done a max test in a number of years, but during a not particularly hard run just this month, I hit 186 beats per minute. I'm sure my actual max is at least a little above that. In past years, I've measured my heart rate at over 200.

All of this suggests to me that my own heart rate range is probably about 20 beats per minute higher than the mean for my age. I'm 48.

Using Maffetone's 180-formula, I get to 127 beats per minute. I can hit that at a walking pace.

Using Mark Allen's slight variation I get to 132 beats per minute. Let's say a moderately brisk walking pace.

I'm no expert, but neither of those seemed like a reasonable benchmark.

I did a little experimenting on the treadmill, and found that I could keep a slow run going at 138 beats per minute, so that's what I've been using.

Here's my routine: I run every day (though I skipped 5 days when I had a viral infection and couldn't run without falling off the treadmill in a coughing fit). My minimum run is 30 minutes, and my maximum is 60. Each day I pick the duration mostly by how I feel and how much time I have available. I hope to get a bit more structure as I progress, and also do some longer runs, but as of now, this is what I'm doing.

I started with a pace that I guessed would be close to the fastest I could manage at a heart rate of 138 beats per minuted. I have a treadmill that will adjust both incline and pace based on heart rate, so each day I just set that up and run. I think my guess was reasonably close. The first seven days I just stayed at that same pace, and the treadmill didn't have to slow me down because my HR went up. On the eighth day I bumped up my pace a tick (i.e., by 0.1 km/hr), and that day I did have to slow down to maintain my target rate.

My original idea was that if I could maintain a given pace all the way through for three days in a row, and keep my heart rate at my target, I would speed up another tick. I kept this up for a couple weeks, and the only times the treadmill program slowed me down were the one I mentioned before (the eighth day), and just after I took those five days off from being sick.

After that, I've never had to slow down, so about a week ago I decided that just two days in a row with no slow-down would be my new standard for picking up the pace. Tomorrow I'm set to go up another tick; that'll be four times in a row on a two-day schedule.

Every run is at a comfortable pace. I'm never pushing myself really hard, and as a result, I'm never dreading a run, and I'm never spent at the end.

But here's the thing: after just over a month (minus sick days), I find myself running each kilometer more than 37 seconds faster than when I started, but my heart rate is the same. In standard (i.e., non-metric) terms, I've dropped just over a minute per mile.

This is all predicted by Dr. Maffetone. He says don't kill yourself. "No Pain, No Gain" is for chumps. You don't have to injure yourself, or be tired all the time, to improve.

I'm part-way through one of Maffetone's books. and it's already changed how I'm going to proceed. I said about a week ago that I was soon going to incorporate some intervals. I've changed my mind. Part of the reason is what I've read (he says to build your aerobic base at a low heart rate for three to six months), but mostly I've just looked at my results so far, and thought about it.

Why change something that's working so well?

Science Friday: exercise and DNA

A segment on Science Friday discussed the effect of exercise on DNA. The headline is a little misleading -- DNA itself is not changed; rather, DNA methylation changes. Says Dr. Juleen Zierath:

[W]e found that 35 minutes of high-intensity exercise was sufficient to have a removal of these methyl groups from the DNA and a production of proteins which would support the metabolism of sugar and fat after exercise. So it's not just to exercise. In this case, you needed to do an exercise bout which would be at the level of where you might not be able to comfortably talk if you're running with a running partner. It's not like walking. Running or biking at a level of exertion where it's hard to carry on a conversation for about 35 minutes.

I've been deliberately avoiding high-intensity running lately, but I'm about to introduce some interval training in the next week or two. I have nine weeks until my half marathon.

Trying a new training regimen

I'm training for the local half marathon again. Like last year (before I was interrupted), I started using Runner's World's SmartCoach. Unlike last year, however, I wasn't really enjoying the plan. This is no fault of SmartCoach -- I still recommend that anybody looking for a plan should give it a look. The problem was the parameters that I plugged in were so terrible that it gave me a training schedule that just didn't fit what I was looking for.

The way it works is you put in a recent race time, your current weekly mileage, and how hard you'd like to train. I didn't really have any recent race times. I put in last year's half marathon, which I had run on three weeks of training after nearly a month off. Needless to say, it was slow, even for me. Also, my weekly mileage at that time was puny.

So SmartCoach had me running only three times a week for the first eight weeks, and four times for the remaining ten weeks. This was reasonable for a plodder with my recent training and speed.

I had two major problems with this schedule. First, I'm more enthusiastic about running now than I have been for a long time, and so I really wanted to run more than 24 times in eight weeks. The second thing is my assessment of what I need in order to improve on last year's fiasco in the half: I need to weigh less. Yes, I need the miles on the road, some speed work, all of that, but mostly I need to shrink my big belly. It's been my experience that the best way for me to do that, by far, is to exercise every day.

So after about five weeks of the SmartCoach schedule, I was really ready for a change.

Meanwhile, I started reading Kyle Kranz's blog. It's good. Read it. Coincidentally, he's the first guy I ever saw running in Vibram FiveFingers. It was in the Jack 15 a few years ago. I saw him just ahead of me early in the race, and I was so interested that I rushed up to him and pestered him with questions. Little did I know then that he didn't just run the 15 mile race that day; he ran several miles prior to make it a 26.2-mile day. These days he's running ultra-marathons.

Anyway, one of his posts mentions heart-rate-based training. Kyle doesn't really give much detail in that particular post, but the two pages he links go into the nitty-gritty. I don't remember exactly when, but some years ago I had read that second link. Along with a lot of training theory, it tells the story of a former runner who started up again, and the methods his friend & coach (the writer) suggested to him.

I won't go into much detail here, but it boils down to running exclusively at a low heart rate for several weeks before moving on to anything faster. The idea is to turn oneself into an efficient aerobic machine.

So about a week ago, I started running every day, at an easy pace. I have a Life Fitness T3-5 treadmill that is very good for this kind of thing. I tell it my target heart rate, initial speed, and how long I want to run, and it adjusts the incline and speed to keep my heart near that target.

Typically it gives me about three minutes before making any adjustments. Invariably, my heart rate at that point is well below the target, so it raises the incline. It gradually increases the incline until I've reached the target heart rate. From then on, it raises and lowers the incline as required. If I'm at zero incline, and my heart rate is too high, it will decrease the speed. It never increases the speed, even back to the starting speed -- once it's slowed down, it stays there or goes even slower if need be.

I picked an initial speed based on what SmartCoach had as my easy pace. So far, after a week, I haven't had to slow down to maintain my heart rate. I figured I'd give it a week at this pace, to see how I adjusted to running every day.

I ran just 30 minutes every day until today, when I ran 60 minutes. Still no slowdown at an hour, and indeed the treadmill even had me at a non-zero incline for most of the run. By the end I felt that in another 15 minutes or so I would have had to slow down a bit. I think this means I'm not too far under my best speed for this low heart rate.

So my plan is to slightly increase the speed starting tomorrow, and to stay at the same heart rate. Each time I can maintain the initial speed for the entire run three days in a row, I'll speed up 0.1 km/hr. I'll also run more than 30 minutes most days.

I'm very curious to see how this goes. I've always been a pretty slow runner, but this is slow even for me. If it works, I should be steadily speeding up. I'll try to post my findings in the coming weeks. I'll also say a bit about how I chose my target heart rate.

Running on the White Line: One Good Earbud Review

I often use headphones when I run on the treadmill, but never when I run outside. I consider it to be a safety hazard, since 'phones prevent me from hearing traffic. Here's an interesting solution to the safety problem: just use one ear, not both. Kyle at Running on the White Line reviews:

Running on the White Line: One Good Earbud Review and Giveaway!: Something I have struggled with throughout all of my miles as an endurance athlete; to wear earbuds or not? Many larger running races and ne...

Finally

It took much longer than I expected to get back in training. My leg was getting better, but so slowly that it didn't seem like I'd be able to train at all before the half marathon next month. I did what I should have done much sooner, and went to see a doctor about 10 days ago. He found no major damage, and said I'd eventually just get better (which confirmed my own thoughts), but suggested that I see a physical therapist.

I did just that. The PT came to the same conclusion, but did some ultrasound therapy and gave me some stretches and exercises to do. Twice daily I've been doing an excruciatingly boring routine, but it really worked. The leg pain was reduced, and came later and later each day. Some days I didn't feel it at all, depending on how much standing or walking I did.

This morning I was back at the PT, and he gave me the green light to run again. I was sure he would. My leg is not completely back to normal, but it feels pretty good.

Over my lunch hour I took a short, slow run on the treadmill, and it went well. I'm going to ease into it, with short runs and no consecutive running days for a while.

Setback

In January, I started formal training for a half marathon. I'm using Runner's World SmartCoach for my training plan. I like it. Compared to my usual haphazard ways, I'm running a little less often, a little slower, and probably about the same mileage. Here's a chart of my running since January:

I started SmartCoach in the middle of the 4th week of the year. I was sick for a few days in the 6th week of the year, but hadn't missed any other workouts until this week. More on that in a bit.

I like the way SmartCoach builds up the training load. It started with just 3 runs a week. It goes in four-week cycles, with 3 weeks of increasing mileage and then it backs off a little the fourth week. It also adds another day per week of training every few cycles, always on the down week. For example, through week 4 of the plan (week 7 of the year on the chart) I built up to 24 km/week on three days a week, then backed off to 20 km, but on 4 days. Similarly, on week 13 I'm scheduled to go to 5 days a week.

My minimalist shoe progress has been pretty good, too. I run my shorter runs almost exclusively in my Vibram FiveFingers, and usually start longer runs in them before switching to Brooks Green Silence. I think my longest run in the FiveFingers has been 7 km.

That's the good news.

On Monday, all of this came to an abrupt halt. I slipped an fell on the stairs down to the basement of our house (yes, I'm graceful. Like a dancer.). My right leg folded under me and I bounced down about three steps on my foot and ankle. I also stretched my quadricep like it's never been stretched before.

As I fell I was certain that I'd done some major damage to my leg, but I found that it wasn't so bad. I could walk right away, though with some pain. I've been icing it and gently stretching, and it's getting better every day. I hope to get back running next week. My training plan calls for a tempo run on Wednesday, which I will probably skip, or at least make it an easy run instead. It's day-to-day at this point, and I'll be very cautious.

SmartCoach apparently has a way to re-schedule the rest of the training based on missed workouts. I'm curious to see what workouts it changes.