Answer: The above question, in one form or fashion, has come up on the support forum and is certainly relevant enough to be worth addressing.  Because while I tend to focus on the goals of bodyrecomposition (losing fat and/or gaining muscle), clearly that’s not the only reason that people choose to work out.

Certainly, I think that, to put it somewhat crassly ‘looking better naked’ is a primary goal for most people who get into training but clearly some people are simply interested in basic overall health and wellness.  For that explicit goal, what kind of training is necessary?

And the answer, really is not much.  Here the basic American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) guidelines are going to be more than sufficient in that they target the primary factors involved in basic health and wellness which are basic cardiovascular health and muscular strength.  Of course there is more to overall health than just those two factors.

For basic cardiovascular fitness, a training frequency of three times per week minimum has been found to be necessary.  Certainly more than that can have other potential benefits (in terms of body composition or what have you) but three times per week is the basic minimum. Durations of 20-60 minutes at an intensity that is typically defined relative to maximum heart rate (i.e. 60-85% of maximum heart rate) are what’s recommended.

I’d note that using estimates of maximum heart rate is problematic at best since there tends to be a great deal of variability here both in terms of maximum heart rate (which can vary massively from prediction equations) as well as functional threshold.

Using Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE) as I discussed in Training the Obese Beginner (e.g. an RPE of 3-4 on a 10 point scale, challenging but doable) or something like the talk test are not only equally valid but are probably easier to use than heart rate monitoring and will put people in the right range.  And an intensity of 3-4 on a 10 point scale puts most people where they need to be.  The talk test I mentioned in that same series, working at a level that allows for a broken conversation to be maintained is another easy way of putting people at the right place.

Certainly interval training, the alternation of bouts of higher intensity with lower intensity, is being found to provide some potential further benefits for both health and fitness.  If nothing else, it can help to avoid some of the monotony that tends to occur when folks do the same types of training day-in and day-out.   As I’ve discussed rather endlessly elsewhere on the site, it can’t substitute completely for steady state type training; but it can provide a nice adjunct for people who want to push things a bit harder from time to time.

Intervals could be incorporated in multiple ways for those seeking general health.  Either a block of intervals, for example doing them twice weekly for 6 weeks (along with 1-2 lower intensity steady state sessions), could be done between every 6-12 weeks of steady-state training or one interval session could be done per week for longer periods of 6-12 weeks (i.e. two to three steady state sessions, one interval session per week).

Interval durations of anywhere from 30-60 seconds all the way up to several minutes with an equal rest interval at varying intensities would be done after a warm-up with a total of maybe 10-20 minutes of ‘on-time’ during each workout; as the duration goes down, the intensity should go up.

So following a 10 minute warm-up, someone might do 10 sets of 1 minute hard/1 minute easy (10 total minutes on-time) at a near-maximum pace during the on bit and a very easy recovery pace during the rest interval and then cool-down.  Longer sets of 3-4 minutes with a 2 minute rest or so could be done for 3-4 sets but at a lower intensity.

While early ACSM guidelines for resistance training were exceedingly moderate (e.g. 1 set of 8-12 repetitions done twice per week), more recent guidelines have embraced more periodization concepts with different ‘levels’ of training for different populations.  Beginners, as discussed in my Beginning Weight Training series need very little training, 2-3 days per week at low volumes (1 set often gives the same gains as multiple sets in this population).

At the intermediate level (after perhaps 6-12 months of beginner training), a frequency of 3-4 days/week might be used.   Some type of basic split routine would tend to be used at that level.  The ACSM guidelines recommend 4-5 days/week for advanced trainees but, honestly, I can’t see 5 days/week in the weight room when the goal is simply general health and wellness.  Four days/week would seem to be more than plenty for all but the most performance oriented folks.  Two to three days/week is probably more realistic for most.

Repetitions can vary and there is probably benefit for even the general health seeking individual to go to lower repetitions ranges (perhaps sets of 5-6) from time to time since that will tend to have benefits for bone health and other important parameters.  Constant pounding in that range can become problematic, especially in older folks for whom connective tissues are often the limiting factor.  Heavy work is good but too much can cause joint issues.

Some type of basic periodization scheme, starting with sets of 12 and gradually adding weight and dropping repetitions every few weeks until heavier sets of 6 are hit before back-cycling and starting over would give the benefits of the heavier work, along with some much needed variety (needed to avoid boredom), without causing the potential for joint issues down the road.  So 2 weeks at 12 repetitions, 2 weeks at 10, 2 weeks at 8, 2 weeks at 6 before backing off and starting over or something very simple like that.

Alternately, a simple double progression using a repetition range of 6-12 would be workable.  So the trainee would add reps until they hit 12 before adding some weight to the bar (bringing the repetitions back down) and building back up.  I’d note that some people simply suck at adding repetitions in this fashion, but discussing that would take another article.

Another option would be some sort of undulating periodization scheme where one workout was done in higher repetition range (perhaps 10-12) and a second was done in a lower repetition bracket (6-8).  The possibilities are fairly endless here and finding a training style that the person enjoys and will do consistently is arguably more important than anything else.

Depending on the repetition count, anywhere from one to perhaps 3 sets should be more than sufficient (as reps go down, the number of sets should go up).  This also helps to keep workout length down.  Individuals with more lofty goals in terms of muscle growth or performance might do more than this but this Q&A is meant to be talking about general health.

For exercise selection, the general health trainee has many many options since there are no strict requirements for any exercise to be done or not done; I generally wouldn’t see much reason to do more than one exercise per muscle group/body part in any given workout.

There certainly appears to be some benefit of heavy axial loading (e.g. squats, overhead press) in terms of bone health and including those movements, or at least movements that load the spine and extremities from time to time  would seem useful.  Of course, doing those movements properly tends to require some amount of competent coaching which isn’t always available.  Even a horizontal type leg press will load the spine and lower body axially.

But trainees can mix and match exercises to their hearts content.  This is a case that it’s more important that the training gets done than how it gets done. Again, the possibilities for mixing and matching are fairly endless here.  Some trainees may prefer to use the same exercises for a complete block of training (perhaps 6-8) weeks and then switch everything out.

Others may prefer to perform one batch of movements for one workout each week and a completely different batch of movements for the other workout (I’m assuming an average frequency for each muscle group of about twice/week).  Personally I’m not a huge fan of switching things out much more often than that (it makes it hard to track progress) but certainly boredom can be avoided more easily with more variety.

As far as overall training structure, there are many possibilities.  Individuals just looking for basic all around fitness may want to put equal amounts of energy into both their strength training and cardiovascular work.  That might mean 2-3 basic weight workouts per week and 3 cardiovascular fitness sessions per week.   These workouts could be done on the same days (which can make for long workouts) or on different days (e.g. weights Mon/Wed/Fri or Mon/Fri and cardio on Tue/Thu/Sat).

Folks who prefer to push one or the other can simply alternate blocks of training.  So in a strength training focused block, weights would be emphasized (with perhaps 3-4 workouts/week in some type of split routine) and cardiovascular fitness maintained (with 3 low to moderate intensity aerobic sessions to avoid interfering with the weight work too much).

After 6-8 weeks, a switch would be made with weights being moved to maintenance (lowered volume and frequency perhaps 2 short workouts per week) and cardiovascular fitness emphasized.   Two to three short maintenance weight workouts per week along with perhaps 4 cardiovascular workouts (2 steady state workouts and 2 higher intensity sessions).  I’ve talked about how to integrate interval training with weight room work in Steady State vs. Interval Training: Part 1 and Steady State vs. Interval Training: Part 2.

Of course, eventually the general health trainee will be as fit as they need or want to be (or they may decide to become more serious about it and move into some type of competition and train more) and can simply move everything to maintenance.  I would note that things like mobility/flexibility work (e.g. dynamic or static stretching) and foam rolling type stuff can be done as part of warm-ups as described in Warming Up for the Weight Room.

In any case, that’s an overview of how someone would train for general health and wellness. In the big scheme of things, the only real difference between this type of training and something more goal intensive is that of scope; individuals seeking maximum hypertrophy or strength or endurance performance will generally do more total training and put more emphasis into that singular goal.  For general health, a more all around approach to training and less overall emphasis and total training is done.  But the fundamental principles of overload, progression, etc. are still relevant.

A little while back, in trying to fix my own ignorance about swimming, I read what is often considered a classic in the field of training literature which is the book “The Science of Swimming” by James ‘Doc’ Counsilman.  Written in 1968, the book represented one of the first attempts to apply much in the way of science to the technique of swimming.  Suffice to say that swimming is very strange and, so far as I can tell even in 2010, nobody is exactly sure how swimming ‘works’.  That is, in terms of what’s going on mechanically in the water.

But this is not an article about swimming, rather there is a particular quote in the book that really resonated with me (especially after some of the silliness I had been seeing on the support forum) and that prompted this article.  In discussing technique considerations and stroke mechanics, Counsilman writes:

Do not subordinate fundamental principles to minor details.

It’s quotes like these, ones that are so to the point and clear that really stand out for me.  It’s also the sign of a truly knowledgeable person: people who know their field can express complicated ideas in simple language.  People who use complex language to confuse you don’t really know what they are talking about.  But that’s a different topic for a different day.

In this specific case, Counsilman was talking about worrying about details of stroke mechanics (or trying to fix or alter them) without paying attention to the fundamentals of proper stroke mechanics.  Because the fundamental principles outweigh the minor details by miles.  But it applies equally well to the issues of diet and training.

As I’ve written about in a previous article How Detail Oriented Do You Need to Be, with the advent of the Internet (along with other forms of constantly running media) people are absolutely overwhelmed with information, much of it dealing with what can only be termed completely irrelevant details.  That is, stuff that just isn’t likely to make an iota of difference to anything in the real world.  I think the reason for this trend is that writing about the basics and the fundamentals all the time isn’t sexy or interesting. It certainly doesn’t sell magazines.

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Let’s Get the Big Exception Out of the Way

Certainly, there is a time and a place where details can matter.    As discussed in How Detail Oriented Do You Need to Be usually it’s people who are at the very extreme high level of performance or leanness looking for that next level up.  Yeah, fine, if I’m trying to diet a male down to 5% body fat without muscle loss, the details may start to matter (though amusingly some can do it without ever moving past the most basic of approaches).  An elite athlete looking for that last bit of performance is in that position where all of the esoteric stuff, the insane details, start to matter.

But those tend to represent such a tiny percentage of the training or dieting population as to be almost irrelevant.  They may be the more interesting subgroup  (because coaches like getting up their own butts with this stuff too) but they aren’t the largest percentage of the training or dieting population.

And while everyone on the Internet thinks that they are advanced, the simple fact is that most are not; most would be served by simplifying more than complexifying.  As well, the individuals in the situations above have spent years working on the fundamentals to the point that they are so well entrenched that they needn’t be worried about.  At that point the details can matter.

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So Let’s Talk about Everybody Else

As I mentioned, by  the definition of the word ‘most’, most people training or altering their diet are not in the above situations, looking for that last bit of a percentage point gain where details may start to matter.  Which unfortunately, doesn’t stop them from all too often focusing on the minor details to such a degree that one of two damaging things happens which are:

1. They never actually get started on their plan.
2. They manage to completely forget about the fundamental principles.

Both are clearly a problem and I want to talk about both in some detail.

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Just Do Something

One of the primary end results of the unnecessary focus on details is that people often spend weeks (or months) looking for the perfect program, the perfect diet.  And invariably they are focusing on the minor, minor, minor details that separate different successful programs.  So one program has such and such a set and rep scheme, another slightly different.   One training program might be more frequency based, another more intensity based (as discussed in A Quick Look at Some Popular Hypertrophy Programs).

I see people do it all the time: asking for a compare and contrast of one training program vs. another.  Is one ‘better’ than the other?  What about this third one? What about this one?  What about that one?

The same holds for diet.  One uses carb-cycling of some form or fashion on a daily basis, another uses big-carb refeeds less frequently (most of my plans), a third does something else entirely.   And every approach seems to work stunningly (at least for some people) or not at all (in others).  But that gets into the issue of context more than anything else; what is right (or potentially ideal) for one person or one situation is not right for another.  Context matters.

Of more relevance, what often happens is that people get so overwhelmed at focusing on the details that they never act.  They spend weeks looking for the perfect diet or training program (which doesn’t really exist in the first place, at best all programs have pros and cons and are, at most, best under a given set of circumstances) and lose time when they should simply be doing something.

Because, at the end of the day, assuming the training or diet isn’t completely and utterly moronic (and make no mistake, there are plenty of those out there) actually doing something is always better than talking about it for weeks on end.

Yet it’s that latter pattern I see altogether too many falling into: people spend days and weeks and longer asking about this plan versus the other plan, this program versus the other.  Time that would be more productively spent actually starting any one of the myriad programs that they’ve asked about.

And this is especially true at the beginner stage (less so at the intermediate stage although the same principles still hold).  When you’re starting out in training or diet, the ‘nice’ thing is that everything works.  One set, three sets, it all works; for the most part any non-idiotic diet will be effective to some degree for generating weight or fat loss.

Hell, some of the idiotic stuff usually works at this level simply because it’s better than what the person was doing beforehand. It’s not that the new approach is better so much as what was left behind was awful. But at this point, the details just don’t matter.  What matters is actually doing something.  You usually won’t find out if something is right for you ahead of time unless you just hunker down and try it.  So stop worrying and start hunkering.

Once again, as folks get more advanced, the details can start to matter.  Basically, you often have to worry more and more about less and less as you try to get to higher levels of performance or leanness or muscularity.   But by the time someone truly reaches that stage, they usually know enough about how their body responds, on top of having years of fundamentals under their belt, that they either know what to do next or how to proceed.  As mentioned above, while everyone wants to think that they are advanced, the reality is that they are not.

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Forgetting Fundamental Principles

Make no mistake, I often get rather focused on details, and many articles on this site reflect that.  Of course, I try my best to balance those out with articles looking fundamental concepts; that is, the basics that are important and should underlie all intelligently set up approaches.  That’s why I write the primers on various topics and try to look at fundamental principles instead of just getting up my own butt with complicated details (that fascinate me but are often not globally very relevant).

It’s worth noting that most of my own complicated approaches to things are aimed at the advanced people in the first place.  The Ultimate Diet 2.0 is an advance diet for advanced dieters; it’s aimed at people for whom the details matter.  Even there, while the overall structure of the diet is a bit complicated, any given day actually isn’t.

The information in The Stubborn Fat Solution is equally detail oriented.  But again, it’s aimed at folks looking at the last little bits of fat, the stuff that doesn’t come off easily without an attention to such details.   For everyone else, such details are not needed: that training and dieting gets done is more important than how it gets done exactly.

But the fundamental principles must always be adhered to, even in the advanced/complicated programs.  It’s simply that the details are less relevant for the non-advanced.  So, for example, as I looked at in The Fundamentals of Fat Loss Diets Part 1 and The Fundamentals of Fat Loss Diets Part 2, there are a set of fundamental principles of fat loss diets that I consider crucial to success, first and foremost among them the creation of a suitable caloric deficit.

And, frankly, any approach that meets those principles in one form or fashion will be a ‘good’ program.  So while I have my approach and Alan Aragon has his and someone like Borge Fagerli (Blade) has another, and Martin Berkhan has his intermittent fasting approach; if you looked at all those plans in terms of the fundamental principles, you’d see that they  all met them.  They may differ slightly in details and approach but the fundamentals are always present.

A similar article could be written (and I will eventually write it) regarding training principles for growth or strength gains.  There are fundamental principles (revolving around intensity, frequency, volume, etc.) that all intelligent programs must meet.  How they are met is less relevant than that they are met in some form or fashion.  And while people will argue endlessly about the (apparent) differences in application; when you get down to the fundamentals most programs are not as different as you think.  Not the good ones anyhow.

The problem comes in when people start focusing on details (that may or may not be relevant) to the exception of those fundamental principles.  So people want some magic combination of foods or whatever to get around the necessity to create a caloric deficit; they hope that they can avoid the fundamental principle of fat loss (an imbalance between energy intake and output) with some minor detail.  That’s when the problems start.

I can’t count the number of times someone has come on the support forum with a question about “Why am I stalling/why am I not losing weight?” and they can’t even answer the basic questions of “How many calories are you eating per day?  How much protein?  How many total carbs?  How much total dietary fat?”  They can tell you just about everything about their diet except the relevant stuff: how much.

So they are worrying about the glycemic index of one food versus another and one protein source versus another and whether 12.7% of one nutrient is better or worse than 17.2% of the same nutrient and one supplement versus another and…..  And they haven’t even figured out how much they are currently eating per day, or their total macronutrient intake or anything else that actually matters.  On and on it goes and I’m sure readers can see this for themselves across the Internet.

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Making My Point

Make no mistake, worrying about minor details can have value in certain circumstances and don’t misconstrue what I’m saying here.  For some it’s a true physiological need; those advanced people who need to worry about the details because they are at a level that matters.  But, as I noted above, those folks have already spent so much time on the fundamentals that they are in a position where it may matter.

For others, there is often a psychological need to worry about details.  There is a type of dieter I once saw Dan Duchaine describe as ‘wanting all the plumbing’ who tends to follow diet and training programs better when they have an insane amount of details to worry about.   They may not need them in the sense of a true physiological need but they want them and will only be happy if they have them present.

And, to a degree, a lot of what is written in the athletic and bodybuilding literature (those subcultures being towards the obsessive end of things) is geared towards that; giving people a lot of details that are often irrelevant to worry about and obsess about.  Certainly psychological needs are important and have to be taken into account but those details must be placed on top of a basic of fundamentals.  Many of those folks often learn over time that the details aren’t really that relevant anyhow.  But starting out they often need/want those details to be happy or to follow their program.

Because what you usually find is this: once you get the fundamental principles in order, most of the minor details don’t matter very much.  At the very least, they don’t add nearly to the results that most people hope for.  And until you get the fundamental principles in place, the minor details don’t matter at all.  That’s on top of the situation where obsessing about those details prevent someone from ever actually acting in the first place.

As Doc said so clearly and succinctly: Do not subordinate fundamental principles to minor details.

Since I still didn’t feel quite ready for the full marathon, I signed up for the open half-marathon.  I had hoped that, similar to the Texas Road Rash there would be some degree of competition in the half-marathon.  As you’ll see there really was not, much to my disappointment.

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Preparation and Problems

I described my training leading up to the event in Part 3 and won’t repeat that here.  Sufficed to say my legs felt good after the week of tapering and I felt ready to give the race my all.  I had scoped the course online and was made aware that it would be smooth black pavement which meant I should run harder wheels.

I gotten some black 88a durometer (this is a measure of hardness) wheels which, of course meant that I had to get a matching skinsuit, socks and shoelaces.  Being color coordinated had worked at the Road Rash and as I discussed in Keeping the Power Inside the Bar, once an athlete finds his mojo, you don’t mess with it.  Or I’m just an idiot.

Now, I had originally planned to mount my wheels in Napa since I’d be sitting around that Saturday night. But I woke up for my butt-early plane flight on Friday had had time to kill so I went ahead and did it then.  And I’m thankful that I did.   Because months back, in mounting my current boots to my current frame, I had found that the third skate wheel tended to rub the front bolt and I had had to dremel it down to make it spin correctly.

Well, as it turned out, my new harder wheels were a smidgen bigger than the wheels I had run at the Road Rash and the third wheel wouldn’t spin again.  This meant that I had to try to find a dremel in LA before the race and, just in case, packed a set of softer wheels that would run.  Had I waited until I was in Napa, I’d have been out of luck with probably no ability to get a dremel and no wheels to run.  There is a lesson to be had here in terms of early preparation and avoiding surprises.

Beyond that, everything went smoothly.   Here’s me in my full regalia for the race.  Again, black wheels, one red and one black shoelace, black and red socks and the flame skinsuit.  If nothing else, I was easy to spot.

Nice farmer's tan.

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Goals

In contrast to the goals of the Road Rash which were, initially at least, to go skate the distance (even if I ended up racing and placing), my goal at Napa was to actually race.  I had trained with the final workout to hold threshold level heart rates for a full 40 minutes and, as discussed in Methods of Endurance Training: Results Part 3, and I intended to basically go hard for the entire distance and race to win.

I had a secondary time goal of going under 40 minutes for the distance which I felt was reasonable based on my training times and fitness at that point.  But I didn’t know much about the course and it could very readily be slow.  Of course, I’m always looking to identify weaknesses and strengths to modify my training and getting more experience in the pack (everyone would be racing at once again) would be something useful going forwards.

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Thursday/Friday

Since I wouldn’t be able to be social in Napa on Saturday night, I had to go out and try to get some social mojo going on Thursday, hoping it would carry me through the event.  It wasn’t ideal since it wasn’t the night before as with the Road Rash but it had to do; I hung out with the same two friends who wished me luck for that race, I had my one drink and went to sleep far too late.  As noted, I got up super early for my flight and recognized my wheel issue.

Friday I flew to LA, a short flight but sitting around is never great for the legs.  I spent most of Friday hanging out with one friend before meeting up with an old college buddy and Alan Aragon (who gave his version of our hangout in his blog).  I also brofisted him as the picture clearly shows; I had to hope it wouldn’t come back to haunt me.

He was nice enough to let me crash at his place Saturday night and I was awoken with a massive calf cramp that morning.  Painful and it left me with some major soreness; also told me I was dehydrated a bit.  After a short easy aerobic workout that Saturday morning and some stretching and foam rolling, I got in the car and did the 6 hour drive to Napa.  I found my hotel and the race course and got my packet, just so I wouldn’t be running around the next morning.  Good thing too as my directions weren’t great and I’d have never found the race start that morning.

In contrast to the Road Rash, it was a much smaller event, and far less organized.  I didn’t have great expectations about it after picking up my packet.  I did my best to drink more that Saturday and my urine was nice and clear so I hoped I’d be fine.

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Race Day

The race was going off at an early 7am which meant an even earlier wake-up call to go get to the event (20 minutes north of my hotel), change, warm-up, etc.  I actually did manage to sleep decently the night before which is odd for me.  But it couldn’t hurt by any stretch.

Anyhow, the course was laid out and it was a weird one.  Running along the Silverado Trail, the race went from the starting line (a mailbox with a tapeline in front of it) north a couple of miles before a hard 180 degree turnaround around cones, back south past the start/finish, south a bunch of miles to a second turnaround (described as being tighter) and then back to the start/finish.  The half-marathon would do one lap, the full marathon two of them.

As with the previous race, I wasn’t carrying water but drank plenty when I woke up, I had to hope it would stave off any dehydration issues.

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Go!

I got in a good starting position behind my friend Eva Rodansky (who had come down from Salt Lake with a couple of other friends to race) and we got a good start off the line.  Rapidly, a line of skaters formed up on the right hand side of the road but I got trapped out on the left on the wrong side of the cateyes.  I was holding speed with the pack but am still not comfortable being in a pace line and didn’t feel like trying to merge.  I also didn’t want to drop back to be in the absolute back of the pack far behind the leaders.

So I did what any reasonable person would do, I accelerated to the front of the pack and took over the lead.  I mean what the hell, the speeds were attainable as all get out, I felt good and I had planned to go race this thing.   I had ‘joked’ with a friend that I would just race from the front and figured that’s what I’d do.  So that’s what I did.

So I’m setting a strong pace and basically time trialling the entire way, none of this speed-up, slow-down stuff that packs tend to do.  One group took a flyer and jumped ahead but slowed right back down about 50-100m ahead, I’m still not sure what they thought the point of it was since it wasn’t long enough to really tire anybody out or crack the pack apart.  It’s like when you pass a guy on the freeway and he speeds up to pass you back and then slows back down.

No matter, 30 seconds later I was back in front of the entire paceline.  But I was happy being out front, it kept me from getting nervous being surrounded by other skaters, the speeds were eminently doable, I felt strong and fit and just planned to go until I could go no further or crossed the finish line.

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The First Turnaround and Back

As we came up on the first turnaround, a kid in orange (seems to be a theme for me) took a flyer to get in front of me.  My guess is that he wanted to stay out of the mix when they tried to get around the corners, too easy to crash.  I let him go, slowed down, got turned around, crossed over and went after him.  Shortly thereafter I had his wheel.

He’s keeping a good pace and I got a good demonstration of why it’s better to sit in behind someone, I was sort of half-pushing and still had to avoid running him over.  The rest of the pack caught up quickly and I realized why I don’t like being in the pack, the guy behind me was either bumping me or pushing me from behind.  I didn’t like it and asked the kid if he was racing half- or full.  He said full and I told him to drop in and save some gas.  It put me back in front where I wanted to be and off I went, still pulling the entire pro/elite line behind me.

We continued hammering, me still pulling from the front through the start finish and into the second half of the course.  I’m holding the same continuous pace although, to be honest, the course was deceptive; a lot of false flats.  That is, roads that look flat but aren’t.

Even so, checking my Garmin momentarily, I was seeing average speeds of 20+ mph most of the time.  There was also a long downhill as we came into the second turnaround, my Garmin says I hit a top speed of 32.7 mph and it had to have been on that hill as I didn’t back off at all.  Someone on the support forum mentioned that it wouldn’t be fun to crash at that speed.  Honestly, you can’t think about it or you start tensing up and that’s when the badness happens.  You just keep going.

Maybe a quarter mile before the second turnaround, a big group went for a breakaway.  At this point I had pulled from the front for probably 9 solid miles without much of a break.  I felt physically fine but didn’t feel like chasing, I figured I’d take the turnaround and catch them up the big climb we had just come down just like I did with the main pack at the Road Rash.

I dropped in behind another skater and then pulled out front as we came into the second turnaround.

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Disaster

The race organizers weren’t kidding when they said that the second turnaround was tight.  I came in far too fast, tried to cut it too hard and went down hard when my wheels skidded out on the pavement.  Worse than that, both of my calves went into full cramp mode after the crash.  Before continuing the report, here’s my road rash from the fall.

Owww.Mk3

So I’m trying to get my calves to uncramp, sitting on the ground trying to pull my toes back to no avail.  I finally get to my feet and still basically can’t move.  It must have been at least a minute, possibly more, just standing there like an idiot unable to move, before I could do anything.  I knew that if I could get back into skating, everything would relax but the pack was long gone.  I really wasn’t worried as far as placing, nobody in my class was anywhere close so far as I could tell.

Finally I was able to start moving again, got back into skating and so long as I skated properly (e.g. didn’t push off my toes) my calves stayed under control and didn’t cramp up again.  Unfortunately, my momentum had been lost and I had to climb the big hill all by myself.  I did it and managed to catch another skater to sit in and recover for a little bit.  I did and off I went hammering home to the finish.

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Finish

I crossed the line with a final time of 41:08.  Off of my goal of sub-40 but without the crash and cramps, I’d have made it easily.  Certainly I’d have gone a flat 40 minutes given the pace I was holding.  Which is relevant as the full marathon pros (who, recall I had led for about 9 miles solid) came in just under 1:20 or double that time.

In fact, after I got dropped and crashed, apparently the paceline was wondering where “the guy in the flame skinsuit” had gone.  Not only did they like having a happy moron like me willing to stay out front but I was setting a nice constant pace instead of jacking around and speeding up and slowing down all the time.

In any case, for whatever it was worth, I won the half-marathon class easily, second place was a full 8 minutes back and even the race organizer made a joke about me sandbagging when I was on the podium.  Unlike the Road Rash, there simply wasn’t any real competition in the half-marathon which is sort of disappointing.   In any case, my top speed and ability to hold it tell me that:

1. I need to move up to the full-marathon distance.
2. Go ahead and check the box labelled pro/elite at future races.

Since apparently #2 is all that’s required to turn ‘pro’ in inline races right now.  Only one race I’ve found lists any sort of qualifying standard (the ability to finish the full marathon in under an hour and 30 minutes) and basically if you say you’re pro/elite, you’re pro/elite.  Ok then.

Basically, my top speed is there, with a touch more distance training on my skates I’m right in the mix with the top guys from a time perspective.  I still need more practice in the pack and a bit more distance in my training (Eva, who took second overall in the women’s division, made the point that if I’d sit in the pack and not pull the whole time I don’t actually need to have skated the full distance in training).  As well, the longer hill was clearly a weakness but Texas is pretty flat and there’s not much opportunity to practice those here.

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Summing Up

So that’s that, another self-indulgent training report.  My Garmin once again put my average heart rate at 177 with a peak of 189 and an average speed of 19.1 (which should have been closer to 20 mph without the crash/cramping).  All done on the same 99% aerobic work and smidgen of sprint training that I had been doing previously.

Certainly as I move up to the longer distances and more competitive ranks a bit more quality work (to cover breakaways and such) will come in handy.  But I’d make the point again that doing most of my training at fairly moderate intensity levels is putting me right where I need to be both technically and from a conditioning perspective to keep up with the top guys.  Had I been willing to sit in behind someone, I doubt I’d have had a problem covering the full distance at the speeds we were holding.

But once again this is a situation where harder not only wouldn’t be better, it’d probably have been worse. I’m continuing to adapt aerobically doing nothing but easy/moderate (albeit boring) training.  Why work harder than I need to, right?

And that’s the end of that.  Looking forwards, there is a marathon in Chicago in 6 weeks I am considering.  It’s twisty which will mean more corners and accelerations which could be interesting/fun.  Failing that I’ll do the full marathon in Houston in November with a quick 10k (for which I will do some interval and threshold work) in Atlanta in about 12 weeks. More reports to come.  On Tuesday I’ll finish up the Training the Obese Beginner series and then move on to other things.  Maybe the research review I’ve been putting off since March.

In any case, as some of you might have guessed, I was travelling to an inline race and I want to do a quick update on both my training and the race results. I’ll do the final part of Training the Obese Beginner next Tuesday.  As with the previous diversion I’ll do two parts with today discussing some physiology and training concepts and continuing Friday with another self-indulgent race report.

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After the Road Rash

Normally after a hard race you might take a bit of time to rest.  I did not.  The Road Rash wasn’t ever meant to be more than just a training session for me even if it did turn out that I raced it and made the podium.  But it wasn’t honestly that hard.  Just a good old workout so far as I was concerned.  So I jumped right back into my normal training immediately afterwards.

Originally I had had a race scheduled in London 4 weeks afterwards but couldn’t justify making the trip to race a half-marathon; as it turned out there was another half/marathon in Napa, California a couple weeks after London.  At the time it looked like I might have business there (fell through) and some folks I knew from Salt Lake city were coming down.  I’ve also got friends still living in the area and I planned to meet Alan Aragon (he of the smug jib) face to face.  So I decided to target that instead.

That gave me 6 weeks to prepare for the Napa event although my intention was still to race in the open division at the half marathon distance so it wasn’t as if much needed to change.  As I noted previously, this first year is getting back on my skates and getting used to race dynamics, if I do a full marathon it will be in Houston at the very end of the season after I’ve put in the time on my skates and can race it well.  I’m still not clear on what you do to move up to pro/elite at this point or if just you sign up for that category.   If I continue racing the as well as I am, I’ll do that next year I imagine.  I’m no sandbagger.

Oddly, or perhaps not, almost immediately after racing the Road Rash, I experienced an increase in average skating speed.  Whereas I had been averaging 17-17.1 mph at a HR of ~156 on two different courses before the race this jumped immediately to 17.5-17.6 mph at the same heart rate (with some laps on those courses in the 18.0 mph range) within a workout or two afterwards.   And yes I had switched back to my training wheels and off of my race wheels so it wasn’t an equipment thing.

I’m not honestly sure what caused this to occur.  My best guess is that it’s a neurological adaptation that the race locked in by working at a higher intensity and average speed.  Or something about the race locked in some physiological adaptation (in this vein the German track cycling team I keep prattling about used stage races to intensify their training and push/solidify adaptations from all of the volume).  Regardless of the mechanism, I was going faster at the same heart rate and effort level.  This boded well for my next competition since I now got to lay in some volume at the new race speeds and get ready to make the next fitness jump.

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Changing My Training

I also decided to change my training after the Road Rash.  My initial idea was to add another day of skating and a fourth tempo run but then I did some thinking and realized that was dumb: how long have I been prattling about not working harder than necessary in training?   Or how the volume of low-intensity training has the biggest predictive effect on endurance performance.  So I took a step back and asked myself what I’d suggest anybody else do.

And having answered that decided to add MORE low intensity volume.  My plan was to add an extra 30 minutes to my easy aerobic workouts (making them 2 hours 3X/week of 30 minutes run, 60′ EFX, 30 minutes run) and bump up my total weekly volume initially and go from there (I’m still contemplating adding more sessions, probably slideboard work).

Honestly, this was pretty mind numbing but I had finally realized that while I can’t read running I can read on the EFX.  This allowed me to finally catch up on all the papers I’d been steadfastly avoiding in the pile on my floor.  The second 30 minute run was still pretty mentally draining, after 90 minutes indoors, I was ready to be done.  At some point in the future, I’m going to write an article about dealing with tedium of indoor cardio.  Right now my best suggestion is this: go outdoors.

Unfortunately, something else happened after the Road Rash event: I got sick.  Ok, not so much sick more of an allergy, there’s a lot of crud in the air in Austin and I had been told for years that if you live here long enough you will get allergies.  Well, I had lived here 7 years previously and never gotten them; then again I never left the cave much since I was depressed.  It’s hard to get outdoor allergies when you rarely go outside.

In any case, shortly after the Road Rash I developed this awful deep cough with all kinds of interesting green stuff coming up in my spit.   It didn’t make me feel bad and my performance didn’t suffer.  But I couldn’t sleep and nothing I threw at it would make it go away.   I did have one night of chills and fever and actually took a day off after that but after 2+ weeks of coughing my brains out, I actually went to the doctor (something I never do), got an antibiotic and killed it dead.

After the day off, I cut my volume back to get recovered and then ramped back up to where I had been prior to the Road Rash.  Clearly what I was doing was working, and I saw no real reason to change it.  So I was back to exact the same schedule I presented in Methods of Endurance Training: Results Part 1.  You dance with who brung ya’ and don’t mess with what isn’t broken, right?

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Final Race Preparation

With two weeks to go to to the Napa race, I did intensify my training a bit.  I’d love to tell you that this was part of this brilliantly planned out scientifically based training cycle.  But, in all honestly, mostly it had to do with being exhausted at the end of a long training week and not being able to mentally face a full hour tempo run.

So I decided to make that workout a 20 minute threshold run just to get it the hell over with.  That means 20 minutes at roughly 180 heart rate rather than an hour at 160.  While physically harder, it’s just less mentally gruelling since the workout is so much shorter.

And it was actually about time to start bumping my aerobic intensities toward the higher end anyhow, just as I’d done in my winter base period.  Making one of them towards the highest end of aerobic levels made sense even if I was just justifying my own mental weakness after the fact.  I can live with it.

But then I had the idea to go ahead and include that as part of my training.  After the Road Rash it was clear that I was at least physically capable of effectively time trialling the full half-marathon distance with about a 40 minute finish time.  I’m basing this on skating 13 miles in about 48 minutes aerobically and assuming the same 10 minute drop for race pace from the Road Rash.

This is of course assuming that the same 10 minute differential holds which might not have been a valid assumption; I guess I’d find out soon enough (worst comes to worst I can sit in a pack).  In any case, I wanted to know that physically and mentally, if need be, I could race the entire distance by myself at threshold pace and hold that for 40 minutes.  So I decided that every other running workout I’d add 10 minutes finishing with a full 40 minutes at threshold a week before the Napa race (that Sunday would also be my last full volume workout as shown below).

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The Taper

I also decided to do a proper taper going into the race.  I’d been hard at it for 11 weeks including the Road Rash and was feeling a bit beaten up (not sleeping well isn’t helping).  An added dynamic has to do with my overall annual plan and where certain events fit in but that’s just too boring to write up right now.  Just accept that it made sense to have a 5 day ‘break’ about now rather than waiting much longer.  So it served both the purpose of freshening me up to race well and giving me a touch of recovery to start the next training block after the Napa event.

This is what my final week’s preparation looked like.

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Nothing terribly exciting, really, just a fairly stock-standard volume reduction taper.  On Saturday and Sunday I did my final full volume workouts.  Interestingly, I had another big drop in heart rate on both the treadmill and EFX during the Saturday workout.   Every once in a while this happens and it’s always tough to tell if it’s a ‘real’ adaptation.  Maybe the machine was different that day (though it would be odd for both the treadmill and EFX to have been underloaded), maybe a bunch of things.  So I don’t usually pay attention to single workouts in terms of resetting intensities or whatever.

But the very next morning I had another skating adaptation, with an average speed of 17.9 mph at 156HR (one of my two standard courses) so clearly my aerobic engine had taken the next jump.    If I did the math correctly, that means that I can cover 13 miles (21 km) in 43.5 minutes at an aerobic pace.

The winning time last year in the open half-marathon was 45 minutes although I couldn’t expect the course to be identical to what I train on (I know there is a big climb and two odd 180 degree turnaround that will slow things down).  But it sure made me pretty comfortable regarding the race going in.  I was expecting to go sub 40 minutes although I couldn’t say how sub it would be.

The rest of the week was just a gradual decrease in volume.   I probably could have done a bit of intensity on Tuesday or Thursday but I was pretty beaten up after Sunday; my legs still felt a bit beat up on Tuesday’s skate which is why I cut back the other runs to aerobic range.   I wasn’t going to lose fitness and being fresh was more important than anything else.

I also took a couple of epsom salt baths followed by some foam rolling to work out some stiffness and tightness.  By Wednesday, my legs were feeling really good.  And the only reason I didn’t do a skate on Thursday morning (which I had planned) is because it rained.  So I did an easy run in the morning, and that was it.

Since I’m used to doing a workout on Saturday morning and wanted to open my legs and lungs up and reset circadian rhythms, I just did an easy 30 minutes aerobic workout in LA while Alan worked on his jakkedness.

How did it go?  Tune in Friday.

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Monitoring/Preventing Overtraining

Finding ways to determine if overtraining is occurring has been a problem confronting sports scientists and coaches for decades with a variety of technologies and methods having been developed.  Certainly many of them used in either the lab or at the elite level aren’t terribly useful.  The average athlete can’t be expected to measure things like blood urea, the free testosterone/cortisol ratio or CPK levels.   Even some of the things I talked about previously such as comparing lactate to RPE or performance may not be readily available (lactate measurements also require blood to be involved which is a whole separate kettle of monkeys, to mix a metaphor).

So while such things may be useful, they aren’t that practically applicable and I won’t spend any time discussing them.  If readers are interested, they might pick up a copy of Viru and Viru’s Biochemical Monitoring of Sports Training.  It’s very thorough, exceedingly tedious and nearly 100% useless for the majority of athletes; the tech just isn’t available in a cost-effective manner for the methods discussed in the book.

Rather, I want to focus on a variety of more accessible technologies/methods (and this list absolutely won’t be comprehensive) that can be used to monitor and watch for signs of overtraining so that the problem can be stopped before it starts (as noted above, it’s always better to stop the problem before it occurs rather than fixing it after it happens).

These won’t be in any particular order and one thing I’d note is this: a huge problem in the diagnosis of overtraining is that while dozens of things can go south, there is rarely any singularly universal measurement that will turn negative for all athletes under all conditions.  So what might diagnose one athlete may be useless for another.  Using a mixture of the listed methods would be one solution to that; hopefully something you use will pick up a problem before it becomes to serious.

Resting Heart Rate (HR)

Heart rate in various forms has been used to try to monitor recovery and overtraining for decades now and it’s probably one of the easiest and more accessible methods.  I mentioned in a previous part of the series that a fairly large and consistent shift in the relationship of effort (gauged by RPE) or speed/workload and HR are one indicator of a potential problem.  Suddenly the same workloads cause a higher heart rate and this often indicates a problem.

I also already mentioned problems with this not the least of which that one type of overtraining sees a drop in HR that looks like a training effect; as well HR can be affected by a tremendous number of variables.  Beyond that, arguably the main benefit of monitoring HR in some fashion is ease of use.  With either a cheap heart rate monitor or simple finger measurement, you can take HR.

But more than just HR in general, here I want to talk about something more specific: morning or resting HR.   Since this eliminates variables such as work, stress, time of day etc. it’s a bit more accurate than HR measurement later in the day or during training. There are still problems.

First off, and this is actually a key to any of the methods I’m going to describe is that you must take all measurements under identical conditions or they won’t be comparable. In terms of resting HR, at least one implication of this is that morning HR should be taken at the same time of the morning under ideal conditions.  Comparing a measurement at 6am one day to 10am another (when you slept in) can throw off measurements.  Assuming you’re comparing similar times of day, here’s what I recommend for measurement:

1. Wake up (I was going to say duh but there’s a note below about sleeping HR)
2. Go pee/poop
3. Put on heart rate monitor (if using one)
4. Lie  quietly in bed for 5 minutes
5. Take HR (start HR monitor or take finger measurement)

This is simply an attempt to a) minimize variables (a full bladder/bowels tends to raise HR) and b) get a more accurate resting value (hence the lie down for 5 minutes bit).  If you use a heart rate monitor, set it to record for a minimum of 1 minute and up to 5 minutes and take the average.

If your watch won’t do that, just watch it and see what value it settles at consistently.  If you take HR manually (finger on pulse), always use your ring/middle fingers (the index finger has its own pulse), and count for a minimum of 15 seconds (30-60 seconds is better) and always start the count at zero.  It’s also better to take HR at the wrist rather than the neck; pressing on the carotid artery causes a reflex that tends to lower HR.  A problem is that it’s not always easy to get a good HR at the wrist.

The rules of thumb on resting HR and training are this: if resting HR is up by 5 beats over normal, take an easy day.  If it’s 10 beats above normal, take a complete rest day.  If you don’t have a HR, you’re a zombie or vampire and have bigger problems.   Basically an increase in resting HR indicates that you’re getting excessive sympathetic tone and need to rest/recover.  It’s fairly crude and you need to have baseline data under fully recovered conditions to compare to but it’s cheap, easy and relatively accurate.

I’d note that it’s still not perfect since the whole waking up, peeing/pooping, lying back down thing can throw off values.  A solution IF you have a HRM that will measure through the night is to wear it through the night and look at true resting/sleeping values.  Of course, your watch has to be able to record for at least 8 hours or so.  It is also possible to cheat the test if you’re good; in my 20’s I would sit in bed and consciously force my heart beat to slow until it got to where I wanted it. Then I’d go train myself into the ground some more.

HR Differential

A related idea to resting HR is to use the differential in lying/seated vs. standing HR.  So you take HR for a minute, stand up and take it again and the difference is supposed to tell you something.  This is presumably a rough measure of the body’s overall sympathetic response since standing up tends to cause sympathetic activity to spike.  I’ve never used this so I can’t comment further on it or give guidelines on its use.  I’m sure they can be Googled.

Blood Pressure (BP)

Presumably the same resting and differential ideas can be applied to BP  Same basic idea, an increase in resting BP or a problem with the differential tells you a problem is starting.  You can find little combo HR/BP cuffs (they usually measure at the finger) if you want to look at that for tracking purposes.   I would mention that blood pressure tends to be very very sensitive to all kinds of random influences and small differences in blood pressure on a minute to minute basis probably mean very little.

Heart Rate Variability (HRV)

HRV is a relatively new entry (in the last several years) to monitoring training and it’s interesting enough that I will, at a future date, write a full article (or 6) on the topic.  Without getting into two many details, HRV is a measurement of the variability in the time between two R intervals in the normal heart rhythm (don’t worry about this too much).

Fairly simply, more variability is good and less variability is bad (indicating sympathetic overdominance); with less variability correlating with all manners of health problems.  It also indicates when overtraining is occurring or starting to occur.  I would note that, compared to heart rate or blood pressure, measuring HRV requires more expensive equipment.

The Omegawave Toy uses HRV as one of its measurements and will only run you about $10,000 or so. Recently more affordable options have become available; both Polar and Suunto make watches capable of measuring HRV at about $400 apiece.  Polar has the better software but Suunto has a transfer method that actually works more than 3 weeks.  Again, wait until I write a full article on this for details.

Not only can HRV indicate when an athlete is beginning to overtrain (and interestingly both endurance and strength/power athletes tend to show a dominance in sympathetic signalling, indicated by a decrease in HRV), it may also have some utility in actually planning training on a day to day basis.  Again, to discuss this in full will require an entire article and I will write that article in the future so please be patient and don’t ask me for details in the comments section.

Reaction Time

Some researchers have suggested that reaction time may be an indicator of overtraining and some emerging research supports this idea (with decreases in something called psychomotor speed occurring with excessive training loads).  When I was skating we started using a stopwatch to gauge reaction time, we’d do 6 start/stop series and average the values (so you try to start and stop the watch as fast as possible, do it 6 times and take the average) looking for trends in the average.  It wasn’t perfect but did seem to correlate reasonably well with overall recovery.

The skater Richard I mentioned in the No Regrets series did one particularly heavy week and his reaction time dropped about 0.04 seconds (from 0.13 to 0.17), with a few days of recovery, he was back to his previous average. I’d mention that this needs to be done under standard conditions (i.e. either before or after warmups, always compare like to like) and it is possible to cheat the watch by changing how you start and stop it.

I could get better values by pushing from both sides with both hands rather than just my thumb.  There is also a bit of a learning curve to hit the button consistently, I’d tend to throw out exceedingly different values on a day-to-day basis (e.g. if my norm was 0.12 and I got 0.22 it was usually because my finger slipped and I’d throw out the value)

I’d also mention that there are other variants on this type of thing that can be used.  I know of coaches who have used finger tapping tests (count the total number of taps in 15 seconds or what have you as a measure of movement speed) or drop tests (mark a stick and drop it from a standard height and see how quickly the athlete can catch it by measuring how many of the marks pass through his fingers) to do the same thing.  Cheap, easy and probably relatively accurate.  Again, you need to have baseline data under completely recovered conditions but assuming you do that, you can look at trends to monitor overall recovery.

Various Power Tests

Various vertical and long jump tests have been suggested as an indicator of overall recovery but I’m not sure this is a fantastic idea.  Doing a maximum test of any sort on a consistent basis, even if it’s just one or two repeats seems to be at odds with some basic training tenets (e.g. not going to maximum every day).  But this may be another valid approach, especially for strength/power athletes.

So after a standardized warm-up, test a maximum jump or three and take the average and compare it to values determined when the athlete is rested.  A big drop in performance would indicate a need for a rest day and some cutoff would need to be used to make that judgment.  It would be important that the athlete have experience with the movement for this to be valid.

Questionnaires

A variety of questionnaires have been used over the years to try and monitor for overtraining.  Probably the most common is the Profile of Mood Score (POMS) which tends to show a characteristic shift (called an Iceberg profile) in overall shape in scores when overtraining starts.  But it’s not perfect and doesn’t seem to pick up all cases of overtraining.  Probably because it wasn’t originally developed to be used for such.

More recent tests have been developed and validated such as the Recovery-Stress Questionnaire these are discussed in some detail in the otherwise worthless book Enhancing Recovery: Preventing Underperformance in Athletes by Michael Kellman.

There is apparently a full book on the questionnaire now as well, I haven’t read it and haven’t used either of the tests with myself or my trainees so I can’t comment further.  Whether accurate or not, perhaps the biggest drawback to this approach is time, since the questionnaires take time to fill out and score.

It’s not time athletes or coaches always have, certainly not on a day-to-day basis.  And while infrequent use might be useful, this may not pick up problems when they are starting; by the time the athlete takes the test, it may be too late.  In contrast, taking HR for 5 minutes in the morning (even HRV only takes about that long) or using a reaction time test can be done much more rapidly.

Sleep/Appetite/Mood

As I mentioned in a previous part of the series, a common occurrence with overtraining is a disruption in things like sleep patterns (usually sleep is impaired), appetite (generally the athlete loses their appetite) or mood (motivation suffers, the athlete doesn’t want to train, etc).  These are due to the inflammatory response from too much pounding on the body and the rest of what’s going on (e.g. excessive sympathetic drive).

Oddly, and no I don’t know why this is the case, often the mood changes occur before the performance deficits are seen.  So when athletes start to lose motivation, report problems with sleep or appetite, or just start to report feeling generally beat up or inflamed (there is often this sort of sub-chronic soreness that occurs, this is due to muscular inflammation), that’s often an indication that problems are beginning to start.  Unless the explicit goal is overreaching and they are supposed to feel beaten up for a couple of weeks, this is when its time to schedule a recovery week or two.

Of course, that assumes that the coach takes the time to ask the athlete about such things and the athlete is honest about it which brings us to….

How Are You Feeling/What Does the Coach see?

Having read basically every review paper ever written on overtraining, I always smile when I get to the end and, having discussed every aspect of overtraining, the authors conclude something to the effect of “Despite 30 years of research into trying to diagnose and prevent overtraining, perhaps the most accurate method available is for a coach to ask the athlete ‘How are you feeling?’ prior to training.”  Yes, that’s right, 30 years and god knows how many thousands of dollars dedicated to research and ‘How are you feeling?’ is the best we can do.  It’s no wonder athletes think sports science is useless.

Of course, this approach assumes that the athlete

1. Has a coach in the first place.
2. Has a coach that isn’t totally incompetent (e.g. is more than a glorified rep counter, stopwatch holder).

But assuming those two things are true, this is a valid approach.  Assuming that the coach actually is willing to pay attention to the what the athletes report (e.g. alter their perfect training program), this is not only a valid approach to monitoring recovery but perhaps the easiest.  I always ask my trainees “How are you feeling?” when they enter the gym.

I want to know how they feel overall (springy, tired, depressed, moody) in addition to anything specific (are old injuries acting up, did they have a long day at work) that might impact what I do with them in training that day.

Then after they lie to me about it….ok, I’m actually not just being obnoxious about this.  If there is a drawback to this approach to monitoring training it’s the same basic one that I discussed in Overtraining, Overreaching and all the Rest Part 7 when I talked about listening to your body: people can rationalize.  Athletes don’t like easy days, they don’t like easy workouts, they don’t like being sent home if they are looking ragged.  Even if that’s what they actually need.

So when the coach asks ‘How are you feeling?’ they will usually say what they think the coach wants to hear so that they can go get pummeled.  That means saying that everything is great, sleep is good, mood is great, they are ready to hammer.  They’ll say this even if they feel terrible.

Please note that this isn’t universally the case: some athletes are more honest than others.  Usually these are older athlete who spent long enough injured and overtrained to know better now.  Most only learn the lesson long after they are past it being of the greatest use.  Younger athletes who are driven and psycho…expect them to lie to you.  I’m not usually one to assume the worst but in the case of overmotivated athletes, you have to assume they are lying until they prove to you that they aren’t.

And that’s why you can’t necessarily listen to what they say, this is when you actually have to be a coach (e.g. not just be the guy holding the stopwatch and counting the reps) and pay attention to what’s going on.  Using other more objective methods like reaction time or HR is helpful here, if their words don’t match the data, there’s a problem.

But this is where, as a coach, you have to watch their warm-ups, watch their technique, how is their movement speed, what are you seeing them do.  If they tell you they feel great but they look like dogmeat during warm-ups, you now know two things:

1. They are going to lie to you about how they actually feel.
2. That they probably still need an easy day.

And both are good data points.  Once you realize that an athlete is going to not be honest about how they are feeling, you can pretty much stop asking; they won’t be straight with you so don’t waste your time unless you just like playing games or think you can browbeat them into being honest.

In that situation, use other methods to monitor them.  HR, HRV, reaction time whatever.  But their verbal reports are useless until you get them to stop playing games and start telling you the truth.  Good luck with that.

But if they are actually being honest (e.g. telling you they feel bad when they are), this method can be very useful.  As noted in Part 7, there are still times when you have to make them man up and work through it (and you often teach a valuable lesson about what they can actually accomplish despite fatigue) but don’t do it all the time.  Ignore their self-reported data (if it’s accurate) often enough and you will dig them into a hole that may take weeks, months or longer to dig them out of.

Which, at long last, brings us to the final part of this series (you’re probably over-reached just reading it) which is:

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What to Do if You Overtrain

Rest.

Seriously, that’s it, that’s the exciting conclusion to this series.  If you’ve screwed up and trained too hard for too long with inadequate recovery and dug yourself in, the solution is rest and recovery for as long as needed to get out of the hole.  It might be weeks, or months or longer depending on how deep a hole you dug.  But you must rest.

And nobody can say up front how long it will take.  It doesn’t really matter.  You rest and recover until you’re rested and recovered.  You can’t force the process and all you can do is be patient and let it happen.  But now you wonder, what should you be doing during that rest period.

It’s would be ideal to start with 5-7 days completely off from training.  Brisk walking tops during that time period and nothing more intense.  Just go rest and sleep and eat and recover.  Get some massage if you can afford it, at least foam roll.  Epsom salt baths, relaxation, the stretching you’ve been skipping the last months.  Watch your nutrition.  Whatever you need to start the recovery process, now is the time to kick-start it and a full 5-7 days totally off will do that.

But what about after that?  During the rest and recovery period, you should keep training light, basically near the active recovery zone and limited in both duration and frequency.  But keeping intensity down is really the key here.  It should be kept at active recovery levels as described in the article Active vs. Passive Recovery.  Certainly no harder (endurance athletes might push up into the low aerobic zone, like 130-140 HR) and frequency should be kept down.  Maybe 3-4 days/week.  Duration, an hour tops.  Maybe.

Of course, athletes hate this.  They feel that time spent resting is time lost, won’t their fitness decrease?  And the answer is that yes it is and yes it will in that order.  But once overtraining has occurred, there’s no other choice.  The athlete can either recover now or recover later.  But they’re going to have to do it eventually.  The longer that they keep themselves from recovering by trying to train too much or too hard, the more time they lose.  The sooner they recognize the problem and fix it, the sooner the recovery will be taken care of and they can get back to real training.

But if they spend the next 2 monts training half-assedly (still too tired to do any real work but able to keep themselves from recovering completely), that’s another 2 months lost.  And they still need the weeks or month to fully recovery anyhow.  In fact, if they dig the hole deeper, they might need longer now. So that’s even more time lost.  So rather than ‘losing’ 2 months at the front end, by continuing to train, they’ve not only lost those 2 months of training but now need at least another 2 months (or longer) to fully recover.  So that’s 4+ months lost.  That’s stupid.

Oh yeah, athletes also worry about getting fat during the recovery period.  Some try to diet.  Do not do this.  In the same way that you can’t build muscle out of thin air and wishful thinking, you’re not going to recover from overtraining by restricting calories.  They need to be at maintenance or maybe slightly above, eat sufficient carbohydrates to keep hormones good and glycogen restocked.

Do some around workout nutrition with your recovery training to get the nutrients to your muscles to help with repair.  You may gain a little bit of fat but, too bad, you need to maintain an anabolic state to recover.  Dieting will just prolong the recovery process if not stop it completely.  The fat comes back off when you ramp training back up after recovery has taken place anyhow.  This is not the time to be neurotic about body fat levels.

And be patient.  In the same way that athletes are always in a hurry to get back into intense training after an injury, they try to rush back to training before they have truly recovered from overtraining.  Monitor some of the things I talked about above: HR, overall mood state, HRV if you have access.

Wait for it to get to 100% normal and stay there a week or two.  There’s no hurry and if you’re not 100% recovered and rush back in, you’ll just dig the hole again and lose more time.  The week or two you wait now is 4 weeks you don’t lose later by falling back off the edge.

And, finally, once you’re recovered, once the overtraining and underperformance syndrome is gone there are two things you must do:

First, ease back into training.  If you took 6 weeks off or whatever, your fitness will be down, your work capacity will be down.  But muscle memory is real, fitness always comes back faster than it was developed in the first place.  How long?   My rule of thumb is that it will take twice as long to get back to your previous levels as you had to rest.

So if you had to rest for 6 weeks, expect to take 12 weeks to even approach your old training levels.   Plan your training along those lines; work backwards from where you expect to be at 12 weeks and where you can reasonably start at week 1 AFTER the recovery process is done.  So if you had been doing 12 hours/week and you’re currently doing 3, plan a progression to get back to 12 hours (actually less than that) from 3 hours over that 12 week span (maybe adding an hour of training every 2 weeks or something).  Don’t think you can jump straight back in without breaking yourself and losing even more time.

Because if you jump back into your old training load, you’re done for; you’ll redig the hole and just have to lose more time recovering.  Spend a month or two building training back up towards the old levels (actually a level below what overtrained you before).  There’s no hurry and there’s everything to lose and nothing to gain by going too fast.  If you just spent 3 months recovering and overtrain yourself immediately again, you lose that much more time recovering again.  Don’t do this.

Second and far more importantly: LEARN from the experience.  Look at what you did that got overtrained in the first place.  What was wrong about your training, too much intensity, too many hard days, too much volume, was your recovery lacking for some reason?  Diet, sleep, recovery modalities, what was lacking?  Diagnose the problem and fix it going forwards.

Because otherwise you’ll just do it again.  Athletes repeat these cycles of training too much (and getting overtrained and/or injured), spending a month recovering and then doing the same thing over and over again.  If a given workload wasn’t tolerable 6 months ago and nothing has changed, it won’t be tolerable now.  So don’t think you can handle it this time around.  Don’t be an idiot, learn from your experiences.

Otherwise you’ll find yourself years down the road having wasted the prime years of your athletic career going through the classic cycle of overtrain/get injured, recover and then do it again without ever having seen your true performance capacity because you were never rested, always a bit over the edge, slightly injured.  It’s one thing to make the mistake once but the definition of insanity is doing the same thing more than once and expecting a different result.

And finally, I’m done.

Clearly, if you haven’t read through the series (e.g. you somehow only found the site last week when I was talking about endurance performance and prattling self-indulgently about my race), you should start with Overtraining, Overreaching and all the Rest Part 1.  Having covered a bunch of tedious physiology and background, I want to now move into some practical application type things.

Today I want to look at, in a global sense, how to limit the risk of overtraining in the first place with my primary focus being on the overall training structure.  In the next part, which I’ll run next Tuesday, I’ll look at some of the various methods that have been used over the years to try and monitor if overtraining is occurring so that it can be stopped before it goes too far.  Finally, and I’ll cover it Tuesday if I have space and Friday if I don’t, I want to look at what to actually do when/if overtraining occurs. Shockingly, that will probably be the shortest section of the entire series.

.Preventing Overtraining

In a global sense, the first key to preventing overtraining is to make sure that the workload/training program is set up appropriately.  This is something I went on and on (and on) about in previous sections but basically, there needs to be some acknowledgement of the recovery processes that are in place and the workload set to that.  Alternately, if you must do a certain workload, recovery must be improved to match it.

As a random example, thinking that the same training program that is appropriate for a 22 year old male will ‘fit’ a 39 year old female is pretty asinine.  Yet many coaches work from exactly that standpoint; they know one workout (usually what they did as athletes) and give it to everyone without consideration of any other factors.  It’s dumb but happens all the time.

In a more specific sense, on top of trying to ensure that recovery is appropriate (e.g. diet, supplements, sleep, recovery), let’s look at some of the various rules of thumbs that have come about over the decades of sports training.  Some of this probably came from research as much of it came from empirical practice as anything else.

I’d call these rules except that they all have exceptions under certain conditions.  So consider them strong guidelines that the majority should follow because, no matter what you think, you’re most likely not an exception to them.  Because that’s not what the word ‘exception’ means.

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Take One Day Completely Off Per Week

I talked about this in detail in The Importance of Rest but, fairly universally (there are exceptions), most athletes take one day off completely per week.  Traditionally this is Sunday (much of training scheduling has more to do with social patterns than physiology) but that needn’t be the case as I pointed out in my own training in Methods of Endurance Training: Results Part 1. Currently my own day off is Friday for reasons explained there.

As noted there are exceptions to this.  Some endurance types will train more or less daily, some Ol’ers will do a very very short/light workout on Sunday (usually 30 minutes of light squatting or something) for various reasons. But these are always in the context of other properly set up training practice and, as I’ll discuss next, athletes don’t try to go all out at every workout anyhow.  These are also usually elite athletes at the top of the performance curve who have built up to that level over a decade or more.  Odds are you’re not one of them.

For the majority of people, taking one day off completely per week is a strong first step. At most you can do some brisk walking but keep it to that.  If you lack the self-control to keep the intensity down either learn some self-control or just take the day off and rest hard (as my coach used to say).

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Limit the Number of Truly High-Intensity Workouts Per Week

Despite much stupidity on the Internet (and the advocation of certain cult-like training systems out there that tell folks to train all out every day), successful athletes do not train in a high-intensity fashion at every workout.  Or even attempt to (the ones that do go by various names, including injured).

As I mentioned in Methods of Endurance Training: Results Part 2, most do the majority of their volume at relatively low-moderate intensities.  You see this in sprint athletes, strength athletes and endurance athletes where the frequency and volume of high-intensity work is usually quite limited.

Folks who forget this usually find themselves in the situation I talked about in Keep the Hard Days Hard and the Easy Days Easy: they train at this medium intensity all the time. Too easy to really generate gains but too hard to allow recovery.

How much high-intensity work you ask?  2-3 days per week is usually about the maximum, certainly there are exceptions.  But a short-sprinter might do two maximum speed days and one special endurance days (others do only two high-intensity days per week) with that representing perhaps 25-35% of their total weekly volume (with some variance depending on the specific sport, time of year, coaching philosophy, etc.).

Powerlifters typically have two maximum days per week, even Westside only has the two ME days (with work over 90% making up about 10% of the total volume).  The other days are low intensity (DE or volume work).  Endurance athletes will occasionally have 3 quality days per week (usually in non-impact sports like cycling or swimming), 2 days per week is more common (runners may only get away with one).  Recent studies find that most endurance athletes do 75-80% of their total volume at aerobic intensities with only a small amount of high intensity work, usually done about twice per week.

See a pattern yet?

So why do you think you should (or even can) train hard every day?  I mean other than because some Internet guy told you to alternate interval training one one day with high-intensity complexes on the other?  Oh yeah, while dieting.  Or because you think you should and/or are a unique and delicate flower who can handle training that would kill the best athletes in the world?

Now, without fail someone in the comments section is going to ask me about my own Generic Bulk routine (which can be found on the forum) which is set at 4 relatively heavy days/week for strictly bodybuilding/hypertrophy purposes. Doesn’t that break the 2 quality days/week rule?

While it is 4 days/week it’s important to remember that working in the 8 or higher rep range is still relatively moderate intensity work (~80% of max or less).  It’s also not aimed at athletic performance per se and any other work (e.g. cardio) is always done at very low intensities.  When I set up programs that use heavier work, the frequency and volume of true heavy work generally goes down.

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Schedule the Week Accordingly

Assuming 2-3 truly hard workout per week, the most common pattern is to space them out to some degree.  With two hard days/week, that might mean Monday/Thursday or Monday/Friday.  Or Tuesday/Friday. Or a zillion other patterns, just keep them fairly evenly spaced through the week.  With three days/week, typically a heavy day/light day (as in my own training) would be the most common.  So Monday/Wednesday/Friday or Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday (assuming Sunday off).

Occasionally you have specific reasons to put hard days back-to-back; you might be getting an athlete ready for a two day competition, or you might want to deliberately generate fatigue to try to push better adaptations (or teach athletes to perform under fatigued conditions).    But these are specific exceptions.

Clearly the other days should be easier days (which can mean truly light days or medium intensity day). There are endless variations and patterns and of course someone will ask what the purpose of the light days are in the comments section, thinking that you should either go hard or stay home.  To which I’ll point them to the article Active vs. Passive Recovery for discussion.

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Cycle Your Training

With few exceptions, all athletes cycle their training to one degree or another throughout the year (the ones that try to go 100% year round also usually go by another name…injured).  The idea that you can or even should be at a peak level of performance year round is simply asinine (occasionally you find groups that try, they tend to be injured a lot…or keep failing drug tests).  Rather, training is ramped to a peak, backed off, ramped back up, etc.  This is generally referred to as periodization which exists in myriad forms.  I don’t have nearly the space to detail any of them.  Another time and another overwritten article series.

This type of cycling can take many many forms.  In my own generic bulk for example, I advocate a 2 week sub-maximal run-up prior to 4-6 weeks of pushing the weights hard prior to backing off again.  Interestingly, Dante Trudell of Doggcrapp fame recommends a nearly identical schedule of 2 week cruises and 4-6 weeks bursts. In my specialization cycles (which I will write up for the site eventually), I advocate 4 weeks of heavy training before a 2 week deload where rebound growth usually occurs.  The cycle is shorter because the loading is much heavier.

You can use longer cycles as well.  As I outlined in Methods of Endurance Training: Putting it Together, my base endurance training cycle was 18 weeks divided into 10 weeks of easy base training, 6 weeks of higher intensity work, a 1 week peak and 1 week recovery.  This is more akin to Issurin’s Block Training concept which compresses the old annual cycle into a shorter period (general preparation, specific preparation, peak, transition) and repeats it more often.  I think you get the idea.

Related to that is what to do between training blocks and this is another place that formal recovery blocks can help stave off overtraining.  One strategy that I don’t think gets used enough by most people, but that I used myself to good success during my speedskating ‘career’ was the incorporation of 5-day training breaks.  This is just a medium-term cycling strategy.

Basically, I blocked my training (depending on where we were in the season) into anywhere from 10-12 week blocks (currently I’m using an 18 week block for my endurance training but the average intensity is much lower than when I was on the ice).  And at the end of the block, I’d just take 5 days completely off.  I’d tell my coach ‘See you on Monday’ and go away.  If I could, I’d get out of Salt Lake City; if not I’d just rest and play video games.   No training (nothing more than brisk walking and usually not even that), plenty of rest, food, etc.  Just to freshen up physically and mentally.

I first saw the idea formally used by Charlie Francis (and detailed in his excellent book Speed Trap) and it’s something I recommend to help limit over-training. It also provides a nice end-goal for a given block of training.  You work through it in whatever fashion, hopefully hit a new peak at the end and then go not train for 5 days (or do something that is not your primary sport to give your body and mind a break; be careful not to pick something that wrecks you with soreness).

In the context of shorter blocks (such as my generic bulk which is an 8 week cycle), you might take a 5-day break every 2-3 full cycles.  So assuming a 6-8 week cycle, that’s every 18-24 weeks and then take 5 days completely off to freshen up.  Supposedly that’s what the Russkis found was the optimal time for a long training block before a break was needed.  So there ya’ go.

This is about the time when the general public trainee (who often doesn’t need to worry about any of this in the first place for reasons discussed in earlier parts of the series) starts to get anxious.  Five days out of the gym? But my muscles will fall off, my fitness will go away, I’ll get fat.  Quite the contrary: the detraining studies clearly show that little to no loss of fitness occurs in that time period.  And quite often a reduction in training triggers the LTDFLE.

Sure you may lose a bit of groove or technique on complex stuff but that comes back in a workout or two. But true losses of fitness or muscle mass are negligible approaching nil over that time span.  Quite in fact, for some people, a 5 day break lets them come back better since the fatigue that they’ve generated with their training can finally dissipate.  Trust me, you won’t get fat in 5 days and your muscles won’t fall off.  You may come back much stronger and more motivated to train though.

Cycling also applies in the much longer-term.  Almost all athletes incorporate what is usually called a transition period in the annual cycle, this is the break between the end of one year and the start of the next.  This can take many forms and used to be called the off-season.  That concept is pretty much dead, most athletes can’t afford to take 2 months off from training.  Year-round training is required in the modern sporting world.

But 2-4 weeks of reduced or no training (or at least an alternative type of training) is common.  In my own skating, we always got Mid-March to Mid-April as our transition; right after the end of year finale.  I’d take 7 days completely off, zero training.  Then I’d just do light bike workouts (3X/week) and weights (2X/week) to stay in some semblance of shape and get ready for the hell that started on April 15th with skate training.  Sure my fitness dropped a little bit during that time but I freshened up physically and mentally and it allowed me to work up to a new peak (by getting some training inertia going from a lower intensity in the first place).

But the point of all of this is that athletes who don’t cycle their training in at least some form or fashion, whether short-, medium- or long-term, usually pay the price.  Next time you wander around a commercial gym and see endless people with their Cho-Pats and elbow braces just going through the motions on a day-to-day basis, consider how long they’ve probably gone without taking a prolonged training break.  Their last one was probably a week ago last never.  There might be a lesson there.

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Listen to Your Body

Ok, this could just as easily go into the topic of diagnosis and is the area where folks are likely to get themselves into the most trouble if they don’t pay careful attention to what I’m going to say. Here’s why: the entire idea of listening to your body is fraught with problems, the two main ones being that:

1. Most people have no clue what’s going on in their own body.
2. Humans have the ability to rationalize (it’s what separates us from the animals).

I want to make it very clear that here I really need to distinguish between the typical psycho over-motivated athlete and the general public.  This was a point I made in the article How to Be Your Own Coach as well as earlier in this series but it bears repeating.  The difference is this: most motivated folks want to train too hard, too much and too often; the average person doesn’t want to train at all.

A suggestion to ‘listen to your body’ and/or ‘take an easy day when you feel like it’ can go very wrong for the second group of people.  They will find any excuse to skip training in the first place, telling them to ditch training when they feel bad means that they will never show up at all.  They rarely train hard enough for any of this to matter and basically, very little of what I’ve written here applies to them in the first place.  But I don’t want them to read this section and go ‘Lyle told me to not train because I was a bit tired’.  That’s not what I’m saying at all.

In contrast, the typical motivated athlete won’t listen to their body at all.  Even if they feel terrible, they will rationalize it away and train hard anyway.  That little niggle in their knee, no big deal.  The crushing lethargy, they’ll make an excuse and train through it.  There is this logic of “Every day I take easy is a day that someone else is pulling ahead of me.”  It’s the same with days off, athletes will vocalize “Every day I’m resting, my competition is training twice that day and getting ahead of me.” Which is nonsensical as hell but that’s how a lot of psycho athletes think.

But that’s the warning and here’s the suggestion: there are times in training when your body is telling you to knock it off.  For whatever reason, bad night’s sleep, stress that you’re not even aware of, the beginning of true overtraining, there are just myriad reasons that you feel awful.  But, sadly, your workout schedule, brilliantly planned with the most cutting edge science and spreadsheet known to god and man tells you it’s a heavy workout day.  You can’t go off workout can you?

Well of course you can.  And quite often should.

Now, you’ll note that I didn’t say always.  I’ll come back to this in the next part of the series when I talk about athletes with coaches but there are times when you just have to man up and work through the fatigue.  Athletes don’t always get to compete under ideal conditions.  If you never teach yourself to perform under less than ideal conditions, you can end up in a real conundrum the first time things aren’t perfect and you find yourself a bit tired in a competition. Sometimes you do have to ignore what your body is telling you and make it happen.  But sometimes is not the same as always.

The bottom line is that if you feel terrible going into the workout, that’s probably your body telling you something; more often than not you should listen (occasionally you should ignore it and push through).  However, that is not always the case.  Sometimes your body lies to you.

Many many times (I and my trainees and many I know have experienced this), athletes who walk into the gym tired or lethargic have absolutely stunning workouts.  I suspect it’s just from being relaxed (relaxation quite often looks like lethargy or fatigue) but I told my coach constantly that if I looked a bit bored, or was yawning at the start of practice, it meant I was coming up on a stunner.  And that if I came to practice raring to go, things would go awfully.  As noted, this is not uncommon.

So this is what I always recommend when someone comes into training feeling a bit tired or lethargic (and this assumes you’re not using some of the strategies I’m going to mention in the next part of the series to monitor overtraining that are telling you you need to take an easy day or skip): at least do your warm-ups.   If nothing else, you’ve gotten 20-30 minutes of light work and even if you call it after that, you’ve done your recovery work and can go home.

But just go through your normal warm-up routine and see what happens.  As often as not, by the time you get through with them, you’re ready to go and everything is clicking.  And then it’s on.  When this happens, you should do the planned workout.

And if you still feel like dogmeat, go the hell home.  Or make it a light technical or active recovery workout (keeping in mind that your warm-up basically accomplished that anyhow) and then go the hell home.  And if you still lack the self-control to keep it easy, just pack it in and go the hell home.  If you’re a cyclist, spin for 45 minutes and pack it in.  If you’re in the weight room, do light technical work and go home.  Etc.

I would note in closing that even the above is not universal. One trainee of mine once came to the gym and looked like crap during warm-ups.  Nothing was going right going into her first work sets, no snap, no pop, her technique on the platform was awful.  I told her to pack it up.  She said she just needed to warm-up some more.  I decided to let her and see what happened and about 30 minutes later she hit a big PR.  Go figure.  But that’s not the norm.

Usually, if you feel tired at the start of workout and go through warm-ups and still feel like crap, that’s a sign to call it.  You’re too tired to do any real work but you can probably dig the hole deeper by trying.   You’ll end up having a half-assed workout that not only won’t do you any good, it’ll do you harm.

It’ll be too low-quality to improve your fitness but hard enough to keep you from recovering.  In that situation, you’re better off packing it in and moving the workout to the next day.  With an extra day of rest, you might actually get something out of the workout.  Or if you’re already on the road to ruin, might need yet another day of rest.  But you decide that the next day after warm-ups.

And again, this is the section that is subject to the most problems, simply because it relies on humans being able to objectively look at their own performance, motivations, etc.  It’s not an easy thing to do, I gave some strategies in How to Be Your Own Coach but when in doubt err on the side of conservatism.  Missing a hard workout or cutting the volume is rarely a bad thing unless you’re doing it every workout; in contrast pushing when your body is telling you to rest is usually a bad thing.  Less is more here and you can do far more harm than good slavishly adhering to the schedule than listening when your body tells you to call it a day.

And speaking of calling that, this is where I’m going to call it a day today.  Next Tuesday (rememeber, special announcement on Friday), I’ll talk about some of the technologies and ways to monitor/diagnose overtraining before it happens.  See you then.

Read Overtraining, Overreaching and all the Rest Part 8.

Now, I had originally drawn up my annual plan with perhaps half a dozen races, one or two were overseas (which I may or may not go to at this point for reasons irrelevant to this article), the rest were in the US.  Most were marathon or half-marathon races with one 10k in Atlanta on Labor Day.  There’s a 10k series up north that I am considering.

Originally, I hadn’t planned to do my first race until late in May since that would give me a good 8-10 weeks of skating outdoors to get my legs back, get used to being outdoors, etc.  But then, in goofing around online, I came across a race that was both early and local.  Specifically, the Texas Road Rash event held on April 25th in Round Rock, Texas; that’s about 20 minutes north of where I live.

Now, even in my 20’s when inline racing was bigger, there were never local events.  It sucked to drive 6 hours (we couldn’t afford to fly) each direction to race for 20 minutes.  So ready or not, I really couldn’t turn down a local race that was just up the road from me.   The event actually had two different races, an elimination (last man out) race on Saturday which did not interest me and both a full and half-marathon (actually 28 and 14 miles) on Sunday which did.

Since I’ve only done 20 miles in training, I opted for the half-marathon distance.  I’m simply too far out from racing inline at this point to know what I’m capable of and would rather focus on the shorter distances this season and worry about moving to the full marathon next year (I may do the full in Houston at the end of the season).  In any case I signed up early, something I’d never done in the past; I must have felt ready.  Also, since I had no clue where I stood performance wise, I went ahead and signed up for the 30-39 age group rather than the open division.

Preparation

I went up and scoped out the race course about 2 weeks before the event, another advantage of being local.  It was basically a square ‘loop’ going around the Dell Diamond up in Round Rock.  One gradual uphill on the front end to a long flat section, a long downhill and the another flat section on the main road back to the start/finish line.

The pavement was overall good with some sections with some rough black pavement.  The half-marathon would be 3 laps, the full 6.  Oddly, the race is nothing but right hand turns; I say oddly as most skaters suck at turning right. I’m currently still one of them though I’m getting better day by day.

For preparation, I did several things.  One of them was to practice climbing, including several climbs on one of my training courses where the climb is on rough pavement.  It gave me the opportunity to test out different approaches.  Rex had told me that most start to chop their way up a hill and lose speed; if it’s not too steep you should sit back and carve.  You do have to increase your tempo a bit, you decelerate sooner and gliding too long costs you speed.

I also did a bit of downhill work although doing it by myself wouldn’t really prepare me.  The rest was just basic training to make sure I could cover the distance without concern; my workouts ranged from 17-20 miles or so done at an easy aerobic pace as outlined on Tuesday.

My only real concern preparation wise that having done zero race pace or threshold work, I wouldn’t know what my limits were.  In my 20’s I had an uncanny ability to hit my threshold and stay there without blowing or going too easy.  I wasn’t sure if I still had that ability, especially not over 14 miles.

I needn’t have worried.

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Goals

Given how early it is in the season and given how little I know about where I stood, my goals for this first race were fairly simple.  My main one was to get racing experience.  Outside of a bit of paceline work on the ice, I haven’t been in a pack in over 15 years. I don’t ride a bike outdoors, I don’t know how to work in a pack or be surrounded by other people and not freak out.  And skating is worse than being on a bike because of the push to the side and the recovery, it’s easy to click skates with someone and go down.

As well, longer races are skated differently than a 10k.  At 20 minutes or less, you can time trial a 10k at threshold and not worry about it, you finish the race before you’re cooked.  Longer races tend to be more like bike racing, it’d be rare to go all out from start to finish.  You can sit in the pack, get some rest, work with others, breakaway, etc.  I have no experience with this and wanted to get some.  So my two primary goals were to get back in the pack and figure out current race dynamics and do so in a relatively ‘unimportant’ race.

I also wanted to go ahead and identify any early strengths or weaknesses for future, more important races.  Basically, just see where I stood based on my minimal (about 5 weeks of outdoor) training to better adjust my training for later season races.  Finally, I was just going to use it as a solid workout, this was another reason I had set up my training schedule as described on Tuesday.  I would skate Sunday morning and do my tempo run in the afternoon.  Just a normal training day where the skate ‘workout’ happened to be a race.

So those were the real goals; I didn’t really intend to ‘race’ in the sense of trying to win or place or even compete.  Then again, I know myself, I had told people ‘Yeah, I just want to go skate the distance’.  But as soon as the gun goes off and someone is going fast, I sort of knew what would happen.

Then I looked at the last year’s results.  It turned out that the 30-39 age group winner had finished in 58 minutes.  At that time, my easy aerobic workouts for 14 miles clocked in at 52 minutes.  I figured I could take my age group without even exerting myself.  This made it very easy to relax going into the race.

I had no stress, no anxiety.  I was just going to go do the thing that is the most fun thing in my life: go skate.  Even a bad skate is better than not skating for me right now.  I was actually excited going into the race which was a nice contrast to the hell of Salt Lake City the previous 5.5 years.

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Friday/Saturday

A lack of sleep messes with a lot of things but, ready or not for a race, I never sleep well the night before.  It’s not anxiety or stress, I simply don’t sleep well.  What I found in my 20’s was that it was the night before the night before that was important.  So long as I slept well on Friday night, a night of poor sleep on Saturday wouldn’t affect me.

So Friday night, I was in bed at 9:30pm and got a solid 10 hours.  Saturday morning I did my normal 90 minute easy aerobic workout.  A smarter man would have cut it to an hour (15′ run/30′ EFX/15′ run) and when I meet that smarter man, I’ll let him write articles for the site.  This was just normal training for me and I wasn’t cutting a workout for a race that I didn’t really care about.

I didn’t have to coach that afternoon so I just spent the day running some errands and doing some race prep.  I had opted to run fairly hard wheels (I had been training on softer training wheels); figuring that anything I lost on the short rough bits would be more than made up by higher speeds on the smooth parts of the course.

I consulted with Eva about it and she backed me up on the idea; in hindsight I’d have rather run even harder wheels but I don’t have them yet.  So I did some bearing switching, changed out my wheels, even checked my bolts and made sure I had everything I needed ready in my bag so I wouldn’t be running around Sunday morning trying to find stuff.

And then went out to be social.  As I said, I don’t sleep the night before a race and I could either sit at home arguing with people on the Internets or being obsessive about the next day’s race and wasting valuable mental energy.  Screw that, I wanted to celebrate.  Don’t get the wrong idea, I wasn’t celebrating victory or anything idiotic like that.  Rather,  I was celebrating a return to the single most joy-inducing thing in my life: inline skate racing.

So I went and spent the evening with two of my favorite people, just having fun and relaxing and not talking about skating (except them being sad that they couldn’t come cheer me on).    I even had a whole Smirnov Ice because I’m a mad man like that.  I bid them adieu at far too late an hour and must have gotten a solid 4.5 hours of sleep, if that.  I was in bed at maybe 12:30 am and woke up at 4:45am and again at 5:30am.

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Race Day

I had planned to get up at 6am anyhow but I was already awake and got moving.  Headed out to the venue, got my race packet and timing chip and just hung out.  My race number was 333, I guess that makes me 1/2 of the beast.   The weather was cool and dry, it was going to be a beautiful race day.  I warmed up, arguably too early but whatever.  I wasn’t really here to race and I don’t warm-up for skating workouts so I wasn’t worried about it.

I’d note that the promoters put on a great race.  Well organized, lots of volunteers, plenty of porta potties and everybody knew what was going on.  Music, some booths with equipment, they had a band after the race was over.  Just a good day all around.  A good turnout too, apparently 388 signed up for the races.  That’s pretty big for inline these days.

Now, the race actually had two major divisions, pro and everybody else; I was in the everybody else group.  The pros would go 3 minutes ahead of us to open a gap and then we started.  As I noted above, they were running a full marathon (28 miles/6 laps) and a half (14 miles/3 laps) but we all skated at the same time.  Which makes it a bit confusing, you don’t know who’s racing what distance or who is in your class.

I’d note that I did nothing nutritionally specific for this event.  I had taken my normal morning caffeine when I woke up but that was it.  I didn’t even carry water.  I figured I’d be done in about 50 minutes which is right on the cusp of needing hydration.  I had a Diet Coke in the car driving out and then had about 10 oz of water 30 minutes out which I then proceeded to pee out anyhow.  I’d be sufficiently hydrated in any case.

I didn’t want the added weight of my Camelbak and Tim Noakes actually has data showing that endurance guys who are a bit dehydrated at the end finish faster; they are lighter.  I just had to avoid cramping (I had one close call with a near calf cramp).  I did chew gum during the race (a trick taught to me 20 years ago by Joey D.) to keep my mouth moist.  But that was it.

To break up the dense text, here’s the first picture, me in my full skating regalia.  You can’t really tell it here but I am fully color coordinated.  My wheels are bright orange, blue skate laces, blue and white socks and my orange and blue skinsuit.  If red is the color of anger; I guess orange is the color of mild irritation or something.  And, no, we don’t wear underwear as is clearly the case.

Yes, my legs are shaved

The Start/Lap 1

Mass starts for inline races are interesting.  It’s bad enough in running races where the guys in back take minutes to get to the front.  In skating, it’s a bunch of folks trying to sprint, clicking skates and trying not to fall.  Here I made a tactical error, I wasn’t aggressive enough in getting up to the line.  Ideally faster skaters go up front and slower stay back but there is always one guy who wants to be up in the mix and gets in everybody’s way; no, it wasn’t me.  I had also been warned that the start was a downhill into a left turn and people would eat it off the start.

The end result was that I got hung up behind some slower skaters, one guy did fall a bit ahead of me but I went around him.  But I got dropped off the main fast pack by about 200m going up the first hill.  Since I didn’t know what I was capable of and didn’t want to blow, I had to keep it in my pants and just bide my time.

We got the top of the hill and the front pack had that same distance on me.  I just kept bridging up/past individual skaters and rapidly found myself in the same place I always was in my 20’s: too fast for everyone behind me but unable to catch the lead group. I feared that I’d be pulling the entire race by myself.  But I wasn’t there to race, right?

Anyhow, skaters in a paceline have a massive advantage, guys in back save at least 20% energy and they can rotate the lead and hold a higher speed than a lone skater.  If I’d been willing to kill myself on lap 1, I might have been able to catch them on the flats but it would have been wasted energy.  So I just kept them in my line of sight and didn’t panic.  They weren’t pulling away and I didn’t want to blow early.

We came around to the far side of the course and I just kept them in attacking distance, I knew I couldn’t catch them on the downhill section and, again, just kept them close.  On the flat bit at the bottom, they had the advantage again and started to widen the gap but I had already made my plan: I’d catch them on the second hill.

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Lap 2

We came through the start/finish, down the little hill and then into the climb.  Going up a hill, pacelines lose much of their inherent advantage.  Speeds are cut and most of the aero advantage is diminished.  As well, most inline skaters don’t know how to climb, they chop their strokes and push back when what they should be doing (as Rex taught me) was to sit back, keep the carve and just increase tempo.  Finally, the lead skater in the pack is an indoor skater and those guys usually only know how to do one thing well: turn left.  With him in front, the pack would slow to a crawl which it did.

So as soon as we hit the hill I gassed it.  I sat back on my heels and just carved for all I was worth, just like I’d practiced in training.  I started making up distance rapidly, kept the pressure up and halfway up I finally caught the back of the pack.  It had been an effort but I’d practiced climbing enough to know how hard I could go without blowing up.  Now I could get a bit of rest and sit in.  I recovered quickly, this is another advantage to having a huge aerobic engine.  Within a brief period, I felt fine.

But packs in this style of race tend to annoy me: they jack around either accelerating or slowing down.   Hold a constant speed dammit!  It’s called speed skating, you bozos, not skate-like-your-mom-drives skating.   But whatever, I wasn’t racing, right?

After maybe 30 seconds, I saw a kid in bright orange take a flyer.  And I made tactical error #2, I hesitated.   I wasn’t 100% sure I was ready to chase but I was sick of going slow.  So I stepped out to the left, hammered to the front of the line (thinking maybe they’d come with me and work; they didn’t) and then went after him.

He had a solid 200m on me but skating alone he didn’t have the inherent paceline advantage.  I knew he’d lose speed on the right hand turn at the top of the hill;  I wasn’t comfortable enough to crossover but I cut the corner as hard as I could and then accelerated like a maniac out, making up a lot of distance in the process.   Shortly thereafter I had his wheel and could sit in and recover for a second.

We worked together for the rest of the top bit into the downhill.  We caught a big line descending and that was scary as shit.  I had already clicked skates a couple of times and roaring down this hill in a line was not something I was used to.  You have to put your hand on the guy in front’s back, I got a couple of pushes from behind.  I just didn’t want to fall and kept moving sideways out of the line to avoid getting hung up or skating up someone’s ass.

We came around the next flat bit towards the start/finish and at some point it was me, the kid in orange and a guy in red working in a small line with me in back.  I still felt good and strong, not really tired at all.  For not intending to race, I seemed to be doing just that.  But I wasn’t dying in the process.

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The Final Lap

Our 3-man group bridged to the next pack, it was actually one of the pro start groups, we had made up the 3 minute gap they started with.  The guy in red asks if we want to pass or sit in.  I yell that he’s driving, he makes the call.  We sat in.   More jacking around in the pack and then I stepped out of the line again to avoid running up on the guy in front of me.  Usually increased wind slows you down but my bearings are so awesome (thanks to Rex’s super secret cleaning method) I was rolling past people not even pushing.

I thought about it for a split second and that was that: I put my head and the hammer down and went for a solo breakaway with 3/4 of a lap to go.  The kid in orange must not have seen me as I was on the inside of the line and I got away clean; he’d come after me soon enough.

I hammered up the hill like it was a flat and moved onto the top flat section, still clear and still moving like hell.  I’m not good at checking what’s behind me but as I made the right hand turn onto the downhill, I saw the kid in orange chasing a couple hundred meters back.

Figuring he couldn’t catch me on the downhill (he wouldn’t if I’d been in a line), I didn’t keep the pressure up; another tactical error.  He did and halfway down he caught my wheel.  No matter.  At this point, I was just racing to win my age group, I didn’t even think I was eligible for the overall since I hadn’t signed up for the open division.  I also thought the kid was racing the full marathon.

We came onto the final flat on the freeway and I’m working it at this point, keeping the pressure up just going since I know the end is in sight and there’s no reason to hold back.  I tell the kid to sit in, that I’m done this lap and he should save himself for the next 3 laps.  I’m just a nice guy.  We’re passing skaters left and right although a third joins our line.

I’m doing all the work, just pushing it hard.  I wasn’t sure about the guy who had joined us, thought he might be part of my age group so I was saving myself for the final sprint.  I had checked out the course and knew I could sprint the full distance from the final right hand turn to the finish line.  That’s when I’d go.

The kid in orange went with about a quarter mile to go.  Just bat out of hell balls out sprinting.  As above, I didn’t know where we were in the race in terms of finishing position (a danger of everyone racing all at once), didn’t think I was eligible for the open anyhow and thought he was doing the full marathon.  So I let him go.  That was my last and greatest tactical error.

He actually went too early and blew a bit, I waited until the final right hand corner and sprinted to the finish as planned, crossing the finish line a mere 2 seconds behind him.  He had done 42:14 and I came in 42:16; his teammate would come in 30 seconds later and the 4th place finisher was 3 minutes back.  Note again that my best in practice over the distance was 52 minutes.  I had kicked some serious ass.  And done it ‘not racing’.  Err, yeah.

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A Silly Tangent

I was fairly certain that I had won my age group by miles (I did, actually, 6 minutes ahead of number 2 which is a 2 mile gap) but wasn’t sure if I would be bumped up into the open division.  The kid had clearly come in first, I figured his teammate (30 seconds behind me) would get second. I was just an old fart age grouper, right?

But while waiting the 2.5 hours that would pass until awards, I decided to get my face painted.  Yeah, fine it was mainly for the kids but screw it; people take this too seriously.  If you’re not having fun, don’t bother.  I had raced an incredible race, now it was time to relax and have fun.  I wish I had had alcohol with me.

Yes, I am an idiot.

I’m actually a little annoyed that it’s facing backwards.  That’s the wrong direction to be skating.  The woman who did it mentioned I was the only one with a beard to get one.  The caption couldn’t be truer.

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The Results

So after everyone had finished the event, they finally gave out awards.  I was reasonably certain I was being bumped up to the overall at this point, having skated the second fastest time for the men’s half marathon.  I wasn’t wrong.  That’s right, my first race in 15 years, not rested, not tapered, with only 5 weeks on my inline skates.  And I made the podium (you can almost see my Sock Monkey shirt behind the trophy).  The kid who beat me by a frustrating 2 seconds is 14, his teammate in third is 15.  I’ll be 40 in 2 weeks.

I'm short.

Now, as I mentioned the event is called the Texas Road Rash and they actually give an award for the best road rash from the race. Had  I known going in, I’d have tanked it at the finish and taken off a layer of skin to get a second award.  As it was I got this trophy for my second place overall finish (I didn’t get a first place trophy for my age group as they move you out when you place in the open division).  It’s my first one and occupies a proud place on my mantle next to my monkeys.

It's a cheese grater, really

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So What’s the Point?

Believe it or not the point of this article is not only:

1. To prattle self-indulgently.
2. To give the finger to the trolls who gave me shit for not being talented on the ice.
3. To show off my trophy.

I actually want to make a point about training.  The current idea that the only type of training that can or should or must be done is high-intensity interval training continues with unabated stupidity on the Internet.  By folks who are not athletes and have not coached athletes but need to sell a product and pretend that they have.

Certainly my n=1 experience means very little. Or does it?  The facts are that most endurance athletes do a majority of their training at low intensities topped off with a bit of high-intensity work and there a lot of reasons to do this.  In fact, the majority of training done by most athletes is done at a fairly moderate intensity (even Westside Barbell, which is known for high intensity training year round does MOST of their work around 75% intensity).   Contrary to the claims of the clueless, easy training doesn’t make you slow or weak.  What it makes you is good.

I didn’t even do the bit of high intensity work most endurance types do and I still kicked ass.   I’ve done zero formal interval work and zero formal threshold work for skating.  I’ve skated aerobically just over a dozen times and done a tiny bit of sprint work (maybe 3 minutes/week tops).  The rest of my training is a mix of easy aerobic and tempo training running or on the elliptical.  It’s all done at aerobic intensities.  Figure ~10-11 hours/week of total training broken into about 50-60% intensive endurance and the rest easy aerobic. And whatever percentage 3 minutes of sprint work per week works out to (hint: it’s ~0.4% of my total volume).

So that’s 99.6% aerobic and 0.4% sprint work.  And nothing else.

And despite that, despite not tapering at all, not resting at all and having done zero race pace work, I took second in the men’s overall division in my first race in 15 years, all while holding speeds that I never touched in training; that I couldn’t have done 15 years younger training 10 times harder.

Had I skated a better tactical race (including knowing who I was actually racing against), I’d have taken first without effort.  I shouldn’t have let the kid wheel suck and I shouldn’t have let him break on me; those are two mistakes I’ll never make again.  But tactical experience will come with more racing. Physiologically, with only 5 weeks under my belt on my inlines, I’m already kicking ass.  I can’t wait for the end of the season when I’m actually in shape.

Let met put this in further perspective, my average speed for the race was 19.8 MPH over the 13.99 mile course; my top speed was 27.4 MPH.  The men’s pro winner who most likely had a decent pack to work with averaged 21.6 MPH.  I pulled most of my race by myself and on nothing more than aerobic training am right in the mix.  With a good pack, I’d expect to go faster than 19.8 MPH.

Doubling my race time of 42:14 to 1:24:28 for the full marathon would have placed me top 10 in the men’s pro open and about top 6 in men’s pro masters; again with only 5 weeks of low intensity training under my belt.  Sure, it’s a theoretical result but with a pack to save energy and a bit more training to be able to cover the distance, it’s well within my capacities.

I’d note that according to my Garmin (which I wore for data gathering but did not look at during the race; you can train by tech but you race by feel), I had an average heart rate of 177 with a max of 189.  I usually put 175-180 in calculators for my threshold heart rate and clearly that’s about right.

And I was able to redline right at that exact pace with ZERO work at that pace in training (admittedly some of this is due to the racing I did in my 20’s).  I did it by feel and had the aerobic engine (developed from mainly low-moderate intensity work) and technique to go fast at that pace.  Without doing any hard work on my skates.

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Beating a Dead Horse

Now, I suppose the real hardheads could argue “But if you had done intervals, you might have won.”  Two things.  First, I didn’t lose for physiological reasons, I lost for tactical reasons.  And the fact that I wasn’t actually trying to win per se.  Second, think about it objectively, try for a second to put your preconceived notions away.  In the past 5 weeks of training, I haven’t done a single workout that was exhausting or even particularly difficult.  Skating is always fun, mind you, the rest of my training is simply boring.  But it’s not hard.

Sure, I’ve had skating workouts where my low back was torched but I’ve not walked out of a single workout feeling exhausted.  At most I’m sweaty as hell and a little bit tired.  But that’s it.  To argue that working 20% harder and being worn out all the time would be worth an improvement that wouldn’t have made the difference in the first place and most likely wouldn’t occur in the second is asinine. Which won’t stop people of course.  They know intervals are superior to everything else and steady state low-intensity cardio makes you slow and stuff.  Right.

Make no mistake, I will eventually perform some actual interval and threshold work on my skates.  Or maybe I won’t if this type of training puts me where I need to be.  That is, why work harder than I need to if I’m performing well on the easier stuff?  But simply consider that, doing exactly zero of that type of work, I performed at an absolutely stellar level, at speeds that I never trained at in practice (my top speed during training is just over 22 MPH but that’s going downhill; I average about 17 MPH at an average heart rate of 156).  But for right now, clearly doing 99.6% aerobic work is allowing me to perform at my best.  Why would I possibly consider doing something else? Or working much much harder for what would probably give me less return?

In any case, for all of you intent on working hard all the time and not feeling happy if you’re not blown up by training all the time, there might be lesson in this.  For those of you still fascinated by trying to perform interval training year round, there might be a lesson in this.  Or not.

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Hardcore or just Stupid as Hell?

Oh yeah, on the way home from the event, there was a location of the gym I belong too (I am ashamed to name it).  It was 12:30pm, less than 4 hours after I’d finished my race, taking second place after spending over 40 minutes at/near anaerobic threshold.

And I did my hour tempo run at 160 HR because this was just a training day for me and I wasn’t missing a training session.  A training day where I made the podium but a training day nonetheless.

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And…A Brief Shout-Out

Thanks, Rex.   I didn’t have what it took on the ice but you gave me the skills to have what it takes outdoors.  I was trained by the best and I couldn’t have done this without you.

In any case, having completed the massive Methods of Endurance Training series, I had done a followup called Methods of Endurance Training: Putting it Together where I gave a real-world example of how I was structuring my own training for my return to outdoor inline racing. I’ll recap some of it below for ease of reading but anybody who wants the details of why I did what I did should read the full piece.  I’ll wait.

But continuing that series, I’m going to do another follow-up on that, discussing how my own training for outdoor inline training has progressed/evolved and then show you the real-world results of the training.  The timing is only relevant as I completed my first race this past Saturday which is why I’m taking the break from the Overtraining series.

Since I’m wordy as usual, this will be a two parter.  Today I’m going to focus mostly on training physiology and application of some of the concepts I talked about endlessly in the previous articles.   Friday I’m going to prattle self-indulgently about myself a bit (with pictures) to show you how my training ended up serving me at my first inline race in over 15 years.

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Summing up the First Block

In Methods of Endurance Training: Putting it Together, I described how I was setting up my training and gave many whys and wherefores as to the reasons behind my madness.  That is, why I set things up when and where I set them up.  To save everyone having to click one whole link, I’ve reproduced that training schedule below.  If you want the details of why I set it up that way, you will have to get over your phobia of clicking on blue text and go read the original piece.

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For the most part, I followed that schedule unchanged with one major exception.  First of January, my knee started bothering me.  I suspect it was due to a skiing adventure where I got a bit twisted up, I started getting pain deep in the knee, it felt meniscal or possibly ligament related.  So I had to stop running and replaced all run workouts with the EFX (elliptical machine) at my apartment complex.  Neither skating nor the bike bothered it, only running and the impact involved was a problem.

While I didn’t care for the EFX much at first, in some ways it may have additional benefits for skating.  There can be a lot of upper back fatigue during skating and getting some aerobic fitness in the upper body with the arm part of the EFX could have benefits.  As well, muscles that aren’t being used during high-intensity activity can actually serve as a buffer for acid, this could have some potential performance benefits even for leg-dominant activities.  Yes, I can rationalize with the best of them.

Originally, I had planned to follow this overall schedule for my first 18 weeks of training.

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But it didn’t actually quite work out that way.  Rather than 4 weeks of threshold work and 3 weeks of VO2 max work to peak it out, I actually combined the workouts.  I did my threshold workout on Tuesday and did a VO2 max workout on Saturday and I did that for the final 6 weeks or so.  So I got the same number of workouts on each, just in a combined fashion rather than sequentially.

The main reason is that by Saturday of the week I was toast and the idea of grinding another threshold workout was just too daunting; it would have been a poor workout anyhow.  But I could suffer through 3X3′ intervals at VO2 max.  So I’d hit my threshold workouts earlier in the week when I was fresher and then ‘peak it out’ with a shorter more intensive workout on Saturday.  Call it the Utah Method, ha ha.

During those roughly 6 weeks of peaking work, I saw improvements weekly in wattages on the bike on both the threshold and VO2 workouts.  At the end of it, I was holding for 20 minutes power output that before had murdered me for maybe 8 minutes 2 years before when I was training solely for the ice. Whereas 220w for 10 minutes had been a grind in previous years, I was doing my long aerobic workouts (90 minutes) at that level.  I also took my VO2 max wattages from a starting point of 270w (which nearly killed me) to about 320w by the end.

As discussed in the No Regrets series, that’s about when I left SLC and for the next 2 weeks I was travelling and sort of training in a catch as catch-can way, just getting workouts as I could.  It ended up acting as a reduced volume/frequency taper in a lot of ways which is what I would have done formally had I not been travelling.

I rocked the Stepmill in Austin before skating the Veloway and killed it wattage wise; coming down from altitude gave me about 3 weeks of pure awesomeness where my aerobic range just jumped.  In Nashville, I did some Stepmill and a bit of outdoor skating and culminated that week with a Stepmill workout to mimic a 10k race.

To whit, after a single 20 minute threshold set and a 10 minute break, I started my second threshold set. I started with 15 minutes at my threshold power output and then started ramping it up.  I’d go up a level a minute for the first 4 minutes and then pushed it to the top of my limits in the last minute, ramping every 15 seconds.  Just mimicking a race situation where you go from threshold to above threshold to a full out sprint at the end.

But the cycle had been massively successful.  I’d used volume (tempo and aerobic work) to build potential and peaked it over roughly 6-8 weeks to a new upper high level.  I was leaner than I’d been in years and my fitness (gauging by power outputs) was higher than at any point during the time I was in Salt Lake City.  All doing more work at lower intensities.

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Back in Austin

After some toing and froing of no relevance to this article, I ended up settling back in Austin, Texas.  My first two weeks of training were pretty haphazard, I was finding a place to live, scoping out places to skate for training, the weather was unpredictable.  It had the benefit of both some active recovery and letting me gradually ramp up into the next training block.

And while I’d love to plan it out in detail like I did the first block, with races on the schedule, I don’t have quite as much flexibility.  I’ll have to be making adjustments to my training based on race performance in any case, just based on what my strengths and weaknesses are and what needs to be fixed.  My overreaching goal, mind you, is to continue building my aerobic engine but there will have to be deviations from any fixed plan due to race schedule dynamics.

In any case, after more toing and froing figuring out gyms, spending time skating indoor inline that would have been better served by skating outdoors, I’ve finally settled on the following ‘ideal’ weekly schedule which I’ll explain a bit below.

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As you can see, I’m not on a completely normal weekly schedule, I technically run Saturday to Thursday and choose to make Friday may day off for a couple of reasons.  One is that most races are on the weekends and I need to be in the habit of skating then; it’s no good being used to having Sunday as an off day if that’s when I have to race.  The second is that I need some circle practice for crossovers and the only suitable lot I’ve found is at a local mall, I can get out there Sunday morning before it opens and not get kicked out by the mall cops.  Friday became the best day to take completely off.

The 90′ easy aerobic workout on Sat/Mon/Wed is currently broken up into 15′ easy running, 60′ on the elliptical, and 15′ more easy running; I break it up mainly for boredom reasons, there’s no strong physiological reason to do so.  Heart rate during this workout never tops 150 and is usually closer to 145; I’ll bump up speeds/level as I adapt but the focus here is on duration NOT intensity or speed.

It’s mainly just boring but is keeping me lean and acts as both recovery/regeneration/a mild aerobic stimulus between the three harder days of training.  To avoid going nuts, I’m going to get a bike and train outdoors more often than not for easy aerobic training.  I’ll spend enough time during the winter indoors without going crazy now.

The aerobic inline workouts started at about 30-40 minutes and have now built to an hour and 15 minutes.  My HR is more variable here since I’m outdoors and contending with wind, traffic and hills but my average is usually in the mid 150’s according to my Garmin monitor.  As well, the odd nature of skating along with the posture makes working at a 145 heart rate nearly impossible but effort wise, a mid 150’s workout skating is equivalent to a mid-140’s on a bike or something.  So it’s still pretty easy aerobic training.  The heart rate/effort relationship is just a bit skewed.

Over time, I’ll build the skating workouts to 90-120 minutes total which will be more than enough for the races I’m targeting.  As noted, these are meant to be easy workouts done aerobically although the vagaries of training outdoors mean that headwinds or hills will raise intensity a bit.  In addition, I’ll usually try to throw in 4-6 short 10-15 second sprints which is the sum total of my speed work right now.  One of my courses has a specific section marked off by streetlamps and I’ll either sprint for 20 total strokes or alternate 10 sprint strokes with 6 cruise strokes with 10 sprint strokes (to mimic breakaway dynamics).  I’ve done zero threshold work and zero formal interval work on my skates.

But as with my first block of training, my key workouts each week are the three hard runs and the week is set up on a hard day (skate+run) easy day (aerobic) schedule with the one day off.   This also ensures that skating is always done with fresh legs after the easier training day.  And yes, my knee healed.  Staying off it for 3 months accompanied with horse doses of glucosamine sulfate and MSM from Costco did the trick.

Weather hasn’t been a problem to date but it can be, if and when I get rained out, that’s when I’ll go indoors to get some time on my skates and move the tempo run to the morning.  It’s not ideal but that’s life when you have rain to contend with.  Alternately, I may use my slideboard if I get rained out since it’s more specific to the physiology of outdoor racing.   Basically, I’ll use indoor when I have to (and during the winter);  if I can skate outdoors, I should skate outdoors.  Specificity trumps everything else.

If you’re wondering why the skating isn’t at a higher intensity, the reasons are two-fold.  One is that it’s too early in the season to burn myself out skating hard.  The second is of more importance: technique.  I’m still getting used to the distances involved, the nature of skating pavement instead of perfect ice, etc.

My outdoor skills have come back quickly but they aren’t there entirely.   If I were to try to go harder skating, I wouldn’t be able to lock in the technique I spent 5.5 years developing and that’s my main priority for this first year: to make my technique automatic.  So I’m keeping the skating aerobic (or as aerobic as it can be) and using the runs to build fitness.  Since I’m skating consistently, I should get transfer.

The extra aerobic work jogging/EFX’ing is just that, keep a consistent aerobic stimulus, stay lean, blah, blah.  So, again there’s a mix of training: I’m skating outdoor inline since that’s as specific as it gets, using three tempo workouts to improve fitness and just doing a lot of other easy aerobic work to do easy aerobic work.

If you’re wondering why I’m not skating more, here’s why: I can’t at the moment.  My low back hasn’t adapted to the distances I’m skating yet and the one time I tried to skate two days in a row, I was just wrecked.  My technique was crap, I couldn’t do it in a useful fashion (I called that workout after 10 minutes and went to the gym for aerobic work).

Once I adapt, I’ll move up to 4 skates per week and pull out one of the run/EFX sessions.  But that’s weeks away right now; I’m in no hurry.  I may also add some short slideboard sets to get more skate specific aerobic fitness on the easy aerobic days, maybe 20-30 minutes in the afternoon.  I have one in my office now.

And, at this point, what I’m doing is working quite well so I’m actually hesitant to change it. You’ll see how well on Friday when I prattle a bit self-indulgently about my first race.

Read Methods of Endurance Training: Results Part 2.

I finished by listing a handful of common symptoms of overtraining with the list deliberately meant to demonstrate that some of the symptoms appear to be relegated to muscle and the others to the brain or more central parts of the body.  I’ll pick up there today by looking at another common distinction of overtraining ‘types’ and then look a bit more at what ’causes’ overtraining to try to tie all of this together.
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Type of Overtraining Part 2: Central vs. Peripheral

For reasons primarily of practicality and convenience, the body is often divided rather roughly into central (meaning the brain and central nervous system) and peripheral (muscle and peripheral nervous system) systems.  While this helps simplify discussions, it’s critical to realize that the systems aren’t separate in the least.

As I discussed in a very different context in the article Dieting Psychology vs. Dieting Physiology, the central and peripheral systems are interacting and communicating with one another constantly. In the case of eating behaviors and body weight regulation, the gut, fat cells and everything peripheral is sending signals to the brain (about such things as how much you’re eating, energy balance, fuel utilization) and the brain is sending signals back out or adapting to them (e.g. making you hungry if you’re dieting, slowing metabolic rate, etc.).

In the case of the body and training, while the brain is sending signals to the muscles about how to contract or what to do, the muscles are sending signals back to the brain (about energy store, damage and other factors).  Separating the two systems may be convenient for discussion or study but it’s ultimately wrong; I’ll come back to this at the end of today.

In any case, in the early days of overtraining, there was an idea that central overtraining and peripheral overtraining were distinct entities and that different types of training would impact on/cause each.  And certainly there is an element of truth to the idea.  We all know, having read the Internets, that certain types of training tend to ’stress’ the central nervous system more than others; and certain types of training tend to stress the muscles more.

But it’s not as if it’s one or the other; it’s simply an issue of proportion (e.g. 20 rep squats are stressful all over and studies actually show a great deal of neural stress from what usually thought of as muscular training).  All training has effects on both muscles and nervous system factors just to different degrees.  That’s on top of the communication going on between the two.  Put differently, it’s critical to realize that the muscles ‘talk’ to the brain in the same way that the brain ‘talks’ to the muscles.

But ideas that you couldn’t overtrain so long as you rotated what muscles you trained every day or that you could only overtrain with certain types of training did become entrenched in the lore of training because of this artificial separation.  And it caused people to make some big mistakes.

As a singular example, Fred Hatfield not only wrote that central overtraining didn’t exist, but that you could train as much and as hard as you wanted so long as you alternated muscle groups.  That is, so long as you avoided local overstress of a given set of muscles, you were fine because there was no such thing as central overtraining.  Sadly he was completely and utterly wrong as many who tried to follow his ABC system found out the hard way.

Going back to my time in SLC, I saw a fantastic example of this, again with the Russian coach who had buried our team in volume; he believed that it was impossible to overtrain if you weren’t doing training that stressed the cardiovascular system.  So long as it was just local muscular work, he felt you were fine.  Which is an idea that got discredited by probably the 1980’s or so; sadly he hadn’t learned anything new since the 70’s.

Because of this belief, he then proceeded to destroy Eva as, despite her constantly telling him that she was becoming overtrained (she had all the symptoms), he ‘knew’ that it was impossible.  They weren’t doing central work and, in his mind, that made overtraining impossible.  All because of a 30 year old discredited idea and the fact that he was a moron.

Again, there is certainly some merit to the idea that peripheral and central fatigue/overtraining do have distinct causes or at least manifestations, which I’ll come back to in a second, but at the end of the day you can’t separate the two out in the simplistic fashion that many have done.  Everything is literally communicating with everything else.  Central versus peripheral systems or overtraining (or fatigue) can be a separation of convenience, just keep in mind that it’s not a separation that exists in reality (or ‘for reals’ as the kids say these days).  You’ll see why I’m beating this particular dead horse so hard in a moment.

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What Causes Overtraining Redux

In Overtraining, Overeaching and all the Rest Part 3, I presented the idea that the global ’cause’ of overtraining was a long-term imbalance between training (and other) stressors and recovery processes.  While that’s useful in a practical sense, it doesn’t get to the real root of the matter; that is, what at the biological/physiological level is causing the problem.  As I noted, those processes may be useful to delve into if they help on a practical level.  Perhaps they let us modulate diet, or supplementation (or drugs), or training structure or what have you.

So what, at the end of the day ’causes’ overtraining?

For decades researchers have looked for an answer and many ideas have been tossed around.  An early one was simply glycogen depletion, it was felt that insufficient carbohydrate was leading to progressive glycogen depletion and that caused the problem.  And some studies seemed to bear this out, glycogen would get depleted over the course of a hard training week and the athletes would start to show early signs of problems.

The idea certainly looked good on paper but studies where glycogen levels were maintained with high-carbohydrate intakes in the face of a heavy training still couldn’t prevent underperformance.  Glycogen depletion wasn’t helping but simply maintaining glycogen levels wasn’t sufficient either.  It might have been part of the issue but it wasn’t the whole issue.

A myriad other things have been looked at and many of the biological things that researchers look at (such as the free testosterone/cortisol ratio) are probably more markers of overtraining than causes per se; that is they indicate that recovery isn’t keeping up with stress but aren’t actually causing the problem.

It didn’t help that some of the factors being looked at were central, changes in neurochemistry and such that occurred.  That was on top of the observations that many of the manifestations of overtraining seemed to be emotionally or brain based as much as they were muscle based.

It was hard to figure out how all of these disparate pieces of data fit together to explain what caused overtraining.  That is, how could all of those different symptoms of overtraining, some of which look emotional/behavioral and some of which look muscular, be linked.  And then someone finally figured it out.

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The Cytokine Hypothesis of Overtraining

The most comprehensive model of the cause of overtraining that I’ve seen was presented in a paper titled Cytokine hypothesis of overtraining: a physiological adaptation to excessive stress? by LL Smith (he’s written several others in a similar vein).  In it he examined all of the different data points that had been developed over the years and built up a model of overtraining that I think is on the right track.  It may or may not be the entire picture but, at this point in the game, I think it’s the best model we have to explain all of these different data points.

Now, for background, cytokines are small, fairly short-lived chemical messengers that do a lot of different things in the body.  As a singular example is something called IL-6 or Interleukin-6.  Released from skeletal muscle and fat cells, IL-6 does a number of different things.  Acutely, it can increase fat oxidation (and IL-6 is released in response to glycogen depletion); chronically it causes inflammation.

IL-6 can also cause fatigue during exercise and it does so by altering neurochemistry in the brain.  So under experimental conditions, even if someone is well rested and such, if you inject IL-6 into them, their exercise performance goes down and they will report fatigue and lethargy.  And IL-6 does so by altering brain function and neurochemistry.  In other words, IL-6 is a chemical released from skeletal muscle that goes to the brain and makes you fatigue sooner than you otherwise would.  Now we’re onto something.

There are dozens of cytokines doing all kinds of things in the body and they are probably all interacting in horribly complex ways that it will take researchers forever to figure out (this keeps them off the streets and out of scientist gangs).  But cytokines and how they work provide one mechanism by which one area of the body (for example, skeletal muscle) can communicate with others such as the brain.

An easy to understand example that most are familiar with is what happens when you get the flu: you get achy muscles and joints, you lose your appetite, you want to sleep all the time.  Basically, the immune system response in one part of the body causes this cytokine response that goes to the brain and makes you feel crappy so that you’ll rest and get over being sick.  The peripheral response has an additional central manifestation, you don’t just get achy muscles and joints but your behavior changes in a way that hopefully gets you to rest up and get over being sick.

Your body is smart sometimes.  Unfortunately, people are sometimes not so smart.  But whereas people will rest when they have the flu, as I noted in Overtraining, Overreaching and all the Rest Part 4,  athletes often continue hammering themselves even in the face of this mounting fatigue and lethargy.  If they were sick, they’d take time off; faced with underperformance, they often train harder.  And they dig the hole deeper.

And this turns out to probably explain a lot about the disparate symptoms of overtraining.  Essentially, the paper I cited above took all the data and developed a model whereby chronic overwork of muscles and joints (in the face of insufficient recovery) causes a systematic inflammatory response in the body; studies have found an increase in a variety of inflammatory cytokines.

In addition to giving you that feeling of achiness, the cytokines released go to the brain and make you lethargic, sap motivation, depress you (or make you hostile depending on your overall personality type), blunt appetite, etc.  They do this by screwing with your neurochemistry.  Those changes then impact on your exercise performance because the signals sent to your muscles to do work is now impaired.  It’s just one big loop.

The chronic peripheral stress/damage/inflammation is the cause of the behavioral issues, mediated by shifts in the chronic levels of inflammatory cytokines.  Basically, it’s your body trying to tell you to knock it off, rest and recover by making you feel like crap.   But as noted above, whereas most people will rest when they are sick, certain athletic personalities interpret underperformance as a need to train harder; they ignore the feedback signals that their body is giving them and do more damage.  Which becomes a different kind of loop: excessive training leads to underperformance which drives more training which further harms underperformance which…..

Beyond that, the idea that central and peripheral overtraining are separate entities is simply wrong.  Rather, the chronically heavy training leading to underecovered/chronically damaged muscles leads to this inflammatory response that causes the central effects (fatigue, lethargy, depression).  It seems to explain most of what’s going on although newer data may develop a more complete model.  I doubt it will fundamentally change this one, it may simply add to it somewhat.

But that rather simple concept, that the muscles and brain are in constant communication with one another seems to wrap the overall set of data points on overtraining into a rather neat little package.  As I noted, many of the observed changes (e.g. biochemical) are probably secondary to the other changes but, at the end of the day, it’s constant heavy loading on muscles and joints that causes a systematic inflammatory response that, in addition to making your muscles feel bad, sends signals to your brain that inhibits you globally.

Hormones go whacky, sleep is disrupted, you get depressed or hostile (researchers have used the Profile of Mood States or POMS to try to measure overtraining for years, and certain characteristic changes occur with overtraining), lose your motivation, reaction time goes down (some have likened overtraining to chronic fatigue syndrome), etc.   It’s a shockingly simple and neat model but seems to explain most of what’s been observed over the past 30 years and all of the differently observed levels (muscular, neural, neurochemical, behavioral).

And that’s where I’ll wrap up today.  In the next one or two parts, I’ll wrap up and look at how to use some of this information to both avoid/prevent overtraining, deal with it when/if it happens and all the rest.

Read Overtraining, Overreaching and all the Rest Part 7.

.Types of Overtraining Part 1: A-type and B-type

At some point in the early days of overtraining research, there was made a distinction between what was called at the time Addisonic (or A-type) and Basedowic (B-type) overtraining.  These were meant to draw similarities to, respectively, Addison’s disease (where the body has overactive parasympathetic dominance) and Basedow’s disease (where it has overactive sympathetic dominance).

I sort of alluded to this in an earlier part of the series where I mentioned that, while, typically overtraining is marked by higher heart rates at the same workload, sometimes it’s marked by lower (and this can look like the athlete is getting fitter).  The first example would represent the old sympathetic/Basedowic overtraining; the second parasympathetic/Addisonic overtraining.

The essential idea is that, in the case of A-type overtraining, the body has become parasympathetic dominant; that is the parasympathetic branch of the nervous system is sending out too strong of a signal.  As one of the consequences of this you often see a lowered resting heart rate, lowered blood pressure and some other stuff.

As I mentioned, this can actually look like the athlete is improving their fitness although their performance still usually sucks (especially when they try to generate near maximal efforts).  In contrast, with B-type overtraining, the sympathetic nervous system is dominant, leading to increased resting (and training) heart rates, raised blood pressure, etc.

Originally, it was thought that different types of training caused the different types of overtraining.  The idea being that high volume training (as seen in endurance sports) would cause parasympathetic dominance and high intensity training (as seen in strength/power sports) caused sympathetic dominance.

But it doesn’t seem to work out that well in practice. As I’ll talk about in, I dunno, Part 7 or something, you tend to see sympathetic dominance in both types of sports when overtraining starts, regardless of type.  A more current idea is that the early stages of overtraining are marked by sympathetic dominance and if you keep pounding on the athlete, they move into parasympathetic dominance.  It’s also possible that different athlete simply show different responses although I’m unaware of data to support that idea.

If there is anything to the idea of ‘adrenal fatigue’, this is probably the closest you’ll ever see me to acknowledging it; A-type/Addisonic/Parasympathetic overtraining is thought to be a failure of the adrenal glands to keep up with demands of constant/chronic stress.  Basically, the system just shuts down (after having previously been ramped up for an extended period).

I’d note that some research on this topic suggest that, contrary to the idea that this is a bad thing, it is actually the body’s adaptation to limit damage from stress.  But I’m not saying anything more about it than that and I have no intention of discussing the topic (at least not as it relates specifically to overtraining) in the comments.

Simply, overtraining can get complicated by the fact that different responses are possible. Certainly, sympathetic overtraining seems to be the more common form, and may be the earlier form.  But it’s also possible for responses that look like a training effect (e.g. lowered resting and training HR’s) to occur, that’s parasympathetic overtraining.  Which can make real diagnosis a problem.

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Symptoms of Overtraining

Over the years, researchers and coaches have identified a number of common symptoms that tend to occur with or sometimes prior to true overtraining/underperformance and I want to look at a few of them below.

I’m not going to discuss them in detail but having them handy not only gives athletes and coaches one gross tool to use for monitoring things, it’s necessary for something I’m going to talk about on Friday .

And I call it a gross indicator for a reason I’ll get into more detail later: the various signs and symptoms of overtraining are never universal, don’t occur in all situations or in all athletes. So they aren’t perfect. But they are common.  I’d note that this list is not meant to be even remotely comprehensive, it’s just a few of the more common symptoms when overtraining has or is about to occur.

1. Constant muscular fatigue and/or soreness (both muscle and joints).
2. Lack of motivation to train/lethargy/overall fatigue.
3. Higher incidence of illness.
4. Depression in susceptible athletes.  Hostility in others.
5. Sleep disruptions.
6. Impaired appetite.
7. Increased resting heart rate and blood pressure (except in the case of B-type overtraining).

As you can sort of see it’s a rather mixed bag of symptoms, and again, that’s only a handful of them.  What may stand out to you, and I deliberately sort of randomly ordered them in the list is that some seem to be related solely to muscles and such while others seem to be more brain (or at least centrally) related.  I did this for a reason.

But to keep this a bit shorter on a day to day basis, I’m going to make you wait until Part 6 on Friday to find out that reason.  See you then.

Read Overtraining, Overeaching and all the Rest Part 6.