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HADD Training Method
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Regroup time. I have the ITU open race (Olympic distance) in June, so while the runnign legs recovery, I need to remember how to swim and ride a bike further than my commute distance! I'll let the running tick over and pick it up again full-time ready for Chester in October.
On a day when you don't feel 'rubbish' those 15 seconds will be yours for the taking.
Hope you're recovering well. Nice you can now focus on something else for a while.
Chester is a very good marathon.
Hadd did say "An HR graph that falls over the course of a marathon should mean only one of two things:
a) the runner is winning comfortably and can afford to slow down (thus the running pace also slows along with HR). I have a graph which can demonstrate exactly this.
b) the runner is beginning to experience severe drop in muscle glycogen and the amount of muscle mass that can be recruited is dropping (thru fuel exhaustion). Lower recruited muscle mass will require reduced blood flow, so cardiac output drops. Obviously the running pace will also drop and the runner will slow in the later stages of the race. "
So it looks like he wouldn't have had an explanation - at least at the time he wrote this.
By the way, I realise that I should have left a 90s gap between sections of the Hadd test on Sunday. I just accelerated through - that seems much more logical - easier to quickly hit the next required HR.. So I either need to make that my new standard, or do it properly next time, and not be able to do a direct comparison. Any thoughts on this?
It won't make a huge difference but you should show faster results next time.
You're right, neither of those reasons that Hadd states for reducing HR apply to you.
Missed too many weeks of training moved away from HR training and paid for it in the last 4 miles of marathon HR hadnt moved much but legs were dead and couldn't get them going so more lack of fitness, ended up doing 3.43 still a personal best by 18 minutes, but if had trained could have been so much better. My sublt runs were at 8.00/mile when I got lazy and less motivated and lost quite a bit of fitness.
Am now back Hadding as part of my recovery and through my next training cycle for October Yorkshire marathon. Plan will be to build to 3x 60 min 70-75%, 2 x 90 mins one sublt one 70-75% plus long run from 2 hours up to 3 depending on where in cycle am at.
60m @ 10.18/m this morning can see some recovery from first post marathon run which was 10.37/m.
Hopefully thread continues.....
And you know now going into your training for Yorkshire that there is still more to come.
Those last four miles was disappointed with myself really that had missed 200+ miles of training more through laziness (coincided with a new job and change to to timetable but thats just an excuse) that training would have stopped some of the pain went through the 8 minute positive split, but has inspired me to get back out there. Ultimate aim is to try and get to 3.15 and be GFA that's maybe next spring though.
I have it in my head that you should rest for 1 or 2 mins between each HR test?
As long as you are consistent in further tests, you should at least then see your progression, rather than changing the rest between runs next time, which means you may as well chuck your recent HR test results away.
Good luck with your Marathon at the weekend Shades, and nice progress over the past 12 months with the Hadd test!
The weather for Monday keeps changing between 17 and sunny, to 13 with rain and cloud! The cooler the better!
I have family members at miles 9 and 17 waiting with a Lucozade Sport for me as the Marathon will have Gatorade Orange Sport on course which I have struggled to find in any supermarkets so rather than gamble on my dodgy stomach, will only take water from the feed stations.
Nice weekly stats Sol2.
Great performance Dr Dan, although I was hoping for a slightly longer report?
Taper madness has really set in with ne, with niggles to my Achilles, calves and both hips. So I've decided to go out at 4:30 pace which is 10:15 pace despite all information I have showing I should aim for a quicker time.
My average LT pace is 9:47 so assume my marathon pace should also be this?
The Mcmillan Calculator says my 1:55 half is about 4:01 pace, and my 3:07 20 mile race come out at about 4:10.
I am not convinced that I have trained on since though and after my previous two nightmare marathons, I would be happy getting around without stopping, under 4:30.
I need to write a blog post for my club's page, so there will be a longer version! However, currently over-run with work, so struggling to get around to this (and to catch up with the thread!).
Martyn - so far the forecast for my race is far too cool for my liking, 10 degrees/feels like 7/8 degrees, that is far too cold for me
I've had Gatorade years ago, at NY marathon I think. Not seen it for sale here except on line. I haven't used sports drinks for years so what a race provides is one less thing for me to worry about. I carry some electrolyte drops which I put into the water and use sweet and dates for carb energy.
I think your target of 4:30 is a sensible target and will be a good PB for you.
I've deliberately done a mini Hadd test close to this marathon so I can see the correlation between my Hadd results and my marathon time, although my injury might scupper this. If I can get through this race without my injury bothering me I have a flatter marathon the following week which will be a better test, although that race can be subject to strong winds as it's by the sea.
I think you would only be able to hold your suggested LT pace in a marathon if you can run 10 miles at that pace with no drift and feel you could do the whole thing again, I might be wrong there?
I hope you're going to do a detailed race report for MK, I so enjoyed your 20 mile race report
I did the a lunchtime run. Same route as last week between 4 and 5 miles... with the last mile flat and paved - my "benchmark" mile. Today, it was 30s faster than last week (today, 10:09 at avg 121 (69% HRmax). I suppose I can put that down to random variation... or perhaps last week I still had some Mancester marathon in my legs? - it see
I went gluten and lactose free for a couple of months last year, and that kick started me on weight loss... and it did my running the world of good. As for a vegan diet, I'm sure you're well aware that meat is by far the richest source of absorbable iron... and that a lot of iron-rich veg and other alternatives contain iron in a form that is not easily absorbed. All about heme and non-heme iron... and how careful you need to be to a) get enough, b) get the right form and c) make sure the other things you eat at the same time are helpful rather than a hindrance to iron absorbtion. I know you don't eat burgers or cheese, so apologies, but by way of illustration, I recently read that if you add cheese to a burger, you halve the amount of iron you will absorb from the meat.
It's critical for runners, so if you're not 100% crystal clear about all that iron stuff, then please do lots of research... [I just started to type that I'm sure I'm teaching grandmother to suck eggs... but that's not really an appropriate analogy!]
Meanwhile I hope you have a good race at MK today.
Plym Trail Marathon – This is such a deceptive course, the little loop we do at the start is up a steady hill, but not too long, onto the top of the moor, saw 2 Dartmoor ponies, here then downhill and through the start to pick up the Plym Trail, which we run out for 6 miles and back, doing that twice. Once on the trail (all tarmac thankfully) at no point can you see a hill the whole thing looks flat, I was running well until about 5 miles when I started to get a painful right calf and by 6 miles I was considering pulling out it was so sore. I saw someone I knew at a car park that we cross and I did consider asking him for a lift back to the start, I had already taken painkillers to keep my groin pain under control so couldn't take any more for a couple of hours. I ran to the turnaround point and coming back across the car park I just stopped to hug my friend and didn't ask him for a lift, I don't know why. A mile further on and my left calf starts to hurt too, this is not good but in a way reassures me that maybe I am not injured and I wondered whether the hill start, I hate a hill at the start of the race, had just irritated my calf muscles. I also did wonder if I was low on electrolytes although I shouldn't be but at the next drink station I took a salt tablet. At about 10 miles the calf pain eased to be bearable and at 11 miles my groin started to niggle but not serious, it was OK for most of the race, just now and then but manageable. There's one long tunnel to go through and my Garmin lost signal about a 3rd of the way into the tunnel each time, we went through 4 times so I don't have accurate splits.
I got to halfway in about 2:25 and stopped for a couple of minutes to scoff some of the lovely cheesy biscuits they had. I was dreading the 2nd half as I knew it would be tough, especially the last 6 miles up the invisible hill again Anyway I set off for the last 12 miles and calfs were OK running, still sore but not too bad but annoyingly more sore to walk. It really is a beautiful route the path goes through the woods, all the bluebells were out and the trees all lush and green. Passing a peregrine viewing area, but resisted the urge to stop and look for peregrines. I took a couple of short walk breaks but ran most of the way down to the turnaround point which was at roughly 20 miles, I could see that other runners were finding it tough on the way back. For the last 6 miles I did a run/walk method and kept that up to the finish and I managed to overtake a few runners too, but was very glad to finish. Not bothered about the time, 5:01:36 I think that was a tough course and although you couldn't see the climb good DD training. (DD is Dartmoor Discovery, a hilly ultra I am doing in June)
At the finish my calf muscles feel very tight but not injured. Wore my Guides 9's and they were superb, no problems with my feet. Not worried about my groin injury now for my next race. I was a fair bit slower in the 2nd half but overall my heartrate was only 82% MHR which is the lowest I’ve ever had for a marathon so that's good.
In the evening while I was reclining on the sofa with my feet up I had a light bulb moment about my sore calf muscles. In Pilates on Thursday we did a series of foot exercises including walking around the room on as high a tiptoe as we could. I felt the stretch when we did it but more in the arches of feet than my calf muscles but when we went on to do our balance section my calf muscles did tighten more quickly than usual. I don't wear high heels now, I no longer have the flexibility in my right forefoot, so think this exercise was an unusual stretch for me. At home on Friday I did the same thing again walked around the flat on tiptoe.
Anyway I'd been dreading reporting in to my guru friend as I thought I'd end up with a punishing calf stretching routine but he agrees that it is probably the Pilates exercise that caused it, my last run was before I did Pilates so hadn't run since doing that exercise.
Went out for a recovery run yesterday morning, right calf is very sore to stretch, left not so bad but was able to run with slight discomfort and once I got to 3 miles it all became a lot easier, slight tiredness in groin, rest of my legs are fine.
Today I’m taking a rest day, legs are recovering well but calves still sore.
Must remember not to book Pilates class 2 days before DD
This what Strava shows for the race, copied from a friend’s posting.
nice work Shades roughing it out, and fair play for getting out a day later for that recovery run.
I always run the day after a marathon, speeds up my recovery.
A pint of Guinness contains 0.3mg of iron, less than three per cent of daily adult needs. Put another way, you'd need to drink 15 pints of Guinness to get the same amount of iron as two Weetabix.
and an egg has 0.6mg
Never mind
I hope the weather is good for your race, cool and raining here in Devon.
Background
So for those not aware, I started running three years ago basically as a dare in May 2014 when two fellow workmates reckoned that I couldn't do the Marathon (They had a point as I hadn't exercised for a few years besides walking to and from work).
So the Dublin Marathon was a 5:45 finish off training May - August, followed by pretty much no training in September or October in the lead up to race day due to Patellar Tendonitis and tear of one of Knee cartilages which needed an operation in November 2014.
So i then plugged on with training between January and April 2015 ahead of the MK Marathon, before having to quit the race at halfway due to ripping something in my hip when reaching for a gel at mile 9.
My attempt, 12 months later in the same race ended before the race started due to both of my calves not being capable of running more than a few miles without pain, so I deferred my place until today.
Hadd
I decided to read up on Hadd due to one of the original guys who got me into running going from a 3:31 to sub 3 hour runner in about 12 months as I recall with very little injury niggles. So after starting to read through this thread, I started Hadding in June 2016 with fantastic results.
After just missing a 5k and 5 mile PB still in the early stages of Hadd, I then PB'd at a 5k Parkrun in October, followed by PB'S at 10 mile and 5 mile races in November, a Half Marathon PB in December, 5k PB in January and a decent time in a new distance of 20 miles in March. So 5 PB's in a row plus a decent time over 20.
Aim
Mcmillan calculator had my half time of 1:55:27 coming out as a predicted Marathon pace of 4:02:58 and the 20 mile race of 3:07:46, predicted 4:11:02, however given the drift between predictions due to a tough last 10k in the 20 mile, quite a few niggles coming up, and not really training on due to a poor March's mileage and an awful taper of 4 runs in two weeks, including my other halves family coming over from Ireland last Thursday meaning I was drinking alcohol Thursday, Friday and Saturday which was awful preparation.
So I decided to go off my feel with LT pace being 9:47 and worst case scenario keeping under 10:30 and just wanted to run the Marathon without walking which I consider a sin for me nowadays, which really helps motivate me to keep going in a race. I would still hope for a sub 4:30 depending on how my achilles and calves behaved.
Race Day
I was up at 6am to get my breakfast in me before my 3 hour cut off for eating due to previous stitches I've had when eating too close to a Race. Porridge, a banana and a slice of Granary buttered toast filled the hole.
Living so close to the MK Dons stadium, I only left at 8:50am so had plenty of time to relax. I was very calm and happy beforehand as I wasn't aiming at any particular time or pace. I met up with my brother who ran a sub 3:45 at Chester last year, and his buddy who was also looking to go off at a similar pace.
Miles 1-4 10:17, 10:09, 9:59, 9:53
We were off late and were finally off at about 10:15 which meant everyone who was out supporting me would assume that I was 15 mins behind my planned pace. I would tend to take all hills nice and slow so would drop back behind him, and the catch him on the flat and downhill sections. I took my one and only water at mile 3. Had a shout out from a club mate stewarding around this time which was nice.
A lot of the first part doubled back on itself so we got the leaders come through followed by the masses. I kept an eye out for my brother and club mates going the other way, but I never saw him. I took my first gel at 4.25 miles.
Miles 5-6 9:51, 9:41
Some downhill sections helped speed up me pace here, but running with my bro's buddy again, we both were feeling good and averaging about 10 min pace. I needed a pee from mile 3 but was determined not to go as I was sure to dehydrate later on.
Split time for 6.2 miles, 1:02:29, 1316th, 10:04 pace
Miles 6-9, 9:41, 9:47, 10:00, 10:05
I noted that I was feeling really good between mile 6, 7 and 8, but restrained myself from foolish ideas of pushing on. Lost my brothers buddy for a bit as he stopped for a pee. Took a gel at 8.5 miles ahead of seeing my parents who waiting with a Lucozade Sport. I was really enjoying this with no real aim so was high fiving lot of kids along the way.
Mile 10-13, 9:55, 9:56, 10:11, 10:15
The freshness was finally going from my legs, and my brothers buddy was ahead of me on hillier parts, before I would close the gap again. Still hovering around 10 min pace and starting to pass some strugglers every now and then.
Split time HM 6.9 miles, 1:09:39, 1196th, 10:05 pace, I went through halfway at 2:12:08 still eyeing up a negative split.nned pace. So I set off nice and slow, mostly with my brothers buddy, although I had planned to take the hills nice
Mile 14-17, 10:24, 10:39, 10:14, 10:32
Took my 3rd gel at mile 14, Just after eyeing up the negative split, we had two bad miles and I realised it would not be a negative split. All previous niggles were holding up well though. My bro's buddy advised me that his HR was 157 and that is max is just 170! I advised him to therefore slow down a bit.
I had a stitch at the beginning off Mile 16, but then a nice downhill part had me overtaking plenty with the stitch gone within a couple of mins. Chucked my Lucozade at this point, before collecting a new one from my Sister at mile 17. I lost my brothers buddy at this point, and he was hanging at about 20 meters behind for some time.
Mile 18-22, 10:04, 10:16, 10:37, 10:50, 11:13
I felt really good, passing fellow runners at will, advising them it was downhill and quite flat in the next three miles. Saw my bro's buddy at a switch back point who was still only about 20 seconds behind. Took my 4th gel at mile 18. Saw my GF at mile 21 just as I was starting to flag a bit.
I was still running past lots of runners who were now down to a walk, but was also slowing. I know that I do not enough liquid in me so was trying to sip on my lucozade as often as possible seeing that I only had half of my first Lucozade, plus a small amount of water meaning dehydration was a real concern.
I took my final gel at Mile 22.
Split time, Mile 20, 6.9 miles, 1:12:12, 998th, 10:27 pace, Race Time 3:24:20
Mile 23-26.20, 11:46, 11:57, 9:33, 9:22, 0.28 miles @8:22
I was in the horrible zone now where a lot were, walking, and then starting to jog again, meaning they would overtake me again which really frustrates me as I'm grinding away at slow pace. Supports were saying BARNSEY are you ok? I was in such a daze, I assumed I knew them before realising otherwise.
I knew this course very well, and when I got to my old secondary school, I knew that I had a nice downhill stretch of about mile 24. So I gritted my teeth, and started making lots of groaning and grunting noises as I upped the pace, shouting at myself to motivate my legs to go quicker so much so that other runners were looking back to see what the noise was!
One female runner even asked me to slow down as my health was more important than a time! I quipped back that I was not even really aware of what pace I was on before pushing on once I reached the brow of the hill.
I finally chucked my lucozade at Mile 26, which I had held onto from mile 17, thankfully nearly emptying it to hopefully hydrate me. Even though I only had a bit left, it was weight I didn't need as I continued to pass people on the flat and downhill parts. I was getting lots of call outs in the last two miles with shouts of go on Marshall's due to my club vest being that of Marshall Milton Keynes A.C. I certainly felt that I had more support than most due to my local vest which certainly spurred me on.
I was now off Milton Keynes famous Redways, and onto the main road that goes into Stadium Mk, still making all sorts of noises, pulling awful faces, and most importantly streaming past fellow runners at will, I was in the groove and flying!
I got a shout out by the DJ just before I entered the stadium who I saluted, before entering my teams stadium in front of plenty of supporters all cheering, I had to run the full length of the pitch on one side, caught someone, but then had nothing left before going past where the away fans are normally housed, then turned at the corner flag with just a sprint to the halfway left, I dug in, high fiving as I went, just failing to catch the runner in front before chucking my cap in the air in celebration!
My watch was flashing low battery since Mile 23, but thankfully kept awake long enough to see my time......4:31:01 (Chip time 4:30:56, 75 min PB)
Finish 6.2 miles, 1:06:36, 759th, @10:44,
Overall stats 26.2 miles, 4:30:56, 1058th, @10:20 pace
Afterwards
I was in a gaze, staring at other runners in amazement at how far back some had finished after I had been with them until Mile 24! I met up with my bro's buddy who ran a very impressive 4:36 after losing 6 stone in the last twelve months. I tried to do some very odd looking stretches but was struggling to shuffle let alone keep balance.
I met my brother who had had a tough race, coming in at a decent 4:01, 16 mins off his PB and was in the never again state of mind at that stage, time will tell.
I was so happy and nearly broke down in tears, realising the enormity of my achievement, I run a Marathon without stopping to walk!
I'm very sore now, and seem to of pulled my stomach muscles on both sides under my ribs, no doubt due to my last two miles.
Sorry for the long read, and even though this a thread based around HR, i don't have any HR stats due to not wearing it in a Race due to it restricting my breathing towards the end of a Race.
Not sure what else to pick out of that really good report, but for now I'll just leave it at congratulations to you...
Similar for you Shades too - but perhaps for different reasons. Well toughed out! I'm a believer that you should pull out if you're injured but never pull out unless you need to.
You do write a great race report, I really enjoy reading them
NorthEnder - I too agree that it's best to drop out when injured but once my 2nd calf started to hurt too I knew it wasn't an injury as such.
I taped up my calves yesterday with Kinesio tape and they really are recovering very quickly since then. Short run today, 5 miles with only a slight twinge, so hope the recovery continues and I don't have the same problem in my next race.