Ups and Downs of Training for the West Highland Way Race

I am now three and half months into my training for this year's West Highland Way Race, and just over have three months left to prepare myself to run 95 miles on the 21st of June.  Now in to second half of training I'm getting into the real business end of training, the first real test will come this Sunday (23rd of March) when I run my first race of the the year - the Loch Katrine Marathon, my second big test will be five weeks later when I run the 53 mile Highland Fling that covers the first half of West Highland Way.

Base building

The approach to training for the last few months is to tailor the conventional Aerobic Base Building phase that most Marathon training plans include to make it more specific to the needs of ultra-marathoning.  The goals for this phase has been to:

1. Develop my ability to comfortably run at the slow pace that will be required on race day.
2. Use fat as the primary fuel for running muscles at the ultra-marathon pace
3. Steadily build my structural resilience to delay the onset of fatigue 
4. Build ability to quickly recover from training and racing   

Previous years I've tried to steadily build up an aerobic base but have almost always been blighted by injury after a two or three months of serious training.  To lower this risk, this year I have built my mileage and intensity up very steadily, cutting weekly mileage and intensity the times when I have felt niggles building.  So far this approach has worked, and while I've had plenty of niggles from my feet through to my back so far have only a needed few days of rest, or easier week has been enough for the niggles to mostly melt away. Elements of training that appear to have helped are:

1. Regular recovery runs (9 to 10min/mile) pace, with around 50% of volume at around this pace.
2. Longer runs at an easy to recovery pace, 9:30 to 8:30 pace.
3. Doing several modest length long runs per week, 
4. No really long runs, longest so far this cycle has been an 18 miler.
5. Following more stressful runs with recovery run days
6. One faster run per week, but keeping pace to just marathon pace and distance at 8 miles.
7. Regular use of foam roller and self massage to keep the muscles loose
8. Eating well

Following this approach I have been able to steadily up the weekly mileage from ~35 mile per week in December, to ~45 mile per week in January and then averaged 56 mile/week in February.  In February in one week I pushed the mileage up to 62 miles, which was my longest weekly training mileage up to that point.

My plan for March was to aim for a weekly mileage in the mid sixties, but both calves had become a bit tight by the end of February, with a niggle in the left calf so I decided to put in a down week in the first week of March and only ran 42 miles, this seemed be enough to relax and heal my calves and last week put in a 65 miles, with three long runs of 14 miles, 18 miles and 15 miles each with only a recovery day in between.  There wasn't a prior plan to do all these so close together, but the weather was sunny for once and my body just seemed to be recovering really quickly so I just went out and enjoyed myself.

This week my calves, have been a little tight each morning, my quads have felt fatigued and my hip flexors a bit over stressed so I'll be taking the rest of this week bit easier than originally planned.  I do have the Loch Katrine marathon on Sunday so I'm figuring that I'll get better training effect from the marathon if I am rested properly and the niggles have melted away.   I really can't complain though, 65 miles in week is half marathon more than I ever been able to handle in a training week before.

So far in this training cycle my body seems to have coped really well with the mileage, my recovery from runs has been astounding compared to my usual aches and pains for days after a long or faster run, with niggles melting away with just a small easing back of mileage/intensity.  Times when I've thought I've over done it for sure a day or two later I'm back running smoothly.

In contrast to this excellent recovery the efficiency I've been recording via my Heat Rate (HR) monitor has improved on average, but no where near as much as I usually see when I'm well into training.  My resting HR has also been elevated right through from January to now.  I had a cold at the end of February that raised my HR into the mid 50's, and since it's come down each week but now sits around 46-48 each morning.  Just once in the last month has my HR go done to 45 where I'd normally expect it to be when I'm well into a training cycle.

With this much volume of training I had expected my resting HR to be down at 44 or below - where it was when I was at my peak last October just before the Jedburgh Three Peaks Ultra-marathon.   The only day when my HR was where I expected it to be I had my most efficient day in this training cycle, surpassing what I achieve back in October, but this was just one fleeting day.  A couple of days later I recorded my worst efficiency of this training cycle - my HR elevated my around 10 bpm for a given pace and using 20% more calories per mile according to my HR monitor.  Then two days later my HR was back down, but still not elevated compared to where I would have expected.

Below is a graph of my Effective Efficiency (calories per mile, adjusted for HR drift and hills) from December to mid March.  General trend is downwards, but it's very noisy, far more than I'd expect, and there are so startling spikes.  When I'm at my peak I usually see Effective Efficiency values in the 78 to 80 calories/mile range.  Something I've only achieved on one day so far.

Would the sporadic nature of my resting HR and HR for a given pace suggest that my sympathetic nervous system is all over the place?  Is it a sign of over training?  I'm torn as my recovery rates are really good, but clearly something is quite right.

Thankfully this week my HR has been reasonably stable so far, a half marathon test run I did on Monday was one of my most efficient in this training cycle, with HR drift being very modest.  Fingers crossed things are settling down in time for my biggest challenge this year so far.

Plan for Loch Katrine Marathon

The Loch Katrine marathon will be my fourth marathon, but only my second road marathon.  My marathon PB of 3:32 I did on my first marathon race back in 2010 during a very hot Edinburgh Marathon.  This Sunday's marathon I'll just run as a training run so the actual finishing time is not critical, but... it would be great boost to get close or set a new PB.

My fitness for distance running is now so much better than it was back in 2010 that I should be capable of time in theory of around 3:05 to 3:10 on flat course.  Loch Katrine marathon is very hilly though, I know of estimates of 1800 to 2200 foot ascent/descent so it'll not be far off the challenge presented by the Kielder Marathon than I did in 3:36 back in 2012.   I estimate the hills will probably take 10 minutes off the time I might be able to achieve on flat marathon, so 3:15 to 3:20 might be possible if I had training specifically for the marathon or was planning on racing it.

My plan isn't to race though, my plan is for a tiny 6 day taper, do the marathon without pushing into the red, then have an easy week and be back into full on training at beginning of April in prep for the Fling at the end of April.  To dial down the intensity I have decided to aim for lower average HR than I'd usually see in a marathon - normally I'd see an average HR for 168 to 170 in a marathon, for Loch Katrine I'm currently looking at 161 as my target.  I have a spreadsheet that I plug in the stats for all my runs and have column for estimates of how each run would map to what I could achieve at different races, and the figures currently point to a time around the 3:25 to 3:40 mark being possible at around a HR of 161.

As trail on Monday's half marathon run I used the MARCO to give me an idea of what pacing and HR progression to use during the race for a target time of 3:30 and average HR of 161. During my run I followed the HR guide for each mile segment - progressing from the suggested HR or 145 through to the 161 HR at mile 13.  The MARCO pacing guide for this mile segments suggests progressing from 8:15 pace to 8:01 by mile 13.  The pacing I saw though was 8:30 for the first mile, and 7:30 for the last. So I started too slow and finished way too fast.  The whole second half of my run was too fast, and I ended finishing 4 minutes ahead of the schedule.

The discrepancy with the MARCO calculator probably isn't too surprising - it was a hilly course which will complicate things and all humans are different, and physiologically I was in totally different place - a half marathon training run rather than the first half of marathon race.  However, even we've these factors it would seem that my starting HR needs to be higher to avoid starting so slower, and at least on this training run I saw far less HR drift than the MARCO calculator assumes, keeping to it's HR profile had me running 30 seconds a mile too fast for the last four mile. It felt too fast as well, with my quads feeling fatigued from the previous weeks high mileage and my hip flexors complained in the last few miles, I'm glad that I'm not attempting to run 3:15 right now.

Having a high HR for a slow pace at the start isn't too encouraging, but a lower HR drift is very encouraging so a bit like my up and down resting HR/sporadic efficiency I seem to be getting mixed signals about my fitness/possible over training status.  I'm hoping a five more days of easy paced running will settle things down and allow me to see a clearer picture of my fitness.

Come race day on Sunday we'll find out for sure just how well my body is responding to training.  I haven't done any marathon specific training, I haven't attempted to reach peak aerobic fitness, I've just been building on the key ingredients I'll need come the 21st of June when I line up at 1am to run the West Highland Way.  Even without any specific training for the Loch Katrine Marathon I'm still hoping that I now have the capacity to run a solid marathon and have a stab at an new PB, with the proviso it's the actual training effect that is most important right now so will need to be done without pushing on too hard.

Introducing the concept of "Aerobic Resilience"

I'm now into my forth year of running Ultra-marathons and this year will take my biggest challenge so far - running the West Highland Way Race that covers 95 miles from Glasgow to Fort William. Preparing for this race is both a physical and mental challenge for me, and having a rather analytical streak I'm drawn to try to understand how best to prepare for the challenge.  I did start writing a long reply on a friends blog about my thoughts so far, but it really deserved a blog post of my own, so I've put together my thoughts, a little rough and ready, but should help understand where I'm going.

A mass of advice, but a vacuum of scientific evidence and models

There is huge amount of material in books and our on the web about how different people prepare for marathons and ultra-marathons, really too much material to digest especially as advice can conflicts, and in particular ulra-marathons have almost no scientific studies that might help us understand what might best.  I love an intellectual challenge as much as a physical one so I've been trying to distil things down to key factors that we should be training for when training for marathon or ultra marathon distances race.

Understanding Patterns that emerge from analysing Ultramarathon race results

From my analysis of ultra marathon results I've seen the trend for faster runners to slow less through races and for them to be able to  sustain a greater proportion of their shorter races paces (for instance looking at ultra vs 10k pace.)   I will need to write this analysis up, but as this is quick post I'll leave this for a later series of posts.

There is also a great deal of noise to the data, so while there are overall trends there is huge individual variations.  I'm hoping to come up with a simple but viable model to explain these variations, at least accurate enough to inform how one should train and paces races to get the best performances.

Introducing the concept of Aerobic Resilience

My current model is to view basic "Aerobic" fitness as equating to a runners 10k or half marathon distances where pace is near is tad faster or around the anaerobic threshold, but still the vast majority of energy production is aerobic.  One then introduces a "Resilience" factor that determines how well we can maintain pace as we run further.   A very simplistic mathematically model one could use might be:

  Speed(distance) = MaxAerobicSpeed *  (ResilienceFactor)^Distance

When ResilienceFactor is nearer to 1.0 for the best endurance runners and lower for those who struggle to achieve their potential at marathon or further distances.

The term Aerobic Resilience probably best sums up what I'm trying to encapsulate with this model.

With training for short distance races like 10k and half marathons it's all about maximizing our aerobic fitness, and topping this off with a small contribution from our anaerobic metabolism.

For longer distances like the marathon and beyond the contribution from anaerobic metabolism is less than 2% so it's it's almost entirely a case of maximizing our aerobic fitness.  However, it's not just about aerobic fitness, muscle damage, dehydration and glycogen exhaustion all play a part.  These other factors all combine to give our Resilience on race day.

When training for races of marathon and longer we have to train to maximize the combination of our Aerobic fitness and our Resilience.  Ignore either and you will not make the best of your potential.

For me the key factors in Resilience are Mental Resilience, Structural Resilience and Metabolic Resilience, The ReslienceFactor is the product of these individual factors.

Mental Resilience

Mental Resilience covers out ability to stay focused and positive through a race, to keep on top of discomfort, to monitor all our physical and mental systems and know what to do when areas need more support i..e take a gel, take a drink, take a walking break, get back running.  The mental side also includes the macro level planning over the whole race and management of pace.  For trail races one often has to keep an eye on the weather and navigation, so being able to have a fully functioning brain throughout the race can be crucial to not making costly mistakes.  You can also borrow a bit of Mental Resilience from any support you might have or from other runners, either competitively or collaboratively.  Things outside your own personal body can also impact on your Mental Resilience, for instance getting over taken or seeing what you feel is cheating might impair you mood or judgement on how to manage your own body and race.

Structural Resilience

Structural Resilience covers the ability of our bones, ligaments, muscles, fascias, cartilage, nervous system, digestion and cardiovascular systems to work continuously handling the physical demands placed upon without breaking down.  All these factors are multiplied together, if any one part starts failing then our overall Structural Resilience is compromised, our running economy will diminish as well as put a large strain on our Mental Resilience as the discomfort levels mount.

Metabolic Resilience

Metabolic Resilience covers the ability of our body to metabolise carbohydrates, fats and proteins efficiently.  Our ability to digest carbohydrates, fats and proteins efficiently also plays a part in longer races.  A runner who has poor ability to metabolize fats will almost certainly have a relatively poor Metabolic Resilience so will likely hit the wall, and will be very dependent on consuming carbs during the race.  Runners with ability to maintain a good pace whilst metabolising primarily fats will have good Metabolic Resilience and will require less fuelling during races.

Ingesting too much food when working too hard causes gastric stress, so a poor Metabolic Resilience puts strain on our Structural Resilience and our Mental Resilience.  A runner with good Mental Resilience would not give in, but slow down till the gastric stress passed then push on when the body settled.  This is just one example of how each of the element of Resilience are interconnected connected.

How to maximize Aerobic Resilience?

A simple model of long distance performance like Aerobic Resilience is only useful if it helps inform how we should train and prepare to maximize our performance come race day.  This is a big topic in itself so I'll leave putting down my thoughts for another post or two.  If you feel that this model is useful, or has elements that I should include just let me know, I'd like to refine it over the coming weeks, months and years to help myself and others enjoy training and racing as much as possible.

Tour of Destruction, Floods and Snow

The last few weeks in Callander have seen a series of Atlantic storms sweep through, in between the wild weather I've got on with my training for the West Highland Way Race, now just 6 months away.  Local trails have mostly been cleared enough to allow passage, but several require clambering around trees. Follows are pictures from three of my recent runs, if you are impatient for festive ones scroll right to the bottom as I played in the snow just before the sun went down.

One of my regular hilly routes takes me from Callander up to and over the Bracklin Falls Bridge then on to Scout Pool, then back down the Backlin Road to Callander.

View of Bracklin Bridge, many branches brought down in the storms.

Beyond the Bracklin Bridge the path heads up hill towards the forestry track, but first you have clamber through this sorry loooking tree that has been blown down across the path.

As soon as your get to the Forestry track you have to clamber through a mighty fir tree that completely covers the junction with the path from Bracklin Falls.

Next set of tress on the way up the Forestry track.

Looking back to all the trees that have already been cleared.

There was once dense Forest here, a football pitch swathe of trees all victim of the storms

More tree clearance

As I emerged from the forestry the exposed edges have been decimated.

Viewing looking north towards local Munroes Stuc a' Chroin and Ben Vortlich, I take the left track down.

Mid afternoon winter sunset, looking down Bracklin Road towards Ben Gulipen with Callander lit up below

A couple of days later I headed around a 6 and half mile loop we locally call the Four Bridges, the route back took me along the cycle path back to the Callander meadows witnessing floods thanks to all the rain that's been sweeping through day after day after day.

Normally a dry field!

Back in Callander with the Meadows Carpoark and playground flooded.

My longest run in December was a 15 mile run from Callander up to Stank Glen.  I squeezed in the run between showers and stayed mostly dry, and even got above cloud base.

Not a great photo, but this used to look very different, another huge swath of dense forest gone, trees blown down at the routes or snapped like match sticks.  The destruction is incredibly localised, some areas are untouched, others every tree in the area has been flattened.

At the head of Stank Glen looking East, 1500ft of descent to come :-)

Emerging out from Stank Glen into the main valley above Loch Lubnaig the clouds boiled away from the forestry.

My run today I headed out at 3pm and squeezed up to Bracklin Bridge and the Scout Pool just before it got dark - the same route as from my first set of photo's above.  I just had to head out as it had been sleeting most of the day down in Callander and knew that higher up I might be able to capture some Christmas scenes.  Alas with sunset half and hour into the run the light wasn't really sufficient for great photo's.  I ran back through heavy snow falling which was wonderful.

View from Bracklin Bridge

The snow and storm felled trees on the forest trail beyond Bracklin Falls had an errie Narnia quality.

Out from the forest and into the snow storm

Heading down Bracklin Road I pass example of impromptu ditch parking!

I saw this view and had to skid in the snow to a stop to capture it.  Christmas lights of Callander.

I've been slowing ramping up my mileage and distance of runs this month by still keeping the weekly mileage relatively low - average mid thirties each week and run at a easy pace for all my runs and seeing steady gains in fitness, for instance in the 9 days between the first Bracklin Falls loop at the start of this post to the one today my efficiency according to my HR monitor has improved 5%.  I am noticing that my HR for a given pace has dropped this week which is really encouraging sign that I'm regaining the fitness I lost during the month of November when I took it very easy (just 54 miles ran in November, while 106 miles already in the first three weeks December.)

Festive greetings to all!

I'm now officially training for the West Highland Way Race!

This evening I got the email saying that I'm one of the 300 hundred lucky souls that will need to toe the line at Milngavie, Glasgow at 1am on Saturday 21st of June 2014, and then head 95 miles north along the West Highland Way to Fort William, covering 14760ft of ascent and finish in less than 35 hours.

I now have just over 6 months to prepare myself physically, mentally and logistically to cover the distance.  The furthest I have ever run in a day was the 53 miles of the Highland Fling that covers the southern half of the route.  It's only 42 miles further to each Fort William, that's not even twice as far so it'll be easy then :-)

I am under no delusions, running 95 miles along this particular trail will be the biggest physical challenge of my life by a long way.  I have enough basic aerobic fitness to put myself in the top third of the those entering the WHWR if we were to run a 10k, but you need far more than just aerobic fitness to travel 95 miles in one day.  

I've been pondering just what factors are key in enabling a running to transition well to running huge distances, it's not just aerobic fitness, there are other physical and mental factors that provide the resilience to make effective use of that aerobic fitness.  To train for all these, sometimes conflicting, factors is what I must now do, to put a label on all these factors together I'm drawn to the term "Aerobic Resilience."

I have various thoughts on how to train to build Aerobic Resilience through the next 7 months, but I'll leave these to follow up posts.  For now I'll just wrap by saying.

GULP!!! I have to run 95 miles!!!! Daunting and exciting in equal measures :-)

Trail of destruction

Wednesday night we experienced the severe storm that hit the whole of the UK, Hurricane force winds battered the Trossachs and left a trail of destruction.  Thanks to the storm we had no electricity till dinner time on Thursday, so the schools were closed, phone networks and of course all computers were off through the day.  Our children even dug out and played Monopoly!

The highlight of their day was at 5:30 when a neighbour popped by to say that an Electricity Company had hired a burger van to give out free meals.  We have a gas hob so were planning on cooking but the girls just too excited by the ideal of free food so I took them down and got burgers and hot dogs.  Felt a bit of fraud as the electricity had just been switched back on.  It was a good atmosphere down at the burger van though with a number of school kids and parents we know down there as well.  My eldest daughter (14) and here friends declared that this was the most exciting thing that had happened in Callander for a while.  I guess youtube and facebook just doesn't beat FREE FOOD!!

Friday the weather was sunny and calm, but hovering around 0 after a cold night.  Curious about the effect of the storm, just before lunch I headed out for a 6 and half mile loop.  One mile in and passing the Primary school I had to squeeze past some barriers erected to close a section of path up to the High School called the "Creep".  In the space of 50 metres I had to clamber over and through three fallen trees that blocked the path or torn it up.

2nd Tree on the Creep

2nd tree on the Creep

Looking back down the Creep to the fallen trees. 

After the creep I headed along the A81 for 50 meters and then followed the path up to Cohallian Woods.  Straight away I had another tree to clamber over.

1st tree down on the path up to Cohallian Woods

Looking back down the trail after 2nd fallen tree

 The rest of the trail through Cohallian Woods was clear of debri but cycle of freeze thaw had left frozen puddles with curious concentric shapes, just had to stop and take a photo.

Nature can be savage, but it also can be perplexing and playful

Mid day and the sun just over the horizon...

 After descending down to the Invertrossachs road I headed over the hump back bridge and up to trail the passes under Sampson stone.  One of the signs had been blown off it's mounts.

Another Sign of storm damage!

A couple of miles further on and on the return leg along the cycle path back to the Callander Meadows park rangers were out clearing trees.  Their chain saws were the only ones that I could here echoing around the valley.

Park rangers clearing trees

Working picking up Chistmas Trees sign

 As I neared the Meadows a road in the sky signed that an Airforce Hercules Transport plane was practising low level flying.  Shortly after a second fly through.

First of two Hercules out on training flights

 As I left the path I can to skip over one last tree.

Looking back down the path, an old Railway line, one last tree ended it's life.

The final mile and half of my run took me through the back streets of Callander, thankfully no more signs of damage around the housing.  Looking up the Callander Crags that sits above Callander looks to be a different story though with a number of trees at the cliff edge had been blown down and now dangled sadly over the crags.

Seeing once majestic blown down leaves me with mixed emotions, it's sad to see the damage to the tree and any wildlife that would have made it's home there.  After the destructions comes new life as the fallen trees open up the ground to allow other plants and trees to grow.  Fallen wood also makes great homes for fungus and the invertebrates that will be part of the food chain for the birds, foxes and pine martin.  I say pine martin, I've yet to see one locally but there are known to be in the Queen Elizabeth Forest.

This run was my forth this week, all easy and modest length, but already my HR/pace figures are showing improvements.  There are a few minor aches an pains after a month largely off, but generally seem to be holding up well.  The West Highland Way Race entries have now closed and it's over subscribed so there will be a ballot, I haven't heard yet, so I don't know whether this weeks training is part of a larger campaign or not.  Fingers crossed that I make it in.

The Salmon have been Running!

For my lunchtime run I headed out for a 11 mile Bochasttle Hill loop along the flank of Ben Ledi, it was beautiful if a little cold out with snow squalls come through.  As I descended down to the Loch Lubnaig I came across the most bizarre thing laying on the forest trail - the tail of Salmon!

I was still 100ft above and third of a mile away from the Loch, there was no sign of the rest of the Salmon and no clues to how it go there.  This section is popular with dog walkers, and the woodland is home to pine martins and foxes so I would guess that it probably hadn't been there too long.

Could a Buzzard, Eagle or Heron have scavenged a Salmon carcase on the loch shore and dropped part of it?   Could a dog have picked up at the loch shore and carried it uphill?  I will never likely solve this mystery.

Once down beside the Loch Lunnaig I saw a few fish rise and leave tell tale riples, and Heron stood in the Shallows (you can just spot it through the trees below if you are Eagle Eyed :-)

Perplexed and amused I completed by run with a bit of spring in my step.  Just three days back into training and I'm starting to feel a little fitness returning.

Detraining - what happens when you take it easy for a month

After my last race of the year, the Jedburgh Thee Peaks Ultra, I decided to take the month of November off training and just run when the sun was out and just for fun.  I ran a total of 58 miles in November, compared to 185 miles in October when I trained for and raced at Jedburgh.  This month I'm now returning to training but keeping things easy to gently ease myself back.

What has surprised me is just how quickly I have lost fitness over the past 5 weeks since Jedburgh, I have noticed that I am getting more muscle fatigue and even have had Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS) in the days after even modest runs.  My heart rate for a given pace is also higher, and the calories per mile reported by my HR monitor for each runs has risen steadily through this period.

The average effective efficiencies (normalized for hills and distance) of my runs tell the sorry tale of the de-training I've seen - I averaged 82 calorie/mile for October, 87 for November and 90 for the two runs I've done so far this December.  That's a 10% reduction in efficiency in just five weeks and I didn't even stop running completely, just reduced by mileage from 45 miles/week to 13 miles/week.

I am quite perplexed by the extent of de-training I've seen, is this normal, is that what others see as well?  My scientific inclination is also drawn to finding out in what ways my body has changed during this period of lighter mileage and de-training.

My own thoughts are really just a jumble of possibilities:

• Mitochondria populations in my muscles has decreased through lack of need for them all
• Muscles have atrophied through lack of stimulus
• Muscles have begun rebuilding after a big month of running and the newly configured muscles need to developed aerobically before I see the benefit
• My aerobic fast twitch muscle fibres due lack of aerobic exercise have reverted to being more like fast twitch fibres rather than aerobic fibres
• Weight changes - I might have put on roughly 1% in weight, pretty negligible but I guess it'll account for a tiny bit of the loss of efficiency
• Blood volume has reduced
• Loss of adaptations for heat loss

I suspect the last two might well be the most significant factors, but I've never read a paper or articles discussing de-training so it's all just speculation.  One thing I have noticed is that calories reported in the first mile of running has only gone up around 3% but the average has gone up 10% showing that I have much more significant HR drift than I did prior to taking it easy.  This makes me suspect that my ability to handle the accumulation of heat has been significantly impaired as I find it difficult to recoil my muscle fibres and populations of Mitochrondia have been slashed enough to explain a 10% loss in efficiency.

If you have insights please leave a comment as I'd love to know what others think might be happening when we de-train.  As I get back into training it'll be interesting to see how quickly my efficiency returns, fingers crossed it won't be months before I get back to near where I was back in October.