I've been rolling through the 32km Sunday runs quite easily recently. But they say that 32km is only the half way mark in a marathon and anything over 32km is a struggle. That was proved this morning. Caught up with Sam at 6am and we did the 36km Narrabeen circuit, without gels again (taking a leaf out of Fats' book).
The first 20km felt great - a beautiful cool morning, chatting away. Sam pushed on a bit after the water stop at Narrabeen SLSC as usual but still felt fine until Cromer golf course. From then the pace got consciously quicker trying to run Sub4 min kms. Felt OK until Dee Why but then the Griffin Street hill punished me a bit and I just tried to drag myself home from there. By now it was 8am (9am in real money due to the clocks going back) and pretty warm in the high 20's. All up 35.8km in 2:31:24 (4:13's).
Sam's looking good for the London Marathon. Every time I'd thought I'd finally broken him he'd pop up in front again pushing the pace. I'm predicting a 2:44.
Finally, congrats to the Tiger last night in running 1:59:08 (still not quite good enough to save himself from owing me $200) and Macca running a great PB of 33:31 in the 10,000m knocking 30 odd seconds off his old mark.
5 comments:
Tom,
I yelled out to you as you ran past LM Graham Reserve but you were too focussed to slow down.
Why would you run with no fuel? All you do is teach your body to use fat not glycogen. The when you get home your body sh*ts itself and fills up your fat stores ASAP. That logic does nothing for form/training and recovery. All you do is teach your body to store post workout.
Sounds like a fruity tight ultra runner strategy to me. The type that runs 4000km in shoes because it is a conspiracy by "evil shoe pushers" that you should change at circa 1000km....
You are smarter and faster than this Tom.
Dunno about the "fruity tight ultra runner", most of them seem to head out with enough provisions to survive a nuclear war. But I hadn't applied any science to it.
apply the science mate. You will recover faster = train better = race better.
I am expecting big things from this year!
I'm late to the party: the science behind glycogen depletion training is laid out in detail by Tim Noakes (the world's foremost expert on the science of running) in "Lore of Running". Pfitzinger & Douglas also strongly advocate restricting carbohydrate ingestion before and during long runs (except for "fast finish" long runs) in "Advanced Marathoning" - generally regarded as the best marathon training book ever written. I recommend you read both.
It is not an easy thing to do and must be introduced gradually like just about any aspect of training. Gradually reduce the amount you eat until eventually you even cut out breakfast. Then you have a huge advantage when on race day you can go much further without food AND take gels to give you that extra fuel on top.
If such training taught your body to store fat I would be obese not a skinny little fucker. If you're getting fat then I'd suggest long runs and eating less are not your problem.
The fact is the human body cannot ingest calories as fast as you burn them racing (Noakes) and so for long races you must rely on stored glycogen. The more you store, the further and faster you can run before burning fat (a lot less efficient). The most effective way to train your body to store more glycogen is to regularly deplete it in training. That is arguably THE #1 benefit of the long run! Taking gels just means you reduce that specific adaptation. You will bonk faster in long races - guaranteed.
The other advantage is because you deplete glycogen during training your body improves it's ability to burn fat effectively and efficiently when your glycogen stores run low. This helps avoid hitting "the wall".
This isn't ultra-running clap-trap. You ever seen a Kenyan marathoner out training with a fuel belt stuffed with gels and powerbars?
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