Another week down...

Another up and down week over (only six more of them to go!). Frustrations not being able to quite crank out the mileage or some of the more intense sessions that I would like, but despite the niggles and the nags, I am still in the game.

• Mon 8th: Public holiday. Easy 10 km at 5:20/km
• Tue AM: 16k @ 4:40 HRav 136 ... not feeling fully recovered from Sunday
• Wed PM: 20k with a whole mix of paces. Some slowish warm up, some lower aerobic, and three mile cruise intervals at about 3:50/km (aggravated hamstring & Achilles a bit)
• Thur PM: Work sprung a drinking party on me, so I snuck out to the gym at 5:30 and did 30 min "hills" on the elliptical and 5k on the treadmill with progressive pace: 4:40 for 1k, 4:17 for 2k and 4:00 for 2k.
• Fri PM: 16 km around the Imperial Palace. First and third laps at around 4:40/km. Second lap was a fartlek of a 400 m, a 600m, a 700 m and another 400 m which was an aborted 1000 m because the right hamstrings started squawking. Would have done a fair bit more of this if the legs were more sound. Really ended up with quite a few sore bits after this one.
• Sat AM: Recovery. 13 k @ 5:20/km, average HR of 122! Also took some Ibuprofens at lunch and dinner to help the legs settle for Sunday's pace run.
• Sun AM: Set up and joined the marathon girls on a race pace run at the Palace. Legs feeling as good as could be expected. We did a lap (5k) to warm up, then five laps at our planned race paces (or thereabouts). Basically I was able to do all mine at between 4:15/km and 4:18/km and my heart rate never got into uncomfortable territory (details here). I was definitely starting to go off the boil by the fifth lap though and developed a new sore spot, in my right calf (sigh!). It was quite a good workout, but once again after I attempt a run with a bit of intensity and quality, I find myself asking at what cost? I recovered pretty well in the afternoon, but have little sore spots in various places in my legs. I think I'll just try and swim tomorrow.

Weekly mileage: 110 km

Limping along

I had a couple of good runs amongst a week in which my main goals were 1) to not lose fitness while 2) try to nurse the right hamstring back to a healthy state.

• I rested Monday, did two sessions on an elliptical trainer, one Wed morning followed by an easy/steady paced Wednesday night run of 18 km with marathon babes, Mary & Satohi.
• The other elliptical was on Thursday night (with the only running that day being 3 km on the treadmill waiting for an elliptical to become available).
• Backed up Friday morning for a run that was to really just be lower aerobic, but became upper aerobic. I think all the muscle fatigue is gone and all fibers are firing again. A couple of laps were comfortably down under 4:10/km, but then some heart rate drift crept in and the pace had to shift down a bit. It was still a satisfying run to come through with the injury feeling not too bad.
• Saturday I clocked up an easy 14.
• Then today, we did a bit of a funky trip from Yoyogi Park, our regular haunt, down to the Imperial Palace (6 km). I ended up running five laps (4.95 km each) of the Palace and back to Yoyogi a different way (7 km) for a total of a shade under 38 km in 3:10:56. I had no idea of the pace early on, but I have just checked my log and realized that it was low 5:00/km. From around 20 km (lap 3) I picked up the pace to 4:40/min for two laps, but by the end of the second I was a cooked goose. I still had to run back to Yoyogi Park by myself, having lost Gareth and Colin earlier to common sense. Then, mercifully, a few km from the end I bumped into the marathon babes. They were finishing off their 30 km run and were also heading to the Park. They were a real godsend as I was ready to just lie down and die. Seriously. But they hitched me up to their little red caboose and dragged me back to the park.
  
• Total for the week: 108 km. Not to bad. But I till feel a bit like I am slowly falling apart.

Psst, they're onto us...

As I sit here nursing my still tender (in fact, 16 km of newly tenderized) biceps femoris, it was not very comforting to discover in today's SMH that there are certain eggheads who think it is unhealthy to exercise for more than six hours a week! Say what?! That's just ridiculous. Haven't they heard that too much running is never enough?

Still, I know can always go and read that old post of Jay's and make everything all better.

Ahh...

Funny way to treat an injury...

As some of the more observant of you are already aware, I made it to the end of September with a run every day. It never started out as an aim, but just became something I thought would be cool to have in the log once I realized it was possible.

After aggravating the injury last Wednesday it certainly took a measured approach for a few days to get there. The gentle late night run on Thursday, then a not so bad 7 km on a treadmill on Friday morning with the hill setting turned up to 6%. On Saturday I arranged to meet Satohi (who I am coaching for Tokyo Women's International Marathon) in Sendagaya to support her with a pre-speedwork run (i.e., she had to speed up to 5k pace for a couple of minutes with a good rest between efforts). I woke up at 9:00, precisely the time we had arranged to meet. Oops. Some quick calling and apologizing allowed me to get there only 35 minutes late. The run went quite well. The sore bit kept reminding me of its existence, but wasn't too bad. But we clocked up 12.5 km, which was certainly better than I expected.

So that just left one day, Sunday, to get the milestone. I had to leave the house at 10:00 to get to a craft beer festival by 11:00 (I was volunteer working there). That left not a lot of time for the run. The day dawned cool and wet, as in raining steadily. Without time for a proper long run, and with a slight head-fog created by a couple of drinks celebrating our 18th wedding anniversary on Sat night, it would have been easy to just can the run, hang out with the family for a bit, and head to the beer event. But there was just one run left to rack up the full calendar month of running! And it would be ages before the boys would wake up...they are teenagers after all...so there was not much choice was there.

I got out the door and decided to keep it simple by heading off on my normal weekday course, up to Komazawa Park, a few laps and home. I thought that if the leg held up I would try to keep the pace up around lower aerobic level and try to make 20 km -- six laps. So I wasn't going to push anything much and was looking to settle at a pace of about 4:40/km. However I was doing that within a km or two of starting and things were feeling good. I started running laps of the park and was surprised that despite being under a heart rate of 140 I was running at around 4:20/km and feeling quite comfortable. The leg was even feeling alright.

As the laps started accumulating my heart rate rose only very slightly into the low 140s, climbing to high 140s only late in the uphill section. It was just a great feeling rolling along at this pace in the rain, knowing somehow that things were gunna be alright. The contrast to those fatigue- and angst-filled struggles of a week or two back was stark. I soon realized that I was running at about or not far off 90-minute half marathon pace and started to think that it would be good to measure the half-M point, though not do anything different to what I was doing. So I ran a seventh lap to reach 19 km and then worked out where the exact point would be on the way back home for the half, which ended up being 92 minutes. Not exactly sub 90, but not bad for a long-run substitute! I had another 2 km to get back home and just kept on with the same pace.

I was thinking about how far I could have kept running at this pace. While it is always hard to be sure, I was certainly starting to feel a fair build up of fatigue in the legs, despite still being able to turn them over at the required speed. I think I could have kept it up until 30 km without too much drama, but we would have been getting into leg-thrashing mode, and I certainly didn't want that ;-) (nor did I have the time).

So that completed almost 23 km for the day (at 4:24/km), 85 for the week, and 503 for the month. Not so bad. Not so bad.

While the sore bit has not healed completely, and I am still going to have to be a bit careful with it, I am feeling much more upbeat than I was a few days ago. I think I can carry on running some easy/steady training runs this week mixed in with some sessions in the pool and or elliptical trainer. Then we shall see what we shall see.

And today is definitely going to be a rest day (the beer event took its toll, you see).

It's a sickness

Wow, thanks so much for all the comments of sympathy and encouragement. That's a good way of finding out the lurkers, just post that you have an injury, ha ha! I'm afraid what I have to tell you is going to wear thin your patience and forbearance.

Moving around this evening from work to Shibuya and up Dogenzaka to attend a kind of interview, involving a fair bit of walking, it struck me that there was not much pain or even discomfort coming from the sore bit. My mind got to working. Every day in September. Every day in September. Maybe you can still do it? I trotted a little bit in my work clothes. Hmm...doesn't hurt. No, don't be foolish! I tried to shove such thoughts to the back of my mind. So on the way back from the interview I popped into Tokyu Department Store 8th floor above Shibuya Station. There is an Osaka goods promotion (until Oct 2), and prominent among the stands was one from a craft brewery, Minoh Brewing. Their double IPA (9% ABV) was extremely tasty (both glasses), as was their real ale style stout. I got home at 9:30 and only Kohta was home and he was engrossed in his Play Station (Final Fantasy XII for those who are interested in such things).

"Hi Kohta!" I said. "Gomen ne, demo chotto atama ni byouki desukara, kore kara chotto hashitte dekakimasu." (sorry mate, I'm, a little bit sick in the head, so now I am going to go out for a little run." -- apologies to those who speak proper Japanese)

I thought that my 3.3 km loop would be enough to satisfy the "run day" requirement. But I moved well, the evening was extremely pleasant, I had a nice little buzz on from the Minoh beer, the leg wasn't too uncomfortable as long as I kept to an easy pace, so I added on a lap of Rinshi no Mori (forest park) to come up with 5.3 km at 5:18/km, HRavg 125.

It was definitely as much as I could hope for, especially considering I had tried so hard to reconcile myself to taking a day off, and I would like to think it did not set back the sore bit too much. At times I also had the thought that, well, you know, this is what I enjoy, this is what I get off on. Just the sheer pleasure of moving along, breathing easy, feeling alive. Kind of like 2P's happy place. So what if I endanger my marathon? Just as Naoko Takahashi said that running is about more than the Olympics, so too can I say that running is about more than a sub 2:55 Ohtwara. So I just enjoyed the run, sore leg be buggered.

Well, I know I am a SFI, but I promise that I am going to keep things very easy and next week really concentrate on cross training, just as some of you suggested in the comments, e.g., Toshihiko Seko. Sure I can get away with these little gentle runs, but if I am going to get to the start line in better shape, I have to give the leg a real chance to of coming good so I can fit in a couple more quality weeks down the line a bit.

Thank you for understanding this poor, sick, addicted runaholic.

Slipping onto the wrong side of the knife-edge

I have to acknowledge that I am now officially in injury management mode. I think I have a relatively serious problem, strain or inflammation, in the long head of the biceps femoris, hereafter referred to as the sore bit.

The sore bit was feeling good yesterday and otherwise my legs felt recovered. But as I got into my warm up last night I could feel some creaks and groans from the sore bit. This SHOULD have been enough to tell me to abandon my plans for running the monthly 5-k time trial as a tempo run (heart rate capped at 165). But I had done it for the past three months and was getting hooked on seeing the trend in the numbers. It was hurting a bit doing the T/T, but not really getting worse or hampering me. The numbers were coming out OK (1:29 to 1:33 per lap; not really any different to last month) and I was feeling quite comfortable at that heart rate. Then in lap 11 the pain went up a notch and was causing me to alter my stride, so I finished the lap and stopped. Today it is sore. There goes my hope of running every day in September. Only four days to go too...

I am kicking myself for not changing plans and just having an easy run in the park, that should have been a no-brainer. And I can trace the injury back to a couple of other strategic mistakes as well. Chasing Hadd's final time & intensity program before I had actually worked up to the weekly mileage involved at easier pace. Not responding more quickly to the realization that HR150+ was just too hard on my legs in the early morning (hence a couple of forced-pace runs when I must have laid the precursor damage to the injury). Of course it is easy to be wise after the fact, but in reaching for the highest fruit on the tree, it is pretty obvious you are eventually going to fall off the ladder. I should have been more cautious. Shoulda known better...

Well, day one of the recovery starts today. Complete rest. Tomorrow morning I will head into a gym and see if I can do some cross training, like on one of those dang cross-country skiing type machines, maybe some pool walking or swimming. Tomorrow might even be too soon for that. But whatever the case, I have to force myself to let this thing recover...and need to downgrade my marathon goals.

Damn.

Age shall not weary them ...

...but running 120+ km weeks certainly seems to do a pretty good job of it.

With the leg tiredness & threatening thigh injury I was talking about last week utmost in my mind, I backed off the intensity on the Friday and Saturday runs. I went into Sunday's long run with a little trepidation about the hot spot in my leg, but otherwise being slightly fresher than the previous two weeks. I also had a piece of toast & golden syrup before starting and a bottle of Pocari Sweat (sports drink) at 25 k. As a result I ended up finishing much stronger and was able to extend the run to three hours, 34.7 km. That brought up 125 km for the week.

I went to an extremely enjoyable BBQ party on Sunday evening, at which I somehow assumed grill duties and spent most of the time tending to briquettes, grilling chicken, lamb chops, blackened fish, lamb fillets and vegetables. And drinking some nice craft beers. In other words, I had a ball! Got to watch some of the Australia vs Fiji WC rugby on Dominic's high-definition telly before leaving too. The clarity of the picture was just unbelievable.

So with a touch of a hangover yesterday and another public holiday on the agenda I refrained from a run in the morning. By 4 pm though I was about to climb the walls, so I talked my two sons into accompanying me on their bicycles and we went for a nice slow and easy recovery run of about 9.5 km in 55 minutes, exploring the roads over to Musashi-koyama, Osaki, and back via Gotanda along the Meguro River (drain).

My run this morning again felt like the limiting factor was leg fatigue. I could still some tenderness in the quads from Sunday and other little yips and yaps, especially in the hamstring region of both legs. So again I didn't try to force the pace and just let it unfold at what felt a firm but manageable pace. Again, this meant that while the pace was quite satisfactory at 4:35/km average for the run, the heart rate was very low at 134 for the run and 148 max (hill-related and very little time was spent above 140-142). So, all this by way of prelude brings me to another extremely timely "ask Mystery Coach" post concerning the Lydiard 1/4, 1/2, 3/4 running efforts. The take-away message from this for me, and what I had been more-or-less gravitating to anyway, was that I do not need to push the pace and chase the 150-155HR. Certainly not on these morning runs when my body just seems to be operating at a lower HR. I also think that I'll make a more concerted effort to back off the distance this week, maybe bite the bullet and take a rest day...maybe...then come back for a couple more seeks of harder conditioning before starting the sharpening phase. I really need to sit down and plan it out.

Third Hadd Test

Finally managed to get the data all entered tonight. And the result is...GOOD! Yes, I have become faster at doing the Hadd test.

Hadd Test: Average pace of last two laps
HR	20-Jun	8-Aug	19-Sep
135	na	0:05:15	0:04:53
145	0:04:50	0:04:37	0:04:30
155	0:04:17	0:04:13	0:04:00
165	0:03:54	0:03:54	0:03:43
175	0:03:44	0:03:43	0:03:38

Total running time for each test was: 43:20, 43:00, and 41: 06.

While the changes between 20 Jun and 8 Aug were pretty subtle, they were much more obvious this time round. The improvements at HR145 and HR155 are certainly very encouraging and match what I have been noticing in training at around these heart rates.

I have made some good progress, but still tend to think I might be a little soft in endurance at the critical 145 to 155 range of heart rates. I do need to keep working at running at these heart rates for a longer time, especially over these critical next few weeks when the temperatures start dropping.

Frankly I just don't accept that I can train myself to run a marathon at 165. Maybe it is physically possible, but 165 still feels like 5k/tempo pace...the kind of thing I could keep up for 5 to 10k, 20k maybe, but not the greater part of a marathon. Perhaps eventually, with continued persistent and methodical Hadd training, but it would take another three months at least and freedom from injury, which is the killer when trying to run longer distances at these kind of paces.

This time around the best I am can do is aim at getting myself prepared to spend a lot of time at HR155 and the kind of pace that will deliver. Based on the current status, that would deliver a very nice marathon time, but I repeat, I think I need a lot more endurance at that HR to come anywhere near a low 4:00/km marathon.

Addicted

I don't know whether I am addicted to running or addicted to writing entries in my run diary, but when I got home from yesterday's meeting earlier than expected, and nobody due in the house for an hour and a half, it wasn't difficult to decide how to kill some time. But I did make sure that it was an easy run. Enough to stop me taking a blank on the log and not so much or hard as to feel guilty about it when I know I need some recovery time (11k in 57 min, HRav 129).

Similarly, this morning I decided not to go chasing the upper aerobic heart rate of the Hadd schedule. My whole framework for the run was to just let it unfold and see what happens. As it was, nothing very startling. Slow at first, gradually came up to about 4:15 to 4:20/km pace. Heart rate was only gradually inching upwards and I wasn't going to force it. I got up into the top end of the lower aerobic zone and only just touched on the lower end of upper aerobic a couple of times. So bagged 16.5 km in 1 hr 15 min (4:33/km) HRav 135). I again didn't feel like I was bursting out of my skin to keep running, yet wasn't all that shagged by the run, either. So I suppose that is still consistent with dragging some fatigue around.

On a not very bright note, I've developed a little pain in my right lower hamstring, just above the rear right side of my knee. It reminds me of a very similar pain I had on the left side I little while ago. Iced it and put some magic cream on. I guess I will not be planning anything overly ambitious for tomorrow.

Thanks!!

Wow! Fantasmagorically helpful comments from all concerned on that last post. I think you all made some great points. I had seen Mystery Coach's post about low heart rates and it was on my mind, for sure, but I needed to read it properly to recall the stuff about the different fibers, so thanks for the link. I think we are generally all in agreement that I have tuckered out my poor little muskel fibers. Tonight I did the Hadd heart rate test. I haven't even looked at the data, but I am pretty sure it is going to show some significant increases in pace for some of the heart rates. Most interesting was that at the last set, trying to run at 175...fergeddaboudit! Seriously, I was all but up on my toes sprinting, but the highest I could get the damn heart rate up to was about 173. If I'd gone into an all out sprint for 200m, maybe I could have briefly lifted up to near 180, but it sure was sticky around the low 170s. breathing like a steam train and really trying hard I was too. I am sure it will be a faster pace than the last test, but what it all really means...

Anyway, out of the office all day tomorrow so it will be Friday at the earliest before I can post the results. And I am 95% sure that tomorrow will be a work-enforced rest day.

Listen to your body

Lydiard underpinned all his training advice with "listen to your body". Similarly, Mike's Mystery Coach says, "don't be a slave to a heart rate monitor. Use it as a guide to see how you respond to different workouts."

Well, these words are ringing in my ears at the moment as I try to figure out what is going on with my body and how to adjust my training. The simplest analysis and solution is that I think that I might be accumulating fatigue and in need of some freshening up. Which is probably no great surprise after the last post.

This morning's upper aerobic run was a bit of a disaster. Just as in recent upper aerobic runs, I had to work really hard to get my heart rate up, and this morning I was even breathing hard. It felt like a tempo run. Then, once I did manage to get up over 147, I started feeling heavy and the pace slipped and heart rate quickly followed it down. It was just physically too hard to run at the pace required to achieve a heart rate over 147. I don't quite get it because the idea is that when you are stressed you have an elevated heart rate, and as you fatigue your heart rate stays high...in fact you have to slow to keep the heart rate at the same level. Well, I didn't have to force myself to slow, I couldn't really help it, but not with heart rate racing away either. When I slowed, through sheer inability to keep the legs moving at pace, my heart rate also fell. It was just as though my system was saying "No! we are not going to run at that pace, fella!"

Resting heart rate this morning was 41. It has varied between 39 and 43 over the past couple of weeks since I started tracking it, so there is nothing there to suggest serious over-training or anaemia or anything. Maybe it is just tired legs.

Mystery Coach talks about the need for balanced training, typified by this statement on Mike's blog today: "It is better in the conditioning phase to see 1.25 hours and 45 minutes the next day than 1.5 hours and the next day off."

Maybe I have reached a bit too far trying to hit those numbers from the Hadd document. Maybe I am just going that bit too far or bit too hard to allow enough recovery. Maybe I am just being too much of a slave to the heart rate monitor (and Hadd) and I should put it aside for a few days and just run to how I feel. If I had tried to run to a target pace today, I probably would have found it tougher than expected, perhaps slower than target. I'd put it down to some residual fatigue and have a couple of easy days before making another attempt at that pace.

So, I think that's all I can do here too. I will take tomorrow morning off and do the Hadd heart rate test and some easy distance tomorrow night. I might be forced to take Thursday off completely because of an all-day meeting in Tsukuba, and then I'll perhaps have an easy run Friday morning and then another crack at an upper aerobic run on Friday evening (to see what difference morning vs evening makes). Seems about the best way forward. Listen to your body. Is it saying have a step-back week? Probably.

But right now, Hadd's theoretical HRmarathon (160ish) versus my envisaged marathon pace (4:15/km which I am hitting at HR147 but not maintaining) just doesn't make sense at all.

A solid week

133.5 km...

I think that was my longest ever week. Two years ago during my buildup I think the highest I got to was about 125 km. And this didn't really seem all that hard, in the sense that I felt like I was recovering from each run by the next day. Sort of. However I again struggled in the last 10 km of the 30 km long run today and feel a bit embarrassed about the slowness of the pace...I need to get faster as soon as the temperatures come down. It was warm today, but I'm also sure the legs were pretty full even before the start.

So in some ways I cruised, but I think all in all it has been a tough week and definitely a step up. So the most ambitious goal I could have for this next week is to consolidate. Do much the same and hope to find the hardest runs of the week, like Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday, feeling just that bit easier.

Following closely the same plan as I posted last week, and getting much closer to it than last week, here are the stats:

Mon: easy 12 km in an hour (forgot heart rate monitor)
Tue: UA 18.5 km, 1 hr 22 min, HRav 143, 4:28/km
Wed am: LA 14 km, 1 hr 06 min, HRav 131, 4:40/km
Wed pm: 2.5 km easy, 5.2 km on track alternating 200 m at 5k pace, 200 m easy, total time 22:49, 4:24/km, average HRav 141
Thur: LA 16.5 km, 1 hr 13 min, HRav 137, 4:28/km
Fri: UA 19.5 km, 1 hr 25 min, HRav 141, 4:23/km
Sat: fartlek, 14 km, 1hr 03 min, HRav 142, 4:29/km (included about 6x500 m at 5k pace)
Sun: long, 31 km, 2 hr 47 min, HRav 133, 5:27/km
(N.B: The Blogger compose window needs a table function)

Definitely needed a nap this afternoon and my feet are feeling a bit weary tonight. I think I might be in need of new shoes. I'm also nursing blisters on a couple of the calloused parts of my toes, one of which is infected and rather hurty. I'm glad tomorrow is a holiday here. I'll do my recovery run in the morning and join a dinky little ekiden in the afternoon that consists of 1-km/leg.

Note to Robert Song: the runs on Tues and Fri are "hard" in the sense that it is really hard to get he body up to working at that level so early in the morning. I run what feels fast, but am still at HR137 or so, targeting 148-153. I hit the park I do laps at and have to really work it up an uphill section to get the heart rate up to 147 or so (by about the third lap) and then I can hold it there, but I admit, I do feel like I've worked darn hard by the end of the run. I know I could keep going, for sure, but not necessarily all over again at that pace. But I am not exactly running on fresh legs either and it is not race conditions...hmmm...anyway, we'll see how it feels in a few more weeks.

Almost a Week of Pure Hadd

In the Hadd document there are some time-based (rather than distance-based) schedules that Hadd used for Joe to progress from 50 to 80 miles per week. I found my training was starting to approach the third of these tables, and without a clear plan for my continued progression, I decided it would be a good thing to aim at. It goes like this (with adaptation to remove the references to Joe-specific heart rates):

Mon	60 min easy	easy side of lower aerobic
Tue	90 min	incl. 70 @ upper aerobic HR
Wed	75 mins easy	lower aerobic
Thu	75 mins easy	between lower & upper aerobic
Fri	90 min	incl. 70 @ upper aerobic HR
Sat	75 mins easy	lower aerobic
Sun	3 hrs easy	lower (w/60 min @ upper aerobic)
Approx 80+mpw

All those "easy" descriptors are a bit misleading f you ask me. That schedule is by no means a stroll in the park. I actually got off to a bad start with only 5k easy on Monday morning. Then Tuesday I approximated the Hadd run, but only got to about 75 minutes (17.5 km) before knowing I'd had(d) enough. On Wednesday (15.75 km) and Thursday (16.4 km) I met the Hadd prescriptions pretty much spot on.

I was hoping to do all the runs before work, but a passing typhoon ruled out running on Friday morning. I got out in the evening for three laps of the Palace and again fell a bit short on the time (18.2 km in 1:20, with a couple of slow km at the start and finish). With that run still fresh in my legs, I went out for what should have been an easier run on Saturday morning, except for the little matter of six reps of my 700-m hill circuit. It was a warm, humid morning, and I was a totally different (as in wasted) runner leaving the hill circuit to the one I was when I approached it. So that was 13 km in 65 minutes, some of it tough, compared to the 75 min "easy".

During yesterday's long run I felt OK to start with and moved at decent but not fast pace. But my legs were definitely full from a fairly hard week, particularly the previous two runs. By 15 km I was feeling fatigued, and by 25 km I was almost ready to quit. I battled on to 29 km, at which point I decided enough was enough, and I resisted the lure of doing another 1 km for the sake of round numbers. So 29 km in 2:32 it was. Total for the week, 115 km. My longest week since October last year.

Overall I fell a little short of the time-based Hadd prescriptions. This is good because it says the schedule is achievable, but still gives me something I have to reach for. The Hadd workouts are also far from easy. The Tuesday and Friday with 70 minutes at upper aerobic are hard runs! And Sunday's three hours with 60 min at upper aerobic...what!? That seems almost insane, at least under current weather conditions. Insane, but not out of reach with sensible building. So as long as I take a couple of weeks to work up to completing this weekly schedule, I think it will be a really good basis for continued progression of the base-building phase.

I've managed to back up from yesterday's long run with a steady 12 km in one hour this morning, so this week is off to the right start. I have a sense of dread about tomorrow though!

Parse the ansar

As Scott said, it is a matter of realizing that the various words have different meanings. There is an entry with the answer to the buffalo one on Wikipedia. Basically it goes something like this:

buffalo=the animal aka bison
Buffalo=the town in upstate New York
buffalo= a verb meaning to bully
So..
Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo (that other) Buffalo buffalo buffalo.
It is easier if you substitute alternative words:
Buffalo bisons bully bisons (that other) Buffalo bisons bully.

For the had one, it becomes a bit more contrived. Let's use the seven-had version. In this case I imagine one "had" could be one person's name, another can be another person, and another one can be a type of food. So let's imagine that the person is actually called Malcolm, another is called Billy and the food is called pizza.

Had Malcolm had pizza Billy had had? (..hmm, not sure... it seems wrong without a "the" in front of "pizza")

For the longer version I was thinking of something more like a short conversation...

A: Had Malcolm had pizza?
B: Malcolm had had pizza, had Malcolm.
A: Had Malcolm?
B: Malcolm had! (I said!)

Which with the originals subbed back in would of course look like this:

A: Had Had had had?
B: Had had had had, had Had.
A: Had Had?
B: Had had!

Aren't you all glad I shared this with you? And if you see any flaws in the above, and if you are still awake, shout it out. There is probably a better answer to the seven-had version, but I am too sleepy to think about it any more.

Parse the sentence, please

The frequent references to Hadd keep reminding me of this sentence parsing problem that my Year 12 (or was it 11?) English teacher gave us all those years ago. You have to punctuate the following to form a semantically correct sentence (or sentences):

had had had had had had had had had had had had

I couldn't get it at the time and I'm not even sure if he ever gave us the answer. And...I think the original might have only involved seven "hads". But I can now think of an answer that works for all those hads, and I think that it is likely there is more than one answer.

I never really understood the concept, to be honest. But a couple of us came across one recently that, now I understand it, allowed me to nut out the had one. The recent one is:

buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo

Let me know if you can do either of them. Answers in a day or two.

Hadd training is not all easy!

The weather has cooled a bit and I have gained a lot of adaptation for running at heart rates in the low 140s. My pace at this HR, at least while fresh, is actually very healthy at around 4:30/km. When the weather is mild I also seem to have pretty good endurance at that HR. So I think its time to start in with some more serious upper aerobic runs (HR147-153 or 79% to 83% of HRmax). From now on I will do them on Tuesday and Friday morning, aiming for about 90 minutes total run (just like Joe!).

So this morning I cranked out this. Reaching for the upper aerobic heart rate brought the speed up to a point that after completing 17 km, including some slower warm-up and cool-down distance, I was still 14 minutes shy of 90 minutes. I wasn't prepared to up the distance any more though as it was already 3 km more than recent Tuesday runs. But to get to 90 minutes means this run is going to have to be about 20 km. Should be interesting. Two things I got out of this run: 1) pace at this heart rate is very respectable, better than three-hour marathon pace (before fatigue sets in anyway). 2) the endurance needs a lot of work as evidenced by the slower fourth lap. I guess the temperature was still a little warm, but I think that after four to six weeks of these runs I should be just about cranking out 20 km at 4:05 to 4:00/km without getting over a HR of 153 or 154. Will be interesting to see if that comes to pass...

The Last Week of August, 2007

Not a bad week of 112 km. Nice and consistent with a decent run of some sort every day.

Mon: 10 km easy
Tue: 14 km lower aerobic
Wed: 17 km with 6 km easy, 5 km evaluation, and 6 km upper aerobic
Thur: 11.5 km easy (PM run home)
Fri: 16.5 km upper aerobic (AM before work) in 1:14
Sat: 13.3 km including 5 loops of a 700-m hill circuit
Sun: 30 km in 2:38

The cooler weather last week, especially Thursday to Saturday, meant that I had to (or could) run significantly faster for given heart rates. I enjoyed running around the hill circuit on Saturday and the cumulative effect of this run and Friday's quicker longish run made the legs feel heavy for yesterday's long run. I ran the whole thing in Yoyogi Park, which created its own , mainly mental, challenges (12 laps). However I persevered and got there in the end and was able to finish the last 10 km fairly strongly.

August ended on Friday leaving me with just over 400 km for the month. And today marks 12 weeks to Ohtawara Marathon. I think I've done a pretty fair job of laying a solid base on which to start adding some harder mid week aerobic runs. I don't really think I need to worry too much about specific speed sessions yet, but I might start adding little bits here and there to start getting the legs ready for some speedwork sessions towards the end of this month.

On my other blog I posted some pictures of the brew day on the 25th. My reference to it last week had some people thinking I was talking about homebrewing. It was a recipe I had first brewed at home, but this was most definitely not a home brew.

Metrics schmetrics

Last night I joined the Namban Rengo monthly 5 km time trial to conduct, for the third month in a row, a tempo-pace evaluation run. I start out at roughly about 5k race pace, maybe a tiny bit slower, but when my heart rate hits 165, as it inevitably will at this pace, I hold it there rather than allow it to continue creeping up as it would if I was actually racing.

The good news is that I did much better than last month; the bad news is I did about the same as I did in June.

June: 19:18
July: 20:06
August: 19:20

The weather was not a factor. In fact all three tests have fortuitously been run at 24 or 25 degrees. We can probably dismiss the July result because I really wasn't feeling great that night and this was, I think, a precursor to the minor health problems I subsequently had.

At first it looks like I am in the same place now as I was two months ago. So let's look in more detail at the June and August data.

I ran faster at the start in June and slower at the finish, 1:28 for the first lap, 1:37 for the last, and took only four laps to hit HR165 average for the lap. I was also having difficulty keeping my heart rate down to 165 in the last full lap.

Last night it was 1:31 for the first lap and 1:34 for the last. I took six laps to hit HR165, and every lap from six to "13" was bang on 165 average HR except the eighth, which was 164.

I do think that I finished feeling more comfortable last night and in fact just clicked my watch at 5 km and kept running, albeit slower, to add another 5 km at upper aerobic heart rate to complete the night's work (I had done an easy 6 km before the time trial).

So, while the data are not totally convincing, and maybe I need a more taxing kind of evaluation run to bear out the improvements in stamina more clearly, I do think that there are signs of improvement. Phew, otherwise I might have started to lose motivation like my old mate Ingo.

Weekly washup

Mon: 7.8 km easy (4:54/km; HRav=71% of HRmax)
Tue: 14.25 km lower aerobic (4:40/km; 74%)
Wed: 7.8 km warm up/cool down
Wed: 9.7 km upper aerobic (4:40/km; 78%)
(c.f. Tue. This was a hot evening, Tue was a 3-deg cooler morning)
Thur: 10.7 km lower aerobic (4:28/km; 73%) (treadmill)
Fri: 16.4 km upper aerobic (4:30/km; 76%)
Sat: Zero (but 11 hours standing around in a brewery)
Sun: 29.4 km long (5:20/km; 70%)
Total: 94 km

I was pretty happy with this as a comeback after last week's set back. The Thur/Fri combo was a bit tough with Thur being in the evening after work and Fri being up at 5:20 am or so. I think I might have over-reached a little on Friday, but I knew I wasn't going to be able to run on Saturday unless I got up at 5:00 or so (I had to head out at 7:00 to go and join in a brew day of my prize-winning home brew recipe at a brewery out in Chiba).

Several runs, Wednesday night and Sunday in particular, were hot and tough. There is such a big difference between 27 degrees and 30 degrees.

Swoon...

Apparently Paul Keating gave a speech at Sydney University last night. Edited version here.

Australia's vital interests are in East Asia. They are not in North America or Southern Africa or Europe. They are here, where we live, in the fastest-growing part of the world. It is in this region that Australia's destiny lies; it is only in this region that our security can be found and that will only happen when our foreign policies and our economic and trade policies are in appropriate and sensible alignment.

Ahh...ten years. Ten wasted years.

I hope Captain Kevin point oh seven has the wherewithal to turn the good ship SS Australia back onto the right course.

Salvaging something from the week

Mon - 2 km (had to pull up short due to a macerated gut)
Tue - enforced rest
Wed- enforced rest
Thur- 5.6 km easy to lower aerobic on treadmill (feeling delicate and tentative)
Fri: 7.7 km easy in local park (condition still a bit delicate)
Sat: 12.1 km lower aerobic to Komazawa park, 2 laps & home
Sun 22 km trail run with a dip in the river after. Body fine.
Total: 49.7 km

Wow, you'd think I could have found another 300 m somewhere!!

The good news is that I seem to be pretty much back to normal, though I still need to be a bit careful. I guess I will be reverse tapering and will not be chasing a 100+ km week this week...I'll settle for 98 ;-)

Darn Achilles is still yapping.

KER-SplaTT!

That is the sound of egg hitting face.

I cringe when I read my last post.

This week, rather than continuing to "cruise" and churn out the miles, I have been meekly nursing a delicate part of my male anatomy...and running...well, not very much at all. In some ways that is fortunate as we are having a heat wave this week which has seen the mercury in the mid 30s all week...it even topped 40 in a few places yesterday.

If you don't want a more detailed explanation of my medical situation. Then please close the tab now. But for those with a stronger constitution, feel free to read on.

Originally a couple of weeks ago, I had soreness and a lump in my epididymis. It seemed to settle down pretty quickly but I was put on antibiotics just to be sure. It is a reasonably common thing to happen to the man bits.

Then I had the good running week last week, albeit that some of the runs were in quiet warm conditions and much sweat was produced. During the trail run on Saturday I felt a strong discomfort like I needed to take a pee, only a bit painful as well, and it came back quickly after taking one. It was just like a bladder infection (cystitis), but it settled down when I stopped running.

Then during my running on Sunday the sensation returned, and when I did take a pee, blood came out!! Hell!! I was a bit shocked by that. Things cleared up later in the day after I had a rest. The strange thing was, as I did mention in that last post, apart from that, I felt so good during the run.

I went to the doctor again on Monday and he thought it was probably being caused by stones in my ureters. He got me to have an x-ray, but it didn't confirm anything. So he just said to keep taking the antibiotics and drink lots of fluid (and don't run for a few days). I felt quite doughy on Monday and Tuesday and the epididymis thing seemed to flare up again. I then started improving on Wednesday and Thursday (last night). Thursday I ventured for a short run on the treadmill and this morning (Fri) a slow 7 km around the neighborhood.

So, what was that I was saying about a knife-edge?

Unfortunately the doc also made me keep taking antibiotics and to stay off alcohol. I am almost a teetotaller!

The question that is burning in my mind is whether the attack had anything to do with the running I'd been doing the week before, or simply came on and obviously was exacerbated by the running. Either way, I do need to tread carefully for a while.

110 km & cruising (kind of)

Mon: 7 km easy
Tue: 14 km lower aerobic
Wed: 10 km (Hadd Test) + 7 km easy
Thur: 12.7 km lower aerobic (evening)
Fri: (morning): 6 km easy//9 km upper aerobic
Sat: 18 km trail run in about 2 hours (uphill out, downhill return)
Sun: 26 km @ 5:19/km average

Looking over that list, it would be tempting to say that it must have involved a lot of slow running. But the thing is, that lower aerobic heart rate isn't that slow these days, as demonstrated by the Hadd test on Wednesday night. Each run designated "lower aerobic" was about 4:40 to 4:50/km average. The second half of the run on Friday morning was mostly at sub 4:30/km. And the Hadd test itself involved three rather fast 2-km reps.

A friend talked me into a trail run on Saturday morning. It was pretty steep terrain and the day was promising to be a scorcher, but once we got a couple of hundred meters up, the terrain leveled out and the air became noticeably cooler. Just nice easy running. I surged up some of the hills, but also walked a lot. Afterwards we cooled off in the river and ate watermelon (and drank about a gallon of assorted soft drinks).

Surprisingly, this morning my legs felt absolutely no ill effects from the trail run whatsoever. And then the run just peeled off at a steady pace. I felt comfortable rolling along in the low 5:00/km despite the 29 degrees temperature. But running with others for a while I slowed considerably below that. Then off again. I was waiting for the old familiar hip flexor fatigue to hit, but it never really came. I finished feeling only pleasantly fatigued and could have easily continued except...I seem to have picked up an infection in the downstairs waterworks area. It was quite uncomfortable during much of the run, so I was happy to finish when I did. I am scheduled to see a urologist tomorrow as a follow-up to what I can only think was a related problem from the week before. But that problem aside, with the passive help of Mike's Mystery Coach and Hadd (via Ewen), I seem to have stumbled on a really nicely balanced mix of frequency x intensity that is making me stronger without wearing me out. It is a precarious balance though, and another week of walking on a knife edge starts tomorrow.

Hadd Heart Rate Test No 2

My blogging mate and aerobic heart rate training devotee Ewen recently ran a Hadd heart rate evaluation and posted about it here. This was enough to make me get off my butt and do my second test, the first having been on June 20th. There were about five of us did the first test, but this time everyone else seems to be away or sick or having their nails done...getting the bumper bar re-chromed...anyway, I had to face it on my own.

Rather than the full 2,400 m, I run five laps, or 2,000 m per rep (five laps of a 400 m track). This makes each rep last about the same time as Hadd's runner, "Joe". The conditions can play an important role. During the first test it was 24 degrees and humid. On Wednesday it was 28 degrees and not so humid. All in all, I don't think the difference in temperature had too great an influence. So, the idea of the test, if you didn't read Ewen's post, is to run a series of consecutively higher heart rates, starting around 70 to 75% of maximum and then 10 beats higher each time with the last one being around 90% of max. In so doing, you should be able to identify your lactic accumulation threshold, where your muscles tip over from being able to clear lactic acid as fast as it forms to a state of net lactic acid accumulation, in other words, unsustainable.

Here are my results given as average pace (minutes per km) for the entire 2000 m:

Date	135 (73%)	145 (78%)	154 (83%)	165 (89%)	175 (94%)
20 Jun	5:08	4:50	4:13	3:52	3:40
8 Aug	5:09	4:41	4:10	3:51	3:40

*Percentages are percent of maximum heart rate.

It is easy to run a little erratically in the first couple of laps as you bring heart rate up to target, so I thought it would also be helpful to look only at the average pace of the last two laps. If there is more fade in one test than another, the data of the last two laps should highlight that.

Results as average pace (minutes per km) for just the last 800 m

Date	135	145	154	165	175
20 Jun	na	4:50	4:17	3:54	3:44
8 Aug	5:15	4:37	4:13	3:54	3:43

There are two main points to take out of these numbers:

1) I have shown a fairly dramatic improvement at the 145 (178% HRmax) level. This is logical because it is where I have been spending a lot of my time in training AND, I think I tended to neglect it in the past, running either harder or easier than the low 140s.
2) There has been no noticeable improvement at the 165 and 175 levels. I attribute this to a combination of a few things. i. It was warmer on Wednesday, so maybe I was starting to get some heat accumulation. ii. I just haven't run enough km or at high enough heart rates to move these limits yet. iii. My aerobic fitness for these heart rates was already pretty well trained on June 20.

By the time of the next test the weather will be starting to get milder and I will have been doing more distance at upper aerobic pace, exhausting though it is. So it will be interesting to see what will happen next.

Hypocrisy of the Most Breathtaking Kind

For those gentle readers who do not like my occasional forays into Australian politics, please look away now. But this one is relatively brief.

In perusing the blogs and the news today, I just couldn't help but notice that in one breath PM Howard is ramming the NT Aboriginal legislation changes through Parliament with barely enough time for consideration, let alone debate or, heaven forbid, consultation with the communities concerned, while in the next breath he is attacking Queensland's proposed forced local government mergers for having a lack of community consultation.

The sheer bald-faced audacity. Consider these two reported quotes from Honest John:

1. From the ABC a couple of days ago

"[Labor] is entitled to see the legislation and to express whatever view it wants, but I want to make it clear, we will not be changing our approach in the Northern Territory," he said.

"We will be going ahead with all of the elements of the intervention plan that [Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal] Brough and I announced, including in relation to the permit system and the prohibitions on alcohol."

In other words, not Labor, which has indicated a willingness to take a bipartisan approach on this issue, not the academics who created the original reports on which Howard and Brough are acting, not aboriginal leaders in general, and not the communities concerned are to be given any voice or influence over the specifics of the legislation. They can all just go to Hell because We Know Best (or will not have Our Agenda meddled with).

2. From today's SMH

"I challenge the Premier of Queensland, let the people speak on your amalgamation proposal.

"Let this be a reminder that if you remove the check and balance in our system and if you have Labor governments at every level, this sort of behaviour will become the norm."

Checks and balances. Yeah, right, you are something of an expert about the abuses that can occur when checks and balances are removed aren't you, Mr Prime Minister. Makes me retch.

Feelin' alright

It finally feels like my body has caught up to the new workload. All leg and health issues are in good shape apart from the left Achilles, which continues to yip away. I now see the great benefit of slowing down a little and evening out to some extent the daily load. I ran 14 km this morning at an average pace of 4:41/km and it was just a steady rolling pace, well within myself. The milder 26 degree temperature helped.

Now, to deal with a couple of things raised in comments to my last post.

To Ewen: Yes, my lower aerobic runs tend to be relatively easy judging by heart rate, though not necessarily by how my legs feel. Though that is now finally turning around, as per the above note. Thanks for the prod, I added the link to my on-line log over on the right there. That takes you to the summary page and then you can click on Calendar or Workout views to see links to individual runs.

Clairie: "Do you throw in a 'drop down' week after several high mileage weeks?"

My reply: I probably should but haven't specifically programmed it in. I think I will do that if I feel myself starting to get worn down. But the specific strategy behind my current program is to run at distance/pace combinations that stress the system only slightly and from which I can recover from and adapt to and start to feel strong, as is happening right now. So with three 90-100 km weeks behind me, and this will be a fourth, I will try to ratchet up by 10-15 km adapt to that, then when it becomes comfortable, ratchet up again. I will also need to start introducing some hills and small amounts of speed work, moreso after the next four-week block of steady distance.

Clairie again: "I'm curious to hear what an 'easy' pace is for you as most of your runs seem to be tempo or decent pace for someone doing that much mileage."

My reply: I am using two kinds of reference systems for pace. One is the Lydiard "steady state" pace (the fastest pace you can run 10 km every day and recover from for the next day). I judge that to be about 4:30/km for me at the moment. Training paces are based on percentages of that. The fastest training pace is that pace and the slowest is supposed to be about that pace plus 10% (about 5:00/km). The other system is Hadd percent of maximum heart rate zones, which roughly line up with the Lydiard pace guidelines. I wouldn't say that any of my runs (except a 5k time trial two weeks ago) have been tempo pace (defining tempo as lactate threshold). So I guess the bottom line is that anything slower than about 4:55/km falls into "easy" (depending on the overall distance), and that is what I will use for warm-up, recovery and long runs. Just about all other training paces at the moment will be between 4:50/km and 4:20/km and if you did a frequency histogram of recent runs, the distribution would be skewed towards the slower end of that range. (But this will change as time progresses.) Because of the current heat, I am also not at all concerned about going slower than steady state + 10% if heart rate or common sense dictate.

milesandmiles: “Always amusing for us training in Singapore to hear people complaining about a 29 degree day :)”

My reply: yes, yes, I know Arnaud, you Singaporeans have the worst of everything. Almost as bad as Texans, you are :-). At least you have the whole year to get used to those temperatures. We have to go from 4 degrees in winter to perfect conditions in autumn and spring, to boiler house conditions for 6 weeks in summer. And yes, I agree that cross training is helpful. I did use it to some extent during the early part of this build-up.

-17 weeks: 90 km getting easier

That was the third week in a row over 90 km and it was much easier to handle. A combination of improved health and improved fitness I should think.
Mon: Rest
Tue AM: 13.5 km @ 4:51/km, HRav 129 (lower aerobic)
Wed PM: 17.2 km with 15.8 km @ 4:54/km, HRav 133 (lower aerobic)
Thur PM: 11.5 km @ 5:01/km, HRav 133 (lower aerobic)
Fri AM: 14 km with 6.3 easy. Then 7.7 @4:37/km, HRav 149 (upper aerobic)
Sat AM: 12 km @ 4:29/km, HRav 142 (upper aerobic, average lowered by including early part of run)
Sun AM: 26 km @ 5:25/km, HRav 134 (long run) in 29 degrees!
Total: 94 km

Health wise, my body is feeling better than it has for a while. I went to a urologist on Thursday who diagnosed epididymitis for the problem downstairs that I alluded to last week. I'm now on antibiotics and off the drink. It had been feeling better but I decided to go get it checked out to be on the safe side. I'm glad I did because I think it explained a lot of the other malaise I'd been feeling on top of the fatigue from increased mileage. Now all I have to worry about is the normal heat stress. This morning's long run was a bit of a killer, but I survived it OK. Longest for a while and at a better pace than last week (not that that is saying much).

93 km for the week

With work and life crowding in, I seem to be reduced to weekly updates. Probably not such a bad thing.

Started last week feeling tired and lacking in energy, empty legs, and sore back. Slight tummy discomfort. High temperatures and humidity added to the challenge. I scaled back distances and intensity on Monday (easy 8.4k) and Tuesday (12k). Still not feeling great on Wednesday evening, but jumped into the monthly 5k time trial with a view to run it at HR no higher than 165, which is the same thing I did last month. The 20:06 turned out was somewhat slower than the previous month, but the heat and feeling poorly surely contributed. Ran home from work on Thursday night (12.7k) and found energy levels slightly better. Friday (12.6k) I ran back from home to work and finally starting to move more freely. Saturday morning I was up and out the door reasonably early to try and beat the heat (ha!) and actually had a decent 12 k, fastest of the week, not counting the 5k of the time trial. In the shower later I noticed that I am tender in my right nether region, so might have an infection down there, which would go some way to explain my doldrums. Might have to get it checked out. Sunday (yesterday) morning I got going quite early and headed out to try and run 2 hours, I didn't mind how slowly. Ended up making it to 22 km on the nose in 2 hours and 5 minutes.

I recovered pretty quickly from yesterday's slow run, but with the stomach and abdomen discomfort this morning I have decided to take a day off. There was a cool change overnight and it would have been lovely running weather this morning. Plus yesterday was my 20th day straight. That was something I really would have liked to have continued and it took quite a bit of will-power and mental struggle to resist the urge this morning from about 5:00 as I woke and dozed fitfully, got up, went back to bed, changed my mind about four times ... finally accepted I had to try and do what is best for my body... damn, it will be a low mileage week now ;-)

End of a solid week

Well, running and work have both been conspiring to make it difficult to find time to blog. But this past week I set about trying to apply the principles of the Lydiard running approach while mainly using Hadd's heart rate prescriptions to control my efforts. The principle of the Lydiard approach, as I understand it, is to run as much as you can while keeping the distance and exertion up near, but below, the limit of what you can recover from each day. And the aim is, then, to run every day. Every day. Like all runners, the biggest threat I pose to myself is to go over the edge and head into a slow death spiral of increasing fatigue. Work pressures this week almost caused that to happen through a few nights where I didn't get as much sleep as I needed. But somehow I have got through and logged 97 km as 12, 12, 18, 13, 7, 12, 24. At this stage of the game, 18 weeks from tomorrow until the marathon, this is a pretty good place to be, but I still think that I might have over-reached slightly and will simply be trying to consolidate this next week rather than add on any more distance. At least I kept the intensity down on most of these runs, easy or lower aerobic, and haven't felt any major physical difficulties backing up each day. The only exception was Friday, when ideally I should have been doing 10 to 12, but the efforts on Wednesday and Thursday had left me feeling tired, so I backed off for an easy lap of the Palace with Ms Uchida from my office (she continues to progress and ran a PB for the course!). Today's long run, at 24 km, was a few more km than I should have done, but then it was also a bit slower than it should have been too. The temperatures are staying mild so far (low to mid 20s), but every day is overcast and humid. Bring on WM-18! (=marathon week minus 18 weeks).

Lining up Hadd and Lydiard-cum-Mystery Coach

Before I get to the title of the post, I'll just fill in the last few day of running. A typhoon brought a very rainy old weekend. On Saturday morning I visited a sports club and got in an upper aerobic 10 km on a treadmill. I discovered the incline function (all the controls are in Japanese you see, so I'd never known what that button was for) and found that it can really help you get a decent workout without constantly feeling like you are about to get thrown off the bloody thing. I still don't like them.

On Sunday the typhoon had set in properly and rain was falling constantly, but there was no wind and it was warm, so I headed off into the rain. I had discussed my intentions with Gareth and tehre was a chance I might meet him in Yoyogi Park. (Colin and others were all off at a race in Nagano.) At the designated meeting time of 9:00 in the park, the rain was growing steadily heavier and not a soul was about bar a few soggy crows. I gave Gareth the customary 5-minute allowance, still no signs of life so I headed off. With a couple of minutes I bumped into Mika T coming the opposite way and so we shared a very wet but warm 10 km together and I turned for home. A soggy but satisfying 20 k. That brought up a satisfying 77 km for the week.

Yesterday (Monday) was a public holiday (Ocean Day). I met up with a friend who has a predilection for speaking Spanish and all things Mexican and ran a couple of laps of the Imperial Guest House (Gosho) with her, generally easy but surging up the hills. An invigorating 12 km all up, though the warm conditions started taking their toll by the third lap.

This finally brings me to today and the title of this post. I've been reading up on all the Lydiard related theory posted by the enigmatic "Mystery Coach" (and commenters) on Mike's blog. As Ewen and others have noted, the methods of Bideau and Hadd, et al. all have a basis in Lydiard. Lydiard's prescriptions tend to be pace related determined from what he calls your "steady state" pace, the fastest pace you can run for 10 km or so every day and be recovered enough to run the next day without getting worn down. The most important word here is not "fastest" but "be recovered". Workouts are then based on a percentage of this pace, ranging from about 8% slower to the same pace.

Hadd, of course uses heart rate based prescriptions rather than pace-based. I have been basing my training on Hadd, but have been seduced by the incredible knowledge of Mystery Coach and really attracted to his ideas on the fiber recruitment model.

So to see just how the Hadd method compares with the classic Lydiard approach, I had a play around with some of Mystery Coach's numbers that he provides for developing a stamina build up. From an educated guess I assumed that my steady state pace is about 4:20/km, from which I calculated that the easier paced days that Mystery Coach prescribes for the early part of the program would have me running at about 4:40 pace. I thought that sounded interesting and based on recent experience was probably not too far off the mark for the Haddish lower aerobic heart rate runs.

So today when running around the Palace on an unseasonably cool day, I put this to the test. The first lap (5k) at 4:40 resulted in a HR considerably lower than the upper range of Hadd's lower aerobic, but that would not be unexpected even if I was following a heart rate guide for the run, since it does take a while for the system to get loaded up. It is the latter part of the run that the prescriptions really come into effect. And sure enough, during the second lap, although I did at times dip down into the 4:20s, the average pace was only a bit faster than 4:40 and the heart rate was right around the 139 to 143 area, exactly spot on for a lower aerobic run. You can see the data here. So this is good stuff. I feel that I much better understand the relation between these two fundamentally similar systems and feel the ability to mix and match somewhat without compromising the integrity of the program. In particular, I am pretty keen to adopt Mystery Coach's suggestion of running faster (100% of steady state) on Saturday (the day before a long run) to activate/fatigue the harder to get at muscle fibers and then bring them into use, i.e., condition them, during the next day's long run. Of course, all this depends on me staying injury free :-(

And if you have read this far, I'll reward you with a little anecdote from today's run, slightly grimace inducing though it is. On my first lap, I was running along concentrating on pace and heart rate and so on, and a nice fine drizzle had started. It was near the Otemachi stretch where the path is a little narrow and the paving is surfaced with that fine pebble-crete stuff. A guy and girl were jogging along side by side ahead of me and I started to pull out to go around them which would have blocked off the path, but I looked ahead to see a guy on a bicycle hurtling towards the gap I was about to close. I saw him in plenty of time to pull up and leave the gap open, but he, the poor bugger, saw my move and reflexively went for the anchors, unfortunately locking up the bike causing his front wheel to slide out from under him. Thereafter he involuntarily used his right knee and elbow as landing gear on the way to becoming fully sprawled over the pavement. He was still a good 10 m in front of us when he went down, indicating the prematurity of his actions, and also the speed he must have been going at. We scraped him and his bike up off the pavement. He was grimacing in pain but being very stoic. Luckily with the greasiness of the path he didn't lose any skin. He was a bike courier and was pretty good about the whole thing. I think he knew that whichever way you diced it, he'd screwed up: too fast for the conditions, notorious place for joggers at that time of day, misjudged and hit the anchors way too early...still, I couldn't help but feel bad for my part in it.

Getting back to normal

The back is still a bit stiff, but much better than it was. I went for a bout of cross-training last night. I spent 12 minutes on a stationary bike, then 5k on the treadmill (does that count as cross training?) and 1 k of freestyle. Plus I did a few strength exercises, but I need to approach those in a more structured way.

This morning the alarm woke me from a deep sleep and I fumbled my way out the door and ran a lower aerobic 15.5 km in 1:14:35, average pace of 4:48, average heart rate of 141. The humidity made this a tough little run. I only aimed for it to be lower aerobic, but despite the conversation over at Ewen's place, I did find that my heart rate crept up past the upper figure (143) for lower aerobic. I slowed as necessary to stop it going too far out of range, but still the average HR after 30 min is above what it should be, and the gradual heart rate drift can be seen in the pace vs heart rate of the splits.

I was still definitely a lot happier with it as a run than last Friday's, which although doesn't look too bad on paper, practically did my back in.

Germaine Greer on Aborigines

oldsprinter posted a link to a very good article by Germaine Greer on the aboriginal issue. At first it seemed like she was just going to rehash the same analysis that many other commentators have provided on why Howard's Crusade (as oldsprinter put it) is deeply flawed and cannot be interpreted as anything other than a deeply cynical political and ideologically driven exercise. But the article goes much further and draws heavily from her own experiences visiting aboriginal communities and friendships she has made within them. She provides some important insights and gets closer to the source of finding enduring practical solutions to the issue of improving the aboriginal condition than most other commentators.

There was one passage though that I did find a little hard to reconcile with my own understanding of the history of early white settlement. She said:

The Aboriginal peoples reacted to contact in different ways. Some were used to foreigners visiting their land. Most assumed that the newcomers would adapt to their way of life, and offered to help them find food and show them how to survive by studying and venerating country. Even when diseases brought by the Europeans reduced thriving communities to a handful of traumatised survivors, there was no concerted attempt to drive the interlopers away. By the time the Aboriginal peoples realised that the newcomers had laid claim to the whole country and everything in it, it was too late.

To suggest that there was "no concerted attempt to drive the interlopers away" is a complete misreading of the real history. When aboriginal tribes understood the enormity and permanence of the white "invasion", they did resist. And they resisted stoutly. In NSW there was something of a guerrilla war that lasted fifty years or more after the first fleet (I guess these days it would be called an insurgency). But ultimately, guns, germs and sheer weight of numbers won out. Perhaps this is what she means by realizing too late. Still, it smacks a little too much of the noble savage rendering of history, and there are one or two other examples of that in the article. Which is not to diminish its overall thrust. It just brings to mind the reality of the sordid early history of white settlement. A legacy that I think hangs around our neck to this day.

I have been reading a book, actually two books in one volume, about the Northern Territory. They were written in the early 1960s. One is by Douglas Lockwood called Up the Track, and one by Bill Harney called To Ayers Rock and Beyond. Well worthwhile getting your hands on, especially the Bill Harney book as he recounts his time as the first ranger at Ayers Rock (as it was then known) after it was declared a national park in the late fifties. He shares a lot of what he learned from the aboriginal elders from the region during his time there.

But it is the Lockwood book that is germane to why I think Germaine glosses over the reality of the nature of the early contact. Lockwood recounts several incidents of history that are at once brutal and ugly and difficult for us descendants of those times to come to terms with. I will reproduce here an expurgated (for brevity) version of one passage. As the passage starts, Lockwood is being given a tour of an old telegraph repeater station in Barrow Creek by a chap called Tom. He goes on to describe an incident that occurred in 1874:

Perhaps it is not surprising...that the repeater stations in these remote spots, weeks and probably months from help, were built as fortresses with stone walls two feet thick and narrow loopholes commanding large fields of fire from within. The linesmen who had to go out on horseback to repair wires cut by the malicious natives generally travelled in pairs. Even so, there were those who failed to return.
...
Tom was saying something about the stone in the walls . . . but I had wandered off again to that hot as hell night in 1874 when the Kaiditj came down from their cubby-holes in the table-top mountains, their black bodies unseen in the dark, and crept to within a few feet of five men sitting on the front veranda of the station. The white men were unarmed and separated from the safety of their fortress. [Lockwood then introduces a couple of the men in the party, James Stapleton and John Franks.]
Suddenly, an incredible shower of spears fell among them, hurled by shadows now dimly seen but unmistakably heard as the quiet evening was pierced by their yells. The white men tried to regain the safety of their fortress through a gate leading to a courtyard at the rear. . . "Yes, that's it," Tom was saying. "They tried to come in through here . . ." but they were driven back by a second volley of spears from primitive tacticians who must have expected them to do just that.
John Franks was speared through the heart and died within a few minutes. At the gateway, Stapleton fell with no fewer than four spears in his body.
Finally the men were able to get through into the fortress. They armed themselves at once and poured a volley of shots through the loopholes ... and cleared the ground.
[section of waffle omitted]
The natives reappeared on the following day, but were fired on from five hundred yards and retired after leaving a dead man on one of the world's loneliest and least publicized battlefields. There was a grim sequel. A punitive expedition was soon organized and rode out to extract revenge. At least seventy aborigines, men, women and children, are known to have been shot. A near-by watercourse was named Skull Creek, for the obvious reason. And there is said to be a mountain named Blackfellows Bones, though I don't know it.
The graves of Stapleton and Franks are still there beside the road in Barrow Creek, a lonely monument to courageous pioneers who rode into unknown hostile country so that Australia might communicate with England.

From "Up the Track" by Douglas Lockwood, 1964 (1995 reprint by Seal Books)

There is a certain poignancy to that last phrase. Scenes like this were played out all over Australia from 1883 until as late as the 1920s. The aborigine has always just been "a problem" to be dealt with using the most expedient measures available and acceptable to the times. Ignore him, shoot him, civilize him, assimilate him, but don't try to understand him and meet him on his terms. He isn't really human enough to deserve it. It seems some things never change.

Easy easy

The back is sorta kinda improving each day. After the easy 10k yesterday morning I went for a pretty serious bit of massage last night at a clinic (K's in Ebisu) that treats some very good athletes, including Mara Yamauchi, who came second in the Sapporo half marathon behind Mizuki Noguchi on the weekend (and ahead of 6th placed Catherine Ndereba). I digress. The masseur also deigned that I was in need of getting a few needles jabbed in me, so I came to have my first encounter with acupuncture. It wasn't bad, but I cannot proclaim it to be a miracle cure either. Not for whatever I've got, anyway. I was in great fear of the massage, not for any pain I might feel, though there was some of that, but for the fact that I might find myself thinking that this is something I need a lot more of. I had good reason to hold that fear. Damn it was good. But at $50 a pop, I just can't do it very often. I dunno, maybe I should aim to go once a month or something. Do a night a month at a host club in Kabukicho to raise the readies.

Tonight, track night, I skipped track and had a good run in Yoyogi Park with Colin. One hour and fifteen minutes of nice easy/steady pace in pretty high humidity and a few squalls. Under the circumstances I think it is a good outcome. And rest assured, the back is getting plenty of stretching.

Caught short

I have often wondered if my continual niggles in the left leg have any structural or gait basis, but never got around to doing anything about it.

With the fact that I am going for a sports massage tonight in mind, I did something simple this morning that I have meant to do for ages, check whether my legs are the same length. After the shower, clad only in my best pair of Bonds briefs (an image I could have spared you all, but ha!), I sat with my butt against the wall, legs stretched out straight, and got my wife to come and give the old pegs the once over.

"Your left leg is about a centimeter shorter than your right leg," she immediately blurted out with a kind of sadistic smirk. Sure enough, I could even see it myself. My left ankle bone touched against my right leg quite conspicuously above the right ankle bone. Damn! Fourty-four years it has taken for me to notice this.

Now the million dollar question is whether this is a) the cause, b) a result of, or c) not even related to my back and other left side problems. And finally, what kind of practitioner do you see about getting a definitive analysis and remedial measures? I have heard that short-legged bastards can get a heel lift shoe insert. I wonder if one centimeter is enough to justify such an intervention?

A tentative come back

Thanks for the assorted "Get well soon" comments.

I took Saturday and Sunday off running. It was hard to swallow given that I was on track for such a good week, but there wasn't much option. I got onto the Ibuprofen and generally just took it easy.

By yesterday morning it was feeling somewhat improved, but far from 100%. SO I decided to use the ticket to a sports club I have and went for a swim before work. That was fin and I did 2 km in 40 minutes. By theend of the day the back was feeling heaps better and the little hip injury thing had pretty much faded into the background. Great stuff that Ibuprofen.

So I braved a run this morning. I ended up having a reasonably crappy sleep and the back was a little tender when I woke up. This time I decided to a) not force the pace, and b) Just aim for 50 minutes. So in the end it was a very easy 10k in just over 50 minutes at an average heart rate of 126. I felt only mild discomfort and never that I was making things any worse. So if I can continue to nurse it back to health this week while keeping up a few runs like this, I shouldn't go too far backwards.

Hobbling & humbling

My lower back has flared up. I worked at home on Tuesday and I think the chair I used is the main culprit. It was a bit stiff on Wednesday, but didn't really hinder my running. Yesterday it was somewhat worse, and due to the discomfort combined with a deadline at work, I didn't run.

So I woke up this morning, got moving and knew immediately it still wasn't the best, but I have run through lower back pain before so thought I'd give it a try. Ended up being a pretty difficult run. Quite painful and slow for the first 4 km or so. Then I stretched my legs and back when I hit Komazawa Park, and it improved a little. I finally got my pace better than 5:00/km, but not much. Still felt like I was hobbling. I did a couple of laps only and then after a toilet break headed home. When I was fully warmed up I was moving OK, but it was a bit of an effort. My heart rate was higher than it should have been for the pace. By the time I finished, my right hip was hurting, probably because of an altered gait. I should have known better. Here's the breakdown.

From a training perspective it wasn't complete write off, but I hope I have not set myself back further by pushing through. I have a tendency to do that, especially when, as now, I am trying to lift the workload. Let's see what tomorrow brings.

A good compromise

Last night it was Wednesday night at the track, i.e., VO2max intervals of some sort. When in aerobic training in the past I have skipped these and gone into Yoyogi Park and tootled around at below LT pace. Got an email from Gareth in the afternoon asking what my plans were for the evening and I said I wasn't sure. Track is more fun and interesting, but I have started aerobic base building so want to avoid running above lactate accumulation pace.

After a 5 km warmup in the park we headed to the track (at which point the drizzly rain decided to get a bit more serious). With none of the regular leaders in attendance, Gareth took over the podium and stop watch and announced we would do 5 x 1200 on a 7-minute cycle. I decided to run them at a lower intensity than I would if it was a full-on interval session, thus they became what McMillan calls cruise intervals (4:26 to 4:32/1200 for me).

Rather than think about pace too much I just said I'd try to not let my heart rate get much above 160. As it turned out, that gave me a set of times just a bit on the slow side of McMillan's suggested range. They were pretty comfortable to run and I was even talking a little bit during a couple of them. So I did one more for good luck. Final result: 4:40, 4:38, 4:33, 4:31, 4:34, 4:31. Full log entry here.

Back into the routine

I meant to post yesterday morning's run much sooner but just got too busy. Basically my stock standard Tuesday morning route to Komazawa Park with a few loops for 14 km in 1:03.

Average HR of 140. So a bit harder than Monday and heart rate drift was noticeable. It was meant to be lower aerobic, and the average heart rate definitely is, but late in the run I was straying into upper aerobic territory. I am determined to try and stop doing that so that a lower aerobic run stays in lower aerobic territory the whole way. Most important.

A new start

I bought some new Asics Gelfeathers, a pair of discounted New Balance trail shoes, a top, shorts and socks yesterday at Art Sports. So decked out in an all new ensemble this morning I had a nice easy to lower aerobic run of 10. 5 km at an average and pretty even 4:39/km. It wasn't hot, but the humidity was incredible, as it has been the last week or so, and as it especially is tonight. Sultry, muggy, steamy, oppressive. So while there was no stress at all on my legs, I was still a lather of sweat by the end.

It was a good way to kick off the first week of my new marathon buildup. Yep, 21 weeks until Ohtawara, and the training starts now. Feeling pretty good too because I am certainly in better shape than I was at the same time last year, and I don't think I really even thought about the marathon until August last year. So let's hope I get the buildup right this time.

I don't normally run on Mondays, but had to do my long run Saturday to free up yesterday for judging in the WanCup home brewing competition out in Chiba. That was very convenient for my anal retentive side because it meant I could get the log up over 300 km for June, whereas had I run Sunday, those km would have gone into July's ledger. Only just scraped in over the 300 too.

For the Saturday run I was up at 6:00 and out the door by 7:00. It was already quite warm and, yep, humid as hell. "Thank goodness I am not delaying this until later." I thought. I found it fairly tough going toward the end of the 21.5 km. Turned out that was about the warmest the temperatures got all day! It seemed to be noticeably cooler by 10, perhaps back up to the early morning temperatures around 1:00, but by 3:00 it really cooled off where it stayed until the next day. Very strange weather.

Anxiously wondering how some fellow bloggers went yesterday at Gold Coast ... just when ya ready fellas ;-)