Building Up for Endurance

For me, the holiday is over. I need to get back in shape, not that I have totally lost it. Just a 3-pound gain which I can easily lose. The holidays gave me a lot of excuses to miss running three times a week. But today, I have decided to break in my new shoes... a Christmas gift from my husband. Yeey!

I looked at the sky and smiled. It was casted with thick clouds. Getting back to the stadium gave me a sense of coming home. There were the usual morning runners occupying the tracks. The air was cool and the occasional blowing of the wind brought a refreshing touch to my face. Wearing my new Nike plus zoom with the nike i-pod+ sensor neatly tucked in my left shoe, I began to run and pray.

I have just finished Haruku Murakami's book and a new resolution has evolved. Running has brought me a clearer perspective of my life and where God is leading me and my family. When you run in circles in a track filled with strangers with only your i-pod as your companion and you do that for an hour, you are left with nothing but your thoughts. Most of the time, these thoughts would also desert you, bored with what you are doing and you are left with nothing in your mind. The blankness and the silence is just the perfect environment that awakens the spirit within. Then you hear the Voice that whispers so softly. Then you realize why there are some runners who prefer to do long-distance running.

After an hour of running slowly on the track, I pushed 'work out completed' in my i-pod and shifted to walking. Covering a distance of 7.96km, I have awakened my slackened body to embrace the 2009 training I have set out for it to do. For week 1 of January, I need to cover 26-km broken down as follows, at least 6-km done 3x a week for Build Up and one LSD of 9k for endurance. My ultimate weekly distance target for base training is 33-km per week which I hope to achieve sometime in April.

The basis is the recommended training program for a beginner who wish to run a half-marathon and this is to run a total distance of 20-30 miles per week (32.2 - 48.3 km/ week), with a frequency of 3-4x a week for base training. From my previous weekly distance of 15-20km/week, I am building up my mileage to that of the target. This build up should be done gradually, following the rule of not greater than 2 miles/ week (3.2 km per week) or 10% of current distance whichever is greater. Every forth week, I also incorporated an Easy Week which is equivalent to 75% of the current distance being ran.

This slow build up is done in order to teach my bones, muscles, ligaments and tendons to strengthen and adapt to the distance. This build up is a sense of programming so that normal adaptation occurs and the body does not succumb to injury. Training requires a lot of patience, consistency and discipline. There is no shortcut to my half-marathon. Cramming will not work.

I ended my morning work-out with a prayer: Lord, help me to carry my crosses daily but let it be the cross that you give me and not crosses I make for myself, for Your yoke is easy and Your burden light. May I go about my business doing things Your way because Your ways are not my ways. Your ways are better than mine.

Then I hear His voice ever so faint:

"I have plans for you... plans to prosper and bless you and not harm you. Because I have come so that you may have life and have it abundantly."

My spirit expanded. A new year is ahead of me, filled with hope and so much promise. I went home to a new book waiting for its pages to be devoured... Running and Philosophy - a marathon for the mind, edited by Michael W. Austin. This is a promising companion for my build up to base training. As I discipline my body, so will I discipline my mind and soul and feed it with healthy stuff as well.

Long, Slow Distance Runs to Prayer

Now that I am comfortable running 10 kilometers, I have decided to start with my base training. My plan is to enter a half-marathon next year, perhaps on my first year anniversary into running sometime in September-October 2009. To prepare for this, the recommended training for a beginner like me is to do base training for at least 8-12 weeks, strength training for 4-8 weeks, speed training for 4-8 weeks, and peaking/tapering for 2-14 days. But I need to adjust my training depending on when the 21k event will be. For now, I will use the 2nd International Subic Marathon on October 24, 2009 as basis of my training program because there is a 21k event listed there. I will not aim for the marathon yet because experts would advise that in order to train for a marathon, you should have been running for at least a year already, which is definitely not the case for me.

For the base training this afternoon, I started with the LSD (Long, Slow Distance). This means running at a relaxed, conversational pace lasting for at least an hour to an hour and a half. The heart rate is approximately 70-78% of your maximum heart rate. How to compute for your maximum heart rate? There are many ways:

Running for Fitness gives a formula to predict for this: For men - MHR = 214 - (0.8 x age) while for women - MHR = 209 - (0.9 x age).

If you want a more accurate way of determining your own maximum heart rate, you can do it on the track or on the treadmill. You must do your warm up first and then run at an even pace, as fast as you can. Do this for three minutes then recover by jogging for two minutes and then do the fast paced three-minute run again. Your maximum heart rate is the one taken during the second three-minute run. But please don't do this latter exercise without medical clearance especially if you are overweight or have problems with high blood pressure or hypercholesterolemia.

Anyway, it was much of an effort for me not to look at my stopwatch and note my distance because this only tempts me to increase my speed. So, I decided to enjoy the music and the cool evening air. Eventually I began to relax and to meditate. Yes, I have discovered that running is actually a form of prayer for me. While your body is busy doing the motion of running, your mind and your spirit can lift itself to heaven. I always found my running time so conducive to prayer except when I am conscious about my speed especially when am preparing for an upcoming race. But now that the race I am preparing for is still months ahead of me and I am forced to do long, slow distance (LSD) runs I am able to relax and switch to prayer mode. Running does not only refresh my body, it also refreshes my soul. LSD is the one that makes a runner addicted to running. Perhaps that is the reason behind the acronym.

Am I Ready for a Marathon?

Perhaps most of you who have hurdled the 10-km event now feels that the next goal to go for is the half-marathon or the marathon.

I do not have much details regarding the half-marathon for now, but for the marathon, it is recommended that you have a running history of at least a year with the frequency of three times a week. That is according to the Running for Fitness book. That makes me ineligible until August 2009. Though my husband thinks we should set our goal towards the half-marathon by middle of next year. This morning I ordered some books from Amazon.com which covers this topic but I will not get my hand on these precious treasures until December, when my sister-in law comes home from the US.

Anyway, for now, let me use the Complete Guide for Endurance Training as reference. According to this book, there are different periods for training: 1) Base training which is the preparatory building phase and the most essential foundation of the training which covers aound 8-12 weeks; 2) Speed training which is when you push your body to prepare it for the demands of the event which covers your next 4-8 weeks and finally, 3) Taper and Peaking which gradually reduces your training in 2-14 days.

So for the base training, the rule of thumb is to run slow for long distances. The goal is to build your endurance. You can start shedding unwanted weight at this stage. The speed training will initially deal more with training intensity rather than duration. So you decrease the length of time you run but you increase the speed. However, you should mix this with intervals of slow, long runs in order to maintain your endurance. Then towards the end of your speed training, you do the overtraining. This part is when you push your body to the limit but this should be done only during the third or second week before the competition. The most important part about the overtraining is that it should immediately be followed by the taper because it is during the taper when the adaptation occurs. Without the taper, the body will not be able to recover and this can lead to serious injuries or overtraining.

This kind of training can also be adapted for shorter races but this is more important for long races. A lot of people may get away with doing a 10-km without much training (that's me!) but the marathon is entirely a different thing altogether and should be planned carefully. That can mean looking at the Takbo.ph calendar and looking at the possible races for 2009 so that you can carefully lay out your training program.