Thompson at Large - author, journalist, blogger, and periodic talk radio host

Taking time to recover between exercise bouts will improve your race day performance

Something unexpected happened while watching the Olympic marathons on TV last summer. I decided to run one. On the one hand, I had a pretty good idea what to expect, having completed the vaulted 26.2 miles three times before. Still, I couldn’t help feeling I was starting from scratch. My last marathon was over two decades ago.

I finished a 1982 marathon in a respectable three hours and eight minutes. In the back of my mind I always figured I would probably run another, but the chasm that separates thinking from training is notoriously wide. Watching those magnificent runners cross the finish line at Athens, the chasm began to shrink. I set my sights on a new rite of passage: the San Francisco Marathon this July. But how fast? I crunched the minutes-per-miles numbers and decided it was reasonable to aim at finishing the marathon with a time that would qualify me to enter the legendary Boston Marathon – a goal that beckons a lot of runners. To make the Boston cut, I’d need to finish San Francisco in three hours and thirty-five minutes or better.

That’s eight minutes and twelve seconds per mile, slower than a sprint but decidedly faster than a casual jog. Even with my solid mileage base, obviously I was in for serious training. This time I was determined to do it smarter, not harder.

Not that my previous training had been dumb, or even all that hard. (I’ve never had a major injury.) It’s more that the art of endurance training has evolved considerably in two decades.

Serious distance athletes have always had to deal with how to balance exertion with recovery. Practically any runner can finish 26 miles if he or she moves slowly enough; it’s something else to finish fast and strong. That requires upping the intensity factor, training at a faster clip and keeping it up over increasingly greater distances. And staying at it for lots of weeks, rain or shine.

Which brings us to the perennial skunk at the runners’ picnic, widely known to ambitious endurance athletes as overtraining. If you’ve ever prepared for a high-stamina event – by foot, bike or water – it’s likely you’ve encountered the bane of athletes who can’t resist tampering with yesterday’s limits in hopes of transcending them tomorrow. Overtraining is when your running joins too much mileage and/or intensity with too little rest time. Overtraining is the resulting irritation, staleness, burnout and chronic fatigue. Overtraining is the injury and illness that so often drive the point home. Overtraining, in a word, sucks.

A respectable alternative is to follow the counsel of the late San Francisco running legend Walt Stack: “Start slow and taper off.” All things being equal, running a lot of slow training miles can get a motivated marathoner across the finish line – eventually. But suppose you’ve got grander goals. Say you want to extend your physical and mental boundaries, go boldly where you’ve never gone before. You mean to burn rubber, kick ass, push every envelope in sight. And while you’re at it, you’d just as soon not blow out a knee or catch one of those festive six-month colds.

If that’s your aim, you probably already know mileage matters; the real question is how much. You already understand that high-intensity workouts are indispensable for a faster finish. But how much intensity – and how often? Progress requires a steadily increasing workload, and rest is crucial. Anybody know the right ratio?

I’ve wrestled with these questions over the years in sporadic attempts to fine-tune my running without having a specific race as a training goal. It’s been interesting to observe a growing consensus among coaches and elite athletes that heart rate is the most important of several physiological variables defining the total stress on an athlete’s body. With that in mind, a couple of years ago I joined the growing number of runners, cyclists, and swimmers who use heart rate monitors to measure the body’s response to training.

But I wasn’t quite home. Like many converts to heart rate measurement, I relied on an outdated and inaccurate method (use of broad, age-based categories for maximum heart rate) to set my training zones. Top coaches now emphasize that heart rate training zones should be determined on an individualized basis. And training programs should likewise be geared to individuals. Populations don’t run marathons, people do.

* * *

Naomi Sklar is getting ready to prick my left earlobe and take some blood while I do a slow jog on a treadmill. Sklar is a San Rafael, California physician who does physiological performance testing to create personalized heart rate training profiles. She’s interested in my lactate threshold.

Lactic acid accumulates in an athlete’s muscles during intense exercise when there isn’t enough oxygen available to continue using the aerobic system to create energy. When runners, cyclists, and swimmers talk about “hitting the wall,” they’re describing the experience of advanced lactic acid build up. As your aerobic capacity increases with training, you produce less lactic acid than you do when untrained. The higher the pace at which the lactate threshold occurs, the fitter the athlete.

After fifteen minutes of warming up, Naomi pricks my earlobe and takes a baseline lactic acid level. Over the next hour, she increases my speed by four tenths of a mile, every four minutes, taking more blood each time. At every stage she correlates my heart rate with the intensity of my running and my lactic acid level.

“Every athlete has the same broad zones: recovery, aerobic, and anaerobic,” Naomi tells me. “Different people with different levels of conditioning enter those zones different numbers of heart beats per minute. Because performance testing is individualized, it gives a precise method for testing and monitoring training intensity and recovery. Then we can figure out the right ratio of exertion to rest in your workout program.”

The “we” in that sentence includes her colleague Steve Thompson (not a relative of mine), a Novato, California physical therapist and coach who works with runners, cyclists, swimmers, golfers to help them reach their highest level of conditioning. After my treadmill test, they spend some time musing over my results, and then I huddle with Steve about the training program he envisions.

“There are five heart rate levels, the first corresponding to easy work and the fifth indicating all-out effort,” Steve begins. “On the treadmill you maintained relatively low lactate values for a long time and then as the intensity increased, so did your heart rate and lactate values. This is typical for endurance athletes since most of the time you do long slow runs or events and seldom push your heart rate high. Given your marathon time goal, we need to do is start getting that heart rate up through workouts that are more intense than you’re used to, while also building in easy runs and days off. The key is to increase your workload without incurring fatigue.”

Steve spends the next few days putting together an online 32-week training program, broken down into four major phases: Base (four months of steadily increasing mileage, easy to moderate intensity); Build (two months of reduced mileage and increased intensity); Peak (the hardest month: faster pace, less distance); Taper (fewer miles while maintaining intensity).

“You’ll notice your months are organized around three weeks of increasing intensity, followed by an easier week,” Steve says. “This is to ensure that your body adapts to the tough workload. It’s common for runners to push too hard when they think they’re doing an easy day, which is where the heart rate monitor is so valuable. You’ll find your weekly routine follows an undulating model of mileage: low miles on Tuesday, higher on Wednesday, moderate Thursday, rest Friday, long run Saturday, easy/moderate Monday, rest again on Monday.”

Here’s a coaching sample from my plan: “Run 10 miles today. Keep heart rate in zones 1-3 on a rolling course. Pay attention to form. Allow heart rate to gradually rise to zone 3 as pace builds, but don't force it up.” For me, zone one means staying below 153 beats per minute (50-60% of maximum heart rate). Zone two is 153-162 BPM (60-70% MHR). Zone three: 163-171 BPM (70-80% MHR). On this day, I’m free to play among the three; but no forced speed.

For the first time in my running career, I now have a personalized training program as close as my computer. And while I’m not a particularly gadget-oriented guy, I dig using a heart rate monitor and find that it doesn’t detract from the zen of running. I take my resting pulse rate first thing each morning; if it’s elevated I know to go slow that day or back off entirely. Steve follows my progress online via my daily entries, and stays available for email consultation. As for Naomi, we’ve got a March appointment to update my lactate levels. As my conditioning improves, my five training levels will need some tweaking.

But there’s a catch — apparently the running part is actually up to me. “Some assembly required,” as the instructions generally say. Go figure.

* * *

Meanwhile, don't forget your feet. While Naomi was taking blood from my reluctant left earlobe, Steve seemed more interested in lower extremities – my left foot, to be precise. When he put a full-length mirror in front of me, eventually I could see the pattern. My left foot was being goofy – that’s actually the correct podiatric term – but Steve prefers the more casual “oversupination.” That’s when the foot remains on its outside edge after heel strike instead of rolling inward.

Steve’s observation helped explain a left knee pain I’d been nursing, along with a chronically tight hamstring muscle. He fitted me with a pair of custom orthotics to provide the necessary correction. Knee and hamstring are once again on best behavior.

Moral of the story: When focusing on running, it’s easy to ignore the obvious. Your feet are comprised of 33 joints, plus more than 100 muscles, ligaments and tendons; along with fully one-quarter of the bones in your body. Sustaining several tons of pressure over a one-mile run, your feet provide foundation, shock absorption, and propulsion.

As for running shoes, insist on the best. Athletic footwear can be pricey, but they're way more important than that expensive new windbreaker you've just got to have. If it's a choice between shoes and apparel, do your homework. Start by finding out how many people ended up in physical therapy because they trained in an inexpensive jacket.

One last thought. No doubt you’ve heard the standard advice about beginning a fitness program: “Consult your doctor first.” I didn’t think this applied to me, a longtime runner who stretches, works out with weights, controls cholesterol and sometimes even meditates. Two words changed my mind: Bill Clinton. The former president went in for heart bypass surgery not long after I decided to run 26 faster-than-ever miles. I immediately scheduled a complete physical before I began training. Do the same, no matter how fit you (think you) are.