Base building

How did I get my base endurance? In my opinion I will never have enough base endurance to do what I want so while I am in charge of my own training schedule, it will dominate all of my training. -------- This is a long read, I just wanted to get it all down before I forgot it.



It all started in December of 2002 when I decided to buy a tri-bike and start doing triathlons to lose some weight. I never knew what I was getting myself into. I have been riding road bikes for fun ever since I stopped speedskating when I was 22. At that time my goal was to ride 20mph for 30 miles at a time. I only did it once when I was 19. I would allways start out riding at a decent pace and try to ride the return route faster. I just rode as hard as I could as long as I could. I was stronger than most in my cycling club and honestly felt good about the shape I was in. When the tri-training started I initially did the same thing, then after reading about heart-rate training I slowed down considerably, mainly because it was easier. The winter time was not a good time to start training on a bike so most of my focus was on swimming and running.



I hadn't swam since gym class in high school so I bought the book "Total Immersion" and read it twice before I got into the pool. It all seemed too easy at the time and I soon found that it wasn't, but that is another story I'll write about later.



The running I knew was going to kill me. I hadn't run since I got out of the Marines back in 1993. I had tried to run a couple of times a few years before but never stuck with it. This time I had a goal and was hellbent on achieving it. My first runs were 1 mile long and I could barely walk the next day. I am totally serious. I would run, then take two days to recover and do it again. After a couple of weeks I got up to 2 mile runs and was running a 13 min/mile at 145bpm. Soon after that I increased to 3 mile runs, when I hit 10 miles for a week I was estatic. I kept running at 145 bpm for several months and slowly brought the times down to 10.5 min/miles. June 15, 2003 was my first triathlon and I had a goal of 30 min for the 3.1 mile run. I just made it at 29:24, I was so happy but the race was so hard and I didn't know how to improve much more. At the time I did that race, my longest runs were 5 miles and the water scared me to death.



Enter my coach. He was a friend of my dad's so when my dad told me about him, it was easy to talk to him. I had met him once before about a year earlier on a bike ride and it seemed to me that he rode like a robot, meaning really strong. I took everything he said as gospel and did every workout he gave me. He liked how I was base building on my run, running at 145 bpm and slowly increase the distance to 15 to 20 miles a week. After a while he had me doing some speed work at the track to bring my efficiency up. Run after run I was running from 145 to 150 bpm while making progress on my pace. When my pace broke 11 min/mile I was really happy again, soon I was racing under 10 min/mile all of the time.




The bike was the same way, long rides keeping my HR low (130's) and not worrying about speed, that came later.



After the racing season I increased my runs to 10 and 12 miles keeping the low HR and doing some speedwork every once in a while. In Jan of 2004 I had to rest my left ankle cuz it hurt so bad and I even saw a doctor. He told me what was causing the problem was shoes with no real arch support. I was running in motion control shoes with soles that were flat cuz that is what the shoe store recommended. I got some insoles with arch supports in them and have been running with them ever since. This winter I am going to try something new.



Up untill June of 2004 I did everything my coach told me to. Long runs, low HR (140 to 145) to build up base. I knew the speed would come when I got stronger so I kept doing it. I kept the coach untill my half IM in June. I started to question his training methods several weeks earlier and lost all confidence in him. A clinic that I attended after the Half IM confirmed what I believed. Since then I have written my own schedule working mostly from some training materials I got from friends, the book "Going Long" and the many friends I made from the sport.



The first thing that I changed was the HR I was running at. I felt that 140bpm was way too low for me. That was increased to 150 bpm immediately. I stuck to the 10% rule for increasing my weekly distances and moved my long run from sunday (which was right after my long ride on saturday) to wednesday. First thing that happened was my knees felt so much better and I could concentrate on form. The speed didn't come as soon as I had hoped. I was hovering at about a 9:45 pace for a long time but that was OK cuz my goal pace for IMFL is 10:00 min/mile. I was just concerned about being able to cover the distance, to hell with the speed. I paid for it on the races this year with slow run times, but I am sticking to my plan.



That is my short history about base building. Lately, I have been running near a 9:15 pace for my longer runs to build efficiency while still staying aerobic. I will let the HR go up to 155 bpm which is the top of zone 2 for me but not much higher. On November 6 I will find out if this works.