November 2018 Monthly Running Challenge

7lenny7 wrote: »

I just caught up with about 200 posts. wow!

@rheddmobile great race report, and a great job on the race for you and your husband.

Run/walk - Run walk is pretty much mandatory for ultras unless you're an elite. I power hike any significant ascents, and many of the insignificant ones. Some runners do use a prescribed run/walk. When I ran the Superior Spring 50K in May I ran with a guy who subscribed to a run 5/walk 1 mile plan. At the end of one of his 5 mile run intervals we said our goodbyes and wished each other well as he slowed to a walk. He later passed me on one of his runs and finished ahead of me. Considering how I get muscle fatigue late in an ultra, I should consider doing something like that on my next ultra, but it's so hard to force yourself to walk when you still feel good. This was the trouble I had at the Loopet Loppet last month. I felt great so mostly ran 28 miles, then had to walk the rest. Even if it doesn't improve my time I'd probably feel better with a structured run/walk.

HR training. @garygse covered it well a few pages back. I'd like to offer more insight as to why you don't want to run faster than necessary. There are solid reasons for hitting certain heart rates during certain runs. Recovery runs, easy long runs, tempo runs, LT runs, strides, intervals, etc. If you're into HR monitoring, you're trying to hit certain heart rates for each type of run, which have a specific purpose and benefit.

Some here have mentioned they know they're running their easy runs at higher than "conversational pace", but it works for them. I'd caution you, though, that running faster than necessary carries risk over time. The point of an easy run or recovery run is to provide a low-stress stimulus to your heart, lungs, bones, muscles, etc. This helps in recovery, add training volume, and keeps you fresh for the next days run. If you're running these runs any harder than that, you're doing your body a disservice. You're guiding principle should be to run at the slowest pace which still provides the benefit of the prescribed run. This keeps you injury free and fresh, as well as keeps the level of cortisol, a stress hormone, at a lower level. Any miles run at a faster pace than this carry no additional benefit but do carry additional risk.

There's a term called "junk miles". Now this means different things to different runners, but in this context, it's anything run too hard to be considered an easy run, but not hard enough to be considered a threshold run. You're putting on more stress than an easy run, but not getting any additional benefits, or not getting them as efficiently as you could had your dialed in your HR for the specific purpose of the run.

On the other hand, if running at such a pace makes you happy, who am I to say not to do it?