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Toughening the legs by Luis

Posted 01:01 PM, September 02 2006

Have you ever been in a race and your legs begin to hurt and your cardiovascular system seems to be just fine? I have. At Vineman I quickly got a wake up call on this subject. My legs started to hurt from all the pounding up and down those hills. Bigger or people with a few extra pounds are more likely to have this occur. Here are my thoughts on this subject.

Mark Allen has a rule of thirds. That means you do one third of your training on flat terrain, one third on rolling terrain and one third on hilly terrain. Of course many of us are aerobically challenged. That means that at any hill our heart rates skyrockets unless we walk or go real slow. So what that ends up doing is causing us not to run on hills and thus our legs end up not as tough as our heart.

The other reason for avoiding hills is injuries. If you have knee injuries or IT band issues you will find that if you avoid the hills you can keep them at bay. Another way to avoid injuries is to run trails and soft surfaces. But here again by keeping your injuries away you also do not toughen up the legs and if your race is on asphalt and hilly you will suffer some.

Over the past few weeks I have made a concerted effort to do some hilly runs. Just today I had to walk on a hill to keep my heart rate below 141. Yikes! It has been a while since I had to do that but I have a feeling this will pay off. The Hawaii Ironman is not what I will call hilly but I am not light and after 16 miles of pave road running, the small grades on the Queen K Highway will seem tough. You feet also need to be tough. On my first Hawaii I took it really easy and with 6 miles to go there was a lot left in the tank. So I ran as hard as I could, I was cardiovascularly fit and my legs were fine but my feet were killing me. I had to stop and massage the soles of my feet. It was great fun to finish strong but again so many things can happen on such a long race.

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Posted by DMCLAUGHLIN6763 @ 02:21 PM, September 02 2006
Hey, are those your legs Luis? Looking fit!!!

Posted by DSELL10051 @ 08:29 PM, September 02 2006
I just read your blog and have a comment about those hills! Months ago, you said that training on the flat was necessary when just getting into the heart rate stuff....that was very true! You also said that hills were a good test of seeing where you are in your HR fitness and how you are progressing. Well, a few months ago when I started the MAO program, I was running on my usual flat out and back 10 miler. At the turnaround point there is an option to keep going longer but the hill starts immediately and keeps going for 4 miles (not horrible but continuous up). When I tested it a few months ago, I only got 2 minutes into the climb before my HR skyrocketted. Deflated, I trotted back down to the flats. Now, I can do the same run and go all the way up to the top (up that 4 mile grade!) and keep my HR nicely under 139 while running at a nice clip!! THAT is amazing...and very cool!!

Thanks for your help....just thought you'd like to hear some good results :)
deb
8 time Ironman Triathlon Finisher, but first time Heart Rate monitor user!

Posted by CCRAIG5300 @ 09:42 PM, September 04 2006
I had to laugh when I read this blog as it was pretty much the story of my race at IM Canada last weekend. I knew going into the race that I was woefully underprepared for the run. For several reasons, mostly due to a fractured foot this winter and real life interfering with training plans, I had averaged less than 25 mpw all summer and only done two runs longer than 13.1 miles in the past year. In my former life as a runner I would never have even considered toeing the line of a marathon on so little training. The question was not would I have to walk but when. Here's an excerpt from the obligatory race report I sent to my training buddies...
"I actually ran pretty well for about 11 miles. A wind had been developing out of the south as the day wore on, increasing in intensity in the afternoon. This was a mixed blessing. It had given us a bit of a push home over the final bike miles but by the time I was on the run course it was a fierce headwind on the out portion. The wind and the lack of toughening run miles on my legs gradually ground me down. My legs were aching and tightening up the way they will in the final miles of a marathon or long run, only problem was I was not yet in the final miles. My feet felt like someone had pounded on them all day with a sledge hammer and it dawned on me that perhaps doing 95% of my training on dirt wasn’t helping here. Finally, it happened. On a particularly steep climb early in the 12th mile I (gasp!) walked. This marks the first time in my life I have walked any part of any marathon that was not to get what I need at an aid station. In so doing I lost my momentum and became even more acutely aware of how badly my legs had shutdown. I tried to start running again a couple of times but couldn’t keep it going for more than a few seconds. Mentally I began to cave and by the turn around I’d resigned myself to walking all the way back. Lucky thing I had until midnight to finish ;-).

As I walked along I began to notice things outside myself, things bigger than myself…the beauty of the lake as the sun began to get lower in the sky, the waves disappearing on the lake surface as the afternoon wind died down, the sound of the water gently lapping on the shore, flocks of Canada geese flying in V formation across the water…Then without even realizing I had done so, at around mile 14.5, I began a shuffling jog that just kind of kept rolling. By mile 15 it was almost a real jog and by mile 16 I knew I would not be walking again. No, I wasn’t flying, but I was running when I thought I couldn’t run anymore. My legs were just this side of useless but from the waist up I felt fine, no, great! So I just kept pumping my arms willing the legs to follow. It was the slowest marathon of my life that probably dropped me out of contention for a spot on the podium, but I had successfully pulled myself back from the jaws of the Death March and that small personal victory is so sweet."

Bottom line = I highly recommend actually doing the training :-).

Posted by RSIMPSON8210 @ 04:33 PM, September 05 2006
Hi Luis,

Good to see your post as I now know I'm not the Lone Ranger.

I just decided recently that in IM WI on sun. my legs are going to hurt and I better get used to this idea or I am going to have a rude awakening at say about 1 PM when I realize I have yet to finish the bike and I have a whole marathon to go!!

On sun. I will be thinking of Warf on Star Trek and his frequent comment before going into battle "Today is a good day to die". Not a lot of run hills I hear in IM WI so the suffering may not be too terrible. But, as Al Trautwig sez "...the distances are ridiculous".

NO PRISONERS,

rick sIMpson

Posted by DSELL10051 @ 08:46 AM, September 07 2006
"Today is a good day to die"! When I read this in the post below, I had to laugh. Oddly enough, that is the mantra that kept coming into my head on the run at canada a few years ago! I see that I am not along in my thoughts!!
deb

Posted by JHINTON10463 @ 10:23 AM, September 07 2006
There's also one element we forget about it. It's biomechanics. Running dosen't cause injuries, it's how one runs causes injuries. I'm a big time advocate of Chirunning, to all my clients that I condition. Especially as IM athletes we need to be efficient, which in turn will produce a lower HR, or run faster with same HR. I see a lot runner taking to big of strides(heel strikers) and which uses to much quads and up and down motion and slow turn over. not effect when when you are moving forward. look at the good runners in the sport, ie. fuhr, bowden, deboom, brown. running is more techinque then you think. get the dvd or book on chi running, it's good information.