Something New

Do you all remember when I posted in January about the fact that I joined a virtual challenge to cover 2,017 miles in 2017?? I never really thought that I'd hit 2,017 miles by myself and I was totally OK with it. Here's the last milestone I hit........

I'm actually only about 55 miles away from 1500 and let me tell you, I am PROUD of that. There are people who joined this challenge as a group (of 2 to 4) and people (like me) who decided to go it alone. I figured what the heck was the difference of me going alone to try to get 2,017 and me doing it with another person and feeling like I succeeded as long as I hit 1,008.5?? Anyway, that's the update on that. On December 31st I'll let you know what I officially ended the year at.

I brought that up because one of the things you get when you sign up for this challenge is to be part of a Facebook group. I'm not very active in this Facebook group, but I have been pretty happy to be in it this year. There have been many informative posts that continue to teach me things regarding my health and fitness. One thing that several members have been talking about is this notion of "maffetone heart rate training" or MAF. You can google it and learn more (like I did), but the idea behind it is that you can become a faster runner by SLOWING down in your training runs.

I've been hesitant to try this because I am already so slow that the notion of slowing down is frustrating. However, I've read some testimonials from people who have been trying it and it has really intrigued me. I got especially intrigued when someone (who actually stopped doing it because it drove them crazy going so slow) said that the one thing they did notice was their weight loss DOUBLED! I have heard other people say things like, "if you want to lose weight stop running". That never really made sense to me since running (for me) burns SO many calories (according to my Garmin). But, burning calories is all well and good, but constantly working in an anaerobic state keeps your body in a glucose burning state rather than a fat burning state.

Right now I truly have NOTHING to lose by implementing this practice. What's the worst thing that will happen?? I will NOT lose more weight and will go back to having even slower training runs. OK. Doesn't seem like that big of a risk to me. What's the BEST thing that could happen? My weight loss can actually kick itself back into gear and my running speed actually IMPROVES! I think the potential rewards are worth the risks.

I'm not necessarily following any specific training plan perfectly. I briefly read things on MAF as well as other articles on Heart Rate Training and weight loss. The biggest thing with MAF training is that they believe you should first build a strong aerobic base. They indicate this could take up to 6 months. The idea is that while you build this base you will increase the speed at which you can run while staying at the same heart rate. But, until you build this base all of your training should be done at a pretty low HR (by my standards at least).

To give you more of an example of what this all means; my average HR for my last 4 mile training run was 159. I hit a high of around 192 during that run. That 4 miles was also the fastest I've covered 4 miles since 2012. I used the MAF 180-formula to calculate my HR zone to build my aerobic base. My MAF heart rate is 130. Today I set my Garmin to alert me when my HR was not in a zone of 122-135. I did the run on the treadmill and after a 5 minute warm up I ran until my watch alerted me my HR was too high. I then walked until it beeped that it was too low. I continued this for 45 minutes. The result of the run was that my average HR was 125 and my max hit around 145. My average pace for this "run" was 14:38. I was actually not upset about that at all. The last time I ran on my treadmill was back in September. I ended up not really feeling like running so I spent a good amount of time walking. My average pace that day was 15:48...but my average HR was 125 and my max was 160! I can look back at my treadmill runs from January and see that there was a day that my pace was 16:11 and my HR was an average of 162 (187 high). Wow!

What this all tells me is that even without doing any official HR training, I have really improved my aerobic ability. I can already run faster at a lower HR than I could back in January. I am actually excited to focus on my HR for now and not worry about my speed. I am also excited at the notion that it might help me lose weight more efficiently. I also need to stop eating as much for that to happen though! 😝

So this is my new endeavor. We'll see how long I'll last doing this. If I can see my weight decreasing and my speed increasing I can't imagine I'll stop. If my weight starts increasing and my speed decreases then that'll be another story all together! 😆