I’ve been reading / listening to Dr. Phil Maffetone quite a bit.  He has a couple of books out and is a pretty frequent guest of the Endurance Planet podcast.  (as an aside, if you are in anyway interested in Running, Ultrarunning, Triathlon you must check out their podcast. )

Through a lot of experience working with athletes, Dr. Maffetone came up with a formula for figuring out one’s maximum heart rate that keeps you well within your aerobic energy system while exercising.   The formula is 180-age (with a ‘fudge factor’ of +/-5 beats depending on how healthy and trained you are.)

Currently, I’m 32 years old.  Since I’ve had a history of injury issues in the past, I decided to play it a little safe and subtract 5 beats.  So my MAF heart rate is 180-32-5=143 (in bpm)

Here are the results of my first MAF test.  My plan is to redo this test about once a month.   My long(er) term goal is to see if I can get my MAF pace down to an 8 min/mile pace.

Arcadia High School Track

• 1.5 Mile Warmup
• Mile 1:   10:59
• Mile 2:   11:31
• Mile 3:   11:41
• Mile 4:   11:36 (not sure what happend here)
• Mile 5:   11:44

I’ve been off serious training for a little while now.  There have been a lot of changes at work that have taken up a most of my emotional energy and I’ve just been feeling a little run-into-the-ground for the last few months.  On top of that my nutrition has pretty much been crap, so running just hasn’t seemed appealing to me.  That desire to start training is starting to come back again finally and I’ve decided that I want to try an do things differently this time around.

I have difficulty training at a high level for long periods of time.  To date I think the longest I’ve consistently trained is around 4-5 months.  I find I train hard for a race and the day or two after that race is over, I just want to quit for a while, I lose a ton of fitness and for the next race, I have to start from square one to build my base back up.  I do this two or three times per year on an average year. I know this is holding me back from realizing even a fraction of my potential.

Things I’m going to try and change this time around:

1.  Focus on nutrition.  My nutrition could use a lot of work.  I’m not just talking about weight loss.  I usually can get down to my race weight with not too much effort, but the quality of my food could use help.

2. Focus on self-care.  I have the tendancy to beat myself into the ground.  A couple of my friends have taken 6-month to year-long sabatacles recently.  While I’m not (yet) ready to quit my job yet, I realize that there are a number of things I can do to lower my own stress levels.  More on this later.

3. Measure.  I’ve been “measuring” most of my training by perception.  I can tell it’s going well when I feel good at faster paces. The problem is that it’s purely subjective and difficult to quantify and very difficult to see when I need to fix something.

4. Think long term.  I have a race coming up in October and nothing scheduled after that.  I would love to break a 4 hour marathon someday.  I know it’s probably not going to happen in October, but I would like to use the October race to get  one step closer.  I want to plan not just for the race in October, but figure out what my weaknesses really are and plan a year or two down the road.