A small enthusiast rant about the power of the aerobic base
Once you start being annoyed and bored doing MAF training, you must change something. From training you must get out things other than physical, but mental too. Satisfying and uplifting things. When you get bored during the run or cannot sustain anymore the type of training you were doing, change is a must.
However, first look for a change in training environment. Can you run fast uphill on MAF ? Can you run on technical terrain on MAF, can you run long, short on MAF ? Did you ever do MAF intervals or a mixture of sports all on MAF ? Did you exhaust all your MAF resources ? If not, look no further to anaerobic training. Search for a hill, ride your bike, row, add strength training and get out from the running routine a bit.
However, I am an overall athlete, I was even doing spartan workouts to make my MAF training more interesting.
In the meantime, I had a really hard time holding my heart rate down under the 180-age calculus. My body wants to burst into speed and give out the enormous energy stored in it. Even when I go out for a MAF run, I find myself running a 3:45/km pace or even faster, dipping a couple of beats over MAF. Instead of forcing, I started adding some speedwork.
Uphill Running
My first 3 sessions were, 3 uphill sessions. Why ? Well I am a trail runner, so it comes naturally first of all. There is no impact and instead making to adapt my tendons and ligaments to the demand, immediately on my first anaerobic run, I work only my cardio harder.
Results
So while doing MAF, results are immediate. You feel better, you feel very satiated and in just one week, if lived properly, your MAF test can show significant improvements. However, to cumulate speed and power, you need a bit more time, maybe 2 to 3 weeks. From even more anaerobic training, like 2 to 3 weeks long period, you might need up to 4 weeks to gain out every inch of speed and power. So after about 4 weeks of seizing of this kind of training, when I was doing again only MAF and jogging plus hiking, I did a 55km hike/run friend run, chill, action and laughter training. We were jogging and joking along to be together. After 50km in the legs, we had a hard 20minute climb to finish off in the village up ahead of us. I ran it as hard as possible and took 56 seconds from the overall strava KOM. It means that from a KOM not only done just after the race, but by people running it fresh too ! I felt like on fire, it was a blast and really just loving sucking in the oxygen.
Then again I am back to MAF training.
LONG Learning curve !
The thing is that MAF is the base of all and you gotto do do it all year around. Stay healthy and stay proactive and reactive. Take care of yourself. The consistency of your training on this aerobic level and the consistency of these anaerobic abruptions every 2 to 3 months will reap long term very high end results. You'll see that, after a while, you can pull out a 10k pr from your hat anytime, you can do finish line accelerations and win, without a lot of speed work and follow any race leader without spiking your heart rate. Be aware of this and do not get addicted to those anaerobic bouts ! They are good, but not always and not that often.
Once you start being annoyed and bored doing MAF training, you must change something. From training you must get out things other than physical, but mental too. Satisfying and uplifting things. When you get bored during the run or cannot sustain anymore the type of training you were doing, change is a must.
However, first look for a change in training environment. Can you run fast uphill on MAF ? Can you run on technical terrain on MAF, can you run long, short on MAF ? Did you ever do MAF intervals or a mixture of sports all on MAF ? Did you exhaust all your MAF resources ? If not, look no further to anaerobic training. Search for a hill, ride your bike, row, add strength training and get out from the running routine a bit.
However, I am an overall athlete, I was even doing spartan workouts to make my MAF training more interesting.
In the meantime, I had a really hard time holding my heart rate down under the 180-age calculus. My body wants to burst into speed and give out the enormous energy stored in it. Even when I go out for a MAF run, I find myself running a 3:45/km pace or even faster, dipping a couple of beats over MAF. Instead of forcing, I started adding some speedwork.
Uphill Running
My first 3 sessions were, 3 uphill sessions. Why ? Well I am a trail runner, so it comes naturally first of all. There is no impact and instead making to adapt my tendons and ligaments to the demand, immediately on my first anaerobic run, I work only my cardio harder.
- Workout 1 - Uphill walk intervals with a pole. Vertical K style. I chose a slope of about 2 minutes with 40m elevation gain on a very steep 30° to 40° terrain with high rock steps on it. When you get into the 3rd interval, finally you see your heart rate crawling higher than MAF and the 10th one is like when I did those hard 400s 3 years ago.
- Workout 2 - My second run I choose to be an uphill even Tempo effort on a 7km D+400m strava segment. I use this route as a measure of performance for a couple of years now. I run up on it on MAF and anaerobically, but do biking on it too. I like it cause it is a very even effort and no straining or accelerations involved, so we do not strain the achilles tendons with fast starts. I keep my form from breaking down and give all I have, but focusing on proper pacing too.
- Workout 3 - I choose a technical moderately steep trail section and ran up on it 10 times. Again in the 2 minutes range. I enjoyed using the elastic recoil of my fascia and bounced from rock to rock, looking for traction and brought up my heart rate to the 180s, just by securely enjoying myself. Honestly, it was such a pleasure.
Results
So while doing MAF, results are immediate. You feel better, you feel very satiated and in just one week, if lived properly, your MAF test can show significant improvements. However, to cumulate speed and power, you need a bit more time, maybe 2 to 3 weeks. From even more anaerobic training, like 2 to 3 weeks long period, you might need up to 4 weeks to gain out every inch of speed and power. So after about 4 weeks of seizing of this kind of training, when I was doing again only MAF and jogging plus hiking, I did a 55km hike/run friend run, chill, action and laughter training. We were jogging and joking along to be together. After 50km in the legs, we had a hard 20minute climb to finish off in the village up ahead of us. I ran it as hard as possible and took 56 seconds from the overall strava KOM. It means that from a KOM not only done just after the race, but by people running it fresh too ! I felt like on fire, it was a blast and really just loving sucking in the oxygen.
Then again I am back to MAF training.
LONG Learning curve !
The thing is that MAF is the base of all and you gotto do do it all year around. Stay healthy and stay proactive and reactive. Take care of yourself. The consistency of your training on this aerobic level and the consistency of these anaerobic abruptions every 2 to 3 months will reap long term very high end results. You'll see that, after a while, you can pull out a 10k pr from your hat anytime, you can do finish line accelerations and win, without a lot of speed work and follow any race leader without spiking your heart rate. Be aware of this and do not get addicted to those anaerobic bouts ! They are good, but not always and not that often.