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| Drink, stay in the shade, wet yourself, enjoy your training and don't suffer ! |
I hear more and more that runners start adjusting their MAF heart rate to a couple of beats higher in case of serious heat. While Lucho from Endurance Planet says that adding like 5 to 10 beats to your MAF while keeping up your regular pace will definitely not hurt your MAF and health, I completely disagree. Especially the longer and the most often you run !
What is the MAF method developed for ?
- To improve fat burning
- To improve general metabolic efficiency and health
- To stay in control of all our functions all the way
- To build base
- To have correct technique as higher heart rates are associated with (negative)stride changes
- To increase recovery
- To improve aerobic muscle fibre health and function
So if your MAF is 145 and you run 50miles a week, you would go out to do that 50miles and run all of it on 155, in the heat including your weekend long run, you'll feel a definitive effect on your next week's runs ! Of course, rarely, but possibly it will have a positive effect on your MAF and health, as your stepped out of your comfort zone after 1 year or more of pure MAF, you sleep 9h a night, you do eat well, have emotional poise, breathe fresh air, live a chemical free lifestyle, bla bla bla.
Most of the time, the effect would be negative however !
Interestingly, if you kept up to your MAF to MAF-10bpm heart rate and healthy lifestyle, you would be slowly adapting to that heat. Imagine doing 7 MAF tests during a 7 heat day period. You would have 3 to 4 days of probably downward curve, but on that 5th day, you would start back improving. You focus on breathing and efficiency to move with less energy and to disperse heat ! When you get back to the autumn groove, suddenly your MAF pace will be just blazing high ! The heat shock proteins, the vitamin D load, the heat adaptations, all will just come in to place.
What I would prefer to do is one or 2 track workouts and keep the other runs even lower than MAFmaxHR, more likely on the bottom part of the 10beat MAF range. It would bring your heart rate up at least, to really high levels, so you use some old forgotten system, then you let your body recover during those MAF-8bpm runs.
I do not talk about blazing fast 800s and 1500repeats in 40°C !
- You jog to your local track or trail section, by 10minute walking and 10 minute jogging. You do 15minutes of athletic schooling drills, mixed with accelerations and body weight dynamic drills and maybe some light plyometric moves, all with a perfect form.
- Go for the 10 x 200s with the recovery time as long as your HR hits under 100bpm and go for the next (in case your MAF was 130 or over)
- Wear always a wet cap and sunglasses, it will protect your face and head. I have 2 bottles of water with me all the time. One to drink like every 3rd 4th lap, but the other to wet my hat after each single lap.
- Cool down by doing 4 laps of barefoot running, doing 30second strength-moves after each lap.
- Walk home 20 minutes watching your general HR dropping lower and lower.
- 5 to 10min cold shower at home !
You will have a very high level stress only for very short 400seconds cumulated time (or faster/slower), but afterwards, you decrease stress radically, but keeping that heart rate still in the MAF range to trigger some aerobic improvements on the other days. I think it is way better, than keeping moderate / moderate-high stress for let's say 10hours a week ! Also as you run faster, you'll have more airflow, more cooling. If there are no children around and you are allowed, run with no t-shirt, to absorb copious amounts of vitamin D. (After some initial tan of course. I do all my stuff in a wet singlet, take it off for the 200s, and put it back for the rest. Keep the wet-hat and the sunglasses of course)
The track has the advantage of never running out drinking water and water to splash on yourself. Also if you decided to abandon the plans, cause it is way too hot, to do actually anything outdoors, your distance from home stays constant. When you went out for an out and back 10miler and you get messed up 5miles from home, well, arrive dehydrated, sunburnt and sunstroke beaten won't be fun.
Depending where you live, you can still do evening or morning runs. I am out on the Mediterranean, so every morning I get fresh air to my skin. I love it. However when I was out in Guadeloupe for a couple of weeks, it did not make a difference. Even if it was cooler in the morning, the jungle humidity was so freckin' high, that I was sweating without doing anything, breathing hard and had very high heart rates, if I let it go !
Second option, switch to biking. Get a UV protective arm warmer and a neck protecting something. Wear cotton traditional cycling cap, under your helmet. In outdoor situations what do we say ? Cotton Kills ! Why ? It stays wet and dries slow ! Keep it wet !
When you ride, there is serious airflow and the body is happier. You do the same routine as running, with a bit more warming up.
- 30minutes of high cadence spinning on low gear
- 45minutes of MAF climbing
- 15 to 20minutes of cooldown, maybe on the downhill
- 8-10minutes of stretching in the house
- Cold shower
Guess what, your aerobic system doesn't know that you are cycling, running, rowing or dancing. If you have a principal sport, the other supplementary activities on MAF, will improve the MAF of your sport. Interestingly, in case we talked about a non impact bike ride, ski / ski-erg, airdyne bike or rowing, we don't just improve MAF, but reinforcing other muscles, learning new skills, taking off impact and avoiding heat !