"I ran 10k once and literally died..."
So said the young woman sitting in front of me on the train, explaining to her companions the disastrous result of her running experience. If her companions seemed surprised at her apparent reincarnation, they didn't show it.
I can also clearly remember my first 10km run, and whilst I certainly did feel as if the sting of death was approaching me in the last couple of kilometres, I am very pleased to say that my memories of that run are mostly a sense of pride and a clear sense of achievement rather than anything to do with mortality. My running log says that I ran that first 10km on the 24th January 2004 and that it was the 36th run I'd undertaken since taking up the sport 102 days prior. It had taken me 82 days to get from couch to 5km, but then only a further 20 days to double the distance I could run without stopping. That first 10km took me just 59 minutes and 14 seconds, which in hindsight is a very clear indication to me that I began running at way too high a pace, and which I'm sure was in large part responsible for the large number of injuries I sustained in the first few years.
Of course, these days I'm far more circumspect, with my primary aim when running being to remain as free of injury as possible. Sometimes, perhaps oftentimes, that means 'listening to my body' and actually being a little sensible and acting accordingly, even if that means cutting back for a while. And so it was today, or more to the point, yesterday. Late yesterday afternoon I quite suddenly developed a sore throat and aching joints and muscles. This was a nuisance, as I had my long run planned for this morning: 20 - 25km out to and through the Kuringai National Park, a run consisting of many hills, some long and reasonably demanding, some short and very steep and extremely demanding. That the weather forecast was for strong wind and heavy rain had put me off not at all. We've had three weeks of rain now, with barely any stop to it, and it was simply time to give in to the conditions and run out there in them anyway.
Well, that was all fine until I arrived home last night feeling like the death of which the girl on the train had spoken. The planned long run was also in jeopardy as I was unexpectedly asked to work an extra shift today, putting a major dent in my plans. Even so, a wave of optimism engulfed me and I decided to dose myself up with echinacea, get a good night's sleep and I felt sure I'd be fine in the morning and able to squeeze some sort of run into my day. And that's what happened. The echinacea and the sleep worked wonders and I did feel pretty good. The shortened run I shoe-horned into my schedule was somewhat tougher than normal, but I still completed a useful 13km and was left feeling very pleased with myself.
Now then, by way of an update, let me tell you a little more about how all this Maffetone method business is going. One of the catalysts that had me start down this road was my inability last year to shed any weight. I had stacked it on again, but despite being 'careful' with my diet and running quite a bit, my weight was going nowhere. So, in October I began following the Maffetone method of low heart-rate running alongside a low-carbohydrate diet. It started with two weeks of very low carbohydrate eating, as in less than 10 grammes of carbohydrate per day. You can see what happened on my weight chart, below. The line of squiggles at the top is my weight essentially plateaued well above where I wanted it to be. The number '1' is where I began using Maffetone's techniques, and as you can see, my weight immediately and sharply fell away. After two weeks, I gradually increased my carbohydrate load, and it's now in the order of 100 - 150 grammes per day, which is plenty, and where I want it to stay. That's probably in the order of one-third to one-quarter what it used to be, and as you can see, the weight is still falling.
Oddly, the only period since then when I've not been able to keep the carb intake low was during our holiday in Sri Lanka. Despite eating carb-rich foods there and not running at all for nearly two weeks, my weight still fell. The number 2 represents where we returned from holiday and got back on schedule again.
I still only very rarely eat bread, and I never eat pasta. Other than that, I'm fairly relaxed about this diet. I focus on eating vegetables and eggs, a fair amount of protein without going overboard, and quite a lot of fat. Because the other aspect of Maffetone training requires running at a slow pace down in the fat-burning aerobic heart-rate zone, this fat fuels my running to a much higher degree than when I ran faster. Good for endurance, because you store way more energy as fat than you do as carbohydrate, but not so good for speed, although Maffetone assures us that in the long term, running on fat will yield even greater pace than when you ran on carbs. That much remains to be seen in my case, although I am already running quite a bit faster at the same low heart rate as when I started.
The key figures are these: since starting this five months ago back in October, my weight has dropped 11.1% (and I wasn't exactly obese to begin with), and even more amazingly, my body fat percentage has dropped a whopping 51%. Some people find quitting bread and pasta impossible, but for me, the results have made it easy, and this far down the road I'm not even thinking about changing back to my old ways.
As to how well it's helping my running, well that will take more time yet to fully assess. It is true to say however that I'm running for much longer periods of time, and if I'm not covering any more ground than previously, I am definitely running with fewer aches and pains. Recovery from long runs is faster, and the runs themselves are far less troubling.
It's all good, and I intend to keep going.
March Too Much
