My last job before retirement was with a startup designing and building LIDAR systems for self-driving cars. I was responsible for developing one of the opto-mechanical devices for the system.
At the time I started, the company was deep into making a demonstration unit and was struggling to keep to the schedule. It had already been delayed by more than six months and the current plan put the schedule out another six. Product demos are the lifeblood of startups because without timely demonstration of the technology investors will stop sending you money and the company dies.
It was easy for me to see why we weren’t meeting schedule: program management was sloppy, documentation was shoddy or non-existent, and critical decisions were being made based on who knows what.
I spoke up about my concern over the lack of rigor and, surprise, I got the program management job added to my responsibilities. Fair enough.
I put some audacious new expectations in place: execute to the project schedule, make decisions based on data not claptrap, and for fuck’s sake write shit down!
We got that demo out without any further delay and we executed successfully to several more demos including one, just before I left the company, that secured our Series B funding round.
Fast forward three years and I’m happy to report that the company went public last month at a valuation of $1.5 billion.
Am I claiming credit for getting the company on the right track?
No. No, of course not.
Well, maybe a little.
Shameless self-promotion aside, my point is that improving anything (a company, a relationship, a marriage, your running) doesn’t happen without calculated effort.
The title of this post might throw you off for its callousness. But, seriously, making improvements is what humans do and that’s not possible without measuring where you are and collecting the data that will show you how to get to where you want to be.
7. Heart Rate
The greatest physical challenge I face with the marathons this fall is recovering from Chicago in time to run Boston the next day. I have a plan for that but I rely on data to convince me that I am on track.
I wear a Garmin Forerunner 245 watch and when I finish a run the data that is collected is uploaded to Strava where I spend some time reviewing it and looking for interesting patterns. The Garmin has GPS and other sensors so it gathers route, pace, elevation, and step cadence information.
But it’s likely that the parameter most relevant to recovery that the Garmin collects is heart rate. To use that information effectively a runner needs to know his maximum heart rate.
There’s a rule of thumb that says your maximum heart rate in beats per minute (bpm) is 220 minus your age. That formula was developed by Fox and Haskell in 1970 and was based on age-referenced average heart rates they culled from various published papers.
Trouble is, very few of us are average. There are wide distributions in heart rate at any age. For example, by the formula my maximum heart rate should be 160 bpm. However, I routinely exceed 170 bpm when I run hard. From my own field testing (sprints, hill climbs) I would estimate my maximum heart rate to be more like 185 bpm.
As do most runners, I have bad days. I feel somewhat off during these runs, my pace is disappointing, and afterwards I’m sapped of energy and feel just generally crappy and useless for the rest of the day if not longer.
On my best days I feel fantastic. The run itself feels effortless and afterward I can be pleasantly helpful around the house.
Recently I noticed some correlations between my Garmin heart rate data and my good and bad days. Check out the graph below where I have plotted my heart rate verses distance for the first three miles of my workouts on April 4 and May 22 of this year.
In my training log I noted that I felt poorly after the April 4 workout and much better after the one on May 22. Notice how erratic the curve is for the April 4 run while on May 22 the curve is much smoother.
I’ve been keeping track of this relationship ever since April. On bad days my heart rate tends to be erratic. Like the temperature in a building whose HVAC is on the fritz, my heart rate bounces around wildly and generally uncorrelated to my pace. I don’t know for sure what causes these erratic heart rate days but I suspect that something in my cardio-vascular system is not optimized on those days.
(Some readers may wonder if I am documenting my own demise here. Fear not good people, erratic heart rates during vigorous exercise is common and no cause for dialing 911 unless accompanied by other symptoms such as chest pains, which is not the case here.)
Suspecting that the fluctuations are related to an inadequate warm up, at the start of the May 22 run I ran very slowly before picking up the pace after a mile. Notice how the heart rate settles down nicely after that first mile and remains calm even as the pace increases. I suppose that’s why all of the smart coaches urge their runners to warm up before any race.
So now I do a slow warm up of at least a mile at the beginning of every training run. And if I have a race or time trial then I will warm up for two miles before quickening to race pace.
But the shape of the curve is not the only interesting element of the previous chart. Note also how at times my April 4 heart rate gets very close to my presumed maximum of 185 bpm. This, I’m convinced, is a critical factor.
Just last week, on August 31, I had another bad day running. Despite doing my regular one mile warm up, I did not feel great during that workout. Here is the heart rate data for the first three miles of that run along with the May 22 data as a reference.
For some unidentified reason, the initial warm up at a slow pace did not adequately regulate my heart rate as usual. In fact there are instances where my heart rate gets nearly as high as my maximum 185 bpm.
I’ve since reviewed some of my past workouts looking for clues as to what other variables might be at play here other than warm up time. One factor that jumps out is temperature. At temperatures between 40 and 50 degrees F my heart rate curve tends to be very smooth, average heart rate is low, and I run like the wind. Workouts at summer temperatures in the 60’s and 70’s tend to require long recovery periods.
I also have seen that a second cup of coffee (read: caffeine) makes the curve more erratic. So now I only drink a single cup of coffee in the morning. It is also possible that my Parkinson’s Disease is a factor. Heart rate is controlled by the autonomic nervous system which has been shown to degenerate for some PD victims.
It is reasonable to believe that one’s heart rate is an indicator of how hard the body is working. It is also understandable that spending even just a few minutes close to one’s maximum heart rate (i.e. working too hard) is akin to injuring one’s cardio vascular system which can require several hours to several days of recovery time.
All along I have been saying that the key to running marathons on consecutive days is to run them slowly. But how slow is slow? I think that the heart rate data provides a clue.
For sure, I need to steer well clear of my maximum heart rate in Chicago to have any chance of recovering in time for Boston. From examination of months of my heart rate data I suspect that I need to keep below 150 bpm in Chicago.
I also suspect that this limit automatically adjusts my pace for whatever the temperature is in Chicago on race day. That is, if it’s a hot day then I will need to run even more slowly to keep the heart rate below 150 bpm.
I’ve tested this plan on several training sessions already wherein I’ve done long runs on two consecutive days. On the first day I set my Garmin to alarm if my heart rate exceeds 150 bpm. If the alarm goes off I slow down to allow it to drop below 150.
This has worked well so far; last week I used this strategy for two consecutive 20 mile runs and there were no serious issues preventing me from running 20 miles on the second day.
There are other factors that dictate speed of recovery and achieving optimum preparation for Boston. I am referring mainly to nutrition and hydration, topics that I will cover in next week’s post.
COVID watch
The delta surge continues and all of the marathons I am targeting are making necessary adjustments for the health of the runners and their cities. Being forced to wear a facemask before and after the race and even during it if necessary does not bother me too much. But it would be upsetting if more of the events pulled a Tokyo and restricted the field size so that I and many others would not be allowed to run.
I’m not overly concerned about Chicago, Boston, and New York because as a fully-vaccinated resident in the United States I think that it is unlikely that I will be excluded from those events.
Similarly, right now getting in and out of the UK (re: London Marathon) is straightforward with a negative COVID test.
Europe is another story and that story is being revised regularly.
After opening up at the beginning of the summer in support of tourism, the European Union is now recommending that all of its member nations ban non-essential travel from the United States due to the unabated rise in COVID cases.
The recommendation is non-binding so it remains to be seen how Germany (re: Berlin Marathon) will respond although the return of quarantining has been discussed. So far the travel restrictions are much the same as for the UK but, if the situation worsens, I may be faced with the choice of abandoning the race or getting to Germany two weeks in advance in order quarantine in time. I expect an update from my tour provider soon.
It’s as if a continent-sized sphincter that controls transit is poised over Europe and I need to get through it, run Berlin, and get back out before it pinches shut. Even if I do manage to achieve this, the passage is not likely to be pleasant.
As you may already know I am a charity runner in the London, Boston, and New York marathons this year.
There’s still time to contribute to my cause (assuming that you have not already done so).
If you share the passion that the Michael J Fox Foundation and I have for finding a Parkinson’s cure please consider contributing to any of the WMM I am running in as a member of Team Fox (links below). All donations are meaningful and greatly appreciated.
fundraise.michaeljfox.org/boston-marathon-2021/joesgottarun
fundraise.michaeljfox.org/londonmarathon2021/joesgottarun
fundraise.michaeljfox.org/tcs-nyc-marathon-2021/joesgottarun
