The crit was a very cool course- a 1 mile loop with one moderate bump and mostly swooping turns.  Not too crazy techincal- and the girls took off right away. Part of that was my fault as there was a prime on the first lap and I wanted it. I got edged out by a fraction of a hair by one of the Shields twins.  Bummer. The front pack was hot and heavy with lots of attacks and surges and a good sprint to the finish.  Again, found myself boxed in a little bit but managed to slingshot around a few ladies to get in the top 10.

The weekend was a perfect precursor top next weekend’s local race- the Pivotal Fitness Race Weekend and SC State Crit Championships.  If you have never seen a bike race before come check it out- I’On on Saturday and Hampton Park on Sunday.

The Importance of Heart Rate Training

by Anne Finch, MS, CWC, USAT Coach

It is winter and most of your athletes are likely still in or starting to come out of base-training.  By now you should have conveyed to them the importance of bringing down the intensity to allow their bodies to recover from the stresses of last season, to take the time to work on skills and limiters, and then start the process of allowing fitness to build again.  Most coaches and athletes understand this in theory, but the hard work can be lost if proper heart rate zone training is not applied.

We know the purpose of training is to get stronger and faster week after week, year after year.   Popular literature and well-respected endurance coaches often will refer to the concept of the fitness ceiling- that being the highest level of fitness that an athlete can currently achieve.  Your job as a coach is to help your athlete hit that ceiling during the peak of his or her race year.  The ultimate goal is to move your athlete beyond the current ceiling and improve year after year.  What was once challenging can now be effortless. 

But peak fitness can only be improved upon if your athlete has a strong base. When describing this to my athletes, I like to use a home-building analogy.   The roof can only be as high as the foundation of the home can support.  Without a rock-solid base building regime where one works on strength, endurance, and efficiency, the body will eventually break down and result in a decrease of the fitness ceiling.  

This is why the importance of heart rate training should be clearly understood. 

A heart rate monitor can be one of the most inexpensive and most worthwhile pieces of equipment an athlete can invest in, but it needs to be used correctly.  Just wearing a heart rate monitor is not going to guarantee better training.  Correct use of a heart rate monitor assumes two things.  First, I recommend the athlete be tested to determine his or her exact heart rate zones.  The default settings of the monitors use the Karvonen formula, a heart rate reserve formula, to determine these zones.  Two athletes are rarely exactly alike, so understand that heart rates do not necessarily follow a formula or fit a standard mold either.

A VO2max test, the gold standard test for determining an athlete’s fitness level, is the ideal test for obtaining precise heart rate zones.  If there are no facilities that perform VO2max testing in your area, you can perform a Conconi test to determine your athlete’s anaerobic threshold heart rate, and from the anaerobic threshold heart rate you can estimate aerobic threshold. While the Conconi test is preferred to the generic heart rate zones of the Karvonen formula, it is inferior to the VO2max test.   

Once your athlete’s heart rate zones are determined the second assumption is that you and your athlete clearly understand the objectives of each and every training session and the importance of staying within the prescribed zones. Coaches may offer slightly different opinions on defining heart rate zones, but generally they are as follows:

• Zone 1 65% of Maximum Heart Rate (active recovery)
• Zone 2 65-72% of MHR (endurance)
• Zone 3 73-80% of MHR (high level aerobic)
• Zone 4 84-90% of MHR (lactate/anaerobic threshold)
• Zone 5 91-100% of MHR (anaerobic/race pace training)

During the off-season when recovery and building a strong base foundation are the main focus, the majority of training should be easy, sustainable efforts in heart rate zones 1 and 2.  After several weeks less training time is spent in zone 1 and an increasing amount of time is spent in zone 2.   Next, begin to introduce periods of training in zone 3.  Then, once your athlete moves out of base building and into the fitness building periods you include harder efforts in zones 4 and 5.  Without knowledge of the athlete’s heart rate tendencies and capabilities, this can easily become a guessing game and thus some precision in targeting ultimate fitness goals can be lost. 

What happens to athletes who do not use a heart rate monitor or follow heart rate training can be seen in a 2001 study by Foster et al.  They determined most non-professional endurance athletes tend to train too hard on easy days and not hard enough on hard days.  As a result, you have an athlete training in what I call the Gray Area training zone.  Within the gray area, an athlete is training too hard for improving his fitness foundation and not hard enough for maximizing the fitness ceiling.  In other words, it is the place where there is minimal or unfortunately no reward for the effort. 

Monitoring an athlete’s heart rate obviously provides data on how hard the cardiovascular system is working during training. But, there is more to it than that.  It also serves as a gauge for what is happening in the body metabolically.  The metabolic factor is critical for endurance athletes as heart rate is indicative of which energy system is being used.

There are three energy systems in the body – Aerobic (oxygen), Anaerobic (lactic acid), and ATP-PC – and each represents distinct metabolic events in the body.  These metabolic events use different substrate as fuel – fat, carbohydrate, and phosphocreatine, respectively.  There are advantages to training each of these systems throughout the year and important considerations should be made with each.  Knowledge of an athlete’s heart rate zones will help you and your athlete pinpoint when he is using each of these energy systems.

The aerobic system is utilized within the low heart rate zones when the effort is minimal and oxygen uptake by the muscle cells is at its maximum.  The primary fuel source used in these heart rate zones is fat.  This is important to an endurance athlete for two reasons.  First, fat is the most abundant fuel source in the body, even in the leanest athletes.  In fact, if only using the body’s fat energy reserves, an athlete could exercise for close to 120 hours without refueling.  Second, aerobic training provides an enhanced responsiveness to fat metabolism during exercise.  Put another way, the more time spent training in the aerobic zones the more efficient an athlete becomes at metabolizing fat as the primary fuel source.

Once intensity increases to levels in which the oxygen uptake cannot meet energy demands, the body shifts to the anaerobic energy system.   Training in this zone occurs once you have surpassed your anaerobic or lactate threshold heart rate.  In this system the primary fuel source is carbohydrate.   While carbohydrate serves as a quick and easy substrate, there are two key points to keep in mind when training or racing above the anaerobic threshold heart rate.  First, a by-product of carbohydrate metabolism is lactic acid.  While lactic acid is not problematic in itself, lactic acid metabolism produces lactate and hydrogen atoms.  The hydrogen atoms cause acidosis in the body which may be responsible for the fatigue experienced with high intensity exercise.  However, the body can be training to utilize lactic acid as a fuel source and thus threshold workouts are be vitally important to an athlete’s training plan. A second key point to remember about going above threshold is that there is only enough carbohydrate stored in the body to fuel a few hours of intense exercise.  Once carbohydrate stores are depleted the athlete must slow down to utilize fat metabolism.  Additionally, it may take anywhere from 24 to 48 hours to replenish carbohydrate stores after anaerobic training.  Therefore, if another hard training session is performed before carbohydrate stores are replenished, further depletion can occur and eventually symptoms of over-training may occur. 

The third system, the ATP-PC system, utilizes phosphocreatine to produce energy in very short bouts of extremely intense activity that last between 5 and 15 seconds.  This explosive power is seen in all out sprints.  To maximize the benefits of training this energy system, multiple intervals lasting less than 20 seconds followed by relatively longer recovery periods allows for high intensity training too brief to stimulate the anaerobic system.  Intense interval training is useful in helping an athlete improve their peak oxygen consumption (VO2max).  Use of a heart rate monitor for interval training will ensure that the athlete is producing absolute maximal efforts needed to see peak VO2 gains.

Understanding the three energy zones and comprehensive knowledge of your athlete’s heart rate zones-specifically their anaerobic threshold heart rate- will help you help them prevent gray area training.  This ensures long-distance training sessions which are important for building or maintaining endurance and stay low enough to maximize fat metabolism.  It also guarantees that shorter threshold and interval training sessions are intense enough to maximize their benefits as well.

Anne Ahern Finch, MS, CWC is owner of Anne Finch Endurance Training in Charleston, SC, as well as an Exercise Physiologist, an adjunct professor of Anatomy and Physiology, personal trainer, and competitive cyclist and triathlete.  She can be reached at info@annefinch.com.  

References:

Foster C, Heimann KM, Esten PL, Brice G, Porcari JP. Differences in perceptions of training by coaches and athletes. S Afr J Med 2001: 8: 3–7.

Hagerman, Fritz. Training the Energy Systems.

To target aerobic metabolism (using oxygen for fat burning metabolism)is not quite so easy in the pool. Again, most novice and self-trained swimmers swim anaerobically during all training sessions. USA Swimming uses a generally accepted list of three different levels of aerobic work. Many other sports use a similar system to define work levels. Here, we will use these definitions:

• Minimum Endurance Pace (EN1) – almost any distance, with very low rest (less than :30 seconds) between repeats, a sustainable, fairly easy pace. This kind of work set takes 15 to 60 minutes (or more). It helps to build base yardage and promotes recovery. An example: 6 x 500 yards at EN1 pace with :15 seconds rest between repeats or 6 x 500 @ :15 rest, EN1 pace.
• Threshold Endurance Pace (EN2) – usually distances less than 500 yards with up to :60 seconds rest between repeats, swum at a pace faster than EN1 (we’ll look at how much faster a little bit later). This type of set take between 20 and 45 (or more) minutes to complete and should increase your ability to perform aerobic work without causing a build-up of waste products in the muscles, but should still be followed by a day of easy work to restore muscle glycogen stores. An example: 8 x 175 @ :20 rest, EN2 pace.
• VO2Max Endurance Pace (EN3) – usually distances less than 300 yards with rest somewhere between :20 seconds up to a time equal to the amount of work completed (a 1:1 work to rest ratio) at a pace faster than both EN1 and EN2 (be patient – we’ll get to it). You will probably not be able to hold this pace for much longer than 30 minutes. This kind of work can simulate the same overall affects of a race. It’s very hard work and should also be followed by some type of recovery workout to restore muscle glycogen stores. An example: 8 x 100 @ :45 rest, EN3 pace.

It is important to balance your efforts to help prevent over-training. Do most of your work at these endurance levels, doing some of each type each week. A very rough rule of thumb for early season work is 50% EN1, 30% EN2, 10% EN3, with remaining 10% shared between very easy recovery paces (slower than EN1) and very fast anaerobic and power speeds. While all swimmers can benefit from some high speed work, most do not need very much. You can develop speed by working at the endurance levels.

Remember, don’t sacrifice technique for speed. You need to strike a balance; the fastest swimmers are usually those that hold the best technique at the fastest speed for the longest period of time. If you are just starting out it will be better for you to hold that good style as long as possible.

For more questions or to learn more about how you can train with me in the pool, email me at info@annefinch.com.

What they call the “Black Hole” I like to call the “Mushy Middle.”  It’s that dreaded area where too many people train- too hard for building a strong base and not hard enough for improving your VO2max.   In other words, a place where you just don’t get any reward for your efforts.  As a coach, I can’t stress enough how important it is to have a strategic mix of intensity and STICK to the plan. If it’s a Zone 1-2 day, spending 20 minutes in Zone 3 because someone else took off  is a complete waste of your workout. Read the article and let me know if you have any questions.  And, of course, this is another reason to get tested to find your heart rate zones!  Email me at info@annefinch.com for more information on testing.

Measuring one’s VO2max ultimately describes the athlete’s ability for his body to utilize more of the oxygen that he breathes.  And since oxygen is necessary for energy production by each cell in the body, it is assumed that the a higherVO2max indicates more athletic potential. VO2max is somewhat dependent on genetics and is affected by several factors:

• lung capacity (getting oxygen from the air into the blood which is passing through the lungs)
• cardiac output (the amount of blood pumped by the heart per minute)
• the ability of the muscle cells to extract oxygen from the blood passing through them (the arterio-venous or A-V O2 difference)

Each of these can improve with aerobic training and, therefore, create an increase in VO2max.

Having your VO2max tested can give you several important pieces of data to improve your training and performance. It is considered the gold standard of cardiovascular, pulmonary, and muscular cell fitness. It measures the maximum amount of oxygen your bodycan utilize.  In addition to determining your VO2max, the test will also measure your aerobic and anaerobic thresholds, which I will discuss tomorrow.  Using these three pieces of information can help you design a training plan for base building, as well as improving threshold and maximal performance. If you want more information about VO2max testing or want to schedule an appointment, please email me at info@annefinch.com.  Special rates are available to TrySports triathlon team members, Low Country Cyclists Racing team members, Charleston Bicycle Company Racing team members, and Coastal Cyclists members.

Endurance coaches will often refer to your fitness ceiling- the highest level of fitness that you can currently achieve.  We all have them, and the best  coaches will help you hit that ceiling during your peak of the race year.  And while the goal of the athlete is to progress beyond that ceiling and improve, most don’t always go about it the right way.  Some believe they must keep pushing themselves to get faster.  Others will take the off-season to regroup, slow down, and work on skills and limiters.

Let’s use cycling as an example. Go on a group ride in November and you’ll see two different scenarios. The ride may start slow, but someone will eventually take off and push the pace.  Watch what happens next- some will follow in what turns into a quick paceline where everyone is beathing heavy and working hard.  Others will sit back and continue the slower pace, maybe even having a conversation amongst themselves as they ride.  You’ll find me in the later group. And here’s why…

Your fitness peak can only be improved year after year if you have a strong base.  Using the house building analogy, your ceiling can only be as high as the foundation of your home can support.  Base building isn’t just about riding (or running) slow.  It includes building strength, endurance, and efficiency.   This period of training should last AT LEAST 8 weeks, but usually extends 16 to 24- depending on your level of fitness.

If you ride hard all year long you are erroding your base foundation which will ultimately DECREASE your fitness ceiling- the exact opposite of what you want to occur.  The purpose of base building is to take the level of effort that is currently challenging and ultimately make it an easy effort.  Smart base training will allow you to ride faster or with more power while maintaining a lower heart rate or RPE.

As with a house, you have to build from the ground up.  When you begin a base building program, the majority of your rides should be Heart Rate Zones 1 and 2, then increasing the amount of time spent in 2, then venturing into 3, then increasing the amount of time spent in 3, and so on. If you don’t know your heart rate zones, then THAT is the perfect place to start.  You can obtain these zones through the VO2 Max test, a test we do at FitMed Partners. If you have any questions about the test or what it entails, email me at info@annefinch.com.

Even as you increase the amount of time you stay in higher zones, you should still have several rides per week that are very low and sustained. And, as I mentioned previously, this is also the time to be working on skills and strength. This should include drill work to improve pedaling efficiency and weight training.

Please note, it’s easy to start getting ahead of yourself.  Stay focused and you will see great gains.  If you have any other questions or want help with building your base, email me or visit www.annefinch.com.

Even the leanest athletes have internal fat stores that hold about 80,000 calories as fat. Conversely, only 1500-2000 calories are stored on the body as carbohydrate at any time. Therefore, if you exercise at an intensity in which you are only utilizing carbohydrate (i.e, higher intensities) you have to supplement more during exercise so that you do not bonk, or run out of energy.  For longer events, the risk of GI distress increases as you replace calories due to the blood being shunted to muscles and not being available in the stomach to digest your food. So, the idea is to train your body to burn fat as long as possible so that you can sustain your intensity without having to eat as much during the race.

Metabolic Efficiency is defined as the crossover point where the percentage of utilization switches between a higher percentage of fat to a higher percentage of carbohydrate.  The great news is that you can train your metabolic efficiency through an increase in aerobic training. Aerobic training is, for simplicities sake, lower heart rate intensities.  It’s important that during the off season you keep your training aerobic and not go over that intensity to teach your body to utilize fat better.  Let me repeat that for those of you who need not be named, NOT going over when you are supposed to be doing base miles no matter what the person in front of you decides to do.  Secondly, metabolic efficiency can be improved by prescribing to a nutrition periodization- cycling through the way you eat based on the time of year in your race season, just as you do with your training.  I can talk for hours just about nutrition periodization but the concept is this: a diet higher in carbohydrate means that your body has to oxidize (or burn) more carbohydrate. This results in increased insulin, which decreases your fat utilization. Therefore, if you can train your body to survive on protein and fat and less carbs, you will tap into fat stores for energy. The off-season is the best time to do this when intensities of training are low and carbohydrate isn’t needed.

To sumarize: an underdeveloped aerobic system and higher carbohydrate intake at less appropriate times of the year equals a poor fat utilization, which leads to the need to intake more carbohydrate, which makes this a viscious cycle. By tapping into fat stores, you can actually decrease the amount of calories that you need to intake during training and racing which will also decease the likelyhood of GI distress.

Now for the cool part: I am now offering Metabolic Efficiency testing in a laboratory setting so that we can determine what your fat utilization is, and then I can help guide you through diet and training changes to make you more efficient. Bob mentioned a case study with one of his IM athletes that, after training this way, PRed at IM Kentucky and qualified for Kona, while only intaking 800 calories during the ENTIRE RACE! This is how efficient he became in burning fat for fuel.  If you have any questions about metabolic efficiency or the testing, email me at info@annefinch.com. It could change your race- or even your life!

SO, over the 2009 race season things went from bad to worse for me. I felt like I was losing my endurance, I was fatigued, slow to recover, holding on to excess body fat, and totally depressed. In fact, I was known to occasionally spontaneously burst into tears 30-40 miles into a group ride.  Plus, my nagging L5-S1 spinal injury was just not healing no matter what I did or how much time I was taking off. So, Dr. McConnell ordered some blood work to see what might be going on. When we got the results, I had to say I was shocked. I wasn’t eating meat but was eating TONS of fruits and veggies and supplementing with a product that I now think is crap, so the fact that my antioxidant levels were low were the most shocking to me. I don’t think people realize just how hard the training really is on the endurance athlete’s body. I could go on and on about this… Maybe later.   Let’s go on to my results.

My deficiencies:

Ferritin. In a healthy female your ferritin levels should be between 60 -70 and mine was 16. Ferritin is a protein in the body that stores iron and releases it as needed. Iron is necessary for oxygen delivery to the cells. With anemia that severe it’s a wonder I could even turn the cranks at all.

Vitamin B12.  Vitamin B12 is only found in animal products and is necessary for blood and immune cell formation.  Symptoms of B12 deficiency: anemia (again), shortness of breath, fatigue, weakness, irritability, decrease in all blood cell counts (red for oxygen delivery, white for imunity). Long term implications are more severe and include neurological damage and degeneration of nerves. Ouch.

Panthothenic Acid (Vit B5). It plays a vital role in energy production (i.e., metabolism). Symptoms of deficiency include fatigue, depression, irritability, and increased heart rate.

Serine. Serine is an amino acid used to manufacture proteins, generate energy, and cell membrane structure. Symptoms of deficiency include metabolic defects and the inability to burn fat and gain muscle.

Glutamine. Glutamine is an amino acid used for energy, protein synthesis, and removal of toxic substances from the body. Because glutamine is synthesized in both skeletal muscle and in adipose tissue in addition to the lungs, liver and brain, it is not considered an essential amino acid. However, there is evidence that our body cannot produce enough glutamine during times of stress, like intense exercise, to keep up with demand, thereby making it more essential than some may think. Clinical research has verified that overtrained endurance athletes suffer from chronic low plasma glutamine levels, which have been shown to contribute to muscle breakdown, diminished immune function, and reduced performance.

Antioxidant panel. In an analysis of a wide range of antioxidants, I was found to be borderline deficient. This was the most surprising to me given that antioxidant rich foods are fruits and vegetables and I was eating more than my fair share of those. Antioxidants are thought to help reduce the damage to and potential death of cellular proteins, lipids, carbohydrates, and DNA by free radicals, which are created as a by-product of oxidative stress including exercise. Studies have shown that endurance athletes produce more free radicals than sedentary individuals and are therefore more vulnerable to cellular damage and consequent decline in aerobic capacity.

Those were my results. As soon as I changed  my diet I started noticing almost immediate results.  At the Lowe’s Motor Speedway TT in August I averaged 23.9 mph for 10 miles for a time of 25:06:14. 1 month later in September I did the same TT and averaged 25.5 mph for a time of 23:40:06. If you want more information about the micronutrient blood test, email me at info@annefinch.com.

A sports nutritionist looks at the problem of low bone density in cyclists and what they can do about it.

Bone density should be checked periodically.  If you are interested in having yours checked, email me at info@annefinch.com or call us at FitMed Partners to schedule an appointment.

BTW, milk and dairy products are NOT the only way to get calcium. In fact, I don’t do ANY dairy and still have very high calcium levels. If you want some ideas on foods that are high in calcium that don’t come from a cow, click here.