Training year in review: 2023

This year gets a 9/10

It has been quite a fun training year, good racing, performance beyond (my) expectations, but also, a little too many injuries and physical issues.

In this blog:

• Year results.

• Reflecting on this journey.

• Main learnings.

• Year overview and totals.

• Injuries injuries injuries.

• Resting physiology (HRV, heart rate)

• Next steps.

A good day for the team at the Biel 100 km.

Year results

• B goal. January 8th: Prom’ Classic 10 km

  • I ran 36’ 40” (PR, down from 37’50” which I ran 4 years ago in 2019). I covered my last training block before this race, here.

• B goal. March 5th: Cannes half marathon.

  • I ran 1h 22’ due to an injury in the last 200m. I’ve battled with health issues and injuries for several weeks, then ran a good race until I had a hamstring strain and had to walk the last part.

• A goal. April 16th, Manchester marathon

  • I finally broke 3 hours (2h 59’ 17”), blog here.

• A goal. May 27th: 100 km del Passatore (Canceled because of the floods in our region). I ran the Biel 100 km on June 9th instead.

  • Finished in 9 hours and 50 minutes (36th / ~700). Race report, here.

• C goal. July 1st: Parkrun, 5km.

  • I ran a PR in 17’ 51”.

• C goal. July 17th: Veluwezoom Trail 32km.

  • I ran 30 minutes faster than last year and closed 8th / 192 (activity here).

• B goal. September 9th: Winschoten 50 km.

  • Finished in 3h 58’ on a hot day (4th overall).

• A goal. October 8th: Chicago marathon. I got sick (food poisoning) in Chicago and could not race, then I signed up for our home marathon in Amsterdam on the following Sunday. A bit of a crazy ten days but it turned out well.

  • I ran a PR in 2h 56’.

Reflecting on this journey

Overall, I am quite happy that after almost 15 years of endurance training, I could finally reach some of the goals I had almost given up on (like running a marathon in less than 3 hours or running a good 100 km).

It was quite a journey, and I am finally satisfied with where I got with running. I don’t run for performance (fortunately you might say). I probably run for mental health above all. It is a way for me to keep my brain calm, and mild depression and anxiety away. Despite all of this, I am not immune to the influence of my fellow runners, and of course, I also enjoy running hard and running personal bests. For the past 15 years, I did love training, but I also felt unsatisfied with my performance.

It was never a problem for my motivation to train, but it was a feeling I had. I was just not able to reach the goals I wanted to reach, even if they seemed attainable to most people around me. I didn’t set unrealistic goals, but even the realistic ones were just not happening for me. There’s a longer story behind this, with roots in not being so fortunate at the genetic lottery when it comes to long-distance running and running economy. Check out the blog below if interested in learning more and in a few tips to overcome similar issues. With lots of motivation, patience, and the right tools, we can get there.

As I was saying above, for the first time this year, I find myself satisfied with my results. It doesn’t really change anything in the day-to-day. I train the same, and try to get a bit better. I do have some other goals, but if anything, I find my relationship with running a bit healthier.

I am not one of those people who can’t see it when they achieve what they wanted to achieve, always unsatisfied, always looking for more, always complaining. In running, in business, and in life, for me, it’s different. It’s not hip to say it: you are always supposed to want more, to achieve more, to think about what’s next, etc. - but I don’t see it that way. It has been a good year and for me, it’s enough. No need to be unsatisfied because maybe one day I can run 2h 49’ instead of 2h 56’ for a marathon. My passion for running doesn’t change, but over the years I have learned to be satisfied with what I have done and what I can do - in running, in work, and in life in general, enough is enough.

Moving on, I’d be happy to maintain or not lose too much, when it comes to performance. I have no ambition to run a faster marathon, but I will keep doing my best to stay healthy and fit, and we’ll see what that brings. As I turn 40 next year, I probably have a few more good years if I play them well and I am lucky enough with my health and injuries. That’s the beauty of endurance exercise, it takes decades to maximize your potential.

Main learnings

As my focus has shifted to the 100 km distance in the past two years, most of my learnings derive from training for this distance (most importantly, race simulations). Below I discuss briefly training, pacing, fueling and hydration, all aspects I have been giving much thought to and experimenting with.

Training:

These are essential for me: training high volume, training hard once in a while, training specific when close to the event. Specific means race pace, hills, and ideally, the same weather. If it is not possible to train in the same weather, then passive heat training can help for a hot race (I had a very good experience with these protocols despite being someone who really struggles in the heat). In terms of things to avoid, for me: training too hard, training hard too frequently, or too much of the same type of training in a short time (hence the changes in periodization mentioned below). Training hard is absolutely essential to my performance, but it needs to be balanced very carefully. I also seem to perform very well when doing big training blocks 1-2 weeks before the race, and a very limited taper (just 3-4 days before the event). I feel like a big taper is needed only if I really messed up my training. More taper talk, here.

Cross-training:

I have spent much of my summer cycling, due to a calf strain that made it hard to do any running for a few weeks. I wrote about it here, and here. In short, cross-training was really helpful in maintaining my fitness and eventually running a marathon PR despite little running and almost no hard running (but being able to maintain key race-specific sessions). However, it wasn’t “a bit of cross-training”, it was 20–25 hours per week of cycling with long rides, intervals, and all I could do in the constraints of daily life. Cross-training works, but I needed to go all in. 

Pacing:

I pace short races (up to the half marathon) based on perceived effort, then try to hold the pace in the second part of the race. The same for workouts. For long races, I do not find this approach particularly helpful. Perceived effort matters, but it is tricky when running at lower intensities. The solution for me is to use heart rate. For marathons, I run at 155-158 bpm, slipping up to 160 bpm for short bits (my maximal heart rate is 184-187 bpm depending on how fit I am). These numbers are (obviously) not random, but come from my own history, trial and error, and racing. Pacing using heart rate, if you do it right, can make racing a lot more fun (no walk of shame or ‘wall’ in the second part of a race, marathon or longer). See my blog below for more details on this process.

For the 100 km, I had planned to run at 135 beats per minute tops, based on trial and error during long runs. This is 72% of my max, and I think I do have some margin for this distance (up to ~138-142 I think), but given issues experienced in training when going just a bit higher, I preferred to stay conservative. I will see next year how it goes with training and if any adjustment is required.

Fueling:

After plenty of trial and error, with nausea, muscle cramps, and other issues, I settled on 1 gel every 6 km as my fueling strategy, with no other food. This would make for 16 gels over 100 km, plus 1 before the start. I do the same for a marathon (which at my pace means 1 gel every ~25 minutes). I tried plenty of different options in the past 2 years in terms of solid food (either actual food or engineered food), but it always resulted in problems, even at a slower, ultra-marathon pace. I suspect part of the issue is that my target race is in a rather warm or hot climate, hence there’s a lot going on together with digestion. Given that a road 100 km doesn’t take too long, I think it is fine to just eat gels and I am not going to change this in the future. This is not much in terms of total carbs intake (at least according to current recommendations), but I tried it twice when running 70 km in training, and it went really well, while anything more resulted in nausea, not eating for hours, and stopping. Minimum effective dose first.

For 100 km, I also take 3 or 4 gels with caffeine, e.g. 1 before the start, one at approximately 25, 50, and 75 km. For a marathon, I take 2.

Hydration:

I cannot bare to drink anything but water for a race this long (otherwise I get even more nausea), so I do not drink carbs nor do I drink electrolytes, but I take electrolyte pills from Precision Hydration (mostly sodium) and separate my food and my hydration. Hard to be sure about these things, but I think the pills have been helpful in the past year, given my high sweat rate and sodium loss. For ultras and marathons I now plan 1 pill every 6 km, just like the gels. In terms of water, I go by thirst, and sip water when having gels or pills, for obvious reasons.

Year overview and totals

My training log is available in detail here, but here I want to provide an overview and some numbers and learnings. Here is my year of training up to today:

Towards half of the year, as I got injured again and wasn’t able to run for more than a few minutes, I picked up cycling, which made the injuries a blessing in disguise. Since then, I started to really enjoy the bike and made a few changes to my schedule to allow for more time on the bike, which I will keep up in the future.

Below is the same data but with highlighted races and hard sessions (hard sessions would include anything from marathon pace to threshold, VO2max, etc. - basically when I am not just going out for an easy run):

It’s always been a bit of a struggle for me to be consistent with intensity, and even this year, there are entire months with no hard sessions or one hard session at most, which is very little and something I see has a clear impact on my performance (I do get a lot slower when I cannot run hard for a few weeks, no matter how many hours I run or train at lower intensities). There are various reasons behind this, sometimes (most of the time) it’s physical issues or niggles that do not prevent me to run, but prevent me to run hard without pain. Other times I just don’t have it “centrally”. Some months I have frequent headaches and no mental space to go hard. I think these issues are still there but have happened less as I have developed a healthier relationship with work and started managing my time differently.

In terms of totals, this year I ran a bit more than last year (I will probably close around 5800 km for running, and a similar amount of cycling). I feel like this is the max I can do with the limits I have, as it amounts to 16 km / day (or 18 km / day excluding the days I don’t run). A decent volume for someone who is not any good at the sport. I’d like to keep it up though, as it seems to be a sweet spot for me mentally.

As per the bike, we’ll see, I do enjoy riding, but mostly for mental health (spending time outside, seeing places, going on trips with my partner) or to balance / improve running (or because of injuries). I have no ambitions to become a better cyclist beyond what will naturally occur because of more training.

Injuries injuries injuries

In summer, after racing the Biel 100 km (race report here), I had already planned changes to my training with the goal of having fewer physical issues (discussed here), given that I had many between February and April.

However, due to a calf strain that I have been carrying since June, I haven’t really been able to enjoy the benefits of this somewhat less risky approach I had envisioned, and in fact, I have had even more issues in the second part of the year.

Right now I am mostly focused on getting over this issue, which I thought was behind me after racing the Amsterdam marathon in October (training and race report here) but that came back again during a short race the following month. Since then, I have basically trained only low intensity.

I am grateful I was able to enjoy some good adventures (a few 50 km runs with plenty of elevation in different natural parks, 6-10 hours on my feet), incredible memories that fuel the training. Still, I have to say, I am starting to miss the structure and hard sessions of proper training, maybe more than I thought I would.

In terms of periodization and attempting to stay injury-free, here is what I’m doing, based on previous issues I had and what I learned over the years:

• No running once per week, no matter what. Breaking this rule costed me a lot this year.

• Cycling to increase training volume (as opposed to running doubles or other strategies that always get me injured). I find that this helps me a lot not to overdo it with running, as I have another way to exercise that does not impact me negatively in terms of injury risk. Quite essential for my mental health I’d say.

• Non-linear periodization, alternating between VO2max, threshold, and steady-state sessions, as opposed to doing big blocks of one type of stimulus. Unsure about the impact of this, but now that I am a better runner than a year or two years ago, this could be a good way to maintain fitness as I approach the 100 km, without focusing on any specific aspects (since I am not aiming at racing shorter distances the way I did last year).

• 4 days between hard sessions (as opposed to 3, which is the bare minimum I can do normally, i.e. session, easy, easy, easy, session, while now it will be session, easy, easy, easy, easy, session), in an attempt to reduce injury risk even more.

• 3 hard sessions tops in a 14-day cycle (one per type, steady, VO2max and threshold, plus a very long and easy run).

Resting physiology (HRV, heart rate)

Below is the past year of my resting HRV and heart rate, measured first thing in the morning while seated, using HRV4Training. This is my recommended protocol for endurance athletes, as it is likely more effective than measuring while lying down (or during sleep - check out some of the research here).

During the year, my normal ranges have been quite stable for both heart rate and HRV: there is basically no seasonality. For heart rate, the range was very narrow in the first part of the year, highlighting how it was always very stable, and possibly missing the mark (while HRV showed some clear suppressions in response to negative stressors, injuries, work stress, etc.).

We can see that many different stressors have impacted the data acutely (and of course, my health and performance). In particular, traveling and work stress / trips left a big mark each time. While I have started reducing these trips to two per year tops, maybe I should do even less. We’ll see what happens next year, but these are not the kind of disruptions I like, and I’d be happy to minimize them further.

Overall, the data mostly reflected my subjective feel, especially in the context of injuries, work stress, travel, and sickness. Under these circumstances, I find the data particularly useful to determine the best course of action in the recovery phase, and establish more clearly when I am back to normal, which isn’t so easy to figure out subjectively.

It is also quite clear from the figure above that the only period in which I had very good consistent training and no physical issues or work-related stressors resulted in high and stable HRV, with very few suppressions (block of green between March and mid-May). At other times of the year, HRV was still within normal range, but there were a lot of fluctuations and suppressions: this is what a high coefficient of variation looks like, which is also a sign of a poor stress response. Keep in mind that stability is the ideal response, more than higher HRV.

Next steps

My goal for next year remains the 100 km del Passatore, the only race I really care about. Now that I even live on the course, I can’t wait to get to the starting line healthy and fit and enjoy the race.

I will also be running a marathon or two if I stay healthy enough, as I did qualify for Boston, so at the moment that’s my only concrete race plan.

Overall, I am aiming for fewer PRs and fewer injuries - I’d be very happy to maintain what I have now and stay healthier, as opposed to getting a bit better but struggling all year with injuries and other issues.

As years of training keep stacking up, gaining and maintaining the ability to spend entire days exercising and experiencing life outdoors, is what motivates me the most. 10-hour runs / hikes, long rides, etc. - these are the days I like to remember and would love to keep experiencing with a reasonable frequency in the years ahead. Adventures and a calm mind, plus the occasional race.

Let’s see how that goes.

How was your running year?

Marco holds a PhD cum laude in applied machine learning, a M.Sc. cum laude in computer science engineering, and a M.Sc. cum laude in human movement sciences and high-performance coaching.

He has published more than 50 papers and patents at the intersection between physiology, health, technology, and human performance.

He is co-founder of HRV4Training, advisor at Oura, guest lecturer at VU Amsterdam, and editor for IEEE Pervasive Computing Magazine. He loves running.

Social:

• Twitter: @altini_marco.

• Personal Substack.

• Strava.

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