New Alpinism

As far as the year to year gains go, I think that your longest/hardest effort each year makes more of a difference than your total training time.
This is just my personal experience: A long time ago, I worked my way up to doing at least one 14 hour effort each year. I did some of those each year for a few years. Then 19-20 hour efforts (I've done more than 20 in that range). Then a 36, and a couple of 48's (non-stop). That was over the course of about 10 years. Note that the work of Noakes is mentioned in the acknowledgements of the House and Johnston book. Noakes has a lot to say about long term (years) adaptations, and his theories about the sources of fatigue are spot on (IMO). I'd highly recommend reading the sections on the "central governor" theory of fatigue, in his book (Lore of Running).
I found that one way to assess long/slow fitness levels is to enter some ultradistance races, and just hike them. A solid hiker can finish a 50 or 100 mile trail race within the normal cutoff limits, without doing any running at all. The steeper and rougher, the less difference between a hiker's time and a runner's.

Dave Swink wrote: Good call on the woman-barely-jogging. That really captures the way I feel when the Zone 1 trail running starts uphill. I have been doing Zone 1 training for almost two months (started before I bought Steve's book). My goals are out in August so I have been trying to patiently build a base, and ignoring the pace information my sport watch offers, but the lack of apparent progress has been frustrating. However, today I timed my benchmark six mile trail run and was very pleased to see an 80 seconds/mile improvement in the last three weeks. Maybe this stuff works after all.

Starting to see that also...about 3 weeks in and my pace has improved by about 90-120 secs/mile. Still quite slow, but if these gains continue, that would be really something. Anyone out there know how fast a Zone 1 running pace can get?

I don't know know what speed they were running at but I have seen several college cross country athletes running around my town at a very good pace easily holding a conversation with one another

@Optomistic: The zones in the House and Johnton book, closely parallel the zones from "Daniels Running Formula" (who they mention in the acknowledgements). Daniels zones are called E, M, T, I, and R, and he has a bunch of very useful tables in that book.
Anyway, from those tables, a guy who runs a 3 hour marathon, is running 8 minute miles for his zone 1 ("E") workouts.

Tom Nyce wrote:@Optomistic: The zones in the House and Johnton book, closely parallel the zones from "Daniels Running Formula" (who they mention in the acknowledgements). Daniels zones are called E, M, T, I, and R, and he has a bunch of very useful tables in that book. Anyway, from those tables, a guy who runs a 3 hour marathon, is running 8 minute miles for his zone 1 ("E") workouts.

Thanks Tom! That would be awesome to get to that point...10:45 right now, although that in itself is quite an improvement from the 12:50 pace of my first zone 1 "run" which was about 3 weeks ago. In the Daniels book I assume they are advocating a whole range of paces in order to get to that point, not just the E zone? So far every time I do a Zone 1 workout I am slightly faster than the time before, though, so I guess in another couple months I'll be down at 8 minute miles too!

Optimistic wrote: That's really interesting, I'd never heard of that... And the respiratory rate I guess stays the same because the tachycardia is not a response to hypoxia, but to hyperthermia or hypovolemia?

You can actually use HR drift as a measure of performance/endurance. The drift happens for a bunch of reasons in addition to heat buildup (House mentions a few on pg 73). As your body responds to training, it will take longer and longer before those various aspects of "fatigue" build up.
If you use a HRM, run at a fixed speed for an hour or more and look at the data. It takes a while for your HR to ramp up to a constant level. Then it plateaus for a good bit of time, then it starts to "creep" up. I find the length of the plateau to be a good measure of my present long/slow type of endurance. When I'm out of shape, it starts to creep in about 30 minutes. When I'm in shape, the plateau lasts for hours.
The trick to doing this type of test is that the actual output (true intensity) has to stay constant, even though your perceived effort will be going up. A treadmill makes this easy, since it keeps going at the same speed. It can also be done via track (using constant lap times) or a measured section of trail that you go back and forth on, or GPS pace reminders (if the terrain is flat, or has an unchanging grade).

what kind of workouts are you guys getting in lately?
I do a mix of big hikes, and inclined treadmill. I'm very lucky to have good terrain close by. I live at 7300 feet, and have a bunch of 2400 ft climbs nearby. Grand Canyon is 90 minutes drive from home. Sunday, I went there and got in 24 miles, with 5000+ ft. elevation gained. For heart rates: 2 hrs between 110-120, 2 hrs 120-130, 2 hrs 130-140, 2 hrs 140-149, 40 minutes at 150+ (zone 2). We (my wife and I) started feeling fatigue after 7 hours, and were pretty sore the next day. That isn't good.
We will do a couple more of these type hikes to prepare for the R2R2R double crossing (46 miles, with 11,000 feet climbed).

Not so lucky here Tom, though we do have some steep river valley terrain to help ease the search for elevation gain. Currently going through my transition period, with a focus on:

• Maintaining Zone 1 and Zone 2 pacing by breathing feedback;
• Avoiding reps to failure on the strength workouts, which is new to me; and,
• Making a concentrate effort to indoor climb weekly at the 5.7 to 5.8 range.

I find getting the climbing workouts in is difficult. I've been able to accommodate Zone 1 workout last weekend on an approach near Mount Athabasca. I am usually able to get one long Zone 1 workout with at least 200 m elevation gain on trail a week, however the shorter sessions have almost no elevation gain.

I am still struggling with how to account the for the strength training and climbing as part of my weekly volume: 1 lap through the circuit with core warm up takes about 45 to 50 minutes, 2 laps at about 1 hour 7 minutes. Using those times (which include rests), it quickly eats away at the weekly volume especially if you are starting small (4 hours first four weeks, 4.5 hours this week).

4 hours - 25% Zone 1 - strength x 2 = An hour or less for 2 other zone 1 and zone 2 workouts plus climbing.

Is anyone else facing the same issue? How have you decided to account for climbing and strength training volume?

This might not be directly relevant but do you guys do anything related to elevation specifically?

Now that it is approaching alpine season in the sierra I've been trying to get above 10k a couple times a week if possible (so far just hikes/mild scrambles still too much snow for much climbing).

My theory is that this way I'll stay somewhat acclimated even though I live at ~5k. I'll probably keep doing this anyway since I like the mountains but I wonder if this is actually effective training-wise or if I'm just kidding myself?

Edit: In case it wasn't clear, I'm talking about training in relation to stuff in the ~13-14k ft range, not some heinous gnar Nepali Death Zone expedition.

Ryan Watts wrote:This might not be directly relevant but do you guys do anything related to elevation specifically? Now that it is approaching alpine season in the sierra I've been trying to get above 10k a couple times a week if possible (so far just hikes/mild scrambles still too much snow for much climbing). My theory is that this way I'll stay somewhat acclimated even though I live at ~5k. I'll probably keep doing this anyway since I like the mountains but I wonder if this is actually effective training-wise or if I'm just kidding myself? Edit: In case it wasn't clear, I'm talking about training in relation to stuff in the ~13-14k ft range, not some heinous gnar Nepali Death Zone expedition.

I do some of that, and it helps. The trailheads for Humphreys Peak (12,637 ft) are within a 40 minute drive for me. I try to do Humphreys at least once before heading to do CO peaks. At the top, there is a whole mile of rocky ridgeline that is above 12,000 feet. If I'm getting serious about something, I do a few laps back and forth on that top mile while I'm up there. I find the breathing significantly different above 12K, vs 11K. But, I also believe that pushing the pace while training at more moderate elevations trains your diaphragm, and some of the chest and neck muscles that assist breathing. That helps some too, even though it doesn't increase your red blood cell count.

On the other hand, my main mountaineering partner flies out to CO from sea level (Alabama), and just acclimates super fast. He has done all (54?) of the CO fourteeners, via extra days tacked onto business trips.

My workouts consist mostly of running for my Zone 1/2 workouts, I am still in my transition period so the small rolling hills around here work for now. If not running I'm doing 15% incline on the treadmill in boots, or hiking up in the foothills. I have started noticing a decrease in my mile splits as I work through, I am on week 4 and have dropped about 90 seconds for zone 1 and a little over a minute per mile on zone 2. Strength goes pretty well, still trying to fine tune the right weights so I'm ending just before failure on each exercise but still feel the challenge. When climbing has been tricky I've substituted another Zone 1 run to get the volume. Looking forward to finding a partner out here to get on more multi-pitch more often to have more consistent outdoor climbing days.

I try to spend one day every week or so doing a 10+ hr day in the mountains on something at least 17,000' to 18,000'. Plus a few days of running at least 90 minutes between 11,000' and 14,000'. And a few days of rock climbing or at least hang boarding for strength with a dose of core exercises thrown in as I am old and need to think a lot about injury prevention.

Heart rate wouldn't be a very good measure of the intensity at these elevations. I can't run in Zone 1, measured by heart rate, here unless it is downhill. Overall, I think that living and training at such high elevation sucks. I can only run slowly. The advantage is you are well acclimatized but, over a period of years, the lack of high intensity exercise (measured by something like power vs. heart rate) wears you down.

Was looking ahead in the book at the base period. Say you're doing the technical alpine objective but live in the midwest. How does one go about doing the two days of moderate alpine climbing as it suggest. I climb mostly at devils lake in Wisconsin so i'm guessing just get a lot of cragging in and do some laps of the approach to the climbs.

Again it may tell me in the book i just glanced ahead quick.

Just got the book and skimmed through it last night. Looks amazing. Anybody had any luck (or even tried) incorporating some of their training w/ more of a climbing-specific focus so as not to lose gains there too? I understand this book is tailored to alpinism rather than pure difficulty on rock climb but wonder how Steve House was tailoring his training such that he was still onsighting 12d (per the book) at the same time as building the rest of his fitness. There may be more in the book but I was wondering if anyone else had thoughts on combining this protocol w/ weekly cragging and maybe a day/two in the climbing gym each week too.

Cheers,
Mike

Mike (Boone),

They talk about that in depth in the book. Basically, he is sending those hard 12s onsight during the climbing-specific part of his training cycle, after many months of not touching any routes anywhere near that level, building a base of fitness.

Word,thanks Alex.

I noticed that several of the people in this thread are from CO. Any of you guys want to do some easy snow climbs in the san juan (SW CO) as part of your training? Maybe a test of your present endurance (without spending a ton of money, or getting killed)?
I'm not far away in N. AZ and want to do something long, but easy, like East face of Mt. Wilson, while there is still snow on that route.

I can't find the post, but I remember at least one person being concerned about fitting in enough strength training when starting at a relatively low weekly volume. I was/still am a little worried about that, but I just started the first week of my base period, and here are some thoughts. I am beginning with four hours of volume per week, which should ramp up to something like 14/week in the middle of the program per the progression.

Four hours for the first week means that my strength training has to fit into about half an hour per workout. I did my strength training last night semi-circuit style with one-two minutes of rest before moving to the next exercise in my circuit. This means the meat of my strength workout took a little under thirty minutes. I left out the core workout, for now. If one was set on including the core workout, they could choose two strength exercises instead of four.

Anyone else coming up with some clever ways to cope/plan inside of the structure provided by the book?

Alexander Blum wrote:I can't find the post, but I remember at least one person being concerned about fitting in enough strength training when starting at a relatively low weekly volume. I was/still am a little worried about that, but I just started the first week of my base period, and here are some thoughts. I am beginning with four hours of volume per week, which should ramp up to something like 14/week in the middle of the program per the progression. Four hours for the first week means that my strength training has to fit into about half an hour per workout. I did my strength training last night semi-circuit style with one-two minutes of rest before moving to the next exercise in my circuit. This means the meat of my strength workout took a little under thirty minutes. I left out the core workout, for now. If one was set on including the core workout, they could choose two strength exercises instead of four. Anyone else coming up with some clever ways to cope/plan inside of the structure provided by the book?

Tuesday: Bench and Squat
Thurs: Shoulder Press and Deadlifts

Each is a few warm up sets followed by 3x5.

Best bang for the buck in terms of time vs strength gains IMO.

Been following the queries and observations here on running speed in low HR zone training. I'm in week 5 or 6 of the Transition Program. Running in Zone 1 just about killed me when I started, as I had been doing a bunch of Zone 3 running, as well as HIIT. Went out on my Zone 1 run this morning and was only a minute slower than my previous Zone 3 training runs. Did my Zone 2 run on Friday and was just about hitting my natural stride. This being said, my buddy who started at the same time as I has been struggling to achieve a steady Zone 1 or 2 pace. I think this may have to do with the differences between how recently our aerobic base has been challenged-- I'm starting with a bunch of recent years under my belt, but he's been out of training for probably ten years. Anyway, just wanted to check in with folks who are worried that the slow-zone will stick around forever. My bet is that, with an adequate base, your pace will return pretty quickly at a much lower HR than you were previously doing.

As a side note, ever since we started doing the House/Johnston training approach, both of our metabolisms have kicked in in a huge way. I've always been a constant eater, but, now, I'm constantly hungry at the same time my bodyfat has dropped about 3.5%.