Sharla's Log

[Sharla]

Yes they did ......

I put off my fartleck all day yesterdaybecause i was nervous in the morning. I had a meeting yesterday to show my supervisors the new software we made up to look at wheat root traits. It went well and actually I should have gone for my run. I felt like i should have been preparing something but Leonard was organizing a PDF presentation with images off of his grunt machine which he's been running the software on. There was not much i could actually do so the run might have been great to stem the nervous energy i had. I might not have said a few things with a little too much expression the way i did!

In the end though Leonard did most of the talking and since he knows so much more about this kind of thing than either of mysupervisors he had the upper hand and it went very well. It's a good feeling after having to do so much using crappy techniques etc enforced by my supervisor - except for a couple of things I've really had to argue for - to have this fly without needing any great defence from me.

Later on I spent most of the day clearing space for my new flatmate who is moving in this morning. I felt like ti all had to be clean etc since i think the example i give sets a precident and i couldn't expect her to be clean if I'm not.

When i was finally ready to go for my run it was late, dark and raining. In the background while cleaning I had the TV on and there was a documentary on about unsolved Australian murder cases so while I would often go out to train in the dark I didn't want to!

So I did the monaghetti fartleck this morning and will swim tonight.

Monaghetti fartleck is:

2 X 2 min
2 X 90 sec
4 X 1 min
4 X 45 sec
4 X 30 sec
4 X 15 sec

Those are all hard intervals followed by equal easy periods. I used to only jog in the easy intervals but this time after the fourth hard 1 minute interval I noticed the equal rest period was not enough to let my heart rate come out of the highest intensity level so I walked.

Not as fit as I used to be but i think I can still push myself at least since i did feel nautious twice during the session.

When i got home I decided this type of workout warrants the cold shower thing. I was more of a dip because I'm a woss!

Having said that i think I'll make the next one longer because when I got out I felt like my face was burning. Obviously i warm my body up a lot more than i realise just during training and perhaps I have conditioned myself to have hot showers without really being aware of how hard I'm making my body work to regulate my temperature.

When I cooled down my body with a really brief cold dip I could tell my face was really hot in comparison. Perhaps it is actually possible to impede your recovery from a hard workout due to making inflammation worse with excessive heat. I have been told before that the heat I like my showers to be is way too hot.

[Sharla]

Saturday did a 1 hr swim - 10 mins freestyle, to mins backstroke alternating. Notice my right arm had less range of motion than my left. Felt it in my abdominal region - perhaps still need to stretch the right psoas a bit more than the left. Find it easy to catch up the right hand with the laft but unless i concentrate i want to sweep my left away before the right reaches it because it's more work bringing the right up.

Sunday - spent all day threshing grain with my sister's help. Defeated it! No more Fing grain threshing! Had to start early - be at my sister's at 7:30 so i didn't get a workout in early.

Finished late and had a job interview on Monday morning so i didn't get to train then either. The interview went ok i guess - not really sure.

Monday night also nothing Can't even remember why now but i suspect i'm just a woss really.

Tuesday i decided playing catch up on missed workouts like i had planned to do originally last week was a waste and i do have more than one sprint type session and more than one interval type session a week.

From that point of view maybe living in the past and attempting to play catch up on missed workouts is a bit demotivating and pointless. I guess things will come up and sticking to a routine is not made any easier by playing catch up. i will endeavor not to miss any sessions but if i do then perhaps it is to be expected sometimes until my job hunting, uni and occasional work commitments are structured in a less chaotic fashion.

Tuesday i didn't get to do anything until the evening. I'm house sitting for my brother at the moment who has a dog less than a year old. She's a whistler - already just about full grown, jumps up to lick my face with ease (often) and is very very hyperactive.

I wanted to go for a run but his area is unfamiliar to me and just when i planned to leave there were a couple of ferals having a roudy arguement out the front. rather than risking a "what the f**k are you lookin at" incident i decided to run around te back yard with the dog.

His back yard is almost the same size as a basketball court plus there is an under cover car port which is empty we could run into.

Played for an hour with 2 X 3 min breaks.

Rules of the game:

1) who ever carries the bit of scrap rubber (used to be a ball i think) runs away from the other one.

2) I'm not aloud to stop moving but she does making me a fool for running around trees since she can stop and wait to see which direction i'm coming from but i can't do the same with her.

3) no wrestling - i figured it wouldn't be so aerobic if i grabbed her and wrestled to get the rubber. It would mean I'd have to stop running which was not the point.

I think I won. Sure i had to break it up into three intervals to survive but when i stopped for a drink so did she.

Sure i had to do that partly because there was no way I was getting that rubber but she never grabbed it off of me eiter.

Sure the only times I did get the rubber were when she decided to drop it to chase the cat but i think that comes down to concentration and keeping your eye on the ball.

It was good, very tiring but not a really consistently high heart rate like a normal run. I think the continual changing directions worked my legs quite hard as well as the intermitant bursts of speed. Probably had a lot more benefits than a normal one hour run really and i had fun in a juvenile way.

[sourpuss]

Sharla! Queen of rubber keep-away!!!

sounds way more fun than a run

[Sharla]

Yes it was fun and i probably looked exactly like that little yellow dude

Have just decided I'm going to have some offline time. A bit of net detox until i get into a routine again.

I'm going to be back online in a few weeks.

In the meantime don't think I've forgotten about your knee Youngblood and I'm gonna ask about it when i'm online again so don't go inventing some high impact knee and back thrashing workout program just to aggrivate me!

Good luck with the knee treatment and good luck to you too Sourpuss. I'll be keen to hear about how things have gone for the two of you dealing with your battles when i return!

[Sharla]

Um yeah my whole abstaining from the forum thing didn't last long!

I think i'm going to stick to the Ask The Trainer Board for a while though and mostly on weekends.

The reason I'm posting is I'm coming up with some new (to me at least) ideas / understanding of exercise physiology and i'm keen to hear opinions from others who are into this side of things like Scrap and Salty.

1) I happened to read that women tend to increase their VO2 max more by increasing oxygen uptake capacity in their muscles by capillarization more so than men. Apparently men will increase their heart stroke volume more than women. That's over time as a result of training i think.

2) Acidity in the blood is a consequence of exercise and i think if i understand it correctly it will signal the process of capillarization (forming new capillaries).

3) Apprently a study with swimmers having a dose of bicarbonate soda pre-workout increased their performance by decreasing blood acidity. I think this is for one workout - sort of like taking glucose right efore a workout - not going to improve your ability to mobilize energy stores in training probably but great for a good one off performance.

4) Apparently stroke volume is limited when tested while cycling due to the way blood can be pooled in the legs. Apparently trained cyclists don't have this problem though and will show the same exercise induced increase in stroke volume during a workout as they will over activities

5) The supine position as in swimming (and Scraps thing ) does not limit heart stroke volume at all.

6) Women begin to outperform men in ultra marathon endurance efforts beyond the 66 km running mark.. This is attributed to lipid metabolism but I'm also wondering if since capillarization is triggered more so by endurance training this has something to do with it.

Another observation was that women do not over-heat as much in these long events - perhaps because our heart is not generating as much heat due to increased heart muscle action associated with increased heart stroke volume.

I imagine capillaries existing in muscles which are able to allow more blow flow and therefore O2 reaching the muscles is a fairly passive mechanism not producing any real heat or using as much energy as increasing heart stroke volume. Perhaps part of the reason in ultra long running (higher heart rate than other sports) distances this mechanism of O2 uptake could become increasingly more important.

7) I never felt like endurance training decreased my power unless I was trying to make weight and not getting enough protein or suffering from te effect of impact. I would still make strength gains with resistance training and adequate nutrition. Apart from that i felt stronger for it .... coincidence or not?

So I'm trying to nut out basically if I should be tayloring my workouts to increase VO2 max in a couple of different ways in different workouts.

For example using either acidic or basic food/drink intake pre-workout and workout methods designed specifically to target or not target capillarization.

As a female capillarization will likely yield better results more easily for me. I'd definately aim to get the most out of that in some workouts.

Perhaps I should also try to design some sessions that will target my stroke volume more specifically since that is a weak point probably not well trained especially by me with my love of endurance training.

Ok enough blabbing from me! Thoughts, suggestions? Do you think it's possible to target these separately to a significant degree?

[Youngblood]

lol good idea sticking to the ATT forum. It can get ugly out there.

I too am thinking on a forum break. Hopefully I don't need to have myself banned again to make it happen...but I'm not above it or beyond another self-imposed intervention. Sorry...only read that far before responding.

Knee is feeling a bit better already, so ty for asking...and I'll let Salty and Scrap or someone else answer the other stuff I know nothing about.

[Sharla]

Good to hear the knee is feeling better

I'm house sitting at the moment so it's an easier time for me to have a forum break than usual but still now while visiting my mum i manage to end up on the computer which i think is frankly a little sick!

As for answering stuff you know nothing about I'm not sure of what makes you think i know anything about it and i'm talking about it so why not you too?

If you have ideas, comments or just a guess it will all help because i'll have to double check the literature or try something to work out what i think about it and that will teach me more too.

I think it's easy to miss key things because you look at things from one angle so hearing other people's angles on things is always good.

[Salty]

Um yeah my whole abstaining from the forum thing didn't last long!

I think i'm going to stick to the Ask The Trainer Board for a while though and mostly on weekends.

The reason I'm posting is I'm coming up with some new (to me at least) ideas / understanding of exercise physiology and i'm keen to hear opinions from others who are into this side of things like Scrap and Salty.

1) I happened to read that women tend to increase their VO2 max more by increasing oxygen uptake capacity in their muscles by capillarization more so than men. Apparently men will increase their heart stroke volume more than women. That's over time as a result of training i think.

I too spend too much time on the forums, but it's just great in this one. I haven't done much comparison between men and women's training, but I can understand how this would be different especially from an evolution standpoint.

2) Acidity in the blood is a consequence of exercise and i think if i understand it correctly it will signal the process of capillarization (forming new capillaries).

3) Apprently a study with swimmers having a dose of bicarbonate soda pre-workout increased their performance by decreasing blood acidity. I think this is for one workout - sort of like taking glucose right efore a workout - not going to improve your ability to mobilize energy stores in training probably but great for a good one off performance.

The bicarb soda works by resisting a drop in pH of the muscles during activies where your workload exceeds that of your lactate threshold (where protons begin accumulating in the muscles).

In actual fact training your lactate threshold can be much more productive than your VO2 max for both endurance events and boxing.

An excellent article on that is here, have a read and you will understand it a lot better Report on blood lactate 1

4) Apparently stroke volume is limited when tested while cycling due to the way blood can be pooled in the legs. Apparently trained cyclists don't have this problem though and will show the same exercise induced increase in stroke volume during a workout as they will over activities

5) The supine position as in swimming (and Scraps thing ) does not limit heart stroke volume at all.

6) Women begin to outperform men in ultra marathon endurance efforts beyond the 66 km running mark.. This is attributed to lipid metabolism but I'm also wondering if since capillarization is triggered more so by endurance training this has something to do with it.

Another observation was that women do not over-heat as much in these long events - perhaps because our heart is not generating as much heat due to increased heart muscle action associated with increased heart stroke volume.

I imagine capillaries existing in muscles which are able to allow more blow flow and therefore O2 reaching the muscles is a fairly passive mechanism not producing any real heat or using as much energy as increasing heart stroke volume. Perhaps part of the reason in ultra long running (higher heart rate than other sports) distances this mechanism of O2 uptake could become increasingly more important.

I could not imagine running 42km's let along 66km's that is just crazy, but another thing which could account for this is the higher water percentage that women hold in their bodies. I'm sure this would start to play an important role in an event of such duration as it would be tough to remain adequately hydrated in those circumstances. This would also explain a few of the observations;

• Increased heart rate
• Increased body temperature
• Extreme fatigue
• etc.

But you do raise valid points, I haven't looked too much into capillaries at all and stroke volume of the heart.

7) I never felt like endurance training decreased my power unless I was trying to make weight and not getting enough protein or suffering from te effect of impact. I would still make strength gains with resistance training and adequate nutrition. Apart from that i felt stronger for it .... coincidence or not?

So I'm trying to nut out basically if I should be tayloring my workouts to increase VO2 max in a couple of different ways in different workouts.

For example using either acidic or basic food/drink intake pre-workout and workout methods designed specifically to target or not target capillarization.

As a female capillarization will likely yield better results more easily for me. I'd definately aim to get the most out of that in some workouts.

Perhaps I should also try to design some sessions that will target my stroke volume more specifically since that is a weak point probably not well trained especially by me with my love of endurance training.

Ok enough blabbing from me! Thoughts, suggestions? Do you think it's possible to target these separately to a significant degree?

One thing you have to be careful with endurance training is the transition of fast twitch to slow twitch fibers. After long events scientists discovered that fast twitch fibers had decreased in percentage, while slow twitch had stayed the same. The found that these missing fibers had turned into intermediate fibers which had characteristics of both, but if this training was regular of a long period of time (years) they would become slow twitch fibers, where they could never come back from there. I don't know if this would apply to you, but I found it pretty interesting. Especially for boxers who are addament about the jog every morning.

I read an article the other day about how one ex olympic gold medal winner in swimming I think trained his athetes over long duration as part of their speed training. His theory was that as slow twitch fibers fatigue more and more fast twitch fibers were recruited to do the work. Sorry my mates have all just arrived and telling me to get my ass off the computer. So I'll hopefully add more to this tomorrow, but interesting questions Sharla

[Scrap]

Sharla Bicabinated Soda, dont go anywhere near it while training. Salty that was a Superb post, the information given was well written and easy to understand. Lactic is the muscles freind, everything written by the guy makes absoloute sence good find. Top Man

[Scrap]

Sharla, if you can get hold of Biochemistry of Exercise vol V11 volume 21 you will enjoy, bicarbinated Soda stops the warning system through acid breakdown from working as it should and can overstrain the Heart its a NO NO.