I STARTED A PODCAST!
There seems to be a growing appetite (at least in my echo chamber) for knowledge on sport science. However, there is also a lot of BS out there.
I hope to address these two points with the launch of my new podcast, "The Physiology of Endurance Running"
I'm excited to announce that I have been invited to compete in the
@BritAthletics
Olympic Marathon Trials on March 26th!
During my build up, I'll be sharing my training on here each week, along with the physiological rationale behind each session.
First update on Sunday!
Manchester Marathon: 8th in 2:15:34!
Very pleased to finally knock out a good one after a couple of shockers in recent years. Stuck to the plan which was to finish strong but unfortunately fell an agonising 5 seconds short of the Commonwealth standard.
Maybe next time...
I've run even or negative splits in my last 6 marathons:
Manchester: 68:18/67:16 (2:15:34)
Newport: 70:12/69:36 (2:19:48)
Warsaw: 69:49/69:27 (2:19:16)
Valencia: 67:25/67:54 (2:15:19)
Newport: 72:00/70:27 (2:22:27)
Belfast: 69:16/69:16 (2:18:32)
A practical 🧵on marathon pacing
Hey
@LondonMarathon
, any chance you want to expand the domestic field by a few places? There’s a 2:18 guy (and 50k GB record holder) here who would love to make his London debut!
The results are in!
A comparison of two "super shoes" with a reference normal trainer:
- Nike Alphafly Next%
- Mizuno Wave Rebellion Pro (Prototype)
- New Balance Hierro (Reference Shoe)
Happy London Marathon Eve!
Good luck to all the runners taking part in your own virtual challenges tomorrow. I wish you were all here too!
Whatever happens, I feel incredibly privileged to be able to take part in the elite race, and I'll be giving it everything I've got!
Unfortunately, there will be no Olympic Marathon Trials for me. I am recovering from Covid-19* and I still get symptoms when I try to do anything more intense than a walk. I'm sure will make a full recovery, but I don't want to risk my health by rushing back. I hope you enjoyed
Shoe comparison: Adidas Adios Pro 3 vs Nike Alphafly v1
Trying to decide upon shoe choice for Sunday's Warsaw Marathon
4 sets of 3x5:00 at 14, 15, 16km/hr. Two sets in each shoe. Order: Nike, Adi, Adi, Nike
As promised, here is a summary of my training week as I build towards the
@BritAthletics
Olympic marathon trial on March 26th. I'm sure it wont all be plain sailing, but I'll do my best to give an unfiltered picture of how an unsponsored amateur prepares to take on Britain's best
Victory in the
@ABP_WSSP
Newport Wales Marathon for Dan Nash, smashing yet another course record here in Casnewydd! 🥇
A brilliant 2:19:46. Llongfarchiadau,
@Dan_Nash94
👏
✅ Last big session done before the
@LondonMarathon
!
🏃♂️ 20 miles of controlled upper zone 2 and then 2 miles hard zone 4/5
🥤 SIS Beta every 4 miles with 70g/hr of carbohydrate
👟 New Balance FuelCell RC Elite
Really not my day today. Never felt good and HR/effort much higher compared to the same pace during training. Not quite sure what, but something wasn't right.
I'm glad I managed to tough it out though and many thanks to all out there supporting.
We are very excited to introduce you to Aneurin (Nye), born on Feb 10th at 6PM.
He is a super strong, wiggly, happy and healthy boy. Mummy Mima is doing well and I am so proud of her.
We are both very much looking forward to this next adventure!
Nearly 4-years after starting, today I finally submitted my PhD thesis!
Many thanks to all of those who helped get me to this point.
Just the viva (and inevitable corrections) to go...
So I think I’ve worked out the formula to get free kit:
✅ Run a marathon a wk
✅ Insta story of every run
✅ Undying love 4 the “community”
✅ Prefer to pace rather than race
✅ Never miss a
#UkRunChat
✅ Loose 10 st
✅ Think compression socks cure all
❌ Be a decent runner
Some case study for you all, measuring running economy in three different "super-shoes":
Adidas Adizero Adios Pro 3
Asics Metaspeed Edge Paris
On Cloudboom Echo 3
Consistency is the name of the game!
My top tips:
✅ Majority of training volume well below the 1st threshold
✅ High-intensity only 2x week & most at only 7-8/10 effort
✅ Start with a weekly milage that is easily tolerated & progress slowly
Discipline. Patience. Control.
We talk lots about how consistent training is the secret to success.
Many athletes understand this but ask me how do they achieve this?
My answer is always the same, strive to create a stable environment that thrives off routine and monotonous repetitiveness.
@IronmanAthletes
I can confirm that the results are in!
For each shoe, I ran for 5 minutes at 16 km/hr (6:02/mile), while having my oxygen consumption and heart rate measured. This was repeated twice so that we had two recordings for each shoe. Data from the final 2 minutes was used in the...
Today, I am having my running economy values measured while wearing:
- mileage shoes (NB1080)
- NB racers (FuelCel Elite RC)
- Nike racers (Next%)
How do you think they will compare?
📰BREAKING | We're excited to be able to reveal the elite field for the 2020 Virgin Money London Marathon and it's absolutely stacked! 🤯🔥
Men's field➡️
#LondonMarathon
#The40thRace
It's a great privilege to be lining up alongside these speedy gentleman this Sunday!
Training has gone well and lactate data looks good, but the marathon is exciting because it is unpredictable... 🤞
I graduated from my PhD last month and my thesis is now publicly available:
"The IL-6 signalling pathway: potential biomarkers for training load, performance, and health status in endurance runners?"
Just 150 pages if you want to flick through!
Seen lots of posts about being more "consistent" in 2023 to reach an annual milage goal of X.
Having a goal is great but the desire to be consistent isn't enough.
Instead, you need to focus on processes that are going to allow you to be consistent
Examples:
1. Eating enough to fuel the work, particularly carbohydrates
2. Intensity control, meaning you never push yourself so hard that can't complete the next day's training
3. Sufficient sleep
4. Appropriate training load
5. Good injury managment
The marathon won today. Going into the race, I thought I was in around 2:16 shape. I actually think that would have been a pretty accuarte prediction, just not in the conditions that fate dealt us! Consequently, I paid the price and started to suffer far too early. Despite my
London Marathon: READY!
I can't wait to pull on my club vest & finally experience that
@LondonMarathon
atmosphere!
Good luck to all the other runners taking part! If you're interested in tracking me, I'm number 21. Follow on BBC2 9:30AM (🏃♂️), 9AM (🏃♀️)
#LondonMarathon
I'm incredibly greatful to once again be included in the British elite field at this years
@LondonMarathon
!
The goal?
The 🏴 Commonwealth Games qualifying time of 2:15:30 🤞
Thanks for your support everyone! I’m please to say that
@LondonMarathon
do seem to be adding a few domestic athletes to the field and that I am being considered. Fingers crossed 🤞
Hey
@LondonMarathon
, any chance you want to expand the domestic field by a few places? There’s a 2:18 guy (and 50k GB record holder) here who would love to make his London debut!
Cardiff Bay 10k: 4th in 30:08 (PB)
Nice to finally wipe away my previous mark from way back in 2014. It was probably just down to the super shoes though!
One week until the big dance...
I'm very excited to share the publication of my 1st first-authour paper,
"IL-6 signalling in acute exercise and chronic training: potential consequences for health and athletic performance"
Upping your training load? Struggling to recover from the training you're currently doing?
EAT MORE!
A big part of how well you adapt to training can be explained by energy availability 👇
ATHLETES LISTEN UP: When you train you have to adequately fuel. When you train more, you have to EAT MORE. Food=fuel. Fuel=adaptation. Adaptation=Performance. 3 new studies showing aspects of fueling related to bone health, injuries, over-reaching & performance. See below.
This morning I conducted a field-test on myself to establish lactate thresholds.
Protocol: 7x1 mile on an outdoor track with lactate taken after each interval (Lactate Pro 2) and HR reported as the average from the final 60s (Polar H9)
Wouldn’t it be great to see a real domestic battle? The potential for some great narratives and media-interest. Think of all those non-professional runners who are competing at a very high level while also being teachers, doctors, parents, carerers etc...
Well, the HRV didn't lie! 3rd in a PB of 14:18 and the highest HR I've seen in around 10 years!
Lots of indicators to suggest that I've coped well with the marathon training so far. T-5 weeks until
@LondonMarathon
I've had a few easier trainning days this week and it's translated into a "PB" for HR and HRV this morning!
Hopefully this bodes well for the
@Cardiff5K
this evening and puts me in a good place to finish strong for last few weeks of this
@LondonMarathon
build-up
As someone on the fringes of making teams in the marathon, the continued non-selection of athletes who have met standards only serves to demotivate me
It certainly doesn't make me want to raise my game as:
Track and Field = dumbest sport at the pro level
Imagine an NBA team saying “We’re only competing in the playoffs if we are a 5 seed or better”
Yet, that’s what occurs every year in track.
Countries decline spots/set higher standards then the governing body of the sport sets.
🔟 selected for the IAU 50km World Championships held in Romania later this year 🇷🇴
Among them are Olympian
@alydixon262
& team gold medallist from 2016, Hannah Oldroyd 🇬🇧
See the full team 👉
#REPRESENT
2022: 14th in UK (2:15:34)
2023: 11th in UK (2:15:19)
2024 goal: Break the top 10 & sub 2:15
I have a good feeling about my 30th year. I still believe there's more I can do to take off a good chunk of time. How fast can I go? Who knows! But I'm looking forward to the journey.
For a while now, I have been curious about a type of interval session often performed by cyclists. They will regularly do very high numbers of short intervals with very short recoveries. An example, that was made popular by a paper from Ronnestad, is 3 sets of 13x30s/15s recovery
This recent paper looked to compare the physiological cost of "double threshold" Vs one big threshold session matched for total work.
3x10 minutes am and pm
Vs
6x10:00 am
My partner, a doctor at Bridgend, has just tested positive for Covid days after she was supposed to have her 2nd vaccination.
So angry at UK gov for failing to protect those who who are giving everything to this pandemic. You've just lost another member staff 👏👏
I am excited to announce the launch of
@cardiffmet
's Sport Physiology Hub!
For the last 4 years, we have provided physiology support to Wales' premier endurance athletes through our links with
@WelshAthletics
&
@TriathlonCymru
.
Now, you too can access our performance lab!
Kilian Jornet, who won UTMB in a CR, was taking lactate and blood glucose measurements at the aid stations. I'd be very interested to see those numbers!
4wks until the
@LondonMarathon
!
A great session on Wednesday but then very tired at the back end of the week. I cut Saturday’s session short (aim was 7x3k off 1k float) and then took 1.5 days off. Feeling refreshed now so hopefully I can have a good last 2 weeks before the taper
My current reading pile 👇
I'm half way through
@mphcrawley
's "Out of Thin Air" and all I can say is that I keep having to fight off the urge to buy a one-way ticket to Ethiopia!
Olympic Marathon Trials Training- Week 5 of 18
A few less miles this week due to Christmas and needing a bit more recovery, but I still managed to get in the key ingredients 👇
Today, I am having my running economy values measured while wearing:
- mileage shoes (NB1080)
- NB racers (FuelCel Elite RC)
- Nike racers (Next%)
How do you think they will compare?
@BlixtenH
Big anaerobic capacity and a high % of fast twitch muscle fibres.
Training implications:
- more control needed around high-intensity sessions
- greater CHO requirements
- won't tolerate high mileage as well
Not quite a PB but nice to be competing for the podium and to run another sub 29:30.
Really happy with where I am at, as I start to build towards
@Marathon_Mcr
Incredible running by Hassan- truly phenomenal.
However, also a truly great run by Clara Evans to finish 46th & first home for GB. Came in as a reserve, only getting the call a week ago, ran a very smart/gutsy race.
Her debut was 2:55 but now holds the Welsh record with 2:25
Providing physiology & nutrition support to
@ClaraEvans4
in her buildup was a real pleasure. An amazing example of an athlete who has just quietly kept putting in the work year-on-year and transformed herself from good club runner into one of the best GB marathoners. You won't...
☆☆☆RETURNING TO TRAINING POST-COVID☆☆☆
I have kindly been passed a couple of resources with guidance on returning to exercise after having Covid. I don't think there is much public awareness around this so I thought I'd share it here.
First, an infographic:
The next episode of my podcast is now out!
"The 2nd Threshold: The physiology and its applications to training"
I cover:
✅What is the 2nd threshold
✅Its importance for performance
✅How do we train it
✅Measuring it outside a lab
Week 3 of 18 of training for the
@BritAthletics
Olympic Marathon Trials.
Busy with work at the back end of the week, but still managed to get most of the planned work done ✅
With the publication of this interesting paper on internal/external workload decoupling (Smyth et al, 2022), I thought I would share data from my recent 2:15 run at Manchester Marathon (1/x)
I've been quiet on here recently as I've been flat-out with my PhD (& still trying to do some running!)
But data collection for study 1 & 2 is done!
💉 192 venous samples
🩸 448 lactate measurements
🏃♂️ 128 wks of training data
🧬 16 DNA isolations
❓ 896 health questionnaires
When it comes to athlete monitoring, a single gold-standard measure doesn't exist. Only by using a combination of variables can you get an idea of how well an athlete is tolerating training
Yes, we are finally back! In this episode, we delve into the physiological model of endurance running performance. We discuss the determinants of VO2max, metabolic thresholds and running economy. We cover additional parameters that are important in the...
For those interested, I belive this was a contributor to why I was well-short of my best at London (goal: 2:15, actual: 2:29)
⬆️⬆️ Psychological stress related to my PhD data collection ➡️
⬆️ muscular fatigue
⬆️ elevated HR
⬆️ perception of effort
One year ago today at the
@iaunews
50Km World Championships!
🔸 Individual Bronze
🔸 Team Bronze
🔸 British Record
I’m not good at looking back and appreciating what I have achieved. I quickly move on and start chasing the next goal. But this represented the culmination of
South Wales runners, cyclists and triathletes
We are recruiting for two exciting research projects that are exploring the concept of "durability" in runners and cyclists
By participating, you will learn your:
❤️ VO2max
🩸 Lactate thresholds
📊 Training zones
📉 Durability
pace dropping off and my PB ambitions having long since disappeared, I really wanted to finish. But my overambitous start also led to my right hip giving up at 19 miles. I limped around for another lap but that was me finished. Thanks everyone for your incredible support over the
Improvement of 800-m Running Performance with Prior High-Intensity Exercise
7 of 11 elite athletes ran faster with a race pace 200m effort in warm-up vs control (just ‘strides’) 20 mins prior
Average 1.2s improvement in 800-m performance
Physiology changes ⬇️
@AndyBeetroot
I am going to start offering online coaching to a small number of motivated athletes who want to reach their running potential.
This will not be about fixed, generic plans. Instead, you will receive the same bespoke & dynamic level of support that I provide to the...
I'm excited to share that the pod is back!
Now joined by co-host,
@OwainZerilli
, our latest episode covers all things "easy running".
We start with defining what easy running is from a physiology perspective, before going into describing what benefits we can (and can't)
The British team have been selected for the inaugural IAU 50km European Championships ⭐
After some incredible results in the trial races, six men and five women are heading off to Avila in Spain this coming October 🏅
Read more here ➡️
A week tomorrow I will be racing the
@iaunews
50km European Championships, representing GB & NI.
I haven't raced all that much recently so decided to get in the lab to see where I was at.
Protocol: 10x5:00 stages with ~45s recovery all at a 1% gradient
What time will I run?!
Overall, the results mostly met my perceptions of the shoes in that the NB FuelCell RC's do provide a mechanical advantage, but not to the same degree as the Nike Next%. As this is NB's 1st generation of "supershoe" though, I think we can expect more to come with their next model
I am standing for election to the UK Athletics Athlete Commission (
@UKA_AC
), a group which presents the views of athletes to our governing body. For those of you have represented GB in the last 2 years (and so are eligible to vote) below is my election statement:
A massive thanks to
@ScimitarCustom
for the new race kit ready for the Elite
@LondonMarathon
! It ticks all the boxes:
✅ Comfortable fit
✅ Light
✅ Looks great!
I am very exciting to have made my first contribution to published research!
I'm aiming to further explore this area over the remainder of my PhD, with data collection for my first study hopefully starting in October 🤞
Lessons to be learned here!
1) You don't develop a large aerobic system by running faster than VO2max
2) Even the mile is a predominantly aerobic event
3) Too much emphasis is placed on "speed-endurance"
Enjoyed this chat with coach Nic Bideau, who reveals
@Stewy_mac3
hadn't run a lap faster than 60 secs for 2+ months before his 3:50 mile pb in December.
"I am often telling athletes that speed work is overrated but Stewy takes it to a whole new level."
In my first episode, I address what the research has to say on "How to fuel your next marathon".
I address:
- CHO vs Fat as fuel sources
- Benefits of CHO supplementation
- How much CHO should we take on
- Solids vs gels vs liquid
- Building a plan
An incredible run by
@walmsleyruns
at
#PCX2
. He breaks the
@usatf
100km record but misses the world record by just 11 seconds after more than 6 hours of running.
6:09:25 (TBC).
Live stream 👉
📸 via
@HOKAONEONE
live stream
I’m off to vote Labour because:
- I wouldn’t have £70,000 of student debt
- I wouldn’t have had to work a zero-hour contract for two years where I was in constant fear of maxing out my overdraft
- My PhD is part-funded by the EU and only Labour have a credible plan that could
With gyms opening in Wales from May 3rd, I am very excited to announce the launch of:
The Endurance Physiology Clinic
✔ Identify your thresholds
✔ Establish your zones
✔ Optimise your training
I calculated my "Efficiency Factor" (a la
@Alan_Couzens
) by dividing my Strava grade-adjusted speed (m/min) by my average HR (b/min) for each 1-mile split. EF is simply the number of meters I'm getting out of each heart beat and is an easy way to (2/x)
Glycogen-depleted training does seem to increase signalling response for adaptation. However, recovery cost is higher and ⬆️ injury risk. Therefore, maybe a useful too if you're time limited, but otherwise focus on fuelling your training sessions so you can do more total hours