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Comment by duxup | Hacker News Reader

I never understood running until long ago I was running for some school event and just got into that grove where ... it didn't hurt to run and I felt like I could go forever.

How these guys do it for that long and that fast still amazes me, but I felt like i got a little glimpse into how it works.

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I think it’s the same for all endurance sports. I think there’s about a month of pain that you have to get through when you first start but then you realise you’re actually enjoying it.

For me it’s cycling, I do 300-400 km per week now and I absolutely love everything about it. The feeling you get when you find a smooth bit of road on a still day and you can feel is the wind in your face and all you can hear is the swish, swish, swish of your tyres is unmatched. It feels like you’re flying.

Flat tarmac, GP5000s, no wind or a tail breeze and it feels like you can go forever. I love grabbing a wheel and switching in with someone of a similar pace. The combined effort boost you both so much. As you say, the sound a nice pair of wheels makes is unbeatable.

You weekly distance is excellent. Work and life get in the way of me exceeding 300 regularly, I sit at 250ish.

> The feeling you get when you find a smooth bit of road on a still day

If you have not already you should try rowing. When you get some speed on water it feels really good.

Just my opinion, but I feel like these kind of sports are unbalanced, because our muscles are mostly powerful for legs, of course rowing is still using legs, but not much more than arms

If you have proper rowing form your arms are almost entirely used just for holding on. The majority of your power comes from legs and core.

Not a professional rower, just looked into form when I was using a rowing machine.

As mentioned you are wrong on this: rowing is mostly legs, some core muscle and then a little arm. As you don't have your full weight on your knees it is a good way to get started on working your legs when you're overweight.

As someone who rows an actual boat once or twice almost every other summer I just want to say that rowing is mostly upper body and arms, with little to no legwork.

I guess we're not thinking of the same thing when writing about rowing.

I'm thinking of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rowing_(sport)#/media/File:Avi... and if you do little legwork you're doing it wrong.

or it does when you're not rowing for time.

cycling on mostly flat roads is not as intense as running to be fair, what I like in cycling is going uphill out of the saddle, I used to do hills repeatedly like that, totalling a few vertical kilometers without refueling nor drinking, that gave great sensations

It's always a great idea to do regular cycling no matter the elevation as it's a great "compacting machine" for digestion

I meant "flat" as in not potholed to fuck, the roads where I am are completely destroyed

I actually live in a fairly hilly area, per 100 km I would expect to do at least 1,000 m elevation

I run but I always wanted to cycle, it is just sharing the road with cars feel super-scary to me. Do you have any advice?

I get up really early and stay on back roads. But for cars, there's a lot you can do in terms of road position and so on. For me, if I feel like I'm approaching a dangerous situation I move into the middle of the road. I also generally ride quite far away from the kerb. A lot of drivers will happily pass you way too close if you give them the opportunity, but there aren't a lot of people who will just drive straight through the back of you if you're in the way.

That leads into riding defensively. I ride with the mindset that everyone is trying to kill both me and themselves. I expect people to pull out in front of me, I expect doors to open etc.

To get a bit more used to being around cars I would recommend getting up early.

But really the main thing is confidence. You have just as much a right to be there as anyone else, and in reality the vast majority of drivers are great. I very rarely have bad experiences with cars. Obviously it takes time to build up confidence, but at the end of the day a confident, assertive rider who signals and manoeuvres well ahead of time is going to be safer than a nervous, skittish rider.

Look at gravel or mountain biking! If you live near some farmland, ranches or a national forest, there are likely miles of public dirt roads that hardly get any car traffic. trailforks.com is a good place to start to see what's near you.

If you start cycling, don't forget to keep running or start jumping - different muscles are involved. Practice of crashing (judo, aitrack) can't be underestimated.

The relative speed between vehicles it's what does matter - keep the flow (or between the waves), the distance and attention (doors, sideways, blind spots, bus stops), be obvious predictable, use your imagination (fly trajectory) and signaling - even take a middle of the road when needed to not confuse someone he can take a chance to overtake you at wrong moment.

I could never achieve this. Even after months of consistent training, my heart rate tends to shoot up pretty fast and max out even for small effort runs. Cardiologist tests haven't turned up anything and they insist I can continue to do what I'm doing (some even saying I shouldn't be afraid to go beyond max HR, but I don't know about that). If anyone else experiences the same or has some insight into this, do share.

EDIT: what my training looks like: zone 2 training with a chest strap monitor. 30-45 min sessions, barely breaking out of walking speed, 2-3 days a week for months altogether, mixing it up with interval runs some times. I've done this many times over in my life, never seeing any improvement. Even today, the smallest of jogs will take me to max HR within 10-15 min

I’m not a doctor but perhaps try running with a smart watch that shows you your heart rate and put in an amount of effort that keeps your heart rate at about 60-70% of max. For now that may be a brisk walking pace not even a jog. As you get fitter your heart rate should come down for the equivalent speed. I also used to go for runs and hit max within a few minutes and stay there for the whole run but ultimately I think I was just pushing too hard.

That's what I do, zone 2 training. I use a chest strap monitor too. 30-45 min sessions, 2-3 days a week for months altogether, mixing it up with intervals some times. I've done this many times over in my life, never seeing any improvement. Even today, the smallest of jogs will take me to max HR within 10-15 min.

Is there any reason for such strictness with your heart rate? I never measured anything and always progress up to a nice speed, and then it's when it flattens. Mix up the trainings and leave the HR monitor at home. Do ones where you just sprint as often as you can and others where you go slow, if you see some stairs during your run just sprint over them, etc. Of course, only if you're a regular person without existing heart issues.

Do you have any medical conditions?

Assuming you've had yourself checked up, and do not have any medical conditions, then maybe you are just aerobically deficient (https://uphillathlete.com/aerobic-training/aerobic-deficienc...). Start slower, doesn't matter if you are walking. In fact, if you are doing 3x45 mins of zone 2 each week, start doing 2x45mins of brisk walking to keep your heart rate at zone 2. After about 4-6 weeks, you should find that you can start jogging again and hopefully (!) your heart rate doesn't peak so fast.

(I'm assuming a lot of things here, namely that you know what your LT1/LT2 are so that you can accurately calculate your 5 zones; https://www.trainingpeaks.com/learn/articles/joe-friel-s-qui...)

It sounds dumb, but have you tried just running slower? And using a watch or something to see your pace so you don’t subconsciously keep pushing faster.

Yes, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43076161

When I first started running outside, I had no idea on pace. I ran at what I felt was "reasonable" and what I felt was similar to my experience of treadmill runs. It was really rough and hard work!

Tl;Dr - I got a basic thing that told me my pace (this was pre-smartphones but basic wearables existed) and turned out what I thought was relatively gentle and reasonable speed was actually a really fast pace and totally unsustainable.

When I knew what my pace actually was, I could stick to a much more sustainable (for me) ~5:30 min/km pace and it felt soooo slow and embarrassing and like I was barely even moving in comparison! But this was a much more realistic pace for a tubby software engineer. And for a long time I had to keep checking the pace as the speed would creep up during a run and it took discipline to "stay slow".

I use the runkeeper app that has the option to do pace read outs through your headphones every few minutes. I'd recommend trying something like that, and perhaps try to begin with a pace of like 6 or 7 min/km for 10-15 mins runs and stick to it and see if that helps, before starting to extend duration and speed after you've built some endurance. I've found fitness and condition improves fairly rapidly - O(weeks). Good luck.

I've done a lot of zone 2 training with no improvement - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43076161

I would probably ignore anything about "zones" or "intervals"-this or "intensity"-that. Bollocks to it all - we are evolved and built to run. Just get out and move in a way that feels comfortable to you.

Perhaps right now your fitness levels mean all you can do is a brisk walk for 10 mins? That's totally fine. Don't try and think you have to be following some workout plan by doing some sort of "zone" thing or some "interval" thing for X minutes. Listen to your body and take it slow.

I did that for many years before attempting this. The results are not very different end of the day, zone training just seems to be a dumbed down framework to ensure consistency.

How did you determine your max? It's quite variable across people, the age-based formulas are useless for most people.

Age based formula only. They stop the stress tests at this point. I could probably go over this, but I'll be worried about exerting the heart too much.

There are corrected formula.

"HRmax was univariately explained by the formula 211 − 0.64·age, and we found no evidence of interaction with gender, physical activity, VO2max level, or BMI groups. ... Previously suggested prediction equations underestimated measured HRmax in subjects older than 30 years."

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1600-0838....

That formula also doesn't have much better performance, check out figure 2 in this study to get a feel for how much variance is left over, no matter how good your model is, age is just not enough:

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/physiology/articles/10....

As-it says in the Abstract I linked:

"HRmax predicted by age alone may be practically convenient for various groups, although a standard error of 10.8 beats/min must be taken into account."

Shall we say 150—190 95% CI for me? (Rarely do I make enough effort to reach 155bpm.)

Not sure I understand what you are trying to say, do you find the prediction to be helpful? 150-190 BPM is such a huge range, what useful information can be derived from it?

It provides perspective and a target training effort.

I've done a good session if I push to 155 bpm. I don't need to worry about finger-sticks for lactate accuracy, because there's no-risk I'll do twice-a-day twice-a-week threshold sessions.

If I'm not even in the low-end of that huge bpm range, I quit and take a recovery day.

Those error bars are too wide for the formula to be useful for training based on heart rate percentages.

I've already said that I have found it to be useful:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43083815

:so please explain why I haven't :-)

You are doing nothing that requires the formula to be precise. A 10bpm standard error, meaning the max is very possibly 20bm off where you think it is, means that you can't reliably distinguish between efforts that someone doing serious training would want to be distinguished.

> You are doing nothing that requires the formula to be precise.

Exactly.

My guess is that neither are most other readers and commenters here. (Any evidence to the contrary?)

Meanwhile, what do those error bars tell use about "training based on heart rate percentages." :-)

> someone doing serious training

Care to say what you mean?

As-it says in the Abstract you linked: "The 202.5–0.53∗age formula developed in the present study was the best in the studied population, yielding lowest mean errors in most groups, suggesting it could be used in more active individuals."

Let's say it again — "suggesting it could be used".

And "A simple formula predicting HRmax based on age only may be used when the exact HRmax is not needed or is difficult to obtain."

For me the difference between 202.5 − 0.53·age and 211 − 0.64·age is less than 2 bpm!

If you are running less than 30 miles per week or so and don't have multiple injury risk factors (e.g. prior history of injury, being older, female) you can fairly safely run at whatever pace you'd like and know that running more and running faster will help you become faster.

The idea of "zone 2 training" that is peddled sometimes on social media makes no sense if you're not running consistent mileage and actively looking to run faster. At that point, the idea is that you're minimizing injury risk in between 2+ hard efforts per week, while still getting in the miles.

I don’t know about the whole zone 2 thing, but I found running 10ks and pushing myself the whole time led to fewer gains than mixing slower paced runs with separate sessions of quarter mile sprints and 1 session of squats per week.

Also running extremely hard for a good distance for me at least, became mentally a lot less enjoyable

Try to use the same effort you have for your 30/45 min efforts just break them down into f.ex 3 min jog then 1 min walking. Start with just the same speed.

> what my training looks like: zone 2 training with a chest strap monitor

Not really going anywhere unless you step into tempo/threshold/VO2 max training.

to echo what the others say, at such low mileage you probably should mix in some threshold running (run at a fast pace you can maintain for ~30mins) and not just depend on zone 2; also, you should try to meet/exceed 45 minutes for zone 2.

Just reading your other replies, I’m curious: did you test your heart rate or did you use a calculator? The 220-your age is completely incorrect for most people.

I prefer a lactate test, rather than max HR, because it’s “easier” for me to induce. Basically, run a 30 minute, even paced, maximal effort. You then calculate your LT by removing 5% off the pace and HR averages you got.

The important part is the pace must be reasonably even and also maximum effort. So, it’ll feel easy to start and by the end you’ll want to vomit. If you’re lucky enough to live near a Park Run, you can do this a few times instead to learn your max effort pacing and work out Z2 from that.

My heart rate would also go up quickly for the first few months. I would slow down and still find myself at a threshold level effort. After 3-4 months of consistent efforts my heart rate started to come down and I would only reach threshold if really pushing it. It may be that you need to slow down and give your body time to adjust. I also bike and for a long time there was a huge disparity in my on bike performance compared to my running performance. However, over time my running performance has improved a lot and I finally developed an easy gear.

I’m still slow when running, but then my goal is just to be able to run and not get injured. I built from 5k, to 10k and now can complete half marathon races on trails, which is a lot of fun. I’m a big advocate for minimal footwear and building strong feet. We are born to run, but modern footwear is silly.

Have the same issue. You've probably already found out it's called Cardiac Drift. I can run at the same pace for a 5k, and my heart rate is linear up to max/max+ every time. I ran ~500mi last year and it was the same almost every run. I tried to slow down from ~8:50mi to ~10:00mi with no real discernible difference. Kind of a bummer. Going to get my arteries mapped out soon (former smoker).

What does it mean to get arteries mapped out?

I'll be looking into getting a 'coronary CT scan'.

same here. I crap out really fast despite a healthy 22 BMI. Feet get sore, everything hurts, out of breath, pain everywhere. So much for running ability being universally evolutionary innate as some claimed by scientists. It's highly variable, not something everyone can do well.

But what's your body age?

https://hvemereldst.no/en/

This year I will have run half the earths circumference at some point. My feet still get sore, everything hurts, out of breath, pain everywhere. Just takes longer now for that to set in.

Anyone who doesn't run much feels that for a long time when they statt. How long have you been at it?

Personally I feel like it started to feel better only when I built some strength in the whole legs and core muscle areas, such that they would all work together to make me move. It's hard to describe. But if I run after sitting a lot when everything is tight and seized up, I'll go back to feeling like a beginner.

1) The Cardiac Exercise Research Group at the NTNU has a corrected HRmax calculator —

https://www.ntnu.edu/cerg/hrmax

— and a Fitness Calculator —

https://www.ntnu.edu/cerg/vo2max

— based on treadmill VO2max tests of thousands of Norwegians.

Check your scores.

2) You say your heart-rate shoots-up fast. Does your heart-rate drop-down fast when you stop exercise?

At-rest maybe 50, warmup-jog maybe 100, then it depends on the ambient temperature. If it's 85F then HR drifts up to 140 and flattens. If it's 50F then HR drifts to 110 and flattens. Then it depends on effort. If it's 85F and hard then 155; if it's 50F and hard then 135.

Last-time I looked my calculated HRmax was 170.

3) I'm not offering medical advice. In my understanding HRmax does not mean something bad will happen if heart rate goes higher. HRmax means heart rate is unlikely to go higher.

Maybe trust your cardiologists?

As a new runner, your heart rate will be really high. Unless you have some notable cardiac risk it's not a big deal.

Ignore the zone 2 messaging for now. Zone 2 training is basically useless for getting better at running when you're just starting because a new runner staying in zone 2 is just walking. You need to run to get better at running. For now, just ignore heart rate and focus on how you feel. Do run/walk and gradually work on increasing the time you run before you stop to walk.

PS.

"Zone 2", “80/20" and the like is advice that's really meant for intermediate runners starting to train more seriously and it basically just means "it's better to run easy most of the time so you can run more, and so when you do run hard you can get full benefit because you're not already exhausted. "

It is good advice in context but has been spouted without context by so many running youtubers and influencers that it has probably done more harm than good.

His high does your HR spike? And what pace are you running at and for his long

Similar boat here. I used to hate running and joked that it was playing sports without the fun game part. Why would anyone want to do that??

But then somewhere in my mid-30s something clicked, and now I love it. Like you said got to get over that initial hump of it hurting, doesn't take long, and then it's just soooooo good.

I'm not running any races or training for anything in particular. I just run for me and my physical and mental health several days a week. It's my "me" time. I definitely get it now.

Also a great way to explore all the nooks and crannies of my city, and find how to link up all the parks and trails and cut-throughs.

I've been running for years but never got into that groove. I know and can "sense" my body well enough now that I know I can run for a long time with a 165 bpm heart rate, and I can adjust my speed/effort to not exceed that bpm. But it's never effortless or carefree running, it is really "stoking the engine" with focus and precision...

I still enjoy hitting targets, improving my speed and technique etc. but it is never a relaxing process.

Maybe never going slow enough? There should be a pace where you can comfortably hold a conversation as if nothing is happening, specially after years of running. It might just be slower than you think, but "conversation pace" is how I think about it.

Yep, slow down enough so that you don't sweat and can breathe 100% through your nose. At first you'll be very slow but if you keep on going weeks after week you'll slowly get faster. A big part of it is mental too, if you're in relatively good shape even as a complete beginner your body shouldn't complain too much for at least an hour, if you're experienced you should be able to sustain that for hours

That's what I do as an amateur but then again I have no running watch, I run in $15 shoes, I don't care about PR, distance, &c. all I care about is slowly and safely building cardiovascular endurance

My story was exactly like yours. I have been running for many years, did a few half marathons, but it never got easier. I could never do the 'effortless' carefree running that I heard so many talking about.

In 2021 I got COVID and couldn't run since. I'd be exhausted and out of breath after just a kilometer or so, it was frustrating to say the least. To overcome that I proposed a 100-day running challenge with a buddy. We live in different cities, so we just ran our own distance and speed we were comfortable with. No tracking app, no stats, no target time or distance, just go out every day and go for a run. First 50 days were frustrating, it took me weeks to just get up to just 2km and then immediately plateaued. The around day 50 I noticed I could slowly start to pick up distance. I intentionally capped the distance to 6km or so, knowing that a 100-day streak is not great for your body. The last 10 days I decided to run 10km every day, which to my surprise I could do effortlessly. And I noticed something else changed. I did the 10km and then I... just wanted to keep going. I didn't though, knowing that 10km a day was already a terrible idea for someone of my age.

After the challenge I took 2 weeks to recover, and then I just went for a long run, see what would happen. I did 16km that day and other than noticing being low on energy at the end, I never felt out of breath. I didn't set that as a target, I just kept going until I no longer felt like going further. I now regularly do a 25km run, but there are also days where I do 10 and feel content. I don't bring my phone or smartwatch, I don't track my time or progress, I don't set targets, I don't care anymore. When it feels good I'll keep going, and if not I'll just do a shorter route, I'm no longer pushing myself. Running has now become my way of relaxing, gathering my thoughts, enjoying being outside. It has become effortless and carefree.

Maybe for everyone it's different, but in my N=1 experience I just needed to stop chasing progress, don't set expectations, no targets. Just get out there and enjoy yourself. Sometimes I do still push myself just for fun to see what I'm now capable of, but other than that I deliberately stay below my limit.

Not sure what the takeaway from this story is supposed to be, I just felt like sharing. Hopefully it helps someone finding more enjoyment in running :-)

The greatest improvement I got in running and general fitness was early 2015 when I did the "do >=1km a day" for 5 months. Often times it was a quick sprint around the block just before midnight (and sometimes then resting until after midnight to knock off the next day if I was busy) but sometimes it was a decent distance. The consistency was what really got everything flowing though.

> I don't bring my phone or smartwatch, I don't track my time or progress, I don't set targets, I don't care anymore.

I'm jealous of this "Forrest Gump" mindset...I also run to maintain/lose weight, so I use my watch (plus intuition, as mentioned) to manage my pace/heart rate/effort so I can run a long enough distance to burn enough calories.

Although I also realize and acknowledge all these stats are probably at least 50% there to satisfy my caveman need for external validation.

Trails. I've been running for over a decade and have never once "enjoyed" a city or pavement run. A half marathon in the city feels like torture but I can easily do 50k runs on trails.

Humans aren't meant to run on pavement in the city or on treadmills. It makes running much less enjoyable.

Unless your true max is at 195 or something 165 HR will not feel effortless. I ran 25k at 132HR on Sunday and even there the last 8k where no longer carefree. My HRmax is 186 currently and my threshold HR is about 170bpm.

With the “220 minus your age” rule my max would be 182 bpm. If I run at 175 bpm I can manage 30 minutes and run ~6K in that time (and be very tired the rest of the day). 165 bpm I can manage for an hour.

Beyond that, boredom and sore feet set in before cardio becomes the limit. I can’t imagine ever running 25K…even at a low(er) HR. Maybe if I lose another 5 to 10 kg of weight…

Technique is a big part of it. There’s actually a specific way to fast running engaging your core and making sure all parts of your legs are used in a way most suitable for them.

I’ve been running for years and I’ve never got into that groove though I wanted it for so long. Lucky bastard.

Top runners can run fast and far without it hurting. But when going for personal bests / very fast times, my understanding is that it is painful, for most of the run. E.g. watch some parkrun vlogs, and you'll hear people say things like "after the first 1km it's really painful, so just take things one step at a time, and hold on to the pace", etc.

"it never gets easier, you just get faster", or so the saying goes

Yeah, max effort racing once you're well trained is basically doing math based on your training data to estimate your physical limit, and then spending the majority of the race in agony, telling yourself whatever is necessary to avoid slowing down to hit that limit.

If part of you isn't wishing for death by the halfway mark of a 5k race, you've probaly left time on the table.

I've always wondered what happens psychologically and physically when you hit that state where you can pretty much go forever. It's like I begin daydreaming and I forget that I feel like I'm about to die from the running. One thing I noticed was that it never happened before the 1st mile, it was always after mile 2 that I would mentally drift off.

A combination of being under your lactate threshold, and of course exercise released endorphins. It's fleeting, but nice when it hits.

I remember the first time I rode a bike for 30 miles, I couldn't even sit down without intense cramping. I ate an entire large pizza loaded with toppings.

Within a year, I rode a bike across the US.

The body adapts to the load it's given, provided enough time.

I guess you used highly cushioned shoes?

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