Today was one of my last training days in Telluride for awhile. My coach, Sam Naney, programmed a good one: three hours skinning up hill. In Telluride, one is limited to a specific area if you want to move up hill. One lap up — approximately 1,600 feet — takes me just under an hour and a half. So, the program for me was to do this two times by skinning up, taking my skins off my skis, skiing down, putting skins back on, and repeat; all while keeping my HR below 130.
Today’s session was memorable for a couple of reasons. First, I was able to incorporate a fueling regimen I learned from Ben Greenfield — with one modification in 5 below; I use low carb fuel instead of glycogen based fuels because I am attempting to train to be a fat burner instead of a sugar burner — that he recommended I incorporate for any endurance training session or events longer than an hour: (1) ketones (I use KetoStart by Audacious Nutrition); (2) electrolytes (I like Quinton Hypertonic); (3) amino acids (I like Kion Aminos); (4) beet root powder (I like HumanN); and (5) Race+ from Sfuels. With regard to the Race+, I have come to understand that there is some disagreement among athletes and coaches as to whether it is necessary — or event detrimental — to not use carbs during an event even if one has trained the body to rely more upon fats than sugars, but i’m going with this for now and staying open to trying a different approach if I think — or Sam thinks — it will help me perform better. But today, I used the above at the end of hours one and two and felt great the entire three hours. Most importantly, my HR stayed at 111, which is well below my current zone 2 ceiling of 130.
Second, while doing all of this skinning and fueling, I listened to Peter Attia interview Ryan Hall: “Ryan Hall is the fastest American ever to run the marathon (2:04:58) and half marathon (59:43) and is the author of the book Run the Mile You’re In.” I highly recommend this entire podcast, but there were three takeaways that I want to consider for my training: (1) training low and living at altitude (to the extent one can do this); (2) using concentric deadlifts to build strength without hypertrophy (i.e., making my butt and legs any bigger than they already are); and (3) using blood flow restriction training — in my case Kaatsu, the pioneer in BFR training, which I have used for years outside of endurance training — as an adjunct to normal strength work.
With regard to training low and living high, Ryan discussed a strategy of alternating training and living between low and high altitudes, which was suggested to him by Jack Daniels (he’s a famous running coach for my southern friends who are immediately thinking of whiskey). I’ve been living at 9,000 feet and training at 10,000-11,000 feet for the last couple of months, but I don’t, at this point, have any specific strategy for how to incorporate this approach — alternating living and training between sea level and altitude — between now and when I leave for Everest in a year, but stay tuned!
Most of us who enjoy lifting weights know that the deadlift is one of the best lifts for developing strength in the posterior chain. Ryan Hall is a big proponent of deadlifting to build strength, but, like me, didn’t want to gain a lot of unnecessary muscle mass. So, instead of deadlifting like most do — picking the bar up slowly and putting it down slowly — he picks the weight up and drops it from the top of the lift. By doing this, he was able to build strength for running without putting on a lot of muscle mass. I’m hoping to incorporate this approach into my training if Sam is open to it.
Finally, while I have used BFR training for years, I haven’t considered how to incorporate it into training for mountaineering. Like the altitude/sea level discussion above, stay tuned as I learn more about how to incorporate this approach into my training regimen.
