First, a little background about how I only knew to training one way - train hard all of the time. In mid-2008 at age 42, I started working out at the gym for the first time in my life. I was enjoying the pains (muscle soreness) and seeing the gains I was making from working out several days a week. By the end of 2008 and early 2009, I was starting to" look in shape" due to weight loss and working out. Although I was being told I looked in shape, I did not feel like I was in shape because I would be exhausted after running a mere mile. So I set a goal to be in shape and to feel like I was in shape. Back then I did not train using a heart rate monitor as I do today. I did not know a thing about heart rate training, not even my maximum heart rate.
When I ran, I wanted to run as fast as I did when I was in high school decades before when I was on the track team. I had not run since high school but I thought I could easily get back to running fast again. Every time I ran, I ran hard. I'm sure I was at or above my maximum heart rate each time. At the end of 2008, I decided to run the Crescent City Classic 10K (CCC10K). In early 2009, I started my first run training plan ever. I followed the CCC10K training plan published in the local newspaper. Every run was a hard fast run since I wanted to go sub-45 minutes and get a poster given to the Top 500 finishers. Well, I finished in well over an hour. I was disappointed with the results as I truly thought I could be a Top 500 finisher. So I needed to get fitter and faster. I ran a few days a week. I also purchased a mountain bike and rode a couple of times a week.
Right after Christmas of 2009, I started on my first round of P90X in addition to the running and cycling. Each night I did my P90X session. After about a month of P90X, I would not feel exhausted when I completed some of the sessions. I just thought I was supposed to push harder! So I got a very inexpensive heart rate monitor and I determined my maximum heart rate was 177. I used the monitor each and every session. I pushed harder and harder to get at or near my maximum heart rate! All throughout this time, I was dieting via cutting my calorie intake since I had already been eating healthier. Each day, I ate what I have to guess was about 1,500 calories. I was burning a lot more calories and eating fewer calories. I was leaning up, I was toning up, and things were going great…
By mid-March, I knew something was not right since I had started feeling tired all of the time. I also started to look a little pale! But just like so many people do, I ignored it all and just kept pushing – no pain, no gain, right! I now know that a no pain no gain attitude all of the time is a disaster waiting to happen. The week leading up to the race, I was physically and mentally drained. My last P90X session was the same weekend as the CCC10K. I finished the race struggling at the end. Once again, I was unhappy with my results where I finished a few seconds above an hour. I improved from the previous year but nowhere near my Top 500 goal or even close to being sub-45 minutes!
Looking at pictures of myself from after the race, my eyes were half closed and I was extremely pale. Later that night, I started getting a minor pain in my chest. So I did the smart thing, I took a week or two off from any kind of training. Throughout all of this time, I kept calorie intake low since it had been working. Plus, I was also under a lot of stress with changes in my life and job. The chest pain I was experiencing after the 10K was still there and slightly worsening. One night roughly three weeks after the race, the chest pain was getting bad as I cooked dinner. While eating dinner with my kids, I started experiencing numbness in one of my arm. I then started feeling a low back pain. Next, my hands were cold as ice. Was I having a heart attack? I kept ignoring these signs as I cleaned up the kitchen. I could not relax. So, I tell the kids to put on their shoes since we’re going to the ER. As we were getting ready, I realized if I was having a heart attack I would probably kill myself and kids during the drive to the ER. So I had my kids call their mother to come get them and I called for ambulance for myself.
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| Selfie in the ER |
The ambulance arrives and I get hooked up to a monitor. With a shocked look on faces of the paramedics, they tell me I am not having a heart attack. What?!? They ask for me to repeat my symptoms and then ask me if I still wanted to go the hospital. Several minutes later I am in the ER where they hooked me up to monitors. I heard it again, “Sir, you are not having a heart attack.” Huh?!? After about 2 hours of monitoring me, they ask me if I want to go home. But they highly recommended that I should stay overnight to be monitored and have a stress test in the morning. I did the smart thing and stayed overnight. I did not sleep much all that night, mainly due to a nut down the hall screaming “hey (pause) hey (pause) hey you” every freaking few minutes. In the morning, I was feeling significantly better – no pain, no numbness, no cold hands. They bring me breakfast but before I could start eating, they come get me for the stress test.
Onto the treadmill I go. They tell me about how over the next 15 minutes, the speed and incline increases every three minutes but that I get to stop when my heart rate reaches 177. One of the nurses asked what my resting heart rate was. “70”, I say. I laughed when she sarcastically stated, “oh God, we’re going to be here all day!” My resting heart rate is significantly lower than that now so I sometimes wonder what she would have said! The stress test starts and after 12 minutes in, the nurse states that I am nowhere near 177. She goes on to say that I need to run as hard possible during the last 3 minutes. With a little more than 1 minute to go, she yells for me to run faster than the machine. She then yells to nearby nurse to come hold me around the waist in case I fall. I’m hauling ass on the treadmill, sweating profusely, and tripping over myself at times trying to get to 177. The nurse starts yelling that if I do not get 177 that I would have to start the 15 minute test again. With 3 seconds to spare, I achieve 177 and the treadmill starts to slow down and level off. As it stopped, I jumped off and yell “THAT WAS AWESOME!!!” The two nurses tell me I’m the first person in a long time to take the full 15 minutes to reach their maximum heart rate. They go on to tell me that I’m the first person to ever yell “that was awesome” after finishing a stress test. We all laughed and then they tell me the obvious, “Sir, we don’t think you are having a heart attack!” That 15 minute run got me pumped up!
They cart me back to my room and a doctor comes by to tell me the same thing about me not having a heart attack. I was ok! Believe or not, it was an anxiety attack! It was caused by too much stress in my body from overtraining, malnutrition, and stress from work and life in general. Stress is evil!
I had a high deductible health insurance policy at the time and I had to pay over $2500 for this very expensive lesson! But it was a great lesson on how stupid I was! I was not eating enough and I was always pushing too hard. I got smarter in my training and read up more about heart rate training. However, I still did not do things properly. I “watched” my heart rate but I really did not do much except read the number on my heart rate monitor. I did not push hard on each and every training session since I did not want another trip to the ER. I also started looking into way to improve the way I ate.
Honestly, I still did not learn the best way to train until end of 2012 after training all summer with my friend Tim during his Ironman training. I started on what would best be considered a half ironman training plan during the week. But on weekends, I was doing whatever was on Tim’s training plan. While he was probably in Zone 2 most of the time, I was in Zone 3 or Zone 4 just trying to keep up with him on the bike. On the run, we were both in Zone 2 and Zone 3 during that time. With so many hours of training above Zone 2, I burnt myself out. I recall wondering why I did the long endurance training and questioning if I ever enjoyed it all. I was evening coming up with excuses to get out of doing the weekend training when Tim called or texted the plans. I kept training but reduced it down significantly. My body was telling me to stop and I listened.
I started looking into why that happened to me. I learned more about heart rate (or Zone 2) training and I applied it during my Ironman training. Zone 2 training helped me to truly fall in love with endurance training. It helped me to improve my level of fitness and athletic abilities. In a future blog, I will discuss more about Zone 2 training, how I used it during 2013 Ironman training, and what I think I did wrong during my training in 2013. We do not have to go hard each and every time to improve. We do not have to feel sore after each and every training session to improve. The best way is to feel you have a little left in the tank when you are done. I like the feeling of having some muscle soreness as it makes me feel alive. I use to love it and if I did not feel it, I thought I was not improving or working hard enough. Train smart people!
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