On the question of Maffetone:
It's a quirky program that has worked very well for some runners. Your age and max HR are used to find a "Maffetone HR" that you are then, under pain of failed conditioning, charged with not exceeding. It's designed to keep you in a fat-burning zone, the better to train your aerobic system. It's particularly good, as far as I can tell, for two kinds of runners:
1) beginning or inexperienced marathoners who haven't accumulated many aerobic miles; for these runners, the MAF HR is a great way of building a solid base and keeping enthusiasm and a desire to run fast from leading to too-fast running too close to threshold--which is to say, Maffetone prevents overtraining
2) triatheletes and ultramarathoners: people whose race-durations demand that they put out a solid aerobic effort for 4-8 hours and more.
Maffetone is less useful, as far as I can tell, for experienced marathoners who've already accumulated a large base after years of training, as well as 5K/10K racers for whom fat-burning isn't quite the priority that it is for ultramarathoners.
Maffetone training disagrees in fundamental respects with certain aspects of other respected training methods--in particular, Lydiard, Hadd, Kellogg, and Pfitzinger, all of whom encourage not just Maff-style LSD training, but a balance of faster aerobic paces, during a base-building phase.
In my case, my Maffetone HR is 138, or what turns out to be 70%. I run my four recovery runs a week at that HR or below. I began the summer by trying to hew to my Maff HR on the other three longer runs; during one hilly 8-miler on a humid morning, I stopped 15 times to let my HR drop below 138. Then I decided to move on and work with my own variation of the other four training philosophies mentioned above, and I've had a far more enjoyable summer, injury-free, that seems to have put me in great shape.
What has stuck with me from my flirtation with Maffetone--apart from the easy recovery jogs, which have always been part of my repertoire--is new respect for the easier effort-ranges. I run the first half hour of my midweek runs (1:20 - 1:30 in duration) somewhat easier now than I used to, giving my system a chance to warm up, rather than pushing at least moderately from the get-go. I don't worry nearly as much about the cumulative pace of my runs; some of my long runs, with a pal, have been quite a bit slower than I used to run them solo. An hour and a half into yesterday's three-hour run, averaging my Maff HR--i.e., 70%, rather than 75% or 78% or whatever I used to do--I truly did feel tireless. That's the whole point of Maff training, and it's a good one.
http://This message has been edited by KudzuRunner (edited Jul-24-2006).
