I learned about MAF from one of the runners in the Billy Yang running community. It was attractive to me because I was coming off of a very slow self-curated 50K, one that I pushed through because I was injured. After a couple weeks of rest, I wanted to get back and build an aerobic base. I thought MAF sounded great because it would be inherently more gentle on my body with a lot of run/walk to start off with and no pressure of miles or pace. I started in mid-July of 2020 and the chart below shows my progress by pace up to Dec 27, 2020. I didn't run every single run at MAF, probably close to 60% of the them were MAF runs. I missed the trails and also wanted to add in a Saturday long run starting in mid-November, so for those runs, I didn't pay attention to heart rate.
- First MAF run was on July 17, 2020: 14:01 min/mi pace, average HR of 134 bpm
- First breakthrough of going sub-12 min/mi was on August 13, 2020: 11:59 min/mi pace, average HR of 138 bpm
- Breakthrough of going sub-11 min/mi was on September 24, 2020: 10:43 min/mi pace, average HR of 137 bpm
- Next fastest MAF run was on October 5, 2020: 10:28 min/mi pace, average HR of 139 bpm
- Next fastest MAF run to date was on December 9, 2020: 10:11 min/mi pace, average HR of 137 bpm
- Fastest MAF run to date was on December 29, 2020: 10:04 min/mi pace, average HR of 139 ppm
I noticed that I need a warm up before starting a run. I now almost always do a fast walking warm-up for at least 10 mins until my HR gets up to over 100 bpm before starting the workout. If I don't do this, my HR will often spike and not come down. My MAF runs are usually between 10:30-11:30 min/mi pace in the last few weeks. I am hopeful that I will get the pace consistently down to around 10 min/mi pace at an average HR of 140 or less. It's encouraging that towards the end of my runs (usually the last 1-2 miles) I can comfortably run between 9-10 min/mi pace and not feel like I'm using more energy.
Consistency is key to MAF training. Here is my training for the last 12 weeks. I've been adding about a mile per week for the last several months.
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