Sunday 2 August 2009

Hill Sprints in Vibrams Reveals some Limitations

Location: The Wrekin, Telford, UK
Date: 31st July

We found a steep stretch of hill and did:

sprint up the hill ~ 25 seconds
walk slowly down (~ 2 minutes)

x 3

Post Workout Nutrition: this, 60 minutes later.

I did not take a photo - but it was shaded by trees and a mix of leaf-covered hard soil and tree roots with some embedded stones.

We did each sprint in grizzly bear mode (i.e. as though being chased by one) and both found our legs giving up during the last 5 seconds.
BBS Recovery
My partner did 4 sprints (one more than me.) I was concerned about just how 'rubbery' my legs felt after number 3. I was conscious that I was still recovering from Monday's BBS workout and did not want to affect performance on the next one too much.

So I cheered him on from the sidelines.
Fasting
I was also coming to the end of a fast - it is very unusual for me to workout in the evening - I normally do it in the morning, when the most I have been fasting for is 12 - 14 hours. Other people seem to find working out at the end of a fast not to be a problem.

From an evolutionary point of view, it would not make sense to make it harder to hunt just when you need the food most. So
for now I am chalking this up to poor sleep and post-BBS weakness.
Vibram Performance
Whilst my partner had some state-of-the-art
fell running shoes, I was in the Vibram Five Fingers Flows. I had seen forum posts suggesting the Vibrams are not suitable for that kind of terrain, and this experience proved the point. Since they have no tread on the sole, muddy or grassy surfaces, especially when wet, are a real problem.

As it turns out, there appears to be another product in the pipeline which may solve that problem - the Trek
. In the meantime I will have to decide whether my fell running should be done the Vibrams, my fell-running shoes, or a choice depending on an assessment of the terrain.
Fast Twitch
It was interesting to see the difference in acceleration between my sprinting partner and me.

Whilst the composition of the soil at the bottom of the slope did make it harder for me in the Vibrams, he appeared to have more raw power when fresh....yet by the top of the slope, I was pulling it back to finish level, albeit on stonier ground.

I suspect he may have a little more fast-twitch tucked away than me, something our respective bench press performance would confirm...

2 comments:

Bryce said...

Hey Methuselah,

A quick question about blog formatting, since you seem to be pretty competent. I wanted to know how you made it so that only a portion of each post shows on your main page, with the 'read more' option available. Am I missing something simple in the formatting settings, or is that a modification you applied?

Thanks,
Bryce

Methuselah said...

Hi Bryce - here's how I do it:

Put this in the Blogger template where the styles are:

<style>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>
span.fullpost {display:inline;}
<b:else/>
span.fullpost {display:none;}
</b:if>
</style>

Then this in the Blogger template just below the <data:post.body/> tag:

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType != "item"'><span expr:class='"mymore_" + data:post.id'>... <a expr:href='data:post.url'>Read more</a></span>

Finally, whenever I write a post, I enclose the stuff I want to hide on the main page in a span tag like this:

This is the text that introduces the post<span class='fullpost'> and this is the rest of it that you only see when you click on the read more link to view the item.</span>

...so it's quite involved and definately not a standard Blogger feature! Hope this is of some use. Let me know if you have any problems making it work.