Endurance Fishing

Endurance Fishing

Paul Arden | Tuesday, 18 April 2023

I have a video of a couple of Snakehead, an elephant and the HT8. But I haven’t finished (or in fact even started) editing it at the time of writing this FP, while swinging in my hammock! What can I say? I went fishing.

I’ve just watched “The Game Changers” on Netflix for the second time  — yes I can get Netflix in the jungle — and it’s something I found very interesting. For those who have been here at Sexyloops for a long time, you’ll know that I became a vegetarian at the beginning of 2001, 22 years ago.

This was an experiment actually. I was into long distance running at the time. And I just didn’t feel that I was getting enough energy from the foods I was eating and so I tried a vegetarian diet. What was remarkable was how quickly the change occurred and I started running faster times. Within 2-3 weeks I could measure the change. It was like discovering a new gear.

I’ve been convinced for a very long time now that a vegetarian diet is better for strength, endurance and a longer life. Despite what most of my friends not only thought but were keen to tell me :)))

Diet alone is of course not enough if we want to be healthy, and we need to exercise. But perhaps not the sort of intense exercise you might think, which is still important, but more important is endurance training ie Heart Rate Zone 2, which is what I believe our bodies are really made for.

My initial interest in Zone 2 started about 9 months ago after finding my route back into fitness about four years ago and discovering the half Ironman runs extremely difficult, despite 20km having been my favourite running distance for decades. Here in the tropics everything seems very much harder and so I started researching why I was burning out early on in the run. This became more of an acute problem when I decided I wanted to do the full Ironman again. If I can’t finish a half Ironman respectably, then how the hell am I going to finish the full Ironman again? And that’s when I started to discover Zone 2.

Zone 2 is 60-70% of max heart rate. It’s approximately the level you can exercise at and still hold a conversation… just. It’s your endurance output where you can simply keep on going. That’s the current equivalent for me of holding 175 Watts on the bike in the boat cabin for five hours (which is not unlike a sauna!) or running at an annoyingly slow pace of 6.45 minutes per kilometre here in Malaysia in a humid 32C for two and a half hours, and being able to do it again the next day.

The reason I was finding it difficult was because I was training, in effect, for a flat out 60 minute race in each discipline, which is a completely different mechanism to how the body needs to work in an endurance “race”.

When I was younger I ran the 10km in the Noosa Triathlon in 36 minutes, and I could comfortably run 20km in 90 minutes day after day. So I was a fair runner. Not world class by any means. In my mind I wanted to be running the marathon at 5mins/km and trying to do so by running longer and longer at what was actually a 5mins30 pace. But my heart rate was through the roof! Sometimes it’s 34C/93F and rarely ever below 30C/86F when I’m running. The sweat doesn’t even evaporate because humidity is often above 90%. In short I was falling apart.

I don’t care if you work at this for 100 years there is no way you can maintain threshold or maximum heart rate for the duration of a Ironman. There is in fact a physiological reason for this, which has to do with how our body utilises stored energy. High intensity outputs are fuelled by stored glycogen in our bodies. Low intensity endurance is fuelled by fat burning. The reason I was “bonking” on my half Ironman runs was because my body was trying to operate on glycogen and when it ran out of that I was shot.

It’s not how fast you can go; it’s how fast you can go in Zone 2. That understanding has transformed my training, and my fitness. It’s not about expending more energy; it’s about being smooth, steady, relaxed, efficient and conserving energy. The more Zone 2 training you do, the faster you get in Zone 2. And that is what it’s all about. It just took me 51 and a half years to learn this!! The only question is how can I put it to use over the next 51 and a half years? :)))

Last week Carol sent me a link to some discussions/podcasts on Zone 2 training which I found to be excellent. I currently spend about 12 hours of my week training in Zone 2. Including Saturday nights, which is a 5hr indoor bike ride in the Battleship Sauna. If you are into any of this, and I think you should be, then I think you’ll find these discussions highly insightful:

https://peterattiamd.com/inigosanmillan/

https://peterattiamd.com/inigosanmillan2/

Resting Heart Rate is a fairly good indication of fitness, of course genetics plays a part in this too. My RHR is in the low 40s. This morning my Garmin watch tells me it was 37bpm. I’m quite sure that’s down to the long distance triathlon training I do, as well as (I believe) the plant based diet. Or maybe it’s because I sleep in a hammock? Who knows. What’s been interesting has been watching that heart rate come down and it’s consistently 15-20bmp lower than just a year ago. But I’m also a lot fitter than a year ago. In fact my RHR has noticeably lowered since switching the bulk of my training to Zone 2.

Why is this important? The longer you live and can stay active, the more days you will fish!!!

 

Really.

 

 

Ok that’s what happens when I write two back-to-back FPs over the weekend; I run out of things to write about that are directly fly fishing! The water is 33.6C/92.5F and I’m going for a swim. I have a Zoom casting lesson shortly. Incidentally if you have written to me and you haven’t had a reply then please check your junk mail for paul@sexyloops.com or write again. Thanks! :)

Have a great week.

Cheers, Paul