# Nate — Personal Findings

Working notes from PT (Eisley), self-observation, and race experience.
Last recap: 2026-06-12 (day before the 30K).

## Cadence & HR — the two numbers that matter

- **170 spm is ideal**; natural cadence is **161** — body falls back to it
  when not consciously cued.
- Holding ~170 has made HR consistently maintainable **< 145** (top of Z2 is
  143) — at the cost of running slower. That trade is the point.
- Watch datafield: big HR + cadence only — the only fields needed in training.
- Current block (week of Jun 5–12): mostly low-HR walking, deliberate.

## Breathing

- **3 strides in / 2 out.**
- Noticed the diaphragm very often lands in the same position on the same
  foot — odd-count breathing (3/2) rotates which foot takes the exhale impact.

## Nutrition

- **I have undernourished in races.**
- Goal: **80 g carbs/hour** during long efforts.
  - At 30K (~3.5 h?) that's ~280 g total — plan bottles/gels ahead, don't wing it.

## Gait / form cues (Eisley)

- Problem: knee forward / stepping too far out front → lose momentum, hard
  strike, pulling instead of pushing.
- Cue: **"run on ice"** — feet land underneath, push backward.
  - This revealed weakness and asymmetry in feet/ankles/legs; in particular
    the **left foot struggles to load the medial side during pushoff**.
- Cue: feeling of winding/turning the feet — sup on lateral, inf on medial —
  aligns with the medial-MTP avoidance; good cue.
- Ice-walk stride note from injury rehab (2026-03-08): shorter, less
  out-in-front steps; cue of rotating musculature from inner to outer
  (pull meat back from inside inner ankle bone, push out behind outer
  ankle bone) felt good.

## Anatomy observations

- Asymmetry in the motion of each leg.
- Feeling of legs out of socket / tailbone out of place / sacrum twisted(?).
- Tightness + weakness where the collarbones join — the feel of pulling that
  area down seems right; likewise shoulders feel out of socket or twisted.

## Injury history

- **2026-03-07, right leg**: right inner leg felt "short", tending to limp,
  unable to pull the right leg back far; legs heavy, cardio fine.
  Rehabbed via the ice-walk stride work above (see ../RunningLogs.md).

## PT exercises (Connor Harris, YouTube)

- **Big toe ball exercise**: side faces wall; forearm against wall, opposite
  leg slightly lateral; raise wall-side leg (marcher); lift body with the far
  leg, focus on pressing into the big-toe ball; imagine lifting the toes
  from the ground.

## 50M training strategy

- Races: 30K **2026-06-13**, 50K **2026-07-25**, 50M **2026-09-12**.
- **Minimize Z3 junk miles** — polarize: Z2 volume + deliberate quality.
- Low-HR walking counts as training (time on feet) even though the dashboard
  currently ignores non-running activities.

## Race fueling

Plans, product reference, and the carb science live in
[RaceLogistics.md](RaceLogistics.md). Personal takeaways: target 80 g/h
(history says I under-fuel), both Tailwind and Hammer Gel are
glucose-dominant — pushing past ~85 g/h with this stack needs more
fructose, not more gels.

## Where this lives in the data / web UI

| Finding | Surfaced today? |
| --- | --- |
| HR < 145 / zone discipline | ✅ Time-in-zone (Activity Detail), polarized split (Dashboard) |
| Minimize Z3 junk | ✅ Dashboard "Polarized split (last 12 weeks)" |
| Aerobic base quality | ✅ Pa:HR decoupling (Activity Detail) |
| **Cadence 170 vs 161** | ❌ not shown anywhere, though per-second cadence is in every FIT |
| **80 g carb/hr fueling** | ❌ nothing — Race Plan page could compute totals from projected duration |
| **Walking / time-on-feet** | ❌ Dashboard filters to `type="running"` only |
| 3/2 breathing, form cues | n/a — not watch-measurable; lives in this file |
