Maffetone Method. Nope

Before I begin describing my experience with the Maffetone Method, let me quickly explain what it is; and what it is not. The theory (postulated by one Phil Maffetone) goes that most endurance athletes spend too much time in their “anaerobic zone” - someting Mr. Maffetone defines differently from most physiologists as the sustainable pace where the majority of one’s energy is derived from carbohydrates instead of fat. Maffetone takes your standard low heart rate base miles formula and takes it about 10 steps farther: turning down the heart rate recommended by other low-heart-rate advocates, and arguing that you should do all your running at that pace. He claims that you will soon become so ridiculously fast at your “easy” heart rate, that all other efforts that you layer on top of that will increase by a proportionate margin. His book gives case studies of 45-minute 10K runners who start with “MAF” heart rates at 10:30 min/miles eventually being able to run 7:30-miles at their MAF HR, and subsequently taking more than 5 minutes off of their 10K PR’s.

Mark "Grip" Allen claims that the Maffetone
method of training helped him make the leap
from elite to unbeatable. That and some peyote.

The description is plausible, and the case studies persuasive, especially that of Mark Allen. Plus, the idea of trying a completely different way of training that a guy who wrote a book insisted would get me results far superior to everything I’d ever tried before was appealing, despite my incredulity. So after my post-Boston break from running I decided I would use my unstructured summer running to give the Maffetone Method a fair shake.

May - Baseline

I took about a week completely off of running after the race, stopped eating clean, and in general started doing the offseason thing. I still ran about 4-7 miles per day, about 5 days a week (compared to an average of 10 miles per day, 7 days per week), and my MAF heart rate let me run about 6.7-7mph (8:35-9 min miles). By the end of May, my MAF pace had dropped to between 6.5 and 6.7 mph (9-9:15 miles). I thought maybe I could chalk that up to a general decline of my marathon fitness, decreased mileage and a focus on building muscle.

June - Where things really changed

For the first half of June, we went on a 17-day vacation to Europe, where I did no running whatsoever. When I got back my MAF pace had dropped to about 5.5-6mph. I suppose I expected a bit of a decline, but I also expected to build it back quickly. I was only away for a couple of weeks, after all. But nearly a month later, my runs still average about 5.7mph. Obviously the Maffetone promise of running faster at your MAF heart rate were not bearing out.

July - Nails in the coffin

But what about the promise that your race performances would improve from running slower? If Maffetone (and the haters) were right, and high volume/high speed leads to overtraining, then my race performances shouldn’t drop off by as much. Maybe? My coworker and I signed up for a 10-mile pancake-flat race two weeks after I returned from vacation. Normally, my coworker runs at a similar to slightly slower pace than I do so I started running next to her. Immediately my hamstrings blew up like I was trying to race up a steep hill and I started breathing like a moose in heat. I wasn’t able to keep up with her 8:45 pace (usually a fairly easy pace for me) for even a mile. I finished that race with an average pace of 9:00/mile and felt like I’d been run over by a tractor for the rest of the day. I mean, that race felt really, really horrible.

Thinking that that day may have only been a fluke (maybe I was fighting something; maybe I hadn’t slept well that week…), I decided one day to turn off my high heart rate alert, and just let myself go for an easy 7.5 mile run based on feel. It was a disaster. Averaging 9:20 min/miles I staggered through the 7.5 mile run to work feeling like I was carrying a 100-pound backpack at 10,000 feet. Could I have slowed down? No. Running slower felt no better, and getting "comfortable" would have reduced me to a walk. When I checked my average heart rate, it was similar to that of a 10K several months before where I had averaged a 7:12 pace (a pace that had disappointed me at the time). This was bullshit. I had just run a 3:37 marathon that I had been disappointed with, and three months later could barely sustain 9:20 pace for a one-hour workout. This is where I cut off the experiment.

Conclusions:

The Maffetone Method doesn’t work.

It may work if you are an inexperienced runner who treats every workout as a race, and runs a low enough volume that you don’t need to vary your pace. It may even work for someone who’s never run in their entire life. It doesn’t work for me.

I probably could learn a lesson in taking my easy runs a little easier. I’ll do that. But right now I’ve got a whole bunch of base miles to run to make up for the extra 2 minutes per mile it takes me to run now, and I just don’t have time to run those miles at 11-minute pace.