I received the following comment on my 2012 in Summary post and thought it and it's response warranted a post of its own as it's a common topic with MAF...

Hello Colin

Revisiting this post as posted here before but not sure if it would be better in the MAF post. I digress.
When you started using the MAF principle; did you experience your heart rate monitor pinging off before you even felt you where actually getting into your stride?

I have tried this for a month now (and even though you suggest trying for 3 months at least) I am finding it utterly soul destroying. I feel like it want to rip the HRM off and smash it to smithereens because it must be lying to me, constantly pinging saying heart rate too high, I am barely moving.
I have read Dr Mafftones Big book of endurance and this situation is often referenced, people can seemingly run happily a lot faster than they can slower. Driving me nuts.
Just wondering if you had to go through this phase or your aerobic capacity was already sufficient to operate at a low HR?

The only thing that stops me throwing the HRM in the next brook is, it works fine when out on the bike. Can keep the HR nicely at may max level of 135bpm.
I can only conclude. Running is far more taxing than cycling, my aerobic capacity or running economy is shockingly poor or both.

Any words of wisdom would be much appreciated. Failing that, the simple cold truth, is my own conclusion about right.

Jason the dis heartend

Don't feel dis-heartened, you're not alone. This is actually a very common issue and I did indeed experience the same frustration as you are experiencing. My body used to be primed for fast training and I could and would whiz through training sessions at significantly higher heart rates. This however isn't very good for MAF and I had to be patient.

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Back in September 2011 I asked if anyone had tried the maximum aerobic function (MAF) training by Phil Maffetone (PDF). It seemed like an incredibly simplistic approach and I was a little skeptical about the efficacy of such a "slow" approach to running so I threw the question out there.

After a lot of research and some good feedback from others I took a whole-hearted plunge into the world of MAF training on 23 January this year. I didn't take the plunge sooner as I was still very concerned about the incredibly slow pace I'd be training at and instead opted to finish out 2011 and most of January 2012 mixing up times and heart rate ranges using some of the ideas garnered from a huge article by John Hadd Walsh known as "Hadd’s Approach to Distance Training" (PDF). This served me well and I was soon building a good aerobic base and clocking up monthly totals I'd not seen before: October 2011: 216km and November 2011: 252km.

As I said, this served me well, but there was still this niggle in the back of mind: "What would happen if I trained to the ideas of MAF?" Some of my training runs had been pretty close to my calculated MAF range so I'd started to get used to the slower training pace. So I bought Phil's big yellow book, read it, put my pride in my pocket and dived right in.

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Last month was a bumper month for running for me. Check it out...

If you add up all those numbers on the right, and subtract the 3 days' running from May, you get a nice round total of 336.30km. Now how's that for a lot of running in a single month.

Unlike my previous month, this month was pretty much exclusively running. I didn't do any dedicated weights sessions or swimming as I find both of these impact my running more than I'd like. I might bring those back during the winter months when I don't always want to head outside.

So not only did I run over 100km in a single week

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It's been a while since I last posted about my running so this is going to be a long summary post covering my recent training and diet. I'll write another, probably shorter, post on racing after this post.

Training

Training is going really well. I'm continuing to run using the maximum aerobic function (MAF) principals written about by Phil Maffetone which I questioned in September last year

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Yesterday's run saw me log my highest monthly mileage total of 259km...

My previous high was 252km in November 2011. Now the fact these two are quite close to each other - we could say right after each other as December doesn't really count as I was on holiday for most of the month - is no coincidence. Since September I've been experimenting with the Maximum Aerobic Function (MAF)

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Well, I think we can say the summer racing season in the UK is now well and truly over. There are a few races left this year I might look to do before Christmas, but nothing I've got my heart set on.

With this in mind, it means it's time to start building up the base for next year's racing season.

Today I discovered maximum aerobic function (MAF) training (PDF from Phil Maffetone who came up with the idea). Essentially, you take 180, subtract your age, add or subtract a bit more based on health and experience and then use the range of that number less about 10 bpm as your training range. You then do all your "base" training in that range and see great results.

This all sounds well and good and the long term results sound good, but I'm concerned about this rather generic approach, especially considering if I took 180 and subtracted my age (31) and added 5 (I pretty much meet criteria 4 in the link above), I get a heart rate of 154 BPM. This is not very high at all, especially considering that I've clocked a maximum HR during a race (Woodley 10k in which I set my season best) of 203 this year.

Has anyone had any experience with using this MAF method for their base training? I'm interested in the positive and negative experiences people may have had.

The other approach I've been contemplating is Arthur Lydiard's run a "million miles a week" approach, but that scares me, unless of course you've got some good information on that topic too.