al320, it doesn't surprise me that you have a substantially better endurance base than I do considering how long you've been doing this.
katyintx and fuckyourcouch I get it. I was basically walking in the beginning. Like technically running, but kind of remarkable that I was moving forward. But at this point I'm doing about 10 min miles at this heart rate on shorter runs and about 10:12-10:25 on long runs. I'm hoping to drop my pace to 10:00 or just below on the long runs befor my marathon cycle starts. It's required much much patience, but I see it working and I really hope it helps me be a stronger runner. I've heard the the key to long distance endurance is not to be as fast as possible, but to slow down as little as possible. We'll see!
Sorry to bring back an old thread... I was gone for a bit and didn't see this earlier.
al320, it doesn't surprise me that you have a substantially better endurance base than I do considering how long you've been doing this.
katyintx and fuckyourcouch I get it. I was basically walking in the beginning. Like technically running, but kind of remarkable that I was moving forward. But at this point I'm doing about 10 min miles at this heart rate on shorter runs and about 10:12-10:25 on long runs. I'm hoping to drop my pace to 10:00 or just below on the long runs befor my marathon cycle starts. It's required much much patience, but I see it working and I really hope it helps me be a stronger runner. I've heard the the key to long distance endurance is not to be as fast as possible, but to slow down as little as possible. We'll see!
Sorry to bring back an old thread... I was gone for a bit and didn't see this earlier.
Before this experiment, I tried to keep long runs under 10min/mile. But I never wore a hrm, so I don't know what my heart rate was. My recent long runs all feel like a much easier effort than those long runs. But I have no way of objectively comparing effort.
I took a few weeks off running in may and started wearing the hrm when I began running again. At that point, my pace was around 12mjn/mile at my target heart rate.
sitnspin is clearly the expert here but I'll throw in my non expert 2 cents.
For a half, I'd stay between 60-70% of your max HR for the half. Higher than that (around VO2max) is what you can sustain for roughly an hour, so you don't want to approach that until the end. Get to the half feeling good, then push from there. My max HR always is way higher than estimates and calculators when I'm in the moment because of those intangible factors.
As for why you've seen such improvement, it's widely thrown about that most athletes don't train hard or fast enough on hard/fast days or slow enough on long/slow/recovery days. Most workouts are done sort of between those two where you don't really see a lot of performance gains. When you stick to your HR, you're forced to go really hard to hit that high HR and forced to go really slow to keep it under.
I know all of this is not an exact science, but this is yet another source of confusion for me. 60-70% seems so low for a race -even for a training run.
The guidelines i have been using say Z1: 65-75%, Z2: 75-85%, Z3: 85-90%, Z4: 90-95%.
I've been trying to stay in low Z2 so about 75-77% on almost all runs. I haven't done much speed work at all, but those have been between 90-95%.
I agree. 60%MHR is sometimes a resting heart rate for some, so it can be kind of low (pending you do not have any medical reasons for it being that low).
I think I took up running because it was an easy and uncomplicated sport. How am I so confused now?
Lol right? Story of my running life sometimes! ktzmoh Certainly you can't spend all your time at a low heart rate, but if you do some of this research I think it will tell you some good "blends" to aim for and how much cardio lower work to do vs. how much in the higher zones. I think this is also why it can be really helpful to hire a coach who understands HR well. We can try to make time goals and hit certain paces all we want, but if your body isn't ready for that based on HR it probably won't be successful. I'm not ready to take the step of a coach yet, but maybe someday. I totally see the value in having someone else figure out the numbers for me!
Bringing this thread back to life because I'm looking into starting HR training now that my A Half Marathon is done and I pretty much crashed at mile 9.
I have a 2 year goal of running a 50-miler- looking to do a marathon and 50K in 2016 and I really want to be strong and injury free until then.
ktzmoh, any updates on how you felt during your last race after working on this?
Bringing this thread back to life because I'm looking into starting HR training now that my A Half Marathon is done and I pretty much crashed at mile 9.
I have a 2 year goal of running a 50-miler- looking to do a marathon and 50K in 2016 and I really want to be strong and injury free until then.
ktzmoh, any updates on how you felt during your last race after working on this?
Thanks!
Yeah! I raced really well! I did not PR, but came within 2:07 of my PR on a slighly harder course and with two stops to stretch. I was being way more cautious on this half than i did at my PR race since I"m starting a training cycle and this was not really a goal race for me, so I was super pleased. Seriously after running almost all 10-12 minute miles all summer, I was pretty shocked that I was easily able to run the half at an average pace of 8:23.
I didn't race by heart rate since I had no idea what the appropriate racing heart rate would be, so I just started out at what felt like a moderate-hard effort and went by feel. My heart rate wound up averaging about 90% of max heart rate for the race and coming pretty close to max right at the end.
My paces were not pretty. Last time I ran perfect splits, this time the variance was much larger. But I definitely learned from the data.
Bringing this thread back to life because I'm looking into starting HR training now that my A Half Marathon is done and I pretty much crashed at mile 9.
I have a 2 year goal of running a 50-miler- looking to do a marathon and 50K in 2016 and I really want to be strong and injury free until then.
ktzmoh, any updates on how you felt during your last race after working on this?
Thanks!
Yeah! I raced really well! I did not PR, but came within 2:07 of my PR on a slighly harder course and with two stops to stretch. I was being way more cautious on this half than i did at my PR race since I"m starting a training cycle and this was not really a goal race for me, so I was super pleased. Seriously after running almost all 10-12 minute miles all summer, I was pretty shocked that I was easily able to run the half at an average pace of 8:23.
I didn't race by heart rate since I had no idea what the appropriate racing heart rate would be, so I just started out at what felt like a moderate-hard effort and went by feel. My heart rate wound up averaging about 90% of max heart rate for the race and coming pretty close to max right at the end.
My paces were not pretty. Last time I ran perfect splits, this time the variance was much larger. But I definitely learned from the data.
That's great! I still have a lot to learn about how to pace myself during a race. My goal is to be able to go by feel ultimately, since for me I get stressed out checking my pace every mile during a race. Looking forward to learning more and putting my data to good use- Friel's book is on it's way to me from Amazon, so I'll take it from there. Thanks for the input!
Lol right? Story of my running life sometimes! ktzmoh Certainly you can't spend all your time at a low heart rate, but if you do some of this research I think it will tell you some good "blends" to aim for and how much cardio lower work to do vs. how much in the higher zones. I think this is also why it can be really helpful to hire a coach who understands HR well. We can try to make time goals and hit certain paces all we want, but if your body isn't ready for that based on HR it probably won't be successful. I'm not ready to take the step of a coach yet, but maybe someday. I totally see the value in having someone else figure out the numbers for me!
Yeah I'm definitely not ready for a coach. But I do think I'll start working some speed workouts in more regularly. I started doing them here and there, but I think I'll try doing them regularly now.
Yeah! I raced really well! I did not PR, but came within 2:07 of my PR on a slighly harder course and with two stops to stretch. I was being way more cautious on this half than i did at my PR race since I"m starting a training cycle and this was not really a goal race for me, so I was super pleased. Seriously after running almost all 10-12 minute miles all summer, I was pretty shocked that I was easily able to run the half at an average pace of 8:23.
I didn't race by heart rate since I had no idea what the appropriate racing heart rate would be, so I just started out at what felt like a moderate-hard effort and went by feel. My heart rate wound up averaging about 90% of max heart rate for the race and coming pretty close to max right at the end.
My paces were not pretty. Last time I ran perfect splits, this time the variance was much larger. But I definitely learned from the data.
That's great! I still have a lot to learn about how to pace myself during a race. My goal is to be able to go by feel ultimately, since for me I get stressed out checking my pace every mile during a race. Looking forward to learning more and putting my data to good use- Friel's book is on it's way to me from Amazon, so I'll take it from there. Thanks for the input!
I agree- Looking at the watch compulsively is annoying. But I do think if I had paid more attention, had an idea of what I was fit enough to do, and paced better (rather than just going by feel) I could have PRd. And my OCD brain was so satisfied to look at my splits that time when they were perfect.
But this was just a half- a 50miler is a whole other ball game.