Well, after that light last week, which culminated with an easy 22.5 k on Sunday (almost doubling the weekly total), this morning I jumped on the upper aerobic horsey and went for a gallop up to Komazawa Park.
Zone 1 of the program was four kilometers warming up at 65% to 75% of HRmax (mostly around 71-73%). Then, just after I hit the park, the monitor clicked into Zone 2 of the workout: 80% to 87% for 9 km. That felt a little bit hard on the legs at first, but they soon warmed into it. On the third lap I caught up with Yoshino-san, a friend of Dan's (he says "hi", Dan!) and we ran together right at the bottom of my target range, sometimes (beep beep) dipping below. This, however, still meant Yoshino-san had to pick his pace up a bit, so it was a nice little compromise for both of us.
I was still more than a km from home when the 9 km came up, thus triggering the monitor to start the 1 km cool down at 65% to 70%. Interestingly I was really just cruising along at that stage at about 82% of max. Felt like I could have run like that all day. Well, I was certainly happy to keep going at it. I decided to capture the cool down in a separate log file so that the average heart rate of the main run would only reflect the warm up and upper aerobic components. That way I slowed down more gradually also.
My pace during the upper aerobic zone part of the run was between 4:07 to 4:30, depending on slope more than anything else.
I think that run reaffirmed that my aerobic base is still in pretty reasonable shape and that I can start to introduce speed workouts more regularly as a build up for our company's ekiden in May.
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About Me
- Stephen Lacey
- Born in 1963 under a camphor laurel tree beside Bilambil Creek, I now live in Tokyo with my Japanese wife and three sons. I started running in 2002 and my addictive personality soon clasped this foolish pastime to its bosom. I am also an enthusiastic amateur brewer and have won a few competitive home brewing awards in my time. Diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma in 2015, today I can no longer run, and my blog posts are more likely to concern the waxing and waning of my condition.
5 comments:
Hmmm thanks for the lesson Steve - your blogs have been informative indeed of late.
As for your comments on my blog you are right I do have top end speed and my capacity to run at 80% MHR isn't too bad - the real problem is weight 90kgs (actually 92 at the moment)at a gnats nut under 178cm tall. Granted a bit is lard but a lot is muscle - if I am ever going be able to sustain my top end speed over any respectable distance I need to trim down (its also gotta be a good move for my heart as I head for the twighlight years).
Any ideas HR wise? I'm considering some long rides on the bike (or windtrainer) at 40 - 60% MHR.
Appreciate any comments sholz@dsa.org.au
Oh and nice run BTW ;-)
I am also finding the HR stuff very interesting. Do you use HR as part of your race plan?
Rachel, hope you re-visit to get this reply. Ummm...that is a question on which my thinking is evolving. I was definitely dead against it earlier on. I saw the HRM strictly as a training tool and a possible liability in a race (because it might make you perform too conservatively). But the fact is, once you know your lactic threshold heart rate, you could use the HRM as a pacing tool, especially for longer races such as the half and full marathon (or triathlon). For shorter races though, I really think you would have more chance of pleasantly surprising yourself by not using the HRM and just going by perceived effort (flat out!!) and breathing.
The thing is: what is the heart rate at which your muscles start to accumulate more lactate than they can process? The more trained you are, the higher it is. Elite marathoners run at 90% of HRmax, and yet their muscles are clearing the lactate. Pretty amazing.
And when you are racing, going for your best, sometimes you just have to push through pain barriers, and having an alarming heart rate blinking away at you would not be very helpful with that.
Hope that helps.
Thanks Steve,
Very interesting. Like you said I think it maybe handy for the longer races, but not the short ones. That beeping when you start to push yourself could get a bit annoying too!
Nice photos steve!!!
Talking about heart rates... mine is definately up in my last two runs. Is that normal when recovering from the marathon? My body is obviously working harder.
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