Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Hadd training is not all easy!

The weather has cooled a bit and I have gained a lot of adaptation for running at heart rates in the low 140s. My pace at this HR, at least while fresh, is actually very healthy at around 4:30/km. When the weather is mild I also seem to have pretty good endurance at that HR. So I think its time to start in with some more serious upper aerobic runs (HR147-153 or 79% to 83% of HRmax). From now on I will do them on Tuesday and Friday morning, aiming for about 90 minutes total run (just like Joe!).

So this morning I cranked out this. Reaching for the upper aerobic heart rate brought the speed up to a point that after completing 17 km, including some slower warm-up and cool-down distance, I was still 14 minutes shy of 90 minutes. I wasn't prepared to up the distance any more though as it was already 3 km more than recent Tuesday runs. But to get to 90 minutes means this run is going to have to be about 20 km. Should be interesting. Two things I got out of this run: 1) pace at this heart rate is very respectable, better than three-hour marathon pace (before fatigue sets in anyway). 2) the endurance needs a lot of work as evidenced by the slower fourth lap. I guess the temperature was still a little warm, but I think that after four to six weeks of these runs I should be just about cranking out 20 km at 4:05 to 4:00/km without getting over a HR of 153 or 154. Will be interesting to see if that comes to pass...

8 comments:

2P said...

Nice but what was the scenery like?

Stephen Lacey said...

ha ha .. bastard!

You wouldn't believe me if I said it was like this or this.

Maybe more like this.

Samurai Running said...

I reckon the scenery where you are Steve is a good mix of all three photos you uploaded.

I did 4:30sec per K for the last couple of kms of my run this morning and I was up around 160 BPM. I got a ways to go to regain fitness after my holiday. While I did run 5 days a week they were only what they refer to as "Junk miles."

Well done old son, you must be pleased with your progress this early in the season.

Ewen said...

The scenery all looks good to me.

I was going to mention the slower 4th lap. I'm finding the upper and lower runs compliment each other (produce lower HRs in the following day's run).

The 90 mins at 82% would be testing. I'm sure you'll eventually get the 4min ks. Just need to do those longer ones regularly. I'm not game to try more than 60 minutes or so at the moment.

Tesso said...

Holy statistics Batman!

Tesso said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Ewen said...

What Tesso? Are you being a Queenslander again?

Ewen said...

"Feeling the effects of increasing the time on legs"! Try taking 1:40 to run 16k like I do on a lower aerobic run ;)