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Can you rely on heart rate to run Easy?
Ive been trying to move towards running more of my runs easier. I've been running with an aim to keep my heart rate below 140. The trouble I'm having is I can run as slow as nearly 4 minutes slower than my 5k pace to achieve this. Shall I go with the feel of an easy run and do 5k plus 3 minutes instead and achieve the same thing, as I'm not sure how accurate my heart rate is when things like work stress, sleep Is effecting it.
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5k + 4 minutes must feel dreadfully slow! 5k + 3 minutes is probably better for your motivation. Your aim should be to reach the point where you can comfortably run at 70%maxHR for an hour plus without slowing of pace or at that pace without rising HR. This means that you need a good idea of your true HRmax, not an age-calculated formula, which is often inaccurate.
The way to do this is to run long and easy. Build your mileage up as high as you have time for, in singles, not doubles. If you can build to 60 minutes per day, with 90 minutes twice a week and 2 hours on the weekend, (or more), that's great!
It will take some weeks, perhaps months (depending on the current level of your aerobic system), but put in the work and the results will come. You want to build your heart so that it sends more blood more often and build your running muscles so they can best absorb and utilise the oxygen that is sent by the heart by increasing capillaries and their density, the mitochondria within and the aerobic enzymes within those. This takes time and the best way to accomplish this is by running easy.
In time, your easy pace (70%) will be around 5k + 2 minutes or a little more and this pace - and all other paces will be much faster.
Good luck
If you can't chat happily at that pace then you're running too fast. Go out with a mate and natter. If you can - then look at the HRM and see what it says.
Just aiming for a HR figure seems to be the wrong way about it - unless you've tested your max.
This will only work if you have some idea of your zones. Ive never tested my max but through experience of taking note of hr in races and training runs of various distances that sub 140 for me is recovery effort, 140-155 are varying degrees of easy, 160 and a few eitherside is mara pace and upto 170 is threshold. If you are going to train by HR then you have to have the detail to back it up or it'll all be quite wrong.
I know others who have ranges all 10 below mine which doesn't seem much but is the difference between mara pace and threshold.
as the limit not to to go over for easy runs.
But to achieve this means I have to sometimes go over 10 minute miles, and I feel like my running style is very sloppy when i have to run this slow and I'm worried about getting injured. I do understand the reasons behind running slow, im
just unsure if I can totally rely on heart rate alone as a figure to run to.
Max - age though ? Not seen that one. Where did you get it from ?
I think people are afraid to slow down - they shouldn't be. When I run with pals we are often around 10mm pace. When I race shorter distances it's nearer 6mm pace. It's a lot more pleasant running slowly !
It's always speed that gives me injuries. Not lack of.
Ive got no races planned from June to October and want to run my best at that Oct 10k. Would slowing all the runs down from June help to achieve that?
http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=42240
What is your current mileage? What races are you targeting?
this is in no way a yes or no answer.
In my experience I found that using the heart rate monitor for long runs meant that I was forced to slow down and personally I think that this hindered me during a Dublin marathon. there are however, other factors to consider, but it was the last time that I used my heart rate monitor for midweek LSRs. (weekend long runs tend to involve marathon paced splits so not applicable)
that is all.
That formula you are using - no idea. Your age doesn't need to be subtracted from anything. You ought to be running easy at somewhere around 70-75% of max, maybe 125-135 bpm. I do this with max of 180 and easy pace comes out around 7-7.30 min/mile. Form doesn't suffer, cadence is a little lower and stride length shorter - I do some strides at the end of a run to open things out a bit.
Come June I'm open to switch to a more periodisation way of training as I want to run well in a 10k in October. At the moment I'm training for a half in 2 weeks and then a 10k in May, I'm just concentrating on getting quicker for them.
So I'm having a problem with my HR and I need help, I just don't understand this
Bit of background, I started out doing couch to 5k at a 10k per hour pace. I couldnt do week 4 and so ended up repeating week 3 for years, feeling useless. Eventually I gave up on ever doing it "properly" and decided to just lower the speed and complete the program to save myself some dignity, then quit running. Anyway I completed the whole thing at something sad like 4.5mph.
After that I ran on and off, trying and failing to do it at a 10kmph (6.2mph) rate and failing again. Every failure damaged my confidence and I'd quit for a while. Eventually my friend suggested I get a book called the running formula and try it out. So I read a bit of it and it said I need to train in different HR zones to get different benefits. It said easy pace builds resilience to injury so I decided to start with 2 months of that first. I bought and am using a HR monitor called Wahoo Tickr X
I'm 30 (nearly 31) so I calculated my max HR as 189. I then calculated my HR zones as:
Easy: 111.51 - 139.86
Marathon: 151.2 - 170.1
Threshold: 166.32 - 173.88
Interval: 185.22 - 189
Repetition: no more than 189
I then measured my HR at my main two running speeds, what I regarded as easy (4.5) and interval (6.2). My HR for 4.5 seemed to be 148 and for 6.2 it got up to 168 after a few minutes before I slowed it down
Then today I went in and decided to work out what speeds I need to run at to hit each HR zone. The results I got were
4.5mph for 5 minutes = 148HR again
5.0mph for 5 minutes = 160HR
5.5mph for 5 minutes - 168HR
By this point I was beginning to feel nauseous. I had already worked out my E rate is about 4.0mph, my M rate is about 5.0mph and my T rate is about 5.5mph. I decided to try and go straight to threshold so I set the running speed to 7.0 which based on my results up until that point I predicted would be my I speed
Well, 2 minutes in my HR has risen to 175 and I started to feel extremely sick. I persisted but as soon as my HR hit 178 I felt like throwing up and immediatly dropped my speed down to a walking speed. According to the HR zones I calculated, the nausea started when I went over my T HR zone
So after I had caught my breath and didn't feel sick anymore I decided to go straight for my max HR within 90 seconds (R zone). I set it to 8.0 since I needed to get there fast, and that's about the fastest I can go while maintaining my running form. 50 seconds in my HR was around 173 and I started feeling sick again. At 70 seconds it was at 178 and I felt that overwhelming nausea. I decided to try and push through for another 20 seconds to make it 90 seconds but after 5 more seconds my body started to sieze up and so I immediately brought my speed down to walking and did a cooldown walk
So I honestly don't know what's happening here. I can't even hit my I zone, let alone my R zone. Those zones are meant to improve my VO2 max but I can't get within 5 HR of my I zone let alone maintain it for 5 minutes, it seems impossible to bear that sort of feeling and my body was practically rebelling against me by that point
So I don't know whats happening but had a few thoughts:
1) I've never run at that kind of HR before so maybe my body just isnt used to it and I need to just keep trying every few days til my body adapts (but that could also be very dangerous)
2) My pain tolerance is low, I need to push through it (but I can't even imagine how anyone can bear that feeling, and if I'm wrong I could seriously hurt myself)
3) I have some kind of allergy to lactic acid or my body isnt handling it properly, so when I go past the threshold level and lactic acid starts to build up I suffer negative symptoms that accumulate til I can't endure it anymore
Does anyone know what this is and why it's happening? Has anyone else ever experience this overwhelming feeling of nausea? It seems to begin at around 168HR, and higher HR level intensify it, and it stops just as quickly when my heart rate drops below 168. I'll never make it anywhere if I can't find a way to get past this barrier, but right now it feels like trying to get through a mountain my smashing my head against it.
If you think you've got accurate measure, you might do well to work based on the perception of effort and ignore paces for the time being (easy runs involve being able to chat or murmur song lyrics). Then try to time your interval work to only push briefly into those beyond threshold efforts. There is a school of thought that if you do work slightly below and just above threshold you can improve your tolerance to lactate but I do class those workouts are quite tough.
What is interval training supposed to feel like? I felt nauseous slightly after 5 minutes of 168HR but that was after doing 5 mins of 4.5 and 5 mins of 5.0, it was also only very slight. Still, going above 170 the nausea ramped up quickly. Is 168 my interval level? If it's because I'm untrained at anaerobic respiration, how can I train myself in that area safely?
I used to get stitches when I was a child and pushed myself hard, but one thing I've noticed over the last 5 years is that I've never even once gotten a stitch. That's whats making me think that somehow I've lost my resistance to lactic acid, otherwise if I had gone up to my maximum heart rate I should've had a stitch in my side
I'll work my way to 1 hour sessions instead. How often do you reckon I should do them to see the best results? Is 5 times per week ok?
Obviously it's not totally advisable to try this if you have any pre-existing conditions. You can do a supervised test on a treadmill in a medical environment, where they ramp up speed and incline until you can't bear any more. I think some of the private health care plans (e.g. Bupa) may offer this though some places do it via a maximal extertion on an exercise bike (which may not bring you close to your running max).
But just assuming your true max is 180 say, you would find running at 170 pretty difficult, pretty quickly. I've a strong aerobic base and that heart rate maps on to somewhere close to the effort I'd be expending at the end of a 5k race. I would very much hate spending much time at that effort outside of a race ...
I've not much knowledge of anaerobic workouts so I'll have to defer on that question. But in general all anaerobic work is supported by the aerobic system (clearing away of waste products occurs in slow time, aerobically) so my belief is that working on that will get you more comfortable when it comes to doing interval style stuff. This means easy to moderately paced miles are required for the most part, and only once you feel stable doing those (breathing fairly even from beginning to the end of the run) you can think about some work at the higher end.
My MHR is only 160 and that was from a test I did 15 years ago when I was 46 so that is way out from what the formula would have calculated.
I do all my training my heart rate, most at 70-75% of my MHR with the odd run at 80% MHR, nothing more.
I think you need to stop worrying about what pace you run at, don't compare yourself to others, run at a pace that is comfortable for you and enjoyable. You will get faster but it takes time and it will be achieved by lots of easy running not running at a pace that makes you feel sick. Why not enter a race, say a 10k and set that as your goal race.
I think once you've posted 10 times on the forum you will then be able to start your own thread
I've been doing easy runs for a very long time now, but the best I've ever managed is a sub 35mins 5k. I'm so close, I just need something to push me there. I thought maybe interval training would push my VO2 max up a bit and increase the speed of my easy, marathon and threshold heart ranges, enough that I could run 20 mins at a M rate and then switch to T to make the 30 min mark
I'm gonna give the blue plan a try from running formula. It's designed for intermediate runners. It doesn't look too bad, except for the "strides". Those are 60 seconds of high speed running but its vague about how fast they need to be, only below sprinting, which means it could be anything really. I'll try 7.0mph strides since I know it takes just over 2mins of 7.0 before I feel sick, so 60 seconds should be no problem at all
Bear in mind a sub 15 5km runner will be running probably 100 miles a week in training to reach that level.
Bear in mind a sub 15 5km runner will be running probably 100 miles a week in training to reach that level.
I feel like anything less than 4.5 wouldn't even be running, but I'm not even sure what my max heart rate is so I dont know what my heart range is either, or what actually even is an easy run. I know I can both talk and sing at 4.5mph, but doing so will raise my heart rate and disrupt my breathing. I feel like when I'm running at 4.5mph I get impatient and start wanting to run faster, and I keep running into the bar of my treadmill whenever I lose focus. I can run 30 mins at 5.0mph which is the high end of my M speed and that feels tough, I can do up to 45 mins at that speed at which point my running form starts breaking down and it feels too tough
I could run probably over 1 hour at 4.5mph but I've never tested to see just how long I can run at that speed. I've noticed my right foot starts to ache whenever I get over 30 minutes of running regardless of pace, and I've been told my right foot twists inwards when I land, but I've tried watching my feet and I can't see anything (although my right trainer usually becomes deformed eventually). I'd get physiotherapy to correct it, but I can't afford it. I'm not sure if running for very long periods of time per session might make it worse, it's part of the reason I've been aiming at sub 30 min 5Ks (plus I start to get really bored after 30 minutes, even listening to music or an audiobook)
I'll start on the running formula blue running plan next week and see how that goes. I'll also aim to run 5-6 days a week to build up my mileage
Get outdoors, it will open up a whole new world for you, you can run anywhere you like, hills too and off road in all sorts of places and running will become so much more enjoyable for you.