Heart rate
301 watchers
Sep 2013
8:18pm, 8 Sep 2013
503 posts
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Revbarbarag
FR - I've just done an outline training plan for myself which involves a cutback every 4th week. It builds up to 45 miles/week and a longest run of 21 miles (4 runs of 20+) with a 2 week taper before the marathon. 4 runs per week, increasing to 5 in January. I sort of wasn't counting any bits of treadmill running I might do at the end of a gym session. MH - where can I find SportTracks? |
Sep 2013
8:22pm, 8 Sep 2013
651 posts
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Moleshome
zonefivesoftware.com
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Sep 2013
9:10pm, 8 Sep 2013
504 posts
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Revbarbarag
Thanks, MH. DavieC, having re-read your last, I've got another couple of thoughts. Re the contrast between slow and easy... you're right of course that it's easy to confuse the two. I suppose that running at an easy effort level is always going to feel slow, since it's significantly slower than you know you are capable of. But then, some people's 'slow' is a speed I will never, ever reach. Even my 'fast' is slow. But - who cares? It's all relative to your fitness, and that is relative to age, sex, length of training, inside leg measurement and a host of other things. The important thing is, I need to run easy - and if the speed at which I do that is slower, or faster than the next person, so what? It's the right speed for me. The other point is about your assertion that the purpose of the easy running was to enable you to run daily (or almost) without becoming overloaded - and that if you are running only 3-4 days a week, you don't need to bother. Earlier in this thread - and elsewhere - it talks about the effort level being chosen so as to train the muscles in the legs to preferentially burn fat - or burn fat more efficiently, or something. The statement there is that if you train above your aerobic threshhold, you won't get this benefit. So it seems to me that if you are only running 3 or 4 times a week, it is even more important to train to HR to get the most improvement to the aerobic system (in your legs, I mean). |
Sep 2013
9:46pm, 8 Sep 2013
3,254 posts
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daviec
'the important thing is, I need to run easy' - agreed. I wasn't making any implications about slow/fast, I just think it's better described as easy. That way it suits everyone. To the second point, even 5k pace, which I find very hard outside of race conditions, is around 90% aerobic. So training at this pace will still train your aerobic system, but it would be incredibly difficult to do a significant amount of training in a week if it's all at that speed. Once you find a speed that you can handle and still get the miles you want in, without too much stress on your system, then that's fine. From a personal perspective, the best advice I ever got was to slow down on easy days, and speed up on hard days. For me, the hard days stress the system in one way and increase performance, and this is supported by the continual stress of lots of easy miles which produce a different kind of stress. I can monitor that much more easily with numbers (ie HR data whilst running, and the stats in the fetch training log afterwards). There are times, such as earlier this year, where I could only manage a few runs a week, and couldn't hit the kind of mileage where I start seeing significant progress. At that period I just ran whatever I felt like on the days I went out. Sometimes it needed to be easy, but with a lack of fitness what felt easy could turn out to be 80%+. If I tried to stay below 75% I'd be walking hills etc. Once I start to get back into regular running and I'm consistent, then I begin to monitor and react to HR. For me that's 50+ mpw, purely because that's what I read in Hadd's HR materials, and that works for me. By that point you've got the start of your base. And with that bit of fitness in the bank you can then run and keep your HR low, and hence increase weekly miles and really start to benefit. |
Sep 2013
9:50am, 9 Sep 2013
756 posts
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Canute
RevBarbara As stated in my original post about Ed Whitlock, he was the first person over 70 to run a marathon faster than 3 hours and currently holds M80-84 world records for marathon and half marathon. I referred to him to show that for at least one individual, a combination of a large volume of low intensity running together with about 20 high intensity events (ie 20 races) per year can produce very high level marathon performance. However this does not prove that everyone will benefit from the same training. With regard to the possibility that low intensity training might be the best way to improve ability to metabolise fat, a large amount of evidence suggests that is probably incorrect. It is true that we burn a higher proportion of fat during low intensity exercise, that is not the same a showing that low intensity exercise is better for improving the ability to metabolise fat. Many studies show that high intensity interval training (HIIT) is very effective for improving the ability to burn fat. For example, Talanian and colleagues showed that two weeks of high-intensity aerobic interval training increases the capacity of muscles to utilise fat during exercise, in women. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov Furthermore, in general comparisons of HIIT with moderate intensity exercise show that HIIT produces not only better ability to metabolise fats but also results in greater reduction in waist size. In a comparison of HIIT v moderate exercise in obese females for 12 weeks, Racil and colleagues found that in both groups there was improvement in blood lipids and in insulin sensitivity but these beneficial changes were greater in the HIIT group, and furthermore only the HIIT group showed significant reduction waist circumference. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov With regard to best strategies for waist reduction, HIIT is showing great promise, but be cautious about jumping on new band wagons until long term benefits have been established. If your goal is to run a marathon next year, ability to run 26.2 miles is essential. I think that the strategy that is most likely to allow you to achieve this is gradually increasing your volume of running over the next few months and most of this should be low intensity running. |
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Sep 2013
10:24am, 9 Sep 2013
505 posts
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Revbarbarag
Woah, now I'm really confused!!! This sentence states something which is sort of tautological, but also crucial: "If your goal is to run a marathon next year, ability to run 26.2 miles is essential." My goal is to run a marathon next year, to finish on 2 legs rather than all fours, and be able to walk away afterwards feeling vaguely human. I put 5:30 as my estimated time, although I would prefer to do it in less than 5. Mostly, though, I just want to do it. So lots of easy miles are the name of the game, certainly for the next few months, with maybe the odd harder session later on to spice it up a bit. The HR monitor keeps on nudging me to slow down. |
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Sep 2013
10:25am, 9 Sep 2013
3,255 posts
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daviec
"So lots of easy miles are the name of the game, certainly for the next few months, with maybe the odd harder session later on to spice it up a bit." That's it. 
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Sep 2013
10:40am, 9 Sep 2013
2,207 posts
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rosehip
and if you want to do something higher intensity then cross train it to reduce the risk of injury? just thinking aloud here, but I could do HIIT training in the swimming pool to protect my achilles and knees ? |
Sep 2013
10:43am, 9 Sep 2013
27,072 posts
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Velociraptor
"If your goal is to run a marathon next year, ability to run 26.2 miles is essential." I am actually in love with the perfect beauty of that statement
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Sep 2013
11:32am, 9 Sep 2013
757 posts
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Canute
RevBarbara I am sorry if my post was confusing, though as you have remarked, the main conclusion is actually very simple: to achieve your marathon goal, building up volume of running, mainly at a low intensity, is most likely to be best, but a few intense efforts, such as 5K races,might also help. Nonetheless, looking at what might have been confusing in my post, I wonder if the confusing thing was the statement that we burn a high proportion of fat at low intensity, seems at odds with the evidence that HITT is effective for improving ability to burn fat. I should have said that we burn a higher proportion of fat relative to glucose, at low intensity. So if you want to make you fuel supply last for the duration of a very long race, your best strategy is to run at a pace well below anaerobic threshold. However, that is a quite different issue for training to improve to improve ability to utilise fats. Here the evidence foom short term studies strongly suggest that HIIT is more effectvie than low intensity training, probably on account of the beneficial hormone changes produced by HIIT. (I will venture in uncertain ecclesiastical territory with an illustration: the servant who buried the two talents probably had the best strategy conserving his talents, but the one who utilized them had a greater chance of increasing his talents – but I am sure you are more expert in interpreting parables than I am.) Rosehip, Yes I think that cross training is potentially a good way of doing HIIT, but if you want to improve the ability of leg muscles to use fats, I would suggest a form of cross training that uses the legs in an action similar to running. My own preference is the elliptical cross-trainer as that involves movements quite similar to running but without the impact and associated eccentric muscle contractions. I myself experimented with HIIT on the elliptical, with some encouraging evidence of benefit. Unfortunately the joints on my elliptical started to deteriorate, so for the time being I have stopped HIIT. I was employing Tabata style HIIT, which is very intense, and was clearly too stressful for the machine. It is possible that a less intense form of HIIT might also work. Cycling HIIT will almost certainly increase ability to burn fat when cycling, and would probably be beneficial for runners – but I have not seen studies demonstrating this. Intense aqua-running might be another alternative. But of all of these I think the elliptical has the greatest potential value for runners. |
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