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Dec 2014
7:42am, 22 Dec 2014
11,107 posts
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Ultracat
Get well soon x
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Dec 2014
9:04am, 22 Dec 2014
3,624 posts
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FenlandRunner
I agree with UC, get well soon, Canute.
I will watch with interest your planned training and the improvements made 
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Dec 2014
9:06am, 22 Dec 2014
4,320 posts
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Rosehip
Get well soon Canute - your training reports,with consideration of the results are fascinating and looking forward to the next installment
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Dec 2014
6:52pm, 22 Dec 2014
196 posts
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exflyboy
Hi Canute, just wanted your views on some progressive treadmill runs Ive been doing. For the last 4 weeks Ive started to do a treadmill run that starts at 8.0 km/hr and increases by 0.1 km/hr every 60 secs. I keep on going until my will to keep going disappears. At first I got to 12.1 km/hr and four weeks later I'm getting to 12.7 km/hr. Its still slow compared with my pace from three years ago but a good step in the right direction, and the max heartrate at the end isn't any higher, usually in the 162 to 164 range. Over the last 4 weeks my parkrun time has gone from 25:58, 25:40, 25:19 down to 24:54 last Saturday, a pretty steady decline, I think you would agree.
Do you have any thoughts on what training effects I am seeing. Is it heart stroke volume, improved use of oxygen, or something else. Interestingly when I give up each time its because I am breathing so hard, rather than my legs hurting, which most folk comment on when doing parkruns fast. If I kept going for another two or three minutes, would the lactic start to build up in the legs?
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Dec 2014
10:36pm, 22 Dec 2014
1,195 posts
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Canute
ExFlyBoy
First, a general comment: you are making great progress. However, I would be cautious about doing too many exhausting sessions. In your present situation, following the successful treatment of your heart problem, any consistent training program that is moderately demanding without causing serious fatigue is likely to produce a steady decrease in your 5K time, down towards you former level. However, for sustained progress, it is really important to avoid over-doing the duration of intense training.
It appears that you are doing two demanding sessions per week, both involving quite extended periods in the vicinity of LT or a little above LT: the progressive treadmill session and a full-effort 5K. It appears your progressive session is nearly 50 minutes long, reaching a pace faster than your current 5K pace, and ending in exhaustion. I personally regard progressive sessions are a useful part of marathon specific training, but I do not aim for exhaustion. I think you are in danger of over-doing the demanding sessions.
With regard to your specific question about physiological effects, I would expect that you are appreciably above LT at the end of your progressive sessions, and that there is increased acidity in leg muscles and in your blood, though you are more aware of the respiratory drive due to the acidity of your blood. Perhaps you already have a relatively well developed ability to transport lactate out of your muscle fibres. Nonetheless, I suspect that both the 5K races and the progressive session are producing a fairly large surge of stress hormones.
Continuing with this training is likely to continue to enhance you lactate threshold, but I think this is a fairly stressful way to achieve improved fitness. I think it would be safer to place more focus on lower intensity training to build up your ability to metabolise fat.
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Dec 2014
9:09am, 23 Dec 2014
197 posts
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exflyboy
Canute, many thanks for the comprehensive reply. I will keep the number of faster sessions to one treadmill progression run and a parkrun for the next few weeks. The easy running I'm doing, at around 75% max heartrate does seem to be having a beneficial effect on the pace I can run at whilst staying at 135 bpm or lower. My beats per mile, which was closer to 1300 a couple of months ago, now seems to be sub 1250, and Ive had a few sessions on flatter routes which are below 1200.
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Dec 2014
10:04pm, 23 Dec 2014
7,747 posts
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Boab
Canute, what HRV monitor do you use?
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Dec 2014
12:11am, 24 Dec 2014
1,197 posts
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Canute
Boab
I think HRV can be misleading unless interprted in context, so the details are a bit complex.
I use the Polar RS800cx HRM which records R-R data (inter-beat intervals). I analyse the data using Polar Protrainer V software which provides several different indices of HRV. Although I look at all of the indices, for general purposes I take RMSSD as the measure of high frequency variation (reflecting parasympathetic activity indicatve of good recovery).
I also examine the axis of the Poincare plot (SD1 and SD2) as their relative values provide an indication of parasympathetic to sympathetic activity. SD1 (the axis at right angles to the 45 degree line) is largely a measure of parasympathetic activity and is usually quite similar to RMSSD. SD2 is influenced by both parasympathetic and sympathetic activity, so a high value relative to SD1 indicates sympathetic tome (i.e. increased stress)
I do not usually assign much value to the power in the HF and LF windows because when relaxed I have a low respiratory rate (typically 4 breaths per minute) and also usually have a large sinus arrhythmia (decrease in HR during expiration). Often HR falls from high 40’s to high 30s during expiration. This is probably an indication of healthy parasympathetic activity, but because my breathing rate is slow, this respiratory variation will appear in the LF window, which is usually regarded by convention as a measure of sympathetic activity. I could avoid this by pacing respiration at a rate which would be unnaturally fast for me (as is required when using the Ithlete) but I prefer to be as relaxed as possible.
Overall, I find HRV is useful if interpreted along with other measures, including subjective feeling. However I would be somewhat distrustful of a devices that merely give a single output
If RMSSD is low (eg less than about 45 ms for me – but individuals differ) I attend carefully to other indices of stress. If resting HR is also high I search carefully for the likely cause of stress. I usually reduce training load until I have sorted out the cause of stress.
Sometimes RMSSD is very large (eg greater than 150 ms and definitely not due to artefacts) I look very carefully for signs of parasympathetic over-training. For example I do an orthostatic test to assess whether I am able to produce at least an 10 b/m rise in HR on standing from sitting, and I assess effort level when running in mid-aerobic zone. If the orthostatic rise is OK and I do not feel undue effort at mid-aerobic paces, I simply accept that HF HRV is very high. In most cases these very high values are associated with a very marked sinus arrhythmia.
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Dec 2014
10:29am, 24 Dec 2014
7,748 posts
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Boab
Thanks Canute. I use the Ithlete device myself and like you find it unnatutal to breath quicker when in a relaxed state. I frequency see my resting HR increase as the measurement time increases. There is likely to be some pshycological impact on the resting HR reading as I think it is well documented that when one sees their HR reading is causes a reaction!
I wonder when Garmin will move in on the HRV monitoring as I don't have the inclination to be buying another device at this time of year!!!!
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Dec 2014
6:50pm, 26 Dec 2014
1,198 posts
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Canute
Boab,
I am not sure that Garmin will move on the R-R recording. In the past few years even Polar has placed greater emphasis on GPS capability than R-R capability. Overall, I think HRV can be useful but the interpretation is not quite as simple as many people hoped it would be. The main reason I persist with it is that I believe that despite the fact that running is improves health for the majority of runners, for a small proportion it is damaging. In particular, people who push themselves to the limit to run an appreciable risk of injury or illness. I suspect that learning how to identify when training stress is becoming harmful might allow one to avoid the harm. For most recreational runners, even those who train quite seriously, the risks are very small. However for an elderly person with significant cardiovascular concerns, the risks, though small are not entirely trivial. I therefore regard it as both an interesting challenge and also a sensible precaution to develop as much skill as I can in recognising excessive stress.
In summary HRV is informative but the total picture in complex and I am not sure it is good value for the effort spent unless one has a special interest in the issue because of some specific vulnerability.
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