Hand on my Heart (rate monitor)
Today's run: Recovery run of 4.2 miles at 9:55 pace.
Marathon is 17 weeks from today!
(Previous post on this topic.) One of the reasons I decided to use a heart rate monitor was that the schedule from the book is rather daunting. I've been a 22-27 mile a week guy for most of the past year, with a brief spot up at 30 (at which point I injured my knee from overuse – another story for another day), so a schedule that peaks at 55 miles and sometimes has you do race a 10K on one day and then a 17 mile run the next day, seemed rather insane. Here's a graph of the schedule, daily runs in miles:
It just seemed I needed to take the advice about pacing seriously, lest I overdo it.
So having decided to use the heart rate monitor as a means for managing the pace, I sought advice from the web and the K-Stars mailing list. I got particularly helpful information from Jacob and Mike.
I bought one. Tried it out on the Scenic 11 run with the K-Stars. The Scenic 11 includes, as Galen puts it, "three hills". At some point after we run up from the park past the Cliff House, after leveling off and heading onto the trails, the monitor showed 185 bpm. That was the maximum, and the average for the run was 168.
I tried to establish my maximum heart rate (HR Max) with the method in the book, which is to warm up fully, then do 3 x 600m up a moderate hill, all out. Maybe I picked too rough a hill. I thought I'd die halfway up the third one. The maximum rate recorded was also 185 bpm.
Now, I was rather skeptical that my Max HR was actually 185. See, 185 is the average HR Max for someone my age, so I thought there was some sort of forcing function in the watch (I had input my birthdate, so it knows how to calculate the typical HR Max). Plus, I did not feel like I was going that hard at any point on the Scenic 11 run. So when I was ready to drop a lung at 185 and I was not going hard at 185 the previous day, I thought there might be an issue.
Then there's the matter of probability. Sure, the probability of having the average HR Max is higher than any other single value, but the probability of having exactly the average HR Max is not that high.
See how the bar marked "5" lines up with 25%? That's the probability of hitting the average on the head. This means that there's a 75% chance that it is some other value, like 184, 183, 182, 186, 187, or 188. So color me surprised.
This results in the following run-type chart for me:
On that Scenic 11 run, where I didn't feel that strong, where I didn't feel like I was running all that hard, I was averaging just above my range for the Lactate Threshold run. This suggests that I was doing more harm than good!
Subsequent conversations with Thomas (lunch on Friday) and Mike (brunch Saturday) leave me still unclear on:
Today's run was an easy going jaunt, completely leashed by the heart rate monitor to make darn certain I keep the effort light and easy. I ran a simple route near my house which involved some hills. Uphill, out of heart rate range. Downhill, in range quite easily. Maybe if I had walked the uphills I would have stayed in range. Ended up averaging 140bpm, just above what should have been the max. With the nearly 10 minute per mile pace, it just didn't feel much like running.
I do hope that light-effort run was useful to tune my legs, which felt a bit sore after yesterday's effort. Tomorrow is an off day, and I might not post. 17 weeks to the marathon, lots left to figure out.
Marathon is 17 weeks from today!
(Previous post on this topic.) One of the reasons I decided to use a heart rate monitor was that the schedule from the book is rather daunting. I've been a 22-27 mile a week guy for most of the past year, with a brief spot up at 30 (at which point I injured my knee from overuse – another story for another day), so a schedule that peaks at 55 miles and sometimes has you do race a 10K on one day and then a 17 mile run the next day, seemed rather insane. Here's a graph of the schedule, daily runs in miles:
It just seemed I needed to take the advice about pacing seriously, lest I overdo it.
So having decided to use the heart rate monitor as a means for managing the pace, I sought advice from the web and the K-Stars mailing list. I got particularly helpful information from Jacob and Mike.
I bought one. Tried it out on the Scenic 11 run with the K-Stars. The Scenic 11 includes, as Galen puts it, "three hills". At some point after we run up from the park past the Cliff House, after leveling off and heading onto the trails, the monitor showed 185 bpm. That was the maximum, and the average for the run was 168.
I tried to establish my maximum heart rate (HR Max) with the method in the book, which is to warm up fully, then do 3 x 600m up a moderate hill, all out. Maybe I picked too rough a hill. I thought I'd die halfway up the third one. The maximum rate recorded was also 185 bpm.
Now, I was rather skeptical that my Max HR was actually 185. See, 185 is the average HR Max for someone my age, so I thought there was some sort of forcing function in the watch (I had input my birthdate, so it knows how to calculate the typical HR Max). Plus, I did not feel like I was going that hard at any point on the Scenic 11 run. So when I was ready to drop a lung at 185 and I was not going hard at 185 the previous day, I thought there might be an issue.
Then there's the matter of probability. Sure, the probability of having the average HR Max is higher than any other single value, but the probability of having exactly the average HR Max is not that high.
Note: this is just a normal distribution, not an actual graph of people's HR Max.
See how the bar marked "5" lines up with 25%? That's the probability of hitting the average on the head. This means that there's a 75% chance that it is some other value, like 184, 183, 182, 186, 187, or 188. So color me surprised.
This results in the following run-type chart for me:
| Type | Min HR | Max HR |
| VO2 Max | 174 | 181 |
| Lactate Threshold | 148 | 167 |
| Medium-Long or Long Run | 135 | 154 |
| Recovery | 139 |
On that Scenic 11 run, where I didn't feel that strong, where I didn't feel like I was running all that hard, I was averaging just above my range for the Lactate Threshold run. This suggests that I was doing more harm than good!Subsequent conversations with Thomas (lunch on Friday) and Mike (brunch Saturday) leave me still unclear on:
- Is 185 really my HR Max?
- Should I rely on the ranges in the book to control my pace, even when, as in Thursday's run, it winds up too slow?
- What goal should I really be setting for myself if I can do a 12 mile run without constantly pushing at 8:03, as I did yesterday?
- What is my true Lactate Threshold pace if I'm at 92% of HR Max in yesterday's run?
- Finally, should I just focus on learning pacing instead of relying on the bleeping beeping watch?
Today's run was an easy going jaunt, completely leashed by the heart rate monitor to make darn certain I keep the effort light and easy. I ran a simple route near my house which involved some hills. Uphill, out of heart rate range. Downhill, in range quite easily. Maybe if I had walked the uphills I would have stayed in range. Ended up averaging 140bpm, just above what should have been the max. With the nearly 10 minute per mile pace, it just didn't feel much like running.
I do hope that light-effort run was useful to tune my legs, which felt a bit sore after yesterday's effort. Tomorrow is an off day, and I might not post. 17 weeks to the marathon, lots left to figure out.
posted by Brent at
2:28 PM
3 Comments:
Something else occurred to me, similar to what I mentioned to you at brunch: heart rate deflection. Sometime in the early-90's it was found that heart rate increases linearly under increasing work load until the lactate threshold, where the heart rate 'deflects' (the slope increases). This was considered quite useful since we wouldn't need to draw blood and measure lactate concentration to do testing anymore. The problem is that apparently some people (I think I remember reading 8-15% of the population) don't deflect. And even when the heart rate deflects, this measure typically overestimates the lactate threshold pace (though not by much). At any rate, it might be worth trying. Provided your HR actually does deflect near your LT, then we could provide a more accurate guess of your training pace zones as well as your marathon race pace.
By
Anonymous, at 12:07 PM
HR Deflection work was done by Conconi , et al in 1982.
By
Anonymous, at 3:18 PM
I also need to clarify 'deflection':
As you work harder and harder (by some fixed increment), at some point your HR 'should' start responding with smaller increases -- plateauing. This would appear as a slope increase if you plotted work effort on the X-axis and HR on the Y-axis.
By
Anonymous, at 3:34 PM
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