Can anybody really run @ at a specific BPM through the whole session on a long run, for an easy run? In other words, when your goal is to run @ a specific Heart Rate, do you actually nail that particular number, for 90-95% of the session, given some room for spiking.
My BPM is 147 at 70%. When I go out for a recovery run, at a slow pace, and still jog, lightly, I go 156-153, for the first mile or so, which obviously is kind of normal, when you start out. Then, I have to start basically shuffling, to get it down to 133. Give it a tiny bit of gas, and then I get it up to 153-155 BPM. There’s no ability for me to target right at a BPM and stay there, no matter how hard I try to keep the same foot turnover, pace, etc. And this is on very flat terrain. To me, there are “heart rate grooves,” not fixed decimals, you can stick your HR on. I have the 133 groove, or the 153-156 groove. I don’t have a 147 groove. I’m either way below 70% or above it by 10%.
And here’s a question, what’s wrong with running 10% higher than recovery. Am I junk training? Is this a wasted day? Should I just stop, when I can’t control the BPMs past my 70%. Just stop and walk.
Is running anywhere between 70 percent and 85% a wasted day.
i can’t answer all of your questions but i can tell you what i do. for my aerobic runs (which they all are now) i stay at or below 80% of my max hr at all costs (including walking up steep hills if need be). the exact number doesn’t matter - if i feel good, i’ll keep it closer to 159. if i’m tired i may slow it down paying little or no attention to the number. my hr monitor beeps when it goes to high anyway. that’s what i’ve learned from brad kearns and i think mark allen and mike pigg did it a similar way. also, i test it every 3 or 4 weeks so i know if the training is working as i get faster at my max aerobic hr.
I do a similar thing. I set my max for a training session and try to stay under that max. In your example, I would set my max at 150 and keep my hr under 150. Once I get over the 150, then I slow down (or walk if I have to) to get it under control. I know what you mean by the hr grooves, but there’s a big difference between 133 and 150+, so you should be able to find some middle ground there. You should also try going out much slower for your first mile. Maybe that hr spike at the beginning is making it harder for you to get where you want to be. I also find it harder to control my hr if I’m dehydrated. Make sure you’re drinking properly leading up to your workout including recovering properly from the day before.
My max for zone 2 is 154 so on my long runs I will start with the first mile in the low 140’s then bring it up to my target for the day which is usually 150. If the road is flat I can normally hold within 2 beats of it. I look at it maybe every quarter of a mile to be sure and adjust accordingly. A lot of times if I have been good, I will let the HR go to to 155 on the way back on the run.
For tempo work I normally run to a pace while noting HR, for fartlek runs I normally let my HR get under 150 before I speed up again.
I don’t do any recovery runs, if I have a recovery day I do it on the bike.
I’ve found that there are speeds at which my body works more effeciently that other speeds - probably analogous to your “heart rate grooves.” When I do my LSD runs, I can’t run at my most efficient speed/rate (my LSD “groove” is about 10 bpm higher than my aerobic threshhold). I always stay strict in my HR training. If my HR goes over my AET by even one beat I back off. If I must walk up a hill, then I walk up a hill. I’d try to find out what you’re doing differently in your running form that’s causing you to have a dead spot around what should be your AET. If in doubt, and assuming you’re doing aerobic training, I’d err on the 133 side rather than the 155 side.
Isn’t the general recommendation to just “stay under that upper limit of the range”? So, if my upper limit for zone 2 is 160 … I just make sure I don’t go over 160 … even though I personally allow myself to go over when I’m going up hills or if I am feeling fantastic.
I also usually start slower when warming up (usually the first 5-10 minutes), so I am under my desired HR zone. Then, I pick up the pace and pretty much run in the zone the whole time. I’m am too high, I will just walk until it drops down to the lower limit of the training zone, and then continue running. Usually I hold right in the zone pretty well. The warmup and short cooldown, usually pull my average HR down some.
I don’t see how anything cna be “junk training”. It’s all training … you just need tod ecide if that training is appropriate for your personal goals.
I always ran 75-80 percent EVERY TIME, in 8-9 mile runs. I never learned or applied any HRM information.
In hindsight, I never developed any aerobic capacity. As much as I ran every other day, in that way, 8-9 miles, not really slow, but not really fast, I didn’t improve much. I was actually out of shape! I was just learning how to not really run anaerobically. I was learning how to die, eventually in the run.
I might as well just have gone out there and ran at 90% until I collapsed.
I should have just been going really, really slow, on slow days, and built up the miles to 16-18 miles or more, real slow, and then, just done one or two days, real short distances MUCH MUCH FASTER on fast days.
Why didn’t you people tell me this?
Do you realize how many people are in the dark about this?
Here’s a fairly long but interesting article on running.
An excerpt.
"To sum up; if you are well trained aerobically, you do not fall apart (as in the earlier examples) when the race gets longer. And here some of you may like to do a quick check and see how your own performances compare…
So, on seeing these, or similar, numbers, I expect to hear at least one (and maybe both) of two things from the athlete concerned:
Low mileage background in training
Whatever mileage being done is being run “too fast” (for performance level)"
I know this sounds weird (and might not have any scientifist background), but I found that at the beginning of the season I had to really shuffle-walk my long runs in order to keep my HR under 165, and I did this for the entire first 2 months of pure aerobic training. After two months we started doing farleks and speedwork and I found my pace at any given HR would drop dramatically…
For example I used to run our 11k loop in 1:07 (6:00 min/k) at the beginning of the season, and now I run it in around 52 (4:45-4:50 min/k pace). We’ve only began really focusing on speed work, so I’m hoping this will also drop…
Don’t be a slave to HR. If you feel like running fast, run fast.
Why are you so sure that you actually know what your max is? You may have used a generic formula that provides some approximation and suffers from a variation that leads you to derive incorrect conclusions.
Your training history is not as fatalistic as you make it sound. I only started AET training last spring (prior to that had spent many years just running at the HR that felt best - usually about 165 which is approx. 15 bpm above my AET). I was patient and stuck with AET training for about 4 months before I did ANY speed work. I have to say, I really enjoyed my AET days and I was somewhat bummed to start doing speed work (painful, although it did its job). When I started AET training, I ran 9:30 miles at 150 HR (my AET) and after four months I was running 7:20 miles at AET. I noticed an even bigger improvement on the bike, where it’s very easy to just sit and pedal for 4 or 5 hours and it doesn’t require the kind of recovery that a 1.5 to 2 hour run does (AET or not). With this base built up, my performance simply sky-rocketed once I started racing.
I’ve found that there are speeds at which my body works more effeciently that other speeds - probably analogous to your “heart rate grooves.”
jhendric said this, and I would agree. Sometimes when I see HR falling, and I believe that it is a muscular endurance issue, I have to crank it up a notch to involve some other muscles. This might be 8-10 beats faster than my LSD, and requires some acceptance of pain until you get there and it evens out, but it gets me through the fall-off, and lets the other muscles recover.
FWIW, this is just the conclusion I have come to. It may change next month!
I’ve not thoroughly read all the other responses, but some tidbits resonated with me…
nothing wrong with being “groovy”. in fact, what you may be seeing is your unique “needs” relative to ADJUSTING the rule-of-thumb zone stuff. the software that spit out the usual 5 training zones based on threshold and the ballpark MHR%ages after my VO2max test this spring was almost 10bpm off for a couple of the zones based on 3+yrs of empirical data my COOCH and I have generated and analyzed.
make the adjustment based on HR for given RPEs (rate of perceived exertion) and then go from there. ought to be much easier to converge on desired/necessary HR ranges for given workouts. I have no trouble hitting my targets for any distance or effort level…tho I will say that you STILL have to make adjustments for environmental conditions, is this the closing half of a bike-run brick, etc. heat and humidity in particular (say, 90F and 90%RH) are good for an extra 5-7bpm for a given pace in my experience.
I find a major spike when I start a run, particularly if the run is the first or the only workout of the day. My normal AET range is 133-145, but I can spike up to 180 and hold that for 10mins or so. There is nothing I can do about it, short of walking and when I do that it falls rapidly back to sub 100.
So now I ignore the hrt monitor until about 10-15mins into the run when amazingly it will just drop. I use both PE and HRT on the run, note that PE and HRT do not match initially but they will do so about the same time when the hrt falls to “normal” about 10-15mins into the run.
BTW this never happens when I bike or swim.
My theories (very unscientific) why this is so maybe a combination of: a) heart needs to warm up and going from doing little exercise to running cause the heart to have to ramp up hence the inital shock and high heart rate, b) I am more efficient biking and swimming then running hence why this spike never happens when biking or swimming, c) biking and swimming are not weight bearing and therefore presents a lower amount of stress on the heart to pump blood to various muscle groups.