OK, I’m a little perplexed after a 5K run I did today (Friday).
A little background first - just started running this year (March). Just started training for tris this year (June/July). Did run speed work on the track two weekdays a week, long runs on the weekend (long for me being 5-7 miles). Seem to be getting faster (for me). Was curious this week if I could do this silly little 5K at a 7:00 pace (my sprint tri pace was about 7:30). This week on Tuesday a coach had me check my heart rate after after 1200 M at 7:30, 800 M at 7:00, and then I ended up doing 800 M in 2:53 and ended up quite close to what must be my max heart rate at 197 (I’m 34 years old, by the way, and had seen 193 once before doing speed work). I did a 10 mile run last weekend at a 9:00 pace and managed to keep my heart rate between 152-156. Coach suggested I maintain a 170 bpm heart rate for the duration of this race.
So I ended up struggling in this race, partly because I didn’t start close enough to the front and ended up fighting the slow crowd for the first 6 minutes. By the time I was running with a group that would hold a 7ish kind of pace, my heart rate was already registering 200 bpm!!! HOLY &^%. Was I just nervous trying to make this goal pace? OK calm down. Manage to get my heart rate down to about 191 or 192 but I end up running the whole god damn race over 190 bpm. It really didn’t feel that good. In the end I finished in 21:39 (6:59 pace, surprise to me because it felt slow) but I don’t feel like I accomplished much due to where my heart rate was the whole time. What’s the deal? Is my max heart rate really 200 or more? Do I need to bag speed work for a while and just do long endurance runs only? Is any of this so strange I should just go see a doctor about heart eurhythmia or something?
By the way, my plan for training Nov-Feb will be for a 1/2 IM race so it will be more endurance based than what I did during the summer for my first sprint, for whatever that matters. Thanks for reading and chiming in…