Who among you has the steely, iron-will to run all day or bike all day at this 70 percent maximum heart rate level-thing-protocol?, putting all your ego, and primal, blood thirsty competitive instincts away, into some dark humiliation closet-or insufferable restraint, suffering to contain your whole being to allow passing of you, whether by foot or by bike, by public joggers, and bike buffoons, who may hound you down or breath down upon your sloth bear pace?
Can you really keep that pace down, or speed, subdue your wild, rebel warrior-mind, and “keep it down” by concluding that you are training more smartly than before? Can you by an intellectual act, and acknowledgment of the science of training, defy your warrior side with this 70 percent thing?
Who does not break away from your KNOWN better interest in building an aerobic base, by just forsaking it, one day, or day after day, and just guns it, to ruin that plan?
I can’t do this aerobic base training with this insidious heart rate monitor thing of 70 percent? I’ve tried. It is too hard. There have to be others. Probably legions. Let me hear you.
At first, you know, you read Mark Allen or all the guru’s including running experts that this is the way, for endurance base training. You are convinced. I mean, who are we arguing with here? This must work. And now, this year, you are convinced dammit, to do this RIGHT! So, you buy your heart rate monitor, or, most likely you’ve had one, and you’ve been “hot” and “cold” about this heart rate thing, or idea, you’ve read about, or almost scolded into submission about and educated about for years in magazines, training books and what not, but you’ve just not really, really done it the RIGHT WAY, consistently, and so THIS YEAR, THIS TIME, this is IT.
And so you go out and tell yourself, “it’s going to be no higher than 140 beats a minute, 140-140-140, okay, no higher…no matter what, no matter the heat, no matter the wind, no matter the other mother f&8ckers out here…it gets no higher than 140…”
And yet, it does not happen.
Why can you not do it? Because it is an affront to your complete being, dignity and will power as an athlete. It permits other human beings, not deserving it so, possibly, to blow by right by you, testing your whole willpower.
And the will to keep it below or at, or “near” 70 percent of your maximum heart rate, this “will” is taxed I would say about as much as say that “will” to run at 95 percent or max during a 5k.
And it is a very, very hard, hard thing to run at 70 percent or lower, or whatever the f&*k that number is, whether it be by one guru’s formula or anothers.
Yet, if you will notice, most of the quibbling here, by everyone is always, some point or argument about why that number, should be a lot more flexible and lenient for them to violate, and go higher than. So, you’ll read, fights like this, “hey, what if its hot, or humid, or hilly, or windy?” Those kinds of things. Please give us an out.
But the worst impediment to it all are other species out there running or biking with you.
You are out in public where the runners and bikers are: and you are on this 70 percent thing, and going about as fast as a dachsund, or cockroach, or seed tick, and a runner or biker blows by, and his or her body, serious looks, movement and overall appearance is judged by you, or the bikers, who go by you—to be worthy of this, of what happened.
You let them go but then pride kicks in, "no, not this guy, not this mother fucker jangling keys, or with that lopped up Giant Sequoia, and its “no way,” and its “70 Percent My Ass,” and, the whole 70 percent thing, is shot right off the bat: next thing, you know, like a vicious wolf, you’re off to 85 percent and rising, running or biking them down, like a blood hound, out to the horizon and back—the whole day ruined.
Of course, the foes are unawares, or maybe think, “what the hell was that about?” “Who was that?” Didn’t we pass him a mile back. Wasn’t he behind us, running real slow?"
They don’t say, “I think he was doing that stupid 70 percent thing, and then he saw us go by and it just infuriated him, and he had to drub us, we knew, I mean, we knew, he was just laying back.”
I would say for group running, its IMPOSSIBLE, to comply this vicious restraint of 70 percent.
Let’s just state that fact right here, unless you’ve got 8 or 9 other like-minded other “heart rate monitor” NUTS in the group; and, of course, if done correctly per individual, everyone gets out of their car and stretches, and, everyone taps their chrono button and heart rate buttons, and, if done correctly, they should be strung out all over the place, in a long single file snake line, each according to their unique, genetic variations to heart characteristics, each according to his or her pace/per their 70 percent beats per minute.
Who wants to show up to scatter into individual units like this, when the whole history of the group is staying together as a pack, and going anaerobic, all together? Who can get back to the car first?
I find it impossible to do this infernal 70 percent thing unless I am completely divorced to society, running out on a country road, where no one exists, then I might could do it. Then, there’s the additional time element, it ain’t much, but running 10 miles in an hour and half, so slow, to keep this heart rate down, I don’t know, maybe in the middle of it, you think, “I can’t take this, I’ve got other shit to do today!”
Then, there’s what I call: The Other Side. I was talking with one of our very fast 2:30 marathon age group runners around here, and I was bitching about this, and he told me that he actually used a heart rate monitor to make sure HE WAS RUNNING FASTER,not slower, than his body wanted to. In other words, it was used to make him increase his willpower to RUN FASTER, not slower, the exact opposite of my dire straits. He wanted to use it to see if his body was secretly wanting to CHEAT on himself.
I guess that’s the goal to get to that other side. But, god, I’ll never get there.