Training, training, training.

[Riazor Blue]

I've been doing a bit of training since Ourense.

Nothing spectacular, mind. Like thousands in the UK I have been waiting on tenterhooks to see if I had made it through the ballot for the London Marathon. Sadly the bank statement arrived yesterday without a cheque being cashed on 29th October. So that's that then.

Despite all I said earlier in the year about how training for a marathon takes too much time etc, etc, etc... I still fancy doing one so I'm eyeing up Madrid again.

So, what of this training I hear you ask? I have taken the plunge and have started to use an HRM. Can I see benefits? Well, I think I can. All this slow running stuff, it would seem that I had been running even slower than I should have been. So that's good then. With the HRM I am now running the easy paced stuff at 5:20 per kilometer, I think my easy stuff before was at around 5:50.

The debate now is whether I should use Working Heart Rate or Maximum Heart Rate. The consensus is tipping things in favour of WHR which means I can up the pace a tad more.

I have just started adding some faster paced work to sharpen up a little for the half marathon on 12th December. Last week I added a hill session and a session of 12 X 1:30" at 95% which worked very well. This week I'll do a run at 85% and a session of 8 X 1km. The week before the half I will do a couple of short runs at pace then that will be it for this year. It... in the sense of any sort of speed work. It'll be back to basics and working on aerobic fitness, a couple of months of that should work wonders for Madrid.

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

An interesting post. Your idea of using working HR got me thinking... To date I've been using my HRM more as an indicator of fitness by analysing my average HR versus time and distance. I use what I think is a useful performance index which is calculated: (Ave HR * time) / distance. This gives a number which gives a pretty rough and ready, but (I think) usefully objective indicator of any run. The lower the number, the better the performance. I started using the HRM in the first place because I could never work out why I felt good about a bad run and vice versa about a good run, so I was in need of some sort of objective measurement.

I think it's helpful because you can compare HR and time over different distances... provided the terrain and conditions are similar of course.

What do you think? Other than that I should stop over-analysing everything and just run the sodding miles...?

[Riazor Blue]

In the past I have had a very basic HRM which only showed my heart rate, peak and average, and nothing more. I could use this to measure improvements or otherwise in my training but was not useful as a training aid.
There are a lot of people who swear by HRMs, but I think that if you train on your own, you need to get a good one, where you can programme whole exercises, with warm ups, exercises and cool down. Then you'd want to upload the data to your PC.

Of course I'm still in a testing period with the HRM so it's still early days, but I think the thing is that by setting the limits at which you want to run, no matter where you run, or if you are stressed or relaxed, you will be working in the range in which you want to work. The advantage of this is that you remove the variable factor of perception (OK, it may not be an advantage to some).

Some say that it's a bit boring running at a constant (slow) pace, to avoid this I've taken to looking for new places to run, off road. The idea is to venture down to my measured routes once in a while to see how the training is going, apart from that, the distances are not that important. In this sense, running with an HRM has made my running more interesting.

[El Gordo]

A lot of people, including coaches, seem to swear by HRMs so I'm sure they're useful tools. I did have one, but I got sort of gadget-sick and got rid of it. Since then, I've kept thinking I should try again but I think I'll wait till I can get a GPS/HRM in one unit that doesn't involve more than one bit. I'm hoping that the next generation of Forerunner will have an HRM built in, without any need for a chest strap. That's the rumour at least.

Main reason I didn't get the best out of the thing when I had it was that I never did work out what my max heart rate is. Seems this is a pretty vital benchmark. I'd need to get that sorted if I got one again.

Crikey. Sometimes I even kid myself.