Analyze my run (Read 1066 times)

I started back to running about 3 months ago. I have mostly been doing 3-4 miles a day, 4-5 days per week on pretty flat ground. I have done a couple of runs up and down in the hills above our house. Today I did my longest run of 7 miles with a pretty good increase in elevation. Felt good all of the way, the hill was a bit tough and had to take walk breaks. Tried to keep in my range on the HRM. Follow the link to my GPS data at MB. I did hit the upper limit on my HRM going downhill and I found that strange. Take a look and see if there is anything that I can make improvements on. http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/invitation/email/accept.mb?senderPk.pkValue=219593&unitSystemPkValue=2&episodePk.pkValue=5685242 Thanks Bob

What is your measured maximum HR (if you know it)? What HR zones were you trying to stay within?

What is your measured maximum HR (if you know it)? What HR zones were you trying to stay within?

I dont know what it is... I have my Garmin 305 set based on 220-age (40)=180, I am trying to stay in zone 4 which is 80% I believe. I am trying to slow my pace a bit but I am having trouble with that. This run may have been to ambitious for me at this point although I felt good during and after the run. AKTrail - Goal is to improve endurance. Running 2 1/2 marathons this year (August and October) and trying to shave about 20 minutes off of last years time. Running the hill was recommended to me as a way to build endurance. I run 4-5 days a week, 3-4 of those are about 4 miles at an average of 9:15 per mile. I try to go longer and slower on the weekends but it just doesnt feel right when i slow to a pace of say 10:30 to 11:30 per mile. I am still learning to use the Garmin as a training tool. Sometimes it will beep when I hit the upper limit on the HR but I feel good and push on. I am a believer of listening to one's body for feedback and adjust. Thanks for all of your comments and ideas. Bob

I think it was an excellent effort, particularly up that elevation change. I find it very difficult to focus on aerobic endurance training and run hills in the same training run. Recommend that you try and focus your longer efforts towards flatter courses and run one shorter hill workout midweek for power and anaerobic conditioning. On that hill workout, ignore the HRM other than noticing how high it gets as you power up the hills. That will come close to your actual measured maximum heart rate. Mine is about 183 or so. I measured 182 yesterday on a steep hill during a race so it may be a few beats higher. Agree with last poster on ignoring the Garmin zones or at least modifying how you view them. Do longer runs on flatter courses at about 70-80% (if it climbs towards the end of your run) of your measured max. You'll be building aerobic capacity and endurance. Even most of your midweek runs should be closer to this level of effort and pace on relatively flat courses. Then build power and anaerobic conditioning to increase your lactate threshold by running around 85%-90% of your measured max on hard days. Expect to go even higher on uphill sections. Don't do this too often though or you'll be at a higher risk of injury.

Depends on your preferred methodology. If you want to use Lactate Threshold, then look at This. The alternative is Max HR. I don't have a specific link to how to do it, but if I recall correctly it involved doing 400m repeats. Check the HR running forum. I'm sure they have all kinds of wonderful ways to do it.