August (2016) Running Challenge

Finally took a running rest day yesterday, but met up with a buddy this morning, and ended up doing some side by side treadmill running while watching olympic water polo and table tennis. Did 10 miles, but the watch recorded 9.5 as I did some faster miles in the middle.

Planning to do another 20 miler tomorrow before flying back to Florida, leaving me with just 1 pre-chicago 20 miler to do there before doing my last one on my next northern trip.

8/2 - 11 miles (w. 2 at MP)
8/3 - 4 miles (w. 2 miles near threshold HR)
8/5 - 12 miles
8/6 - 11 miles
8/7 - 20 miles
8/8 - 7 miles (w. 6 at MP)
8/9 - 11.5 miles
8/11 - 10 miles

Total: 86.5 miles, 3 session with MP/threshold HR/speedwork running
Goal: 200 miles, 8 faster sessions
Remaining; 113.5 miles, 5 faster sessions

2016 Race Schedule:
Disney Marathon - Jan 6 - 3:29:09
Gasparilla 15K - Feb 20 - 1:01:59
Ironman 70.3 Florida - Apr 10 - 5:07:51
Pittsburgh Marathon - May 1 - 3:08:25
Ironman 70.3 Augusta - Sep 25
Chicago Marathon - Oct 9
Ironman Florida - Nov 5
Rock 'n Roll Las Vegas 10K - Nov 13

greenolivetree wrote: »

@luluinca My heart rate is 127 just walking. LOL Average about 165 over the course of a run but if I speed up or do hills it's 185. But maybe my HR is just able to go that high :-p Resting HR is about 55 so I just don't worry about it.

I feel like I could have written this myself, lol. I average 165-170ish, and higher when it's hot and/or humid like it has been lately. I think the highest I've ever maxed out at was around 190ish, although I've never had any kind of official test to determine my max HR. And also the same for the resting heart rate, so I don't worry either, lol

That formula that was posted earlier actually seems like it might be somewhat accurate-ish for me:

217 - (33x.85) = 189 + 5 = 194

Article on gps watches for 2016 - the link says 2015 because lower in the article it gives that list again in case you want to grab them on sale.

http://www.runningshoesguru.com/2014/12/top-5-gps-running-watches-for-2015/

August

2Aug - 7m
4Aug - 8m
6Aug - 5m
7Aug - 6.4m
9Aug - 4.8m
11Aug - 7m

38.4/100miles

@katharmonic -Yes. Hot. I woke up thinking I would run for an hour. That number has been steadily decreasing in my mind as the day goes on. Currently thinking I will be fine with a half hour. By the time I get out there, I will probably convince myself that it's a good day for a rest day. There's always yoga. In my basement. Where it's cool.

Also, sorry about your doggie

100km!
And at least a kilometer week of 1-200m sprints

3rd August - 7km
4th August - 12km

8th - 5km
10th - 5.5km
11th - 3?km aprox.

Let my garmin battery go flat yesterday
And I smashed my big toe on this nice, steep, rocky, twisty path. Corner of my toenail is split off by a crack and the joint is a bit swollen (and bruising up this morning).
Hopefully its starts getting better tomorrow.

32.5/100km

AdrianChr92 wrote: »

@5512bf @luluinca Max HR is set and you can't train it. You can lower your resting heart rate but you can't increase your max. It's set. Only time you go over your max is if you are having a heart attack or something like that. Problem is it's hard to achieve max heart rate. Most people will give up before hitting it because of the extreme discomfort. I thought mine was 196 because that's what I reached in a 5k but then I did another 5k with 100% humidity and kicked a little too hard at the end. I though I was gonna die right there. Hit 198.

I threw up everything I ate 24 hours ago and today and felt instantly better so thats that. I guess 13 min of tempo is fine too.

Aweful that you're sick! Hope you recover quickly!

Interesting on the HR. I've given up on trying to normal. Mine is one that runs high, 200-210 is not uncommon to see.

I did the stair stepper today at 24 spm (level 1, it doesn't move any slower) and my HR hit 162. Ya, I probably wasn't supposed to be doing that.

AdrianChr92 wrote: »

@5512bf @luluinca Max HR is set and you can't train it. You can lower your resting heart rate but you can't increase your max. It's set. Only time you go over your max is if you are having a heart attack or something like that. Problem is it's hard to achieve max heart rate. Most people will give up before hitting it because of the extreme discomfort. I thought mine was 196 because that's what I reached in a 5k but then I did another 5k with 100% humidity and kicked a little too hard at the end. I though I was gonna die right there. Hit 198.

I agree your true max HR is completely unknown, however my point was that those formulas to determine them are useless, especially for those who do a lot of cardio training. I do believe that with cardio training you are obtain HR numbers that are higher than those formulas will calculate and do so without any negative consequence. Like you said, to get your HR in the high 190's, for just about anyone, is incredibly uncomfortable and you are only able to do so for a few seconds before you just have to stop.

When I first started running a HR of 175-180 felt like death and I couldn't go on, now 175-180 is something I see several times a month when doing threshold work and can go with that HR for 15-20 minutes. I think you can push the formula number upwards with training, but you are correct that anything over your true max is bad news.

I feel almost bad to post this, as most of you guys are still stuffering from heat waves, but... it finally got colder this week! Tuesday and Wednesday I ran late in the evening, and both times the temperatures were (barely, but still) below 20C/70F. Today I ran earlier, when the sun was still out, so it was a bit warmer, but none of the killer humidity.

Sadly, the weather forcast claims the summer will return soon - Saturday and Sunday we'll be back around 30C/86F. I guess a cold, rainy weekend would have been too good to be true *sigh*

Despite the colder temps, I wasn't really "feeling it" during the first half of yesterdays run. Originally, I had planned to drive over to the mountains, but then I get held up at work way longer than planned; and then I freaked out because I couldn't find my wallet. After turning my apartment upside-down, driving back to work and searching the office, I finally found it in the car under the seat
By that point it was much, much too late to head for the mountain trails. I was rather disappinted about that. On top of that, it was late enough that the sandwich I had for lunch was only a faint memory; so I wanted dinner more than I wanted to run around the neighbourhood...
I went out anyway, but the first 6 or 7 km I kept arguing with myself if I should really run the planned 14.5km or not. When I came to the point where a right turn would have been the shortcut home, and the left turn the looong way around, my playlist came to the rescue. At that moment, it was playing the end of Resistance by Muse - "We must run, It's time to ru-u-un...". Perfect timing! I decided to take that as a sign to take the long way; and funnily enough, once that decision was made, I enjoyed the second half of my run much more. Still, when I reached my place after 14km, I didn't think twice about skipping the last few hundred meters and finally getting myself some dinner.

I made up for that today though. A colleague mentioned he recently started running again, and we decided to go for a run together after work tonight. He said he could do about 5km at the moment, but "not very fast". I actually had an easy 6km planned for today; so I thought running over to his place to pick him up and then letting him pick the pace would be nice...
Good thing I had the 1.2km over to his place as a warmup; because we ended up running 6km together, at an average pace of ~6:10min/km - which is somewhere between 10k and HM race pace for me. We still managed to chat during the entire run (but more in one-sentence-bits rather than long stories), and I found out that before he took a break from running, he used to do 9km in 45minutes in the lunch break. Since my 10k RACE PR is barely under 1 hour, I wouldn't have thought todays run would be easy if I had known that before. Guess that's running karma's payback for skipping the last half km yesterday

5512bf wrote: »

AdrianChr92 wrote: »

@5512bf @luluinca Max HR is set and you can't train it. You can lower your resting heart rate but you can't increase your max. It's set. Only time you go over your max is if you are having a heart attack or something like that. Problem is it's hard to achieve max heart rate. Most people will give up before hitting it because of the extreme discomfort. I thought mine was 196 because that's what I reached in a 5k but then I did another 5k with 100% humidity and kicked a little too hard at the end. I though I was gonna die right there. Hit 198.

I agree your true max HR is completely unknown, however my point was that those formulas to determine them are useless, especially for those who do a lot of cardio training. I do believe that with cardio training you are obtain HR numbers that are higher than those formulas will calculate and do so without any negative consequence. Like you said, to get your HR in the high 190's, for just about anyone, is incredibly uncomfortable and you are only able to do so for a few seconds before you just have to stop.

When I first started running a HR of 175-180 felt like death and I couldn't go on, now 175-180 is something I see several times a month when doing threshold work and can go with that HR for 15-20 minutes. I think you can push the formula number upwards with training, but you are correct that anything over your true max is bad news.

That makes sense to me. I guess what I'm hoping to do is decrease the HR threshold at which I can actually run faster. In other words, if I can only run a 13 min mile right now comfortably, then perhaps with training I can run an 11 min mile at the same HR? So while I haven't increased my Max HR I've increased distance by pushing my HR zones gradually over time.

Is that right?

I do remember my Max HR probably being quite a bit lower when I first started going back to the gym. I'd come off a little over a year of a very serious illness and the first time I got on the treadmill I thought 135 was going to kill me.

I think I may have improved my overall health conditions quite a bit since then but I doubt I'll be able to increase my Max HR at this point. I'll be happy to improve my running times though with practice.