August 2017 Running Challenge

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  • skippygirlsmom
    skippygirlsmom Posts: 4,433 Member
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    @7lenny7 thank you. Be patient with yourself.

    Rest day today

  • MobyCarp
    MobyCarp Posts: 2,927 Member
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    Rest day today. I'm more beat up than I think I ought to be after yesterday evening's 15 mile run. I'm hoping part of that is that I didn't stop to stretch in the rain.

    So on a rest day, when you're beat up and not in the mood to add races, you look at upcoming races. Next Wednesday evening is Pound the Ground 10K, the 7th race in the Rochester Runner of the Year series. Found the course map. I've never run that course, but I've run all the roads it covers in training and in other races, in weather ranging from beware of blowing snow and freezing water bottles to beware of heat stroke and be sure to hydrate enough. I suspect it will be an open road race, which will only really matter for a little less than a mile of the route.

    Looked at the preregistration. There are all of 68 people preregistered for the 10K; the 5K is more popular. But the 10K is the RROY race. There are 3 people in my age group preregistered. I don't have to run fast to finish ahead of the other two. So, unless someone fast registers between now and gun time, it should be an easy age group win. That would mathematically clinch at least a tie for the age group in the RROY series, and in practice clinch a win because the only guy who could mathematically tie me can't run all the remaining races.

    If I were confident that's all there will be, I'd just run it at around a 7 minute mile, win the age group, and save the fast effort for Bergen 5K a week from tomorrow. In practice, I'll likely go to the start line at Pound the Ground not being totally sure that there is no one I have to work to stay ahead of.

    I don't need to look for competition at Bergen. I already know the fast runners will show up for that one.
  • wishiwasarunner
    wishiwasarunner Posts: 202 Member
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    August goals are 90 miles and figuring out what all the info from my new watch means about my training.

    Aug 3 - 10 miles
    Aug 4 - 6.2 miles

    So I have been running for a few years without any HR data. After hanging around here lately, I decided I needed the new fenix5 and chest strap HRM. I have only gotten in 2 runs and was really expecting to be told that I stay in zones 1-2 and that I don't ever get up to zone 4-5. Instead Garmin is putting almost all of my running (except for the warm up) in zone 4-5. That is just 2 runs so I know part of the issue is lack of data. My average HR was 150-155 on the runs. The shorter one was slower but with more elevation gain. Both were about 1-1.5 minutes per mile slower than my marathon pace and 2-2.5 minutes slower than my HM pace. I will continue to collect data and maybe do the lactate threshold test later, but I noticed several people posting runs in zone 2 that had similar HR. I don't put in the mileage of most on this site, but do you think Garmin is underestimating my max HR (48 year old female) or that I really am like many runners who go too fast on training runs? I felt like I was taking it pretty easy

  • KatieJane83
    KatieJane83 Posts: 2,002 Member
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    @wishiwasarunner it's possible it hasn't correctly estimated your max HR. There's a very wide range for 'normal' and I don't think there's a good formula out there that's guaranteed to be accurate for everyone. I've estimated my max hr to be somewhere in the upper 190's based on seeing an actual reading of 195 in the final push at the end of a hot and SUPER humid (96%) 5k. I figure that's gotta be pretty close. I've estimated my LT HR to be around upper 170s or 180, based on a hot 10k. So for me, 150-155 would be Z2 I believe. (for reference, I'm a 34 yr old female)
  • katharmonic
    katharmonic Posts: 5,720 Member
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    shrcpr wrote: »

    @WandaVaughn, our halfs are just a week apart - mine is November 12 and my first as well. What is the name of yours? I like to look them up and see the courses. Mine is the Monterey Bay Half-Marathon in Monterey, CA.

    @shrcpr I'm a bit jealous, the Monterey Bay HM sounds so nice. I love Monterey Bay. Looks like a great course. Good luck to you and @WandaVaughn on your first half marathons! I did my first last fall and will be doing my 4th (how did that happen) this October.



    Date :::: Miles :::: Cumulative
    08/01/17 :::: 5.5 :::: 5.5
    08/02/17 :::: 2.4 :::: 7.9
    08/03/17 :::: 5.0 :::: 12.9
    08/04/17 :::: 2.5 :::: 15.4

    It felt too oppressive to me to run outside today, I just couldn't gear up for it. So I hit the treadmill at the Y this afternoon so I wouldn't have to take a 0 for the day, and so I could get Chinese food from the Wegman's hot bar for dinner.

    I don't know what was screwing up with my Garmin on the run indoor setting. Usually it and the treadmill speed disagree a bit, but today Garmin was wildly inaccurate. It thought I was doing 9 min miles which I most assuredly was not. It was more like 11:45-12 min miles. I took the mileage from the treadmill and corrected the total in my Garmin file. Weird.

    Storms are supposed to come through tonight and tomorrow is supposed to only be 70 degrees for a high. Looking forward to that.

  • MobyCarp
    MobyCarp Posts: 2,927 Member
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    wishiwasarunner wrote: »
    August goals are 90 miles and figuring out what all the info from my new watch means about my training.

    Aug 3 - 10 miles
    Aug 4 - 6.2 miles

    So I have been running for a few years without any HR data. After hanging around here lately, I decided I needed the new fenix5 and chest strap HRM. I have only gotten in 2 runs and was really expecting to be told that I stay in zones 1-2 and that I don't ever get up to zone 4-5. Instead Garmin is putting almost all of my running (except for the warm up) in zone 4-5. That is just 2 runs so I know part of the issue is lack of data. My average HR was 150-155 on the runs. The shorter one was slower but with more elevation gain. Both were about 1-1.5 minutes per mile slower than my marathon pace and 2-2.5 minutes slower than my HM pace. I will continue to collect data and maybe do the lactate threshold test later, but I noticed several people posting runs in zone 2 that had similar HR. I don't put in the mileage of most on this site, but do you think Garmin is underestimating my max HR (48 year old female) or that I really am like many runners who go too fast on training runs? I felt like I was taking it pretty easy

    It's possible for both to be true. IIRC, Garmin defaults max HR to 220-age at first. I know that Garmin defaults the low end of five zones to 50%, 60%, 70%, 80%, 90% of what it thinks your max heart rate is. I lived with the Garmin zones for over 2 years and the HR data never seemed to mean anything to me.

    You can go into Garmin Connect and change the zones. You can change what it thinks your max HR is. You can change the percentages the zones are based on. You can tell it your resting HR and change to the reserve method, where the zones are percentages from resting HR to max HR. And recently I found an option (that might not have been there before) letting me tell it my LT HR and set zones based on percentages of LT HR.

    The problem with having all this control is, to make it useful you need to have some idea of what your max HR or LT HR is. Resting HR is easier, you just measure it before you get out of bed in the morning. But max HR and LT HR are kind of a puzzle to get to, absent some expensive and inconvenient lab tests. There are ways to estimate LT HR, but it's a nuisance to run a time trial just to get LT HR, and my race results don't all agree; my best guess is that my LT HR is between 153 and 157.

    The best advice I can give you is, watch the absolute HR numbers for a month or two, and correlate the numbers with how you feel on the run. That will give you some sort of clue whether the zones are where they belong. It would be helpful if you had some intense running to compare to your easy runs, so you can see what the difference in HR is between what you currently perceive as easy and what you perceive as running for speed. You should see clear HR differences between easy, MP, and HMP running in similar weather and similar terrain. If you run a shorter race like a 5K or a 10K, that should elevate your HR more than half marathon pace. Then you take those differences, think about how you felt, and do the best you can to determine where your zones belong.

    I wish you luck; I'm still not certain I've got the HR zones in Garmin where they belong for me.
  • RespectTheKitty
    RespectTheKitty Posts: 1,667 Member
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    _nikkiwolf_ wrote: »
    Did any of you ever do the
    kinetic revolution 30 day challenge/?
    It's 10-15min of exercises or drills - all kinds of promising-sounding stuff like mobiity, plyometrics, balance, technique drills, ...

    Should be good for injury prevention and running technique. It's free, so I've decided to give it a go. Anyone else who wants to join and start with day 1 with me today?
    If you don't want to enter your mail address to sign up, you can get to all individual days of the challenge via this link: http://www.kinetic-revolution.com/30daychallenge/welcome-to-the-challenge/

    I'm up for this! I definitely need it.
  • T1DCarnivoreRunner
    T1DCarnivoreRunner Posts: 11,502 Member
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    @KatieJane83 Wow, that is a high LTHR. Mine was tested in a fitness lab at 161.
  • KatieJane83
    KatieJane83 Posts: 2,002 Member
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    midwesterner85 wrote: »
    I measured my calf and thigh - 38cm and 53 cm at their widest when flexing of course. I'm trying to remember why we are doing this... will go back a few pages.

    I don't quite remember either, lol, but we're pretty close! I measured 36 and 52
  • KatieJane83
    KatieJane83 Posts: 2,002 Member
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    midwesterner85 wrote: »
    @KatieJane83 Wow, that is a high LTHR. Mine was tested in a fitness lab at 161.

    Yeah, I think I tend to have a high hr. I still need to get a true resting hr read though, I think it's around 50. And the LTHR is just an estimate. It's based on a 10k where my avg hr for the race was 179. All this hr stuff gets tricky, lol
  • Orphia
    Orphia Posts: 7,097 Member
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    wishiwasarunner wrote: »
    August goals are 90 miles and figuring out what all the info from my new watch means about my training.

    Aug 3 - 10 miles
    Aug 4 - 6.2 miles

    So I have been running for a few years without any HR data. After hanging around here lately, I decided I needed the new fenix5 and chest strap HRM. I have only gotten in 2 runs and was really expecting to be told that I stay in zones 1-2 and that I don't ever get up to zone 4-5. Instead Garmin is putting almost all of my running (except for the warm up) in zone 4-5. That is just 2 runs so I know part of the issue is lack of data. My average HR was 150-155 on the runs. The shorter one was slower but with more elevation gain. Both were about 1-1.5 minutes per mile slower than my marathon pace and 2-2.5 minutes slower than my HM pace. I will continue to collect data and maybe do the lactate threshold test later, but I noticed several people posting runs in zone 2 that had similar HR. I don't put in the mileage of most on this site, but do you think Garmin is underestimating my max HR (48 year old female) or that I really am like many runners who go too fast on training runs? I felt like I was taking it pretty easy

    @wishiwasarunner Here's how to set your HR settings on the Fenix 5:

    http://www8.garmin.com/manuals/webhelp/fenix5/EN-US/GUID-30C91919-943C-44E9-8048-901AC0881AEA.html

    I've used this to set mine on my Fenix 5 with wrist HRM.

    I'm 50, and my LTHR is 151, and max HR is 213, based on a 25:41 5K PB in April.
  • Elise4270
    Elise4270 Posts: 8,375 Member
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    KatieJane83 wrote: »
    midwesterner85 wrote: »
    I measured my calf and thigh - 38cm and 53 cm at their widest when flexing of course. I'm trying to remember why we are doing this... will go back a few pages.

    I don't quite remember either, lol, but we're pretty close! I measured 36 and 52

    Because I'm neurotic. My husband made a comment about mine. So I wondered whereabouts others were. :lol:
  • wishiwasarunner
    wishiwasarunner Posts: 202 Member
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    @KatieJane83, @MobyCarp, @Orphia - Thank you for the information and help. If Garmin is basing the zones off of a max HR of 220-age, then that is definitely part of the problem. I used the watch for a 2 mile leisurely walk with the dogs and it had me in zone 2. Surely if I can run a full marathon, walking the dogs should not be my training pace. Thanks again
  • PastorVincent
    PastorVincent Posts: 6,668 Member
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    RespectTheKitty wrote: »
    For the record, I don't have a measuring tape so I can't give you my calf and thigh measurements. :tongue:

    Suffice to say, they do what they're supposed to do, so I don't really care how big they are.

    Good for you! :smiley: That is the right attitude, I think.

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