Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Wednesday 12 mile tempo run

12 miles with 2300ft of gain between 8200-9200ft altitude in 1:26:20. Average pace 7:11/ avg HR 158. Killed it. I added on 2 miles to my regular 10 mile route and I'm confident had I just run my 10 mile route I would have gone sub 7 pace for this which puts me close to one of my best times EVER. Average HR of just 158 puts me firmly at aerobic threshold or a Zone 3 effort... not that hard. I tried to stay completely in control and never feel like I needed to back off... just steady and strong. Taking in to account that I'm just back from a 10 week run hiatus I would call this one of my strongest runs of the entire year... if not then THE strongest.

10 comments:

GZ said...

Okay - I will bite.

How is it that you are so magically fit with so little specific training (a bit of a softball here, but you get the idea).

Michelle Simmons said...

That's it. I'm quitting training for 10 weeks.

Lol. JK. ;) Nice run!

Lucho said...

Hey now, watch the teeth. I was thinking about the same thing as I saw time checks. WTF? The low HR is partly due to fatigue from last week and yesterday's bike. I definitely felt the effort from the bike yesterday.
Part body weight. I'm still under 145 which helps a ton.
Part i-pod playlist of Five Finger Death Punch, AC/DC, and Royal Scots Dragoon Guard bagpipes (you should check them out)
But mainly I think it's that I'm still riding the wave of solid bike fitness from Leadville. It's not completely specific to running but today I could muscle the hills, not smooth and light on my feet, I just forced the hills. Squats don't hurt.

Mama- I would HATE to be around YOU during a 10 week break from exercise :)

Brett said...

I think GZs question is not too different than the question 'how could Lance Armstrong break a 3 hour marathon when he never ran that much'? You can't go out there and do it on pure chicken legs, but its the aerobic engine that is most important (I am guessing).

Art said...

I fully believe that cycling is more specific to running than running is to cycling....and I am speaking from a "retired" runner's standpoint, eh....when the legs get stale from running you can switch to cycling to give them a break but still innervate the cardio-vascular system....

David said...

I am currently taking an injury-induced break, so this gives me comfort. Unfortunately, I probably already weigh 200 pounds. All biceps. Grrrrrr. /breaks keyboard

Just out of curiosity, when we were going relaxed that day this summer, what pace do you think did we did the 10-mile course in?

Lucho said...

Brett- Somewhat. But I would suspect he ran more than he let on. The guy doesn't do anything half assed.

Dave- We ran it in ~1:17-18 I think.

Art- Absolutely!

Chief- I don't enough about you or what you're doing to give a useful answer. The HR range sounds way too high though. Max hR doesn't mean anything, lactate threshold is specific to your current fitness and is what you should base the HR ranges off of.

GZ said...

Lance was also supposedly a 9:30 mile guy in HS. None too shabby.

I think the magic is this. Base. The two guys I have seen this year who have been able to tap into their base even though they have not done their "typical" training are this blog's author and that old guy who jogged and won the PPM this year.

I'd also say that if you are not seeing a significant change in your fixed HR paces over a significant period of time, then you either:

a.) up the mileage at the fixed HR and continue the experiment or
b.) yes, go to work outside of a base building phase.

In the case of A, I have come to believe that for one to get a benefit of base miles ... well, there needs to be a bunch of that base miles. Back to the point of Carpenter and Lucho: Carpenter did 2 hours a day for several years. Lucho did 45 hour weeks. I am pretty Mark Allen was doing a good number of hours too. :) If one is only doing 20 miles a week, there may not be enough stimulus there to provide a pronounced change (improvement) in pace for that fixed HR.

But let's say you are doing as much mileage as you can (for whatever the reason), ought to do ... so yeah, maybe you have plateaued at that FHR. It is a good time to then intro the non aerobic pace work. In those cases, I think you also measure until to you see a plateau there too ... then go back to fixed HR work.

Assuming that is what you enjoy.

Brett said...

Anon, your MAF pace should be somewhere around 180 - Age, or 130 for you...not 145-150. Thats likely one reason you may not be seeing improvement (running 15-20 bpm over MAF). I think also everyone goes through plateaus and you should transition to some other stimulus or focus on some other weekness for a period.

Lucho said...

Sorry, my bad anonymous.