Happy Presidents Day!
I enjoyed my day off doing a little work from home in the morning and followed it up with a great brick workout. If you check out the details of my workouts on Daily Mile, you'll see I'm trying something a little different for a while...going slow. Well, I already go slow so maybe just slower. I've been reading a lot about Low Heart Rate training and am waiting for a book from Amazon to arrive in my mailbox.
From what I've heard, The Big Book of Endurance Training and Racing is to physical fitness as Think and Grow Rich is to entrepreneurs. It creates a foundation and basically explains in no uncertain terms what you need to do to accomplish your goals. It makes it seem simple. The hard part, as anyone knows who's ever tried to do anything, is that you've actually got to start and, more importantly, be determined to stick it out through the tough times.
The author, Philip Maffetone, doesn't make grandiose claims to help you create a beach body or give you a secret to run a 5 minute mile. Instead his methods to make you go faster are to actually go slower. The goal for each training session, whether it's running, biking, swimming, pogo sticking, or skipping to your lou, is to keep your heart rate as close to a certain number without going over. Welcome to The Price is Right...For Faster Run Times.
Take 180 and subtract your age. This is your new favorite number. The idea is that your body will become more efficient at this "low" heart rate and over the next couple months of training you'll actually see improvements and run faster while maintaining this rate. You become aerobically fit.
My first experience at maintaining this heart rate (on the run today) dropped my pace from my usual 8:45 pace to a molasses-like 12:30 pace. I honestly felt like I could walk faster. In preparation for Ironman 70.3 Austin in October, I expect to see my pace at 149 beats per minute drop from 12:30 to around the 7:00 minute mark. Maybe I'm just being optimistic. After all, the book is still on its way to my mailbox.
Nice to see another Honey Stinger team mate blogs as well.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the #FF! This topic is pretty interesting - I have been doing something similar for some time to prepare for Boise 70.3. I started keeping an input/output chart like Joe Friel suggests in this post: http://www.joefrielsblog.com/2011/01/comparing-output-and-input.html. It is pretty fun to watch your efficiency improve and your speed get faster at the same (lower) heart beat! Good luck in your training!
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