Heart Rate Monitor Running Diary – Week Five
After my initial induction period of recovery runs, I am now introducing some harder workouts into my program.
I started the week with an interval training session. During this session I ran a warm-up mile at 5mph, which gradually increased my heart rate to just below 65% of my maximum. Then I ran a series of “striders” for one mile. My first Strider was 6mph, then I increased each subsequent one by 1mph and ran the final one at 10mph. This brought my heart rate up to around 85% and prepared me for the main interval session.
I ran 0.25 mile intervals on the treadmill with 0.15 recovery jogs. As it was my first interval session it meant that I could only estimate a good starting pace. I decided to run at 8mph, but found that this was too fast for the first interval as my heart rate started to climb above my 85% target heart rate. This was not a problem, but would likely mean a considerable struggle at this stage in my training, so I reduced the next interval to 7.5mph. This still felt a bit too fast, so I decided to run the remaining three intervals at 7mph. My heart rate reached my 85% target in each interval, so this was fast enough. My recovery jogs were all at 5mph.
After two miles of intervals I continued for one more mile at an easy 5mph pace. Overall it felt like a tough, but enjoyable five mile workout. At the finish I walked for about 0.25 miles to cool-down, then did my usual back stretches and some leg stretches (hamstrings, quads and calves).
On Day 2, I ran a six-mile recovery run. It was very pleasing to see that my time for the distance had improved by close to two minutes! Such is the power of interval sessions.
Day 3 was a rest day, due to the fact that I had a full day of travelling and work, followed by my second hard training day of the week. I don’t usually run two interval training sessions in one week, so for this session I had planned a three mile steady run at 80% of my maximum. I started at 7mph and gradually reduced my speed (as dictated by my heart rate) to 6.3mph during the run. I ran a four mile recovery run on Day 5, followed by my final run of the week the following day, which was eight miles at recovery pace.
The culmination of the weeks training saw more than five and a half minutes improvement in my time at six miles, compared to the previous week, and well over six minutes reduction in my time for seven miles! This is the result of running faster in the early miles and maintaining a higher speed for longer in the later miles – a double whammy! All in all a good weeks work.
Here is a summary of the weeks training:
| Date | Detail | Incline | Time | Miles | Peak H/R | Avg. H/R | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct-5 | 1m < 65%;1m Striders; [0.25x85% / 0.15x70%]x5; 1m < 70% | 0.0 | 00:53:06 | 5.00 | 173 | - | |
| 1m@5mph; Striders 6-10mph/5mph; Intervals (see below); 1m @ 5mph | |||||||
| Intervals 5 x 0.25m @ 8.0/7.5/7.0/7.0/7.0mph with 0.15m @ 5mph recovery | |||||||
| Oct-6 | 6m < 70% | 0.0 | 01:08:04 | 6.00 | 153 | 151 | |
| Mile Splits: 1m 9:52; 2m 20:22; 3m 31:28; 4m 43:07; 5m 55:17; 6m 68:04 | |||||||
| Oct-7 | OFF | - | - | - | - | - | |
| - | |||||||
| Oct-8 | 3m < 80% | 0.0 | 00:26:53 | 3.00 | 164 | 159 | |
| Mile Splits: 1m 8:34; 2m 17:28; 3m 26:53 | |||||||
| Oct-9 | 4m < 70% | 0.0 | 00:41:51 | 4.00 | 153 | 150 | |
| Mile Splits: 1m 9:33; 2m 19:41; 3m 30:34; 4m 41:51 | |||||||
| Oct-10 | 8m < 70% | 0.0 | 01:27:41 | 7.00 | 153 | 151 | |
| Mile Splits: 1m 09:20; 2m 19:16; 3m 29:55; 4m 40:58; 5m 52:29; 6m 01:04:16; 7m 01:16:01; 8m 01:27:41 | |||||||
| Oct-11 | OFF | - | - | - | - | - | |
| - | |||||||
October 16 2009 10:48 am | Heart Rate Monitor Running Diary
February 6th, 2010 at 11:10 pm
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