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I didn’t run on Friday for a few reasons, mostly though it was because of beer on Thursday night. Didn’t let that get me down but, yeah, been a bit “social” of late so got to reign that in a little so it doesn’t interfere with the plan.

Anyway, I walked Saturday and Sunday with M and today I went out on the scheduled 5km run. It was lovely out with the sun rising and before too many people were in the park.

Now, I promised to start talking about heart rate training a bit more and describing what it is that I’m trying to learn here. To recap, what I’m learning is coming from John L. Parker, Jr.’s book Heart Monitor Training for the Compleat Idiot (again, this is a title I loathe with a passion). I’m learning so please correct me if I’m getting this wrong.

The received wisdom amongst runners and coaches is that hard/easy training is the way to become a better runner. Hard/easy training is just running alternate days fast and then slow.

You run hard to improve your anaerobic capacity. Jeff Galloway’s Book on Running:

Anaerobic running is when you exceed the speed and/or distance for which you have trained. The muscles are pushed beyond their capacity and need more oxygen than then body can supply. For a limited period of time, muscles continue to function by utilitzing chemical processes that free oxygen from within the muscle itself. The amount of oxygen available this way is quite limited, large amounts of waste build-up, and the muscles get tight and sore. You find yourself huffing and puffing and slowing down. After the exercise is over, this oxygen must be “paid back” to the muscle (the “oxygen debt”). One of the main purposes of speedwork is to give you anaerobic experience in measured doses; if you follow it with sufficient rest, you’ll train your body to deal with oxygen debt. Anaerobic running is not necessary for health only for improving speed.

When you run hard you use up oxygen as it interacts with a type of fuel called glycogen. Glycogen is an easily available fuel stored in muscles. You only have a limited supply of glycogen and when you run out of it you’re in big trouble because you need it to help convert fat into fuel to keep running.

Basically, you train fast to get your body used to the intensity of anaerobic exercise.

You run easy to improve your aerobic base and to recover.

Building an aerobic base means getting more efficient at turning fat into energy. If you’re better at turning fat into energy you can burn that energy instead of your limited supply of glycogen, that lets you run for longer. Long distance runners need a high aerobic base or they rely too much on burning glycogen and when that runs out they hit the wall.

It is called a recovery run because at the same time you’re building your aerobic base you’re giving your body a chance to restock glycogen burned on the previous hard run, letting your immune system get back to full-strength after the high intensity workout and letting your muscles repair themselves from wear and tear [1].

Okay, so hard/easy training. How do you know when you’re running hard and when you’re running easy?

Well, usually you go out and run “so you’re breathing easy” to run easy or you run a mile rate that you think is easy, 9 minute miles or something. All these measures are subjective and this cuts to the heart of the matter.

Heart rate training is designed to give you an objective measure of when you run hard and when you run easy:

Easy = below 70% max. heart rate.
Hard = everything over that, you can push yourself to tempo runs of 85% and interval training at 90-95% and you know that you’re hitting your goals because the HRM tells you so.

Link to the index for this series.

Related posts:

1. Heart rate training: index
2. Heart rate training day 7: a 5km jog
3. Heart rate training day 4: a pleasant awakening…
4. Heart rate training day 10: frustrating…
5. Heart rate training day 2: trust the system and just show up

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