Operation Move

Online Running Coaching

You are here: Home / Archives for heart rate monitor

heart rate monitor

Training Plans: Match the pace or get in the zone?

· · Leave a Comment

When you are hunting around for training plans there are usually two kinds – heart rate zone or pace based plans. In essence they are both the same thing – they are just interpreting the information in a different way. A Heart rate zone plan might have a long run in Zone 2, speed intervals at Zone 4-5 with recovery in Zone 2 and a steady run at Zone 3.

Heart rate zones are guesswork (without a metabolic assessment) but a good guide is:

Zone 1-2: Conversational talking
Zone 3: Talking in short sentences
Zone 4: Be able to get out a word or two
Zone 5: Max effort. You can’t talk at this level of effort

A pace based plan will guesstimate what your pace should be for these different levels of effort so it will have a guide for easy, steady, tempo, race and speed.

Generally you can find training pace calculators that will help you with this. It asks you to put in a recent time. So as an example mine would look like this:

Recent run: 10km in 55 minutes (got to love treadmills, right?)

Running pace: 5:30 min/km

Easy run: 6:39 min/km

Tempo run: 5:34 min/km

Max oxygen: 5:01 min/km

Speed: 4:39 min/km

Long run: 6:39 – 7:29 min/km

Yasso 800s: 4:09 min/ 800m

Now my only problem with this is that while I agree with the long run/easy paces I don’t think it quite pushes you on the speed paces. Because it seems to calculate based on training required for a speed you have already run. If you want to run faster, you have to run faster. So I often look at guides to tell me if I want to run 10km in 50 minutes what speed do I need to train at (so long as that goal isn’t a huge leap from what you have already done. For example if I wanted to improve a 55 minute 10km time to a 50 minute 10km run time suggested running paces would be these:

Race pace: 5:00 min/km

Easy run: 6:09 min/km

Tempo run: 5:05 min/km

Max oxygen: 4:35 min/km

Speed: 4:15 min/km

Long run: 6:09 – 6:55 min/km

So which is better?

The answer is that they are both guess-work. There are dangers in not running your easy runs easy enough or in pushing yourself too hard on a tempo run. What both things can help you with is figuring out what is right for your own body.

The benefit of the heart rate over the pace is it measures effort rather than an arbitrary pace, which might be right on one day, but is going to be way off on another day where you might not have had enough sleep or are a bit run down. Conversely, pace can also limit you unnecessarily on speed days. If you are running to feel, you may actually run faster when you are feeling good than if you were just aiming for a pace.

For that reason, if you don’t have a heart rate monitor, rather than using pace as a guide – you are probably better off using a perceived effort approach. So you would aim for your easy and long runs to be 60-70% effort, your tempo runs to be at around 80-90% effort and your speed intervals at 90-100% effort.

If you aren’t a regular heart rate monitor user, using one occasionally to see how your perceived effort and your heart rate match up can be a good thing. I often find if I haven’t used one for awhile my sense of an easy run effort is actually probably more like a steady state effort and it reminds me to slow down on those types of sessions.

But even so, it’s good to keep in mind that heart rate monitors aren’t perfect. They are measuring something that is correlated to effort, but there are going to be discrepancies if you are stressed, if it is hot or if you’ve been unwell, so it’s a great guide but when in doubt go with how you feel.

I have a heart rate monitor. So what do I do with it?

· · 5 Comments

 

I have a sickness.

It’s running gear related. It’s not really a problem though, because I have enablers.

Anyway, I recently bought a watch with a Heart Rate Monitor. Awesome because more stats right?

There are a whole heap of training plans you can do based on training to heart rate zones, rather than pace. And most suggested paces are actually based on Heart Rate Zones.

Zone 1 – Recovery <60% max heart rate (the walking zone where you are usually able to hold a full conversation while you are moving). 85% of calories burnt in this zone are burnt from fat.

Zone 2 – Endurance 60-70% max heart rate (considered easy pace because you are still able to talk and hold a full conversation). 85% of calories burnt in this zone are burnt from fat.

Zone 3 – Steady – 70-80% max heart rate (this is the top end of your aerobic zone and you can still talk in short sentences). This zone is the key for building endurance. It will build new blood vessels and develop lung and heart capacity. Here 50% of calories burnt are burnt from fat.

Zone 4 – Threshold – 80-90% max heart rate (This is your speed zone. You will be able to speak in short phrases). This zone will build your ability to take in oxygen. I assume from the gasping. It is also the zone where your body starts creating lactic acid. 15% of calories burnt in this zone are burnt from fat.

Zone 5 – Max 90-100% max heart rate (Maximum effort zone. You would be pretty much unable to speak in this zone.) Generally this is only used for short speed intervals and hill sprints because it would be hard to maintain this for any longer. 10% of the calories burnt in this zone are burnt from fat.

Now without a metabolic assessment, heart zones are guess work. Although these percentages will give you an idea of what your heart rate will be in any given zone, everyone is different and so you will have to gauge for yourself where you are.

One of the things I found interesting is that most of the features on the Garmin and also on Strava for calculating the heart rate zones are based on a direct percentage of the max heart rate. I have a max of about 185. You can do a calculation based on age (220-your age) – but it won’t be overly accurate. Or you can test it out by going flat out and see what your heart rate gets up to. So if I was going purely on their calculations my ranges would be

Zone 1 – Up to 111

Zone 2 – 111 – 129

Zone 3 – 129 – 148

Zone 4 – 148 – 166

Zone 5 – 166+

But the problem with this is I knew it wasn’t right. I struggled to stay in zone 2 at all unless I was walking and I spent most of my ‘easy’ run in zone 4.

My theory is that the lower your resting rate is, the less the averages work out for you. I found a different calculation to work out the zones:

(max heart rate – resting rate) x percentage + resting rate

I have a resting rate of around about 50, so this is how the zones work out:

Zone 1 – Up to 131

Zone 2 – 132 – 145

Zone 3 – 146 – 158

Zone 4 – 159 – 171

Zone 5 – 172+

I tested this out on my run today and it seems more or less accurate.

In Strava (the premium version), Garmin Connect and on your Garmin device you can set up custom heart rate zones based on what you think is accurate for you.

I think the best part of heart rate training is that it takes away a lot of the decisions for you. You don’t have to worry if you are going too slow or too fast and you can just have that helpful feedback either on your long runs or on your speed sessions. The shorter the intervals, the delay in feedback will probably mean that it won’t be overly useful. But for everything else, it’s a great way to guide your sessions.

Do you like training with a HRM? How did you work out your heart rate zones? Or are you suffering from too much gear and prefer running bare?