I agree 100%! If I tried it every week I’d just dig a bigger and bigger hole for myself! Luckily I don’t find doing regular easy-pace long runs especially taxing on my body these days, so that helps balance it out.
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Lots of awesome goals here!
My goal for this year besides the HIM I signed up for in early November is just to get better and faster running. I never truly exercised until a couple years ago (swimming), and only truly seriously started running last November.
For reading above it looks like to get better running, I definitely need to start running at least three times a week instead of just two times a week as I am not being consistent enough. If needed, I’ll bump swimming down to once a week to fit in another short run or two. However, I am worried about injuring myself so I am also considering hiring a coach to help me with running.
We’re on a similar timeline. My 70.3 is in September. I’ve dabbled in running, but have never trained consistently past, maybe, 8-12 weeks and always ended up burning out with ITB issues. I started Tri training In November with 2 runs a week right around 3 miles for each. Very easy runs, zone 2 HR. I added a third run in December putting me at about 10 miles a week. I’ve slowly raised this to about 15 miles a week now with one long run at an easy pace with some strides at the end, one tempo run, and one interval run. No injuries so far. Two things that really helped my running form were increasing my turnover to around 180 steps per minute, and switching to a mid foot strike.
I’m coming back to trail running after taking a year off. Starting very casually, with low miles and mid distance races, I don’t want to take the focus away from my MTB. The Longest races in my calendar are a little more than 13 miles, with tons of altitude gain. Super stoked to be back. =)
My running goals are basically just my run splits for tri. Ran my first 70.3 last year (which was my 2nd half marathon ever lol), ran a 1:50:xx Bonked at about mile 10-11…nutrition on bike was completely on point, but i had this plan to consume caffeine around mile 9 on the run…went for red bull and soon my HR was skyrocketing up to ~90% HRmax. Terrible. Hoping to improve my HM time to 1:40 or better this year.
I am very new to endurance running. Last year was my first year really giving it a go. I’ve started to read some stuff by Seiler and found this article: Intervals, Thresholds, and Long Slow Distance: the Role of Intensity and Duration in Endurance Training
The HR zones he describes in table 1 (mainly Z2) seem different from what I’ve seen elsewhere…
Z1: 55-75% HRmax
Z2: 75-85%
Z3: 85-90%
Z4: 90-95%
Z5: 95-100%
With my time away from structured running/racing after my 70.3 last June – school obligations, I don’t have a race pace to determine pace zones, unless I were to use my 70.3 HM time. So for time being, I am estimating my HRmax based on what I have hit in runs and in TR, I’ve hit 188 multiple times so I was adding a few BPM and rounding to 195 so this would put my Z2 HR 146-165, this feels like a very large range and appears on the higher end of things.
Since I am so new to training I am probably overthinking things (med school makes one neurotic as it is), but just wanted to pick the brains in here!
That’s encouraging to hear! I need to work on increasing my turnover, but good thing is that I already have a mid-foot strike. I hope you have a great 70.3!
Browsed the article. It’s all still following the general 80/20 method with most runs falling in Z1. For what it’s worth, I’ve been roughly doing this the last three months with about 80% of my runs at easy pace (below 150bpm) and I’ve avoided injury and have seen my average HR drop 10 BPM for my tempo runs. It has also helped me balance my swimming and riding. I do my hardest work on the bike with TrainerRoad.
Thanks, same to you! I used a metronome and some 180bpm song playlists on spotify for about a month. Now I fall into that cadence pretty naturally.
The 2 structured training methods I used - Daniels, and a French thing - both used HR for base, easy, slow, volume, and pace for faster work (from marathon/half pace, though 10k-equivalent, through all-out VO2Max). This is for the same reasons HR has been replaced by power in cycling; HR is way too slow to react in shorter intervals and reacts to other variables. You can easily do a 4x5min@10k pace session (a classic “T” workout à la Daniels), but you could not do something that controlled using HR. And higher intensities make the problem larger: imagine doing a 3x8x200m session with HR. You need to use pace for that.
The simplest MaxHR test for a runner is a 5k race (a real one with lots of people), assuming you know the pace you should do it at. A well-paced 5k makes you die a few hundred meters before the line, and hit a good estimate of your MHMax in the process (right before passing away).
The 80% at easy pace should include the warmup/cooldown of intensity runs; for example, a 90min run with 4x10min @ accelerated pace, 3min recovery, woud still count as 38 mins easy running. Otherwise the 80% would be too much (or to be more exact the 20% not enough) intensity work.
Agreed. I’m new to structured training so I’m easing into it. I’ll generally do three workouts a week: Easy pace mixing in 8-10x30sec sprints with one minute recovery, a tempo run with 10min warmup and cooldown, and a longer easy run to work on my endurance.
finished my second marathon on Sunday. ran a 2:55:03 so exactly what I was hoping for, and the BQ which was the real goal! now on to bike training for Austin rattler, and hopefully Leadville.
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That’s seriously quick, great job man! Will you sign up for Boston or was the BQ just a benchmark?
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Nice running!
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Planning on running the 2020 race. Training will begin after the Leadville 100, and I’m looking to improve my time further. Possibly get upwards of 70mpw and go sub 2:50.
I am running my first Half Marathon in June. Goal is 1:45. Plan to cycle 3 days a week and run only once per week to be as fit and fresh as possible for the race. Only previous race was 1.5 years ago, 10K at 48 min. Pretty excited for it.
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My parents just offered me an entry for a half marathon in a week in Europe/France, I never ran before or never actually with a watch, This morning I went to the local and ran 15 loops to make it to 20k in 1h22, is it going to be good enough for the HM ?
Yep.
15 loops of what? a track? 20k in 1:22 is very fast for sure. should be under a 1:30 HM.
if you are talking 15 laps around a track, its only around 6km.
My local park loop is a flatish 1.3km and I did 20 laps of it I mean
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