Side Note: I do enjoy the Tuesday run plan as every week it is something different and it keeps me interested and wondering "what will next week be?"
So I scouted out a local hill to tackle, I was not sure what elevation it was meant to be but the plan stated 0.5 mile up so I looked for distance. There was a lovely hill nearby that I had seen and said "one day I'll try running on that" and it's even called "run of the knolls" to tease me as the challenge it will be. The whole knolls loop is over 5 miles so am looking forward to completing that challenge one day.
Tuesday morning arrived and went through the new routine to get ready to run...put on clothes, change clothes based on weather and my guessing 'how hot will I get', strapping on heart rate monitor, setting up watch, adding on run belt with drinks, getting key, feeding dog, feeding me, chasing Nigel to get ready.
I swear it takes longer to get out the door than to actually do the run....
Side note: I drank a red bull light for breakfast just before run, couldn't stomach food. And took orange barley cordial in 2 small runner's flasks. Worked well for nutrition.
Off I went...and today's focus was to keep an eye on my heart rate. I'm just learning about heart rate and the zones and why it is better to go slower and keep your heart rate down than to just "go fast and go hard." My main understanding (and I am not an expert here) is when you hit your Anaerobic Threshold (that high heart rate that has you breathing really really hard) you are using the internal body storage for fuel and your brain says "don't accept new fuel into the body" and it stops processing it so you will run out of energy within 1-2 hours. Even if you try and take more fuel in via food, drink, gels... your brain has been programmed not to accept or process it and it will reject it - through your stomach getting gut issues or throwing up, or bonking.
That 1-2 hours window for fuel and energy is fine for those short races or training sessions, but I'm training for an IronMan looking forward to 16 hours of working my body hard! So I have to train to lower my heart rate to be able to fuel my body. Learning what fuel to take in and when to take it is another key element I'm learning, but today's training was focused more on the heart rate.
In a hill climb training session I know I am going to get a high heart rate, so my goal was to try and bring it back down as low as possible after the climb. It was quite amazing the range I had on the run....the high heart rate went up to 180 bpm as I climbed the 170 feet over 0.5 miles and then I managed to bring it down in the recovery 0.5 mile descent to as low as 135 bpm.
Looking at the heart rate and elevation chart...I cam see how the patterns overlap considerably. As I work my body harder to get up a hill, my heart is working harder increasing my heart rate.
When I look at the heart rate and speed chart there is not a pattern to be seen as easily as the other chart. I see the points that I turned around or stopped to catch a breath at (the spikes in the speed). I'm not sure how much of a range I should expect in my running speed....partly I think I should expect to see a faster speed when I was coming downhill, but then as I was focused on bringing my heart rate down I know that I focused my body to go slow and to just breath. So overall looks like the majority of my speed was in the band of the 12-14 minute miles.
These hill climb runs are going to be helpful to build up for the training race of the San Dieguito Half Marathon on Feb 13th. It's meant to be very hilly!
Overall Summary
Distance: 5.45 miles
Time: 1:07 hours
Avg Moving Pace: 12:11 minute miles
Elevation:
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