Author Topic: a fast and explosive donkey! (Read 2599364 times)

Joe · « **Reply #6225 on:** June 02, 2025, 04:09:22 pm »

I am growing increasingly convinced that HR (esp optical) isn't that good a guide for workouts and the priority should just be pace (scaled according to some recent benchmark race). HR varies so much with stuff that doesn't rly reflect internal load.

LBSS · « **Reply #6226 on:** June 02, 2025, 04:34:57 pm »

i was literally about to reply to the opposite effect in your journal, haha. pace is so affected by outside stuff: temperature, humidity, elevation gain, whether you're alone or with others, etc. one day's 5:15 is another day's 5:45; threshold pace on a chilly day or on the track is lower than a hot day or on a hilly route. your body's systems work together to produce pace, and i'm more and more convinced that it's a bad proxy for training load, for that reason. HR isn't ideal, either, but at least it's a measure of something important going on inside your body, rather than an output. speed/interval work could be an exception, but otherwise i'm gonna be focusing on HR.

over the weekend i looked at my last few months of training. coros app gives summaries over different time spans. in the past 16 weeks:

average mileage: 50.52 km
total time on feet: 70:39
distance: 757.83 km
HR average: 133
44% of km run under 133bpm, 36% under 149, 8% 150-158, 10% 159-169, and 2% 17+

takeaways:

i'm ready to start pushing mileage up. 50kpw is a good baseline for a sub-20 5k, which i've run. and it's a good baseline to start pushing up to the 100+kpw that the plan i'm, uh, planning to follow gets to.
my easy/hard split is smack on 80/20, which is good. but the easy mileage might even be a little too easy. i think it's worth starting to allow my HR to creep up just a bit on long runs, while leaving recovery runs (i.e., tuesday and thursday and sometimes saturday) very chill. anything up to 149 is in what coros describes as "aerobic endurance" zone. i probably won't push *that* hard, but more try letting HR hover around 140 instead of around 130, as i've been doing.
summer is coming, so it's really time to start de-emphasizing pace outside of intervals and certain kinds of races.
unrelated but, i need to really start forcing more consistency with strength training. i might bail on the gym membership, i'm not climbing enough to make progress anyway, and use the money saved to pick up a couple of DBs. once my wife and i move again, i'll put up the fingerboard she got me and use that for pull ups. hasn't seemed worth it in this house because we want to leave before it gets cold again.
last but not least, i feel really good: excited about running, itching to sign up for some more races and see how fast i can get.

LBSS · « **Reply #6227 on:** June 03, 2025, 07:24:49 am »

- run 42:25, 7.73 km, strides 5 x 100m
first four reps in 17.3-17.4, last rep 15.2. little mini-taper this week heading into the race on saturday.

Joe · « **Reply #6228 on:** June 03, 2025, 05:10:59 pm »

Quote from: LBSS on June 02, 2025, 04:34:57 pm

i was literally about to reply to the opposite effect in your journal, haha. pace is so affected by outside stuff: temperature, humidity, elevation gain, whether you're alone or with others, etc. one day's 5:15 is another day's 5:45; threshold pace on a chilly day or on the track is lower than a hot day or on a hilly route. your body's systems work together to produce pace, and i'm more and more convinced that it's a bad proxy for training load, for that reason. HR isn't ideal, either, but at least it's a measure of something important going on inside your body, rather than an output. speed/interval work could be an exception, but otherwise i'm gonna be focusing on HR.

I think a bunch of those things impact HR as well (question of priority, right, are we asking "what's my HR at this pace?" or "what's my pace at this HR?"). I think for me I'd rather pair pace (or grade/effort-adjusted pace depending on how reliable your watch is at producing that) + RPE, with HR as a secondary guide. I still like HR for easy efforts, but that's b/c it's a reliable way to make sure my easy efforts are very easy, and doing 3xsub-threshold workouts a week, they have to be or I'd be toast.

One big reason I like pace is sort of indirect. Cyclists have way more useful data available to them, and basically all of them train by power with much less priority given to HR. Now ofc power is way more reliable and objective than anything a runner can get, but (grade-adjusted) pace is closest.

Other less general factors: (1) The relative temperateness of my climate compared to yours also makes it easier for me to have this view (though iirc, Magness has made some comments about giving lower priority to HR in Houston since the summer makes it do crazy things) (2) The timing of my medication vs when I run makes a big difference, and I know that's got zilch to do with internal load.

Quote from: LBSS on June 02, 2025, 04:34:57 pm

takeaways:
my easy/hard split is smack on 80/20, which is good. but the easy mileage might even be a little too easy. i think it's worth starting to allow my HR to creep up just a bit on long runs, while leaving recovery runs (i.e., tuesday and thursday and sometimes saturday) very chill. anything up to 149 is in what coros describes as "aerobic endurance" zone. i probably won't push *that* hard, but more try letting HR hover around 140 instead of around 130, as i've been doing.
unrelated but, i need to really start forcing more consistency with strength training. i might bail on the gym membership, i'm not climbing enough to make progress anyway, and use the money saved to pick up a couple of DBs. once my wife and i move again, i'll put up the fingerboard she got me and use that for pull ups. hasn't seemed worth it in this house because we want to leave before it gets cold again.

As I said above, if you're starting to push more workouts+overall, I'd be careful about pushing up easy efforts. I'm extremely pro just buying some dumbbells + getting a pullup setup and doing home workouts, though. This is one place where I think using intervals.icu is useful, since you can see what's actually moving the needle in terms of load/fitness.

Quote from: LBSS on June 02, 2025, 04:34:57 pm

last but not least, i feel really good: excited about running, itching to sign up for some more races and see how fast i can get.

awesome! feeling's mutual.

LBSS · « **Reply #6229 on:** June 04, 2025, 07:35:17 am »

well, once you introduce RPE and grade adjustments then i think we're not that far apart. what i'm trying to get away from is thinking about pace full stop as the main target measure for a workout. power would be better than HR, i gather, but, as you said, it's not as easily available. but pace+RPE tracks pretty closely to HR for me, i think. interesting point about magness and houston, do you remember which video that's from, or where you read it?

ETA: i'm not going to start pushing on easy runs, more just letting myself run a little bit more by feel rather than constantly checking my watch to make sure HR doesn't creep over 130 or 140. like if i'm climbing and it goes up to 145, that's ok. if i'm descending and it drops into the low 120s, also ok.

- speed intervals
-- warm up
-- 13 x 200m hard, 200m jogging rest
-- cool down
meant to do 12 but lost count, lol. pace was all over the place, anywhere from 3:04 to 3:28, but mostly in the 3:10-3:20 range.

ETA 2: thinking about my times in the context of how hard i was running today just drives home how unbelievably fast the top milers are going, let alone 800 and below. the fastest 200 i ran today was 37.6 seconds, which extrapolates to a 5:01 mile. the top men are doing 28-29s/200m to hit sub-3:50. obviously, this workout didn't make me tired, that wasn't the point. but i know how hard i was running those reps. those dudes are flyyyyying. i genuinely don't know if i could run a 28s 200m. maybe i should try. might be fun to see how fast i can do a few short distances at some point soon. like 200/400/800/mile.

ETA 3: there is an all-comers track meet near me the last weekend in august. hmmmmmmm...........

Joe · « **Reply #6230 on:** June 04, 2025, 04:19:37 pm »

Quote from: LBSS on June 04, 2025, 07:35:17 am

well, once you introduce RPE and grade adjustments then i think we're not that far apart. what i'm trying to get away from is thinking about pace full stop as the main target measure for a workout. power would be better than HR, i gather, but, as you said, it's not as easily available. but pace+RPE tracks pretty closely to HR for me, i think. interesting point about magness and houston, do you remember which video that's from, or where you read it?

Yeah we probably basically agree. I definitely don't think a workout is only good if I hit my paces (and I'm certainly not going to push into red zone to hit it; I'd rather be too slow than too fast). Just a matter of what tool is used to dial in that "right intensity" feeling in the absence of something like lactacte/power.

Quote from: LBSS on June 04, 2025, 07:35:17 am

ETA 3: there is an all-comers track meet near me the last weekend in august. hmmmmmmm...........

do it! track meets as an adult seem hard to come by

LBSS · « **Reply #6231 on:** **Today** at 07:49:41 am »

yeah i texted a buddy yesterday who's getting back into running after a long layoff when his kids were very little, and has sub-6:00 mile as his main goal. he ran 4:5x in high school, >20 years ago. he's interested in the meet, so i think that's probably happening.

actually, there is a local track club that organizes all-comers meets pretty regularly. i'd just forgotten about them. they're out in the burbs but i have a car now so that's really no barrier.

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Author Topic: a fast and explosive donkey! (Read 2599364 times)

Joe

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