Three days after the horrendously windy race, it's still pretty damn windy and I'm training in it again. It's not quite as bad as it was at the weekend but yesterday I was battling 18 mph winds or thereabouts and today it was a little worse, and absolutely chucking it down to boot.
I've been experimenting a fair bit recently with training based on heart rate. I've been encouraged to do it by a couple of friends and further encouraged by watching the lovely and ridiculously cheerful Jake Lowe's facebook feed. It makes perfect sense to me, but I find it hard to just "let go" of pace. I find that I don't really trust it and I want to know how fast I'm running, is it fast enough? I have to be quite strict with myself. I programme the sessions into my watch and set it to beep at me - which is does quite insistently - if I'm outside the target heart rate zone. I then only look at it if it starts beeping and I don't have pace on the screen so I don't worry about pace.
Yesterday I had a (relatively easy bearing in mind Sunday's race) interval run which involved 7 miles running with miles 2, 4 and 6 at around 10k pace. For the purpose of marathon training I'm taking 10k pace to be around 6:35s. I've run 10k quicker but right now I probably couldn't; there seems little point basing it off a PB pace I'm probably not currently capable of. For this sort of session I would normally use pace rather than heart rate but given the wind that seemed ridiculous, so I programmed the whole thing into my watch and used that. It worked really well, the three miles effort were at varying paces. I ran one in a very exposed spot with a strong crosswind and headwind which was 6:49, one with a lot of shelter then a great tailwind for the last couple of minutes at 6:29 and the final one straight into the headwind with a higher target heart rate as it was the last, I ran at 6:45, and bloody hell did I know about it. Overall though, I felt like it worked.
Today was going to be a rest day, I'm concious of the miles in my legs and fatigue stopping me running as well as I should do, but I decided at the last minute to switch my run days. I'm only planning on running four days this week, so by running today, I'll give myself two run free days before the weekend. I felt up to doing the workout today, not a particularly arduous one, so I decided to just go and do it and then hope to go into the weekend with fresher legs.
Today's run was very simple, and it was a heart rate based run. 6 miles with a target heart rate of 150-155, which falls into the "just a regular run" category for me, and on a "normal" day I'd expect to run around 7:30s - 7:40s. Today was not a "normal" day, it was a horrid day, so I anticipated some fairly wide fluctuations in pace. I was also expecting to find it a frustrating slog, because heart rate doesn't take into account utterly knackered legs.
Bearing in mind the knackered legs I broke one of my personal rules, and ran solo with headphones so I could listen to music. I almost never do this because I don't believe it's entirely safe, but I was after all the help I could get today. I told myself I'd slip one earphone out on the section of quieter road, and that would do for the purpose of personal safety, although if I'm honest I did completely forget. So there I was, in the howling wind and absolutely pouring rain, with my little bum bag with my phone in, and my headphones on, being not at all a proper runner.
Bearing in mind the knackered legs I broke one of my personal rules, and ran solo with headphones so I could listen to music. I almost never do this because I don't believe it's entirely safe, but I was after all the help I could get today. I told myself I'd slip one earphone out on the section of quieter road, and that would do for the purpose of personal safety, although if I'm honest I did completely forget. So there I was, in the howling wind and absolutely pouring rain, with my little bum bag with my phone in, and my headphones on, being not at all a proper runner.
I put the phone on random shuffle and just accepted I'd get what I was given. At first this worked well, a bit of Led Zeplin, perfect for my target effort level, then some Simon and Garfunkel, and my the start of Wilne Lane I was happily and loudly single "Cecelia" while steadfastly ignoring my tired legs. Then the phone decided to treat me to a considerable amount of Queens of the Stone Age, which I love, but which is a little less cheerful trotting and singing along and a little more listen and enjoy in my head. I turned the volume up and tried forget about the legs and just focus on two things, good form despite fatigue and the music. By three miles in I was incredibly grateful for the music because I was bloody knackered, drenched, and starting to battle the crosswind. That's OK, I figured, I'll run until my watch beeps at me that I'm at the top end of heart rate zone, and then I'll just ease off a little and stay there. This is what I've got used to doing.
More Queens of the Stone Age, one of my favourite songs, and I found myself chanting "burn the witch" under my breath in time to the music just as I came into Draycott. Sorry people of Draycott, I'm sure you're all very nice really. But I was still running, trying my level best, and waiting for the watch to beep to tell me I'm at the top end of my heart rate zone so I can ease back just a little and stay there. The beep wasn't coming. I kept thinking I'm trying hard, I really am, how am I still shuffling? I started to think that I'd just made a mistake about feeling up to running today, and that clearly I wasn't. I resigned myself to just finishing the run, because realistically my legs weren't up to a great deal more and it was getting windier.
When I got to West Park I caved and checked my watch, which falls into the very naughty category. At this point I discovered I'd just run a 7:15 mile squarely into a 20 mph headwind, and some alarm bells start to ring. A further look at my watch showed that my heart rate was by this point well over 160. Then the penny dropped. I took my headphones out. My watched did what I like to call its "cross beep". A few seconds later it didn't another. My poor little watch had in fact been furiously beeping at me for some time, but I couldn't hear because of course I was running with rock music blaring full volume into my ears. I'd also missed the watch telling me my workout was over and it was time to cool down and jog home, so instead of 6 miles I'd done 6.5. Boy did I feel like a complete spanner.
When I got to West Park I caved and checked my watch, which falls into the very naughty category. At this point I discovered I'd just run a 7:15 mile squarely into a 20 mph headwind, and some alarm bells start to ring. A further look at my watch showed that my heart rate was by this point well over 160. Then the penny dropped. I took my headphones out. My watched did what I like to call its "cross beep". A few seconds later it didn't another. My poor little watch had in fact been furiously beeping at me for some time, but I couldn't hear because of course I was running with rock music blaring full volume into my ears. I'd also missed the watch telling me my workout was over and it was time to cool down and jog home, so instead of 6 miles I'd done 6.5. Boy did I feel like a complete spanner.
I had a laugh, called myself a twat, and stopped. No wait, I stopped, tried not to cry, called myself a twat and then jogged home. I laughed later. I definitely stopped first.
So in summary, training on heart rate, I'm becoming big fan. Training with music, well, it helps sometimes and who cares? Using the vibrate function on my watch, yeah, that.
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