Weekly Totals and Review, Dec. 13th Through 19th.
Sunday, December 19, 2010 at 7:41PM
Another strong week, but with a different strategy and it's own issues. I've had a lot of success with increasing workouts to maximal efforts at the end, but I've cut down on the frequency of those since I know they have limited returns. A few in a week is a good thing, but making most of your workouts like that will exhaust you and make you prone to injury. So, I've cut back on the number of them some and allowing the growth to slow a little bit.
Beautiful location, great training, awesome results
We also had to travel out of town again and it's tough getting in workouts when you've got to travel six or seven hours on the weekend. Once in a while is one thing, but this time of year is full of weekends like that. Meh.
Anyway, I got in over 50 miles of running again, and that's really good stuff. I'm also getting extremely good at getting in and staying in zone 2, which is an indicator of excellent endurance and nutrition. On top of all that, the max I can get my HR to hit is climbing and so is my LT, which is awesome for overall speed. I'm hoping that soon I'll be able to get in over 15 hours per week and really build up some mega endurance and speed for Ironman racing.
You can click on the bolded workout titles to see the HR graphs and more.
Monday AM - 3300 yard swim, 48:25 minutes
The nutrition of "One Bowl Method" continues to unfold and impress! This is the first time in recent memory where I got up on Monday morning with plenty of energy to go swim.
Got a late start due to recording a little bit of audio for the podcast.
Form work - Noticed that the legs are a red flag for your form. If they aren't straight and resistance-free (no wiggling), then you are working sideways through the water. Bad! Get as neutral as possible.
Monday PM - 1 hour run on treadmill, 6.93 miles
Nice little breakthrough run. My new "easy" pace is 8:13 min/mile at 140 BPM. That's a big jump from 10:00 min/mile and 120 BPM. This improvement has everything to do with eating less and speedwork.
I'm also going to label the 7 MPH button on the treadmill "Kona" and everything slower as "Fail". I like that. A lot.
Tuesday AM - 1 hour Bike ride on rollers, 20.0 miles
Another breakthrough workout. I've upped my threshold by around 10 BPM and improved strength tremendously. I can tell that my muscles give out before my lungs, so there's strength to gain for sure.
Did this with no TV, just listening to a Pandora station made up of Lamb of God, Static-X, and Korn. Decided during this ride that I'm going to do my damnest to qualify for Kona.
Tuesday PM - 1 hour barefoot run on treadmill, 7.22 miles
Hard run, trying to find top end of potential of sustained effort before failure. Looks like it is about 162 BPM and 6:30 pace at the moment. When I hit that, both hamstrings freaked out with twinges of pain, so I shut it down and backed off.
Excellent speed workout. Bare feet got so hot that I had to soak them in cold water to cool them off!
Wednesday AM - 55 minute swim, 3900 yards, 1:26 pace.
Bumped up the pace to 1:26 per 100 yds based on the last swim on a 1:28 being a little easy. Well, I set myself up for a workout with this one! I struggled a bit towards the end trying to keep the pace. I spent a good portion of the swim exploring different stroke techniques and appropriate times to exert more muscle strength within the stroke pattern itself. Good swim.
Wednesday evening - 1 hour push run, 6.44 miles
Outdoor run with Roxy, mixing in core work while running easy. Did 15 push ups and 10 squats every 10 minutes. Did 6 pull ups each of the four times I passed the monkey bars on the local playground. Ran easy, sped up during the second half, trying to get close but not past LT.
Thursday Morning - 20.65 mile bike on rollers, 1 hour
Hell YEAH! This "Heartbreaker" workout continues to blow me away. I warmed up and hit 140 BPM at 20 minutes in and then elevated my heart rate 1 BPM every minute until failure. I could feel my LT hit at 155 and kept going until 167. Just a week ago, my LT was 140 and failure was around 160. Huge improvements with a simple workout.
I recovered for a few seconds and then finished the hour in the Pain Cave - hovering at the edge of LT.
Friday Morning - Barefoot treadmill run, 1 hour, 8 miles.
No HR graph because my watch picked up the footpod on my shoe in the closet and thought I wasn't moving.
No run last night because I drank too much caffeine yesterday and then felt like crap.
Put Pandora on some super evil sh*t and let it fly. Kept escalating speed and HR until I hit 9.6 MPH (treadmill goes to 10) and 170 bpm at the end of the hour. That's a 6:18 pace! Totally in Kona Qualifier Mode. Hell Yeah.
Saturday Morning - 1.5 hour push-run, 10.77 miles
At Emily's family's place for X-mas. They live on the outskirts of Tyler, TX. Nice and rural with plenty of big hills. Got the HR up into zone 2 (first part of HR graph is off) and then stayed there. Ran a mix of country roads and Tollroad 49. Great run. Already getting frustrated with food options. Might have to go to grocery store next visit.
Did 15 pushups and squats every 10 minutes for the last hour.
Cycling ninja.
Saturday Afternoon - 3 hour bike ride, 50 miles
Great three hour ride, if a little cold. Stayed in zone 3 except when chased by dogs and maxing out twice at the end. You can see my energy levels fading slightly due to underfueling and then pick back up at hour three after eating a guacamole sandwich.
Good hill at the end of bike/run workouts used to max out.
Sunday morning - 2 hour run, 14 miles
Started off running with Emily, shot a video, then she turned back and I kept going. Great run, getting very strong at staying in zone 2. Capped off the run with a maximal effort on the last hill. HR graph is wonky because I lost GPS signal a few times.
Reader Comments (6)
I think I missed the original post about the Heartbreaker workout...what exactly is it?
Rachel, it's AWESOME!!! Warm up for 15 to 30 minutes until you're right in the middle of your Zone 2 range. Then, for the next 30 minutes, elevate your HR by one beat per minute. When you finish, you'll be blasted. I've been doing this for a few weeks and it's improved my overall speed by a huge margin. Enjoy!
It seems like whenever I run, and at whatever pace, my heartrate is always through the roof (never sub-155). Any tricks or strategies for getting HR under control while running and/or improving pace at a constant HR?
You need to train at a lower HR for a while. You are going too hard. You need to spend many hours a week in your zone 2, no faster. New people hate this because they have to run so slow, they often have to walk. But in a couple of months, you'll have built up the base aerobic fitness to run at an easy pace without your HR being so high.
Is it normal to gave good fitness (and corresponding HR) in certain sports but not others? I can push much harder (go faster) it seems when swimming or biking (even though these are newer disciplines to me) without such a high HR.
Totally. The sports are related, but not the same. Your breaking points, muscle strength, and efficiency levels will be different.