• MennoMelange
  • Monday, February 27, 2006

    in the zone

    oh, the ups and downs of training... and trying to train right. I knew that if I wanted to put up a big goal to shoot for, and actually make it, I'd have to get some help training for it. So I did. I've been reading about running, talking to people about running, gone to running clinics, and had workouts with a coach. Before all this, I knew that it was good to have a long slow run about once a week. But I didnt know how long, or for that matter, how slow.
    After joining up with a local run group, I got a schedule of distances to cover before the race. The schedule works up to about 24km, which should be done 3 weeks before the race. Cool. Distance, check. Now for the slow part. With prompting from the coach, christmas money burning its way out of my pocket, and a geek's love of gadgets, I got a heart rate monitor. After setting it up, (then RTFM) then setting it up again, I wore it during this weeks run. And, as a result, I found out that slow really does mean slow. The optimal heart rate range for long slow distance runs is 65 to 75%. and running that slow is pretty difficult. Especially when you have 18km to run, and you dont want to take all day. It took all day. I could have finished the run in less time than 2 hours and 15 minutes. But they tell me it is better this way. I guess we'll see in a couple of months.

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