Friday, February 4, 2011

My treadmill is fraudulent

My treadmill is a Leisure Works Preformance Treadmill...what a lot of crap. There has been nothing leisurly about training for a 1/2 marathon. It's actually a lot of work, both to fit in, and then to execute the miles as laid out by Hal Higdon http://www.halhigdon.com/halfmarathon/
But I know it is worth it, the days I want most not to do it, are probably the days I get the most benefit out of it. Benefit by way of getting the snot out of my brain as Nadine calls it.
I have just about finished week 2...again...I don't actually have a half planned until May so I went back to the beginning to incorporate some heart rate training into my plan.
Heart rate training has been really interesting. Mark Allen writes about it in this article http://www.duathlon.com/articles/1460. Basically you calculate a heart rate that is your maximum aerobic heart rate. It increases your endurance dramatically, or so I'm told, and your legs give our before your lungs! FAB!

Two weeks into it and I've noticed a few things.
1. It takes A LOT of patience. Running, if you can call it that, far slower, and then having to stop for walk breaks to bring my heart rate down to where it should be!!! Sheesh, how humbling. I'm not as fit as I once thought!

2. It really seems to work. I had to holy moly slow down to "running" a super slow pace to keep my heart rate below the level I had calculated, but in a few days I was able to maintain that heart rate at a full MPH more than when I started, and could run for longer before my rate would elevate past the point I was working at AND it would recover faster...hmmmm maybe there is something to this. I'm still far from where I'd want to be but definitely seeing improvement

3. It's winter here and I'm basically religated to running on my treadmill. I have a love/hate relationship with this thing. I love to be able to run somewhere in the dead of winter but it's SO BORING. With heart rate training I've had to cut out having spontaneous dance parties and playing air guitar and air drums while I run. If I do it, my heart rate elevates past where I want to, if I don't, I wanna poke my eyes out from boredom...I gotta get a TV down there.

So there you have it. A 1/2 on the horizon and a treadmill that lies to me...but I love love love love love my new Garmin :)

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