houston marathon

(see also: houston marathon, )

This week, I houston marathon stepped up the number of runs and also the pace I houston marathon at.  An update on the sessions this week:

Tuesday

Schedule: 1 mile jog + 2×1.5 miles (12 mins) with 800m (5 min) recovery + 1 mile jog.

Total target time: 52 mins

Actual time: 53:42

Wednesday 

Schedule: 5 miles in 50 mins (10 min mile pace)

Total target time: 50 mins

Actual time: 49:22

Thursday

Schedule: 1 mile jog + 2 mile (18 mins) brisk + 1 mile jog

Total target time: 40 mins

Actual time: 40:36

Each of these runs were between 4 and 5.5 miles, which are not long runs.  These did present a couple of challenges for me though:

1)  Running on three consectutive days: in all my previous training over the years, I have rarely run two days in a row as houston marathon always stuck to the run one day, rest one day approach.  Running on consecutive days is thing for me, so I did not know how it would turn out.  I considered switching houston marathon 3rd day for a swim just in case, but when it came to it, I decided to give it a go on the treadmill and see how it felt and it was no problem.  Getting back to running after 6 weeks and recovering from the Achilles injury is still on my mind alot, but as these were short runs my legs coped ok

2) My easy running pace is slower than 10 minute mile pace.  For the half-marathon in November, I used my heart-rate as the  target for all the training runs, not the time taken to cover the miles, so sticking at around 136 bpm for easy runs and 152 bpm for faster sessions still meant that I rarely went faster than 10 minute miles.  All of the sessions this week meant at least 10 minutes miles and much of it was faster.  Running at this pace is not natural for me yet, but I was pleased that having the time targets meant that I could push harder than would and did not feel that I was pushing too hard.

I have read that conventional wisdom says that running most of your long runs at a pace that gives a heart rate in lower zone (around 130bpm for me) should be the target.  Consistently training at this pace should see my heart rate stay around 130bpm but my get faster.  However, I have found that this marathon is way too slow for me as this gives me a 11-12 min mile pace, and I need to run 9 minute miles to clock a sub-4hr marathon.  I have a really low resting heart rate (around 52 bpm) and find that running at 13obpm is way too easy.  houston marathon calculated my working heart rate (around 176bpm) in an attempt to refine the lower/ middle / upper heart rate zones, but this still gives a lower zone target heart rate of around 130bpm.  I dont quite understand why my resting heart rate is so low, yet when running I hit the target zones at a slow pace.

So, for the runs this week, I ignored my heart rate ran at the proscribed pace regardless (I know this may not be a good idea long term, but I wanted to try it on the shorter runs).  I also know that for most of the races I have done, I have averaged around 160bpm and not been completely exhausted when I finished (I always feel that I could keep going for longer). All of my runs this week were harder than normal but they were achievable.  Hopefully this will increase my pace and over the coming weeks my average heart rate will drop even as I near the 9 minute mile houston marathon pace.

Two more runs to come over the weekend - one short and one long (-ish: 8miles) so I will run to at around 10min 30sec mile pace and see how it feels.

Good luck to John Rankin who is running the Houston Marathon this weekend and well done to runswithwind for completing the Disneyland Marathon (that sounds like a bizarre place race!!)