It's Thursday and I have completed every scheduled workout so far this week. YEAH!!!!
I love this feeling. I feel tired, but that's from pushing myself. I feel strong, because I've been working all parts of my body. I can feel all the muscles in my body (or so it seems); I can feel them move and can see them under the skin and I just love it. I really feel like an athlete.
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Last night it was lower body strength training. I love doing lower body because I really want a round ass. For my strength training I do this modified boot camp. I warm up on the elliptical for 5 mins then whip out the weights. I do my reps then hop on the elliptical for the rest period. It really works me hard and I get weights and aerobic training at the same time. I end up doing an hour with 1/2 being strenght and 1/2 being aerobic. Nice. So I'm feeling good about that...... This morning I got up and did my 5 x 400m run. It was good.
I got this iTunes program that you can use to set up intervals. So, I set 2:30 runs with 1:00 recovery for my run this morning. It's pretty cool. It abbreviates the songs, so everytime the song changes it's time to change your stride. Fun. I like it because I don't have to pay attention. I can just run and listen to music and change my pace when the song changes - nice.
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I got into a conversation yesterday with another athlete about heartrates. This is something that's really bugging me. According to the charts and some very simplistic tests I've taken, my max HR should be around 176-180. Now that's all fine and good, BUT, I can sustain a HR of 169 for an extended period of time. During my run this morning (I did 5 x 400m) I had HR of 179 -and no, I was not dying. 80% of my max should be 144. At that HR I can go literally forever and sing at the same time. I wonder what my real max HR is. I don't think I'll ever know and I'm not sure a HR monitor will ever be of any use to me.
I wonder if this has something to do with the fact that I have been doing aerobic exercise since I was 19 years old. For those keeping track, that's 28 years. I began doing aerobics when they first hit the scene. I had an LP record and a picture book. This record lasted an hour and was incredibly unsafe and totally kicked my ass. I got my first VCR strictly to play aerobic videos. I have always done them and I think my heart has benefited from all this exercise. One of the things that attracted me to running and tris was that aerobics had really gotten too easy. I could not find something that would really challenge me; you would not believe the collection of tapes and DVD's I have if anyone is interested.
When I had been doing aerobics for about 5 years, someone told me that the best way to judge how hard you're working is your preceived exertion (can you hold a conversation and sing- not working hard enough; can you talk but not really easily - that's about right). They also said they best way to judge how strong you are getting is by how quickly you recover. These things have always stayed with me and I base my exertion on these principles. Now, I recover really, really quickly. I can push myself flat out, total effort, and once I stop I'm fine within a minute or two. Also, my resting HR is 45 bpm.
I don't know if this makes any sense at all but I really want to train right but I'm not sure how to do it. I guess I'll just continue to use preceived exertion and use my HR monitor and try to figure it out for myself. If I can run at 165 bpm for a sustained period and talk some I think I can safely assume that that would be about 80% of max and my max HR would be around 210. Have they ever tested this 220-your age on anyone. What would they do, run you till you die and say, Yup, that was the max HR.
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What else. Blogger sucks!!! I've been trying to leave comments on some blogs and I'm not sure if they are there or not. I kept getting messages saying this page can not be displayed or I didn't enter the word verification right. Blogger - ugh!!!!
3 comments:
My max heart rate is way higher than the prediction equations, too. I think that's just an individual thing.
You may be able to operate longer at a higher percentage of your VO2max because you're not LIKE an athlete, you ARE a fit athlete!!
Check out this Kolata's book, Ultimate Fitness. She writes about how bogus those formulas are, the value of using a HR monitor, and other fitness related topics.
Usually it's 226-age for women (220-age for men). But still, your max might be higher than that. You can do a max HR test yourself (preferably with supervision) by running a series of hills at max effort (after a warm-up) or on a track or treadmill going all out (to the point where you feel like you just can't go any harder).
And there are other formulas besides simply 60% of max (called the Maffetone method) where you also factor in your resting HR.
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