Waterford half marathon

[DavidF]

Shocks

Well done. But you would have been 2 mins quicker if you hadn't that Aldi muck adorning your lovely calves.

On a more serious note, your HR info is interesting. What is your max HR? it might be benficial for people to know what % of max HR you are training at at the various levels ie tempo, long run etc.. I believe heart rate training is a great way of avoiding 'junk miles' whether you are bike or run training

[DavidC]

Nice report Socks http://racing795.com/2012/12/04/waterfo ... mber-2012/

[BShaugh]

Approx 183 David . I think it takes a good bit of time to really understand what your own heart is doing. For example from running a bit with Frank his max is what you expect for his age but it definitely rises slower than most people. He can obviously pump a fair volume of blood, we were going around gibbet hill one day and mine was 162 and his was something like 143 going up a mother of a hill. I always found it hard to get the heart rate up on the bike but maybe my cadence was too low. Reading Roche and dan Martin they time trial at something like 165 plus (I know they are in their 20s but still)

[DavidF]

Frank is what you expect for his age but it definitely rises slower than most people. He can obviously pump a fair volume of blood)

Interesting observations there Shocks.

[don]

'Frank rises slower than most people', that's the quote of the week.

As for HR based training, well I'm no expert here and generally it's great for running and I'm sure the likes of Tom may have better insights here with his performance levels. However on the bike side, I've been reading up a bit about 'Power Based Training' recently, in fact Joe Friel's book titled 'The Power Metre Handbook' is a good read. I haven't finished it yet but anyone is welcome to it when I am. He describes HR Only Based Training as 'Like using the fuel guage on your car to determine how fast you're driving'. I suppose this is particularly the case with the MTB side of the house, where it is a total impossibility to keep heart rates at a constant, so if you don't train the way you race then you will not reap the benefits. I suppose the only issue and it's a pretty major one, is the cost of a bike power metre . Trying to get my hands on a second hand one, but they are few and far between.....

[Orls]

http://www.runningforfitness.org/calc/h ... tors/hrmax

I find this website interesting for various calculations, including HR.

[BShaugh]

' He describes HR Only Based Training as 'Like using the fuel guage on your car to determine how fast you're driving'. ..

I wouldn't agree with that analogy - your HR tells you how hard your body is working at a particular moment all be it with a slight lag, you can generally derive how long you can sustain at that HR from it - aka your fuel tank
A particular person could sustain 170BPM average over a 10km but only 155bpm over a marathon.

The power meter on a bike is doing something similar except it smoothes out graph of a rising heart rate and is generally used in conjunction with a HRM. If you watch any of the tours most of the guys are wearing HRMs in time trials esp.

Maybe Santa will deliver you one Don?

[don]

Sorry Shocks, I was rferring to the bike. The old Power Metre are pretty useless on the 10k's or Marathons, so it's the HR Monitor for that.

All elite cyclists wear HR Monitors to measure Training Stress Scores TSS, however most base their training now on Power. Look at this article from Bradley Wiggins after he won the Tour this year (particulalry 'Wiggins Program' section). All his training, programs and thresholds are based on power not HR and is it some power, he's threshold is 475 watts. try sustain that for more than 30 seconds

http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/news/lat ... ining.html

[BShaugh]

Power meter is the job alright Don if one falls your way. My only point was I didn't agree with that guys analogy, that there is great value in using a HRM on the bike