Coaches - What should your Heart Rate be at for Tempo Runs?????

Tempo Time wrote:

I am curious as to what your Heart Rate should be at for Tempo Runs/Aerobic Threshold Runs.

What you really want to know is the upper limit of your zone. You'll see anywhere from 85%-92%, which is huge range in pace difference. The best way to determine the upper limit of your tempo zone, in my opinion, is the Joe Friel method. Do a search for "Joe Friel" and heart rate. In my personal experience, it is accurate to within 1-2 heart beats while the 85%-92% range is 13 beats for me... way too much difference in pace.

Here is an excerpt from Friel's blog at trainingbible.com.

What you need to know is lactate threshold heart rate (LTHR).

There are many ways to find LTHR. The simplest (not the easiest by any means) is to complete a 30-minute time trial all by yourself (no training partners or races). Warm-up and then go as fast as you can for the entire 30 minutes. Treat it as if it is a race. Ten minutes after the start hit the lap button on your heart rate monitor. When you are all done look to see what your average heart rate was that last 20 minutes. This is a good estimation of LTHR, I’ve found. Please note that this is NOT a 10-minute warm-up and a 20-minute race effort. For some reason many athletes assume that’s what I’m saying. It is a 30-minute, all-out effort. We are just looking at the last 20 minutes of it.

Very insightful, that's good stuff. What heart rate monitors have you found work the best or would you recommend?

Also, how to you determine your max heartrate?

Lastly, do you have an email address to contact you and follow up further?

ukathleticscoach wrote:

Do you think the East Africans are checking the Hadd thread?

My use of the name "Read the Hadd threads" was directed at the OP, not you. But I agree with your earlier post: it's easier to naturally sense your lactate/anaerobic threshold when you live/train at high altitude (and race at sea level). I've found that over time, when you've returned to sea level training, that you lose this "sense" of the threshold. This is where a heart rate monitor can be helpful.

ukathleticscoach wrote:

Do you think the East Africans are checking the Hadd thread?

When you have government funded camps and are overseen by doctors, coaches agents, and drug dealers.... why would you need to check the Hadd thread?

What's Hadd thread?

Some of the threads dissappeared.

From the "Good threads" permanent page:

Hadd Training

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?board=1&id=131180&thread=131180

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?board=1&id=121489&thread=121489

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?board=1&id=74355&thread=74355

These link works:

http://www.cypressop.com/misc/Hadd%20Threads.htm

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?board=1&thread=42240&page=0

wellnow wrote:

Good luck searching for the Holy Grail of distance running Ray-san.

Oh thanks!

In my never-ending quest for the holy grail, I found a link to a performance model, which purports to show "the current paradigm" of the currently accepted understanding of exercise physiology:

It is originally dated 1996, so surely it needs some updating to incorporate the latest knowledge from this century.

I see it includes aerobic features like VO2max, Lactate Threshold, as well as non-aerobic features like mechanical efficiency (neuro-muscular coordination? running skill?), and psychological factors (concentration?).

Do you have any comments regarding the representativity of this model with respect to performance and training?

Specifically:

- Would you call this model part of the "aerobic dogma"?

- Does this model ignore "running skill", "neuro-muscular coordination", "longer running stride", and "concentration"?

- How would you change/improve this model? Would you delete some boxes? Add some new ones? Rename some existing ones? Shrink some boxes, and enlarge others? Maybe the "Central Governor" could be plugged in their somewhere as a filter, right next to, or replacing "Resistance to Movement".

- Maybe the size of the boxes should change over time, as the athlete accumulates miles and experience.

- Maybe it's too complex? Maybe it's not complex enough (The author himself gives no less than 8 things that could be added)?

Please take the time to provide a reasoned and coherent and self-contained response. If you can link your answers to an external source (e.g. Robergs, Noakes, Canova, etc.), that would be helpful.

dont bother... you cant argue with someone on ideology. they are so intertwined in their beliefs that if hard evidence was in front of them they still would refuse to admit it.

Thought this one through wrote:

wellnow wrote:

Good luck searching for the Holy Grail of distance running Ray-san.

Holy Grail - you mean like your "learned skill theory"

You seem to be as thouroughly closed minded in terms of your "learned skill theory" as you claim other people are about their "aerobic devlopment theories".

Maybe there is some truth in each theory and so maybe you shouldn't make the evidence fit into your theory but look at things objectively and build your theory around what evidence shows.

Certainly there is a skill to running and becoming better and more efficent at that skill is very important to getting better asa runner, but that doesn't mean that aerobic development isn't important or even that doesn't happen as you improve your skill. Which came first the chicken or the egg?

**********************************************

Neuromuscular coordination is not my theory. You may think that you have thought this one through, but it's obvious that you really haven't.

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HA HA (genuine, not sarcasm), good response Ray-San, thanks for the laugh.

Haven't I already explained all this to you though? You want me to go through the whole thing again? That's going to take weeks.

Take a 40 year old out of shape housewife. She does no Vo2max, no tempo runs, all she does is jog 3-5 miles a day. She does this for 12 weeks. She improves her Vo2max and her lactate threshold without doing Vo2max or lactate threshold work. Why?

A 15:00 5k runner does Vo2max work twice a week for 12 weeks. At the end of 12 weeks his Vo2max doesn't improve but his SPEED at Vo2max does. He also miraculously improves his lactate threshold. Why?

Alan

ukathleticscoach wrote:

Do you think the East Africans are checking the Hadd thread?

Hayduke wrote:

When you have government funded camps and are overseen by doctors, coaches agents, and drug dealers.... why would you need to check the Hadd thread?

Have you ever actually been over there or even spoken to an East African runner? By the way I've got Getaneh Tessema's old Ethiopian vest back home which he swapped with me. Don't write about something you know nothing about

I do a 4m tempo run almost every week. It always feels hard and like there is no way that i could hold that pace for an hour. Yet i'm running at a pace that is 10-15 seconds slower than i've run a 10 mile race.

It always makes me question what my true tempo pace should be.

shoulod be no more than 64 bpm

Ray-san, i told you so.

Even as a percentage, this isn't a constant. It will vary with fitness.

I also agree with the poster who said that a lower than normal pulse in this season occurs when I am tired, and am struggling to generate the neccessary pace.

What about the variation with age. Perceptively, I feel that I'm running pretty comfortably when I do 4 miles at my 10k pace (I can run 4 x 200m. fast stride after a laps recovery).

If I am fresh and work off % heart rate or 5k time, it feels far too easy. I'm thinking that as a 52-year-old who has been training hard for about 40 years, my cardio-vascular development is very limited, and that with age what has dropped is not the lactate threshold speed, but the muscular strength to maintain threshold speed for the time/distance that one would have been able to at 25-30 years old.

I do have a subtle sense of humor -- sometimes it even escapes me. I'm glad you had a good laugh.

I noticed I forgot to mention Brooks in my list of sources.

It's hard for me to express or even decide what I want from you, or why. Of course *I* know what you mean -- unfortunately for you, that just makes two of us, and you must know I don't agree with some of your conclusions, or the relative significance.

For me, and my limited purpose, simply put, that model is not broken. It's also not so aerobic nor dogmatic. I have tried in vain to see why you so desperately want to throw out the "old paradigm", and replace it with a new, neuro-muscular model.

Even Dr. Noakes Central Governor Theory, probably the most radical thinking in exercise physiology today, doesn't break the model, but just complicates it. If necessary, just insert a box between "potential performance" and "achieved performance", with some inputs to outside temperature, humidity, glycogen levels, hydration, etc.

I don't want you to spend weeks though, on my account - If I wanted to wait weeks, I'll just go back and re-read "let's get up to date here".

Thanks for the concern. We've been dancing around in circles for some time now, so I kind of know what to expect by now.Maybe your right -- time to find a new dance partner.

Hayduke wrote:

Ray-san, i told you so.

Runningart2004 wrote:

Take a 40 year old out of shape housewife. She does no Vo2max, no tempo runs, all she does is jog 3-5 miles a day. She does this for 12 weeks. She improves her Vo2max and her lactate threshold without doing Vo2max or lactate threshold work. Why?

A 15:00 5k runner does Vo2max work twice a week for 12 weeks. At the end of 12 weeks his Vo2max doesn't improve but his SPEED at Vo2max does. He also miraculously improves his lactate threshold. Why?

Alan

Improved neuromuscular coordination.