Getting frustrated with “jogging” at 95%

jogi wrote:

BMI 18.5.

Eat more

Throw away the heart rate monitor. I'm serious. Throw it away. Learn to listen to your body, not a watch. How does your body FEEL?

throw it away wrote:

Throw away the heart rate monitor. I'm serious. Throw it away. Learn to listen to your body, not a watch. How does your body FEEL?

Hungry?

Try this wrote:

jogi wrote:

BMI 18.5.

Eat more

I eat heartily but have been at 6’1” / 140- since my twenties. All vitals are normal.

What happens when you go harder? Does your HR just stall out-- like does 188 feel much harder than your "conversational pace" at 180?

I reread your post. I think that you are not getting an accurate max HR reading. You need to run longer than a mile to get it, and a 400 is way to short-- you will feel like crap at the end of these, but your heart rate won't be at its highest point. I would suggest something like 4 x 4 min hill repeats, 2 mins rest, trying to do them really hard with the last one all out.

throw it away wrote:

Throw away the heart rate monitor. I'm serious. Throw it away. Learn to listen to your body, not a watch. How does your body FEEL?

I’ve gone by feel too for many months but am honestly not sure how to rate feel. Here is what I know: I can run for 45-60 mins in the 170s while breathing through my nose and taking slow long breaths like once every ~2-3 seconds. I can talk pantingly. I feel completely in control and feel like I’m jogging, not running.

I also know that it feels like a breeze jogging briefly or run-walking in the 150s and much easier than the 170s and easier than 160s. So I’d like it to feel easier than it currently feels.

Here is another distinguisher: if I run 4 miles at 175 bpm, I can usually feel it somewhat in my legs the next morning. If I run-walk 7+ miles at 150 bpm, I can’t tell if I ran the previous day or not except by memory. I’d like to run continuously every day without being able to tell if I ran the previous day, but can’t seem to get there.

ssss wrote:

I reread your post. I think that you are not getting an accurate max HR reading. You need to run longer than a mile to get it, and a 400 is way to short-- you will feel like crap at the end of these, but your heart rate won't be at its highest point. I would suggest something like 4 x 4 min hill repeats, 2 mins rest, trying to do them really hard with the last one all out.

Ok thanks, haven’t tried hill repeats yet, though I have found that hard flat intervals usually don’t push my heart rate to even 188 because I think my legs get too tired. 188 was the max I got at the end of my hardest 400, mile, or even 5K (with the last half mile or so as hard as I could push). Even if my max were 200 (how much more can it be in the forties really?), there is no way I can run continuously even at 75% or 150 bpm. My lowest steady HR while jogging has been ~167 on great days and I’m trying hard to jog easy, but it typically goes up and settles somewhere in the 170s with max 180+.

To answer your previous question, it’s weird how the same heart rate feels differently. If I’m jogging, 180 feels like my heart rate sneakily crept up there but it still feels like I’m jogging and can keep going for quite a while. If I’m running hard, I’ll get to 185 in a minute or two and it hurts in a way I know I can’t sustain for very long. It almost feels like I have a very narrow range — like 168 to 188 — within which all of my 5 heart rate zones lie.

Try the Easy Interval Method by Klaas Lok.

You can go off the pace charts instead of heart rate. The method seems to do a good job of teaching running economy at different "comfortably/ hard" speeds. There are walking breaks and long jogging recovery periods to keep the daily workouts pretty easy overall.

You might be a guy without a lot of slow twitch fibers (type I), which is what you are working on by keeping the heartrate low. Getting more runs up towards the lactate threshold and back down, can help build more capillary density in the type IIa muscles, which will help make your fast twitch muscles become more endurant.

Stop using a heart rate monitor.

I always take hr readings with a grain of salt. On an occasional easy day, take your hr the old fashioned way, with a watch and counting beats in 10 seconds. Compare that rate to what your monitor says, to fact check it, because if you were conversational, I doubt your hr was really 184.

Also, I think you've just been running for only a year after 39 years of being sedentary. It's going to take time. It sounds like you've been doing the right things. I would continue to walk run, slowly advancing to not needing to walk at all.

I also think the advice to do a little bit of quality lactate work is a good one. The key there is "a little bit." It is just to help you develop some strength after a lifetime of no running.

At this point screw it just forget about the heart rate and go entirely by feel. If you feel you can run 4 miles and come back the next day and do it again, then do it.

The numbers might be way out of whack due to a sedentary lifestyle which led to an underdeveloped cardiovascular system, and the numbers will continue to be weird until you improve your fitness.

SprintDude wrote:

Try the Easy Interval Method by Klaas Lok.

You can go off the pace charts instead of heart rate. The method seems to do a good job of teaching running economy at different "comfortably/ hard" speeds. There are walking breaks and long jogging recovery periods to keep the daily workouts pretty easy overall.

You might be a guy without a lot of slow twitch fibers (type I), which is what you are working on by keeping the heartrate low. Getting more runs up towards the lactate threshold and back down, can help build more capillary density in the type IIa muscles, which will help make your fast twitch muscles become more endurant.

Thank you, will try it. The book’s reviews do read like a different approach from traditional ones.

And your hypothesis about twitch fibers perfectly describes how I feel. I have verified that I’m actually faster run-walking than running for anything over 4-5 miles. My 10K training PB is 10’ pace running continuously but I have run-walked 5+ miles at 9’20” pace during training and am pretty sure I can run-walk 10K even faster close to 9’ pace if I ran it with a race mindset.

holterskolter2 wrote:

I always take hr readings with a grain of salt. On an occasional easy day, take your hr the old fashioned way, with a watch and counting beats in 10 seconds. Compare that rate to what your monitor says, to fact check it, because if you were conversational, I doubt your hr was really 184.

Also, I think you've just been running for only a year after 39 years of being sedentary. It's going to take time. It sounds like you've been doing the right things. I would continue to walk run, slowly advancing to not needing to walk at all.

I also think the advice to do a little bit of quality lactate work is a good one. The key there is "a little bit." It is just to help you develop some strength after a lifetime of no running.

Thanks for the tips. Just to clarify, I’ve not been totally sedentary (except for my day job). I’ve indeed been generally fit via other sports like cycling, swimming, soccer, badminton, etc. much of my life. Before I started running, I’d hit the gym 3-4 days a week, usually some cardio and then weights. I just never gave running a shot until last December because I thought I hated it, but didn’t realize I would end up loving it.

I also agree that you should ditch the HRM. Do most of your runs at a pace where you could easily carry on a conversation with someone.

Once or twice a week depending on how you are feeling, ramp up the pace for a few miles to something that feels comfortably hard.

Gradually increase the volume as your aerobic system adapts to running regularly.

You need to understand that all of your "issues" are based on precisely one BIG assumption, which is that whatever HRM you're using is providing accurate results. If your HR was truly as high as you claim it is, you would not be conversational, you would not feel easy, you would not feel "just fine" which your body IS TELLING YOU IT IS FEELING. Full stop. Your HRM is trash and your running is completely normal, you're just a slow old dude. Go out and enjoy running and stop wasting time posting threads that are just manifestations of your anxieties.

Direct quote from OP:

"I’ve gone by feel too for many months but am honestly not sure how to rate feel. Here is what I know: I can run for 45-60 mins in the 170s while breathing through my nose and taking slow long breaths like once every ~2-3 seconds. I can talk pantingly. I feel completely in control and feel like I’m jogging, not running."

Mate, that IS rating by feeling. "I am honestly not sure how to rate feel." Proceeds to rate by feel. You're a basket case.

throw it away wrote:

Throw away the heart rate monitor. I'm serious. Throw it away. Learn to listen to your body, not a watch. How does your body FEEL?

This.

And like the last poster said, your HRM may not be accurate.

If so, you are cheating your potential due to a cheap piece of equipment misleading you.

There are explanations for high heart-rate readings, like cadence drift, but what matters is that you not cheat yourself or the time and effort you are waging.

HRM can be used to inform a good training plan, but imo, they should not dictate it. There are too many ways it can go wrong or be influenced by other factors.

seattle prattle wrote:

throw it away wrote:

Throw away the heart rate monitor. I'm serious. Throw it away. Learn to listen to your body, not a watch. How does your body FEEL?

This.

And like the last poster said, your HRM may not be accurate.

If so, you are cheating your potential due to a cheap piece of equipment misleading you.

There are explanations for high heart-rate readings, like cadence drift, but what matters is that you not cheat yourself or the time and effort you are waging.

HRM can be used to inform a good training plan, but imo, they should not dictate it. There are too many ways it can go wrong or be influenced by other factors.

Thanks, I do understand that, but the HRM is just another piece of data. Throwing away the HRM alone is not helping me fix these two problems I’m trying to fix (and for which I started doing low HR training in the first place):

1) I can’t jog easy for long distances. If I increase weekly mileage much over 20mpw with continues running, I get injured often consistent with what people running hard all the time experience. If I run-walk at 150 bpm, I can significantly increase my mileage. (So the HRM data seems consistent with my suspicion that I am running hard when running by feel.)

2) For 5+ miles, my all-out run-walking PB is faster than my all-out running PB (with no HR limits or monitoring whatsoever).