As promised in "Need for Speed Too" here's the information on Heart Rate training zones. I show screenshots taken from Mike Trees' run.nrg instagram account.
There are five heart rate zones to reflect training intensity impacts on the heart, i.e. the demand for oxygen in your muscles and organs to oxidise glycogen into glucose for your cells to use.
The zones are based on percentage of maximum heart rate, and this is where things get a little tricky. Although there are some equations to calculate this, they are not terribly reliable. You've probably heard of:
220 minus your age = this is unreliable. For example, I would be 156bpm, yet I regularly train at about 170bpm maximum!
Better is 208 minus 70% of your age. That would give me 163 which is closer but still nearly 10 too low.
So really it's best to get it tested or do an activity that will get you there, noting this will by definition put your heart under significant strain, so check with your Dr first!
I've heard of various ways of doing this:
2x 800m flat out with two minutes rest. You'll hit max on the second 800m
Run for 10 minutes as fast as you can and then sprint for a minute
There are plenty of ways of doing this but they all require you to run flat out for a reasonable time!
You don't need to be super accurate, but you want to be within about 5bpm so you end up in the right training zone for what you are doing.
Here's some nice pictures of Mike training on the beach with the explanation of the training zones.
and lastly,
To check you're not overdoing it or becoming unwell:
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