Why Heart Rate Training
Posted on July 10, 2007
Filed Under Uncategorized |
When I first started running earlier this year, I was hurting myself - a lot. I wasn’t really aware of it in the sense that I acknowledged where my pain was coming from, I mean I obviously knew I was in pain, but I didn’t blame running - I blamed my body.
I have an extremely competitive, addictive and dedicated personality - it is usually most obvious in my work - it is not uncommon for me to spend 48 hours straight at my desk writing code, sleep for a few hours and then pull another 48. I’m also blessed with ADHD and have a touch of OCD. The combination of all this means that once I decide to do something, I throw myself into it fully. Nothing will distract me from accomplishing my goals, in fact I generally shut down anything else I’m doing and everyone else around me. My wife is the only one capable of moderating me. Once I get into this mode, I meticulously break everything into small tasks and then move forward one task at a time, not moving to the next task until the one I’m working on is pristinely completed.
So, when I decided that I was going to become a runner, more specifically I decided that I was going to become a ultraMarathon Endurance Runner, I created tasks for myself that I believed were in-line with achieving my goals. These tasks included: running 12 miles once a week, running 4 miles of 1/2 mile sprints once a week, speed climbing 4,000 feet to the top of a mountain once a week and light 5 mile runs every other day in between the more difficult tasks. That was just the beginning - that was my plan to get ready for real training.
The problem was, I was completely out of shape and overweight. I decided that didn’t matter, that I would just set these goals and accomplish them. It probably would have worked - if I didn’t seriously injure myself. The compounding problem here was that I would only run at near my top speed. This meant that I was stopping about every quarter mile (I did make it to the point where I was only stopping every half mile on 4 mile runs) in order to catch my breath - then I would pound ground again until I felt like I was going to pass out. I worked up to where I felt like I was ready to give the 12 miler my first shot. I blogged about it over here. I did it, it hurt like crazy but I did it. The next day I did a 4 mile run and only made it 3.1 (I insisted on doing a 5k before I quit).
I was in a lot of pain but I didn’t care, I considered that the price I had to pay to get in shape and meet my goals. I took the pain seriously and worked with it as much as I could, trying not to seriously injure myself but I mostly just ignored it. That’s when Adria (my wife) read about Heart Rate Training and started exchanging email with Andrew Seeley - and decided to pay him to coach her. Remember I said that she was the only one that could moderate me? She told me I needed to contact Andrew and consider using his coaching methods. She went over what it was and what Andrew had set up for her, it sounded pretty good. So, I emailed Andrew and told him where I was and what I was doing. I told him I was interested in his techniques and that if he had a better plan, I was willing to drop mine and give it a try. He wrote back and told me that I was on the road to injury and that I needed to stop doing what I was doing. Actually, he put it in my terms - he said we needed to “reboot the system and rewrite the software” - and that was something that I could totally understand.
I’m a man of science, and Andrew explained everything to me from a scientific basis and it totally made sense to me. He explained exactly why I was winded so frequently and what I needed to do about it. He told me to wear a heart rate monitor (something I had never done) and to run at a 140 heart rate for 45 minutes. He explained that going that slow would be hard for me but that I needed to make sure I went slow enough that my heart rate stayed down. It was slow all right - barely faster than walking! But what amazed me was that I was able to run 2 1/2 miles without stopping. In fact, when I did stop I was barely breathing heavily and it didn’t hurt at all. The next day he told me to run at 150 for 30 minutes. This pace felt a bit better but it was still much slower than I had been running. In 30 minutes I covered almost 3 miles without stopping and was mildly breathing heavily once I stopped - I was hooked.
Running slower than a ten minute mile is almost embarassing to me - it’s that competitive nature. But it’s been several weeks now and I can definately see a big improvement in myself. I get very frustrated with my body though because my heart rate is so high at such a slow pace. I know that it will eventually get to the point where I’ll be able to sustain very fast speeds for very long distances but I’m very impatient. I want to be doing really hard training runs, I want to challenge myself and feel like I’ve accomplished something. For now though, I know I’m building my base. I can only progress by doing this part correctly and by building my body up to the point where it’s able to handle the things I want it to do. I’m just frustrated by the waiting 
This blog will be about my frustrating journey to aerobic fitness and then my journey to accomplishing endurance activities. I’m really looking forward to that last part!
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