This month I’ve managed to finish both the 60 minute magic plan and the 10k magic plan. I’m currently feeling really pleased with myself.
I realised looking back over previous runs that I’ve been running in what my Fitbit classes as Peak heart rate zone, so this week I’ve been focussing on staying in cardio for as much of the run as I can. I’ve found this tough as what I think as my natural running pace pushes me over the edge, but ultimately a good thing to learn I feel.
For today’s run I managed to glue together a decent amount of parks and green spaces, including one that I’ve been wanting to visit for a while but couldn’t find an interesting return route from until I could run a further distance.
Not fully focussed photo, but I didn’t want to stop my run to take it, so it was taken as I went along.
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TimeInNature
Graduate10
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I love the energy in a slightly fuzzy photo! What a gorgeous place to run. Congratulations on those massive achievements. You can change your badge for a “graduate10” one now if you want!
It’s a good aim to run at a lower heart rate. You’ll most likely find that as time goes on, your pace at that effort will increase. That’s what happened to me. I’m not totally convinced that Fitbits are particularly accurate at measuring heart rate so I take mine as a general guide!
One thing I really enjoyed from my NRC guided runs recently was the speed runs which had you running at lots of different paces, all based on effort. That helped shake me out of just running mindlessly. It made me think about what I wanted from the run and what the best pace for that would be.
How did/are you celebrating? You definitely need to take some time to think about how far you’ve come. 🎉 🏃♀️ 💪
I agree with you about the Fitbit heart rate. I wouldn’t rely on it particular but I figure it is always as inaccurate and so run by run comparisons work out.
I’m planning to throw some tempo, fartlek and intervals into my plan as my 20% of non-easy runs - I’m thinking one run a week could be that.
That sounds like a plan! I trained up to HM like that-one short easy run, one long run and a speed run. The speed runs are brilliant fun. Nothing like pacing it down a country lane to get the endorphins up! Take it slowly and carefully if you haven’t done that sort of thing before. When I first started, my legs absolutely hated me the day afterwards!
Congratulations on your first 10K TimeInNature , and that looks like a lovely route too!
Bear in mind that you'll actually develop better as a runner if you spend the majority of your time running at an easy, conversational pace. I'm not a fan of running by pace or heart rate myself, not least because wrist-based devices aren't always accurate and I do a lot of running up and down hills, often on trails. So I prefer to run by perceived effort, which works much better for me.
I spent a little time comparing the Fitbit heart rate to a perceived effort chart I found online and the runners world pace guidelines.
The perceived effort chart I found had heart ranges on it which means that the heart rate I ran to today should have been around a level 8 or 9 effort (out of 10). I’d have said it was about a 4 or 5.
I was somewhere close to the runners world pace guidelines for an easy run so that stacks up as well
I’m using the heart zone as an indicator rather than as a truth. I figure it’ll generally be as inaccurate regardless of the run I do so comparing run to run still has value.
Have you personalised the heart zones TimeInNature ? I ask because the commonly used 220 minus age formula, which I believe is the default on Garmin, is wildly out for me. My maximum heart rate during my run this morning was 186, whereas theoretically it should be 158! It wasn't a particularly tough run, it's just what comes of running hills at midday when it's about 28°.
I'll be honest, I don't even use numbers for perceived effort! My scale's more like this: sing choral music, carry on a conversation, manage a sentence, gasp a word or two, and can't breathe aargh why am I doing this!
I have been wondering about personalising the heart zones. I know that I’ve been beyond the theoretical maximum based on the formula - 170 for me - on a number of occasions (including while walking rather than running!). And those were when I was somewhere between managing a sentence, and gasping a word or two. Maybe a short sentence 😆
On a run when I was deliberately pushing it a bit - gasping a word or two - I got to 189.
I did see an article explaining how to work the zones out with runs at different lengths and taking some percentage of one of them. It sounded a bit complicated to be honest!
On my Garmin Forerunner 45 it was basically a matter of changing the default numbers and the device did the rest. I imagine it'd be the same for a Fitbit.
Well done to you TimeInNature for running your first 10K, remember to tell the administrators that you have ran your first 10K, after that you will see the words Graduate10 next to your username, nice photo you took while still running, you deserve to be very pleased with yourself, congratulations 🎊
A huge well done 👏🏻 it’s such an achievement isn’t it? I’ve not got a fitness watch apart from a plain step counter one but I’m after one for Xmas. It’s interesting about heart rate whilst running as I’ve heard it tells you if your run is an easy one or not but does this make you speed up your pace at times? I kind of like running at a slow pace now as I know I will feel comfortable until the end but I also know it’s good to do intervals or Fartlek training to build stamina and speed when required.
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Quest Target achieved, 10k of continuous running. 
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