I'm following the Magic Plan over on Bridge, and so today was a7k run.
My plan was to run at a steady pace of around 9.20 per km over the 7k, meaning I’d complete my run in around 65 minutes, and hopefully keep my heart rate in Zone 3. It felt slow as I checked my watch after a few minutes but, somehow, I’d managed to replace pace with cadence on my display🙄, so I had no way of knowing.😶
After 1k my watch displayed the lap time – 8.39! Way too fast! Again!! I needed to slow down.🐌🐌🐌
So, with no way of gauging how fast I was running I decided to try and run to heart rate instead. I’ve had no success when I’ve tried this previously, and some of you will know this whole thing freaks me out a bit as my heart rate always seems high when judged against the common formulae. 😱
But it was better this time. It was hard though to stay within Zone 3 and I found myself creeping into Zone 4 too often for my liking. In fact, I was running on the threshold for a large part of the time.
But afterwards, looking at the stats, the heart rate zones were split roughly 50:50 between Zones 3 and 4, just very briefly touching the red zone at the of a long uphill stretch at around 6-6.5k. My splits were 8.39, 9.41, 9.41, 9.23, 9.20, 9.25, 9.27. So, in the end it wasn’t too far off my plan.
Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to do a 7k after my 6k on Wednesday as I was definitely feeling it in my legs after the 5k mark. But in the end, I was quite happy with the result.😁
The pic is about midway on the route, just a path across fields behind the leisure centre, but the light was very nice this morning.
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Birdlady64
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Not having pace was nice in a way as I got to try something different, that up until now has scared me a bit,
I don't think any of those formula work properly for me, but today was the closest I got to running in "Zone 3". As it was such a 50:50 split I suspect things need tweaking a bit, but I don't know myself well enough yet to fiddle too much.
I did my 7k one yesterday and wondering whether to tackle the 8k at the weekend. Currently my long ones have been in the morning before school runs but now they are taking alot longer and it's getting dark in the morning i need to have a rethink.
Brave or stupid. If I wake up stiff and aching tomorrow we will know which it is!
I'm supposed to be doing my long runs of the plan on a Saturday morning to fit around work, but events scuppered that plan last week and next. Hopefully it will settle down after my holiday.
I hope you figure out a schedule that works for you
Well done! That’s so similar to what I’ve been doing. It’s so lovely to be running slowly and enjoying the scenery! I sometimes just get lost with my thoughts. I usually set off too fast as well!
I’ve found there are a number of ways I can set my watch up to show what I need and I am still experimenting. I’ve got the zones set up on screen 2 of my watch. This means that it shows the zones in different colours in a circle on the display. It has an arrow showing where you are in the zones and a readout of your current heart rate. I just have to swipe up on my watch to see that screen. On the normal screen, I can set my current heart rate to display as it is, or as a percentage of my maximum heart rate (you have to know what percentage you want to run at) or the zones themselves to show as numbers as I’m running, e,g. 3.5 would mean halfway between zone 3 and 4. MontyMooDog helped me to understand my watch so I could do this!
Yes it was a much more enjoyable run for this morning. I slept a bit better, but still only 5.5 hours. I'm hoping my break will cure that.
It was a pain to begin with the watch this morning, but it was good because it made me try something a bit different. I've never really looked at the zones, and it was the first time I really appreciated what that circular heart rate zone display was for. I've just set a max heart rate and left the zones as the default percentages. I don't really know enough yet to fiddle with them.
I’m glad if I get 5.5 hours at the moment! I’m constantly exhausted. Hopefully your break will help reset your sleep cycle.
I had to do a lot of reading to begin to understand about the heart rate settings. I still think I need to set the MHR setting higher in the Garmin app. According to the data, I was running in Zone 5 for most of my run yesterday! I was pushing it, but surely not that much. I’ll see what happens on my run tomorrow.
I figured that all the zones are a range of percentages. The stats don’t show, for example, if I was running only just into Zone 5, which is a possibility. I’ll have to take more notice of my watch, because that will tell me as I’m running exactly where in the zone I am. So it could be right!
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My pre-10k race run and my heart rate stats
Consolidation Run 5-- Smart watch running to 6k
Heart rate zones and 25min run
