Thursday, November 12, 2009

Body building anatomy and heart rate zones

I took today off following the Remembrance day statuary holiday. Tomorrow will be off as well. Wow!

Got up at around 10am this morning, I felt a bit guilty as I had just tried to establish a new habit of getting up earlier last night.  My excuse is that I worked out last night and was excited reading couple of body building books. Leg felt a bit of soreness this morning and I decided to listen to my body when I was laid on the bed. Anyway, it is obviously hard to get rid of an old habit, even for just a day. :-)

I tidied up my home this morning.  Everything had been messed around for a while. In the noon, I went out to for a run. My plan was to run 8 miles. But I had to come back home after 4 miles due to the strike of my intestine. A bio-break is not bad, anyway.  I kept running for another 4 miles. Not fully recovered from the 8 miles run yesterday, my pace is noticeably slower than yesterday.  Anyway, it's an easy/recovery run. You are supposed to run most of your mile in a week easily as today.

The sun shine really lighted up my run today.  I met a lot of runners along the road.  Seems the sun shine did a good job of alluring people out of their offices.

Last night, I was reading the following body building anatomy book.  It addresses some of my questions hovered for a while. I will try some new moves tonight to exercise my muscles.



I started to used the heart rate monitor to monitor my training recently.  The heart rate of today and yesterday's easy runs fall into the 60%-70% heart rate zone.  That's the zone of typical easy/recover runs. I also checked the heart rate of the so-called "interval" run of last Tuesday. The faster pace did boost the heart rate to the 70%-80% zone. That worked.  However, I was doubting why the interval training wasn't as hard as I expected.  The heart rate explained that the interval run I performed was just a tempo interval, not a full sprint interval, which should set the heart rate to 80%-90% zone.  The heart rate zone is quite actuate and useful in measuring the running effort. Here is a useful link of the Heart rate zones. I'd keep using the heart rate monitor to monitor my training in a more scientific training, I hope.

Based on my research and the current fitness level, I'd list my running pace and heart rate zone here for record.

Rest heart rate: 60 bpm
Maximum heart rate: 188 bpm
Weekly mileage: 25-35 mile per week
  • Recovery run
    • pace: 6:00 min/km
    • heart rate zone: < 70% (<150 bpm)
  •  Easy run, long run
    • pace: 5:00 - 6:00 min/km
    • heart rate zone: 67%-77% (146-159 bpm)
    • 80-90% of the weekly mileage
  • Tempo run, tempo interval, Cruise interval
    • pace: 4:00 - 4:15 min/km
    • heart rate zone: 77%-83% (159-166 bpm)
    • Tempo interval is for beginners, Sprint interval is of experienced runners
  • Sprint, Sprint interval
    • pace: 3:30 - 4:00 min/km
    • heart rate zone: 82%-88% (165-173 bpm)
    • No more than once a week, no more than 10-15% of the total mileage.
    • 2.5-4.5 miles a week.
  • All out
    • pace: ??
    • heart rate zone: 95%-98% (182-185 bpm)
    • No more than once a week, no more than 4-8% of the total mileage.
    • I haven't yet tried this kind of training.
    • 1-2 miles a week

The above list is based on my estimate and only a few data collected, especially the Tempo run and Sprint run, as I haven't done much these two kinds of training.  I'd collect more data later and update this list.

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