How'm I doing ?

From the 1st Jan this year I decided I would start to get fit and diet. I'm 6ft 3ins and 37 years of Age. I reached 109 Kgs on the scales on the morning of the 1st Jan. I now weigh 92 kgs on May 20th. I stated running on that first day to. I managed 3 mins and had to stop. For the next several months I built up walking/jogging/in door orbital training (during frost and snow) etc. I'm now running 30Ks plus a week. I run about 7.35 min miles at a distance of about for 8ks. My heart rate at this pace is about average 160. My resting heart beat is now about 53. I train the final half of my 10k runs at about 170 bpms. I'm feeling good and I'm really enjoying it. I have started to look on the internet and in forums now becasue I don't really have anybody to talk to about my training. I live in Norway and my wife thinks I'm crazy. I actually want to run every night almost. Anyway, I was wondering how I'm doing and whether my training looks ok. My next step is to go longer and faster. If I'm enjoying running still at xmas I might put my aims on a marathon (maybe 2007). I couldn't even have contemplated this before...Any tips out there with regards training and how to measure yourself. As you may gather I am rather competative and like to gauge my progress.

First of all, yes, I would say your progress is good. It is certainly nothing to worry about. Many people can't maintain 7.35min/miles.

I make it that in old money, you have gone from 17stones 2lb to 14 stones 6lbs. That's going to have done you the world of good, I'm sure. Your resting pulse look svery healthy.

I don't know an awful lot about heart-rate training, but you seem interested in what your heart is doing, so maybe following a heart-rate-based schedule would be a way you may like to train? It's also a relatively easily-measurable way to train, too. Don't think that you have to be doing 40+ miles per week to be doing yourself plenty of good, but you would have to increase your mileage for a marathon. It is only necessary to do this for a few months before the race, though.

A marathon certainly seems well within your potential.

I'd say 7.35 min miles are pretty good! But living in Norway must make running entertaining in January/February??

Thanks for the replys
10P Badger - Sorry about all the metric measurements. That's living in Norway for 14 years. I use the heart as a guide because I don't know what else to use. I bought a polar HRM and feel it has helped me. Earlier I used to go flat out to begin with for shorter distances. I note now if I maintain sub 160 in HR for the first 20 Mins in my last 20 Mins I can go a lot faster.One thing I forgot to mention was recovery and currently I hit stop after my final 50m sprint at the end of 9ks and my heart reaches about 180. I take a 5 min recovery and my heart is down to 100. It seems that is where a remain on shorter runs and faster runs also. Is this normal.
10 mins after the run I am down to 60's.

Heckenhocker - The Jan Feb training consisted of Orbital trainer for 30 Mins and some streching. When there were breaks in the snow etc I would walk or run about 5 miles.

Your HR recovery sounds fine....

...why not take a look at the thread on base training on this forum. It has a lot of people using HR as a training aid. There are also some useful articles on this website....like

http://www.runnersworld.co.uk/news/article.asp?UAN=176

Enjoy the running.....it seems you are rather good at it!