For those that train and race by HR

Obviously accounting for things like hills, wind, and of course accurate training and race course measurements !!

have you ever achieved the same pace (e.g. within 5 secs/mile) in a race for a given HR that you have in achieved in training ?

Is it possible or do nerves always get in the way ?

A lot of factors get in the way, including heat, personal stress etc.

I've also known of people run up to 12 secs / mile faster in a marathon than training at the same HR, being fresh and rested.

For my 2 decent marathons after training like you do my marathon HR should have brought 6-6:05m/m. It worked out at 6:11m/m on the day(s)

that's quiet encouraging, I've had two poor races where my pace was ~20-25 secs off training paces, and only one (which was a 10k, and 200m short) where it was anything close.

I've been working through the potential reasons and sorting them out in training to good effect


- poor warm-up
- poor prep doing too much day before etc.
- poor post run refueling (affecting hard runs some days in advance)

and less controllable

- heat
- nerves

but as of yet still to get anywhere near training paces, which would be very nice if I did !

quiet = quite obviously !

and one other reason I forgot

- going off too quickly, which is not a good idea when you are running pretty close to your ~100% aerobic limit..

Couple of things I've read that might be of interest :

20 degrees fahrenheit difference can lead to an increase of 10bpm average over the same workout. Might help quantify FLM05 result.

1% of body weight lost through dehydration results in 7bpm HR increase.

Cartman,

Can you remind me of your HR/Speed increase curve theory?

For example I ran 7:51 miles for 18 miles at 73% Max HR on Saturday (5 min break halfway for drink so HR dropped. Not included in total time)

Using guidelines is it possible to predict current performance at 5m, 10m, hm etc?

hmmmm,

You mean the fact that for every increase in BPM there is a linear increase in pace ?

Well to do that I'd do one of those Hadd tests on a track and run 2400 at 140, 150, 160 ,170, stick the results in excel and get the gradient and intercept. Or just take take two runs at different HRs and interpolate.
E.g. I think my gradient is about 3.8 secs/mile/bpm (most people seem to fall between 3 and 4, from my analysis of errr 5 people) as I run about 6:10 @ 170HR and ~7:35 @ 145HR

But I'm not sure how that helps predict race times though, unless you know the average % HR you could hold over the distance, e.g. 1/2M, but then that will depend on where your LT is, so you need to know that first.

Of course you could use the old 16 per mile for double the distance rule, but thats only a guideline for when you are aerobically "fit" and does vary quite a bit from person to person (so I've heard)

Think I've probably confused you... :-(

Thanks.

I'm not sure I am mentally ready for a Hadd track test. So maybe I will extrapolate from a scatter chart.

I'm hoping to have a LT test in the next few weeks, but it will be for the bike so may not be truly relevant.

Perhaps I should stop analysing and actually train. The git htat's jsut won a 71 half has made me angry.