Over 60s training.

Happy birthday NZC! Enjoy learning how to use your present. I don't use all the features of my garmin, and keep meaning to learn new things to do, but enjoy it nevertheless

Diana
Snap. Good running yesterday in the wet!!

TS
Snap to you too, with the weather conditions and the results of them.

But we mustn't complain too much when many peoples homes are being flooded.


I wanted to try out my new trail shoes today. This meant running on pavements first and I found this quite a hard ride. Then I ran around my football pitch a couple of times. Well there was no mud because I ran most of the way around it in ankle deep water. I decided that was enough grass/water running, it raised my heart rate rapidly with the effort that was needed to keep going. Then I ran through streams (actually puddles) to get to the trail. Like TS says the water was pouring off the fields into ditches which are full. I didn't avoid any puddle or mud at all.Which is good for me as I don't do mud as you all know. The deep puddles kept the shoes reasonable clean. My legs look disgusting. I must get to the shower now.

I ran an undulating 5 miles in 45.20 mins, av pace 9.01 mm, av HR 129, MHR. 141. My HR was high to start with, as a result of feeling so tired I think/hope. My legs felt extremely heavy and I very nearly turned back after 400m's. But carried on. My low back is feeling very stiff this morning, and yes I got wet this morning.  

Happy birthday nzc sorry for being a bit late but not been able to get online over the weekend,A 610 garmin what a lovely present.

TS-Good to see you getting some good runs in.

Ceal-A busy weekend for you and the far east will be involved as well.

Graham-Nice 10miler there and a good decision not to race.

Mick6-That distance was out of the blue,glad you enjoyed it.

Never ran myself this weekend just felt to tired,just been to the doctors to get a blood test done at hospital tomorrow.Just want to make sure that i am ok  

Happy birthday NZC and aren't you a lucky girl, that is the top end, very latest, posh version. 
I have the 405 with HR and footpod, it is similar to yours without the fancy touch screen and it also has a number of bugs that yours doesn't.

Very happy to help you get into getting the most out of HR monitoring.

First and foremost I should say I am not a big advocate of running by HR much more post run analysis to see where you are and assess what you need to be doing. Once you have been using it for a while you will find that your subjective feel becomes quite accurate and as long as you continue to use your HRM you stay calibrated.

Runners have a very wide range of HRs, some have high rates some have low. It does not seem to be related to your fitness but more to your genetics and physical size. I have a max of 187 but ceal and TS are in the 160 range

To intepret your HR absolute readings you need to establish your HR range, that is your max and resting values. 
Your resting HR is easy to establish, just take your HR while still lying in bed first thing in the morning. I would suggest doing it a few times as it does vary a bit.
Your max is a little tougher to establish. All the formulae that you see are very very unreliable and should be avoided.
You can do a Max HR test but I have not found them that reliable or easy to do.
I have found my max from 5k racing. An all out effort 5k will take you close that is within 4 or 5 bpm.

Having done this you will now have your working heart range, that is Max - Resting, for example mine is 187 - 45 = 142 bpm.

At this point you can compare your HR numbers with normalised heart rate zones

For example if you are running at 70% of your working heart range (WHR) that is considered an easy or recovery run. It is usual to express your HR as a % of your WHR.
For example if I was running at an average HR of 150 bpm then I would express that as  73.9% WHR
                    ( 150 - Resting)  / (187 - 45) * 100 = 105 / 142 * 100 = 73.9%

Your Lactate Threshold, that is where your body is producing as much lactate as it can process without it accumulating excessively in your blood, is usually in the low 80% range. This is an important number as it reflects the effort level that is typically the pace that you should be able to run a half marathon at and also the effort level that you should be doing your tempo runs at. I find this one of the most useful levels to establish and calibrate yourself at.

I would suggest you run with your HRM for a while and just collect some data. Run an easy run and look at the HR profile, it should be flat after an initial ramp up and be under 70% WHR.

If you can produce screen shots of the HR profiles I will be happy to comment on them.
I have written all sorts of software to enable you to compare runs and post your results so if you are comfortable installing software I can help you with that. 

Hope all that is not confusing.

Mick

ceal,
I think your run, although wet, sounds like fun. In contrast we have had some snow so it is looking all white and Christmassy. It is not too deep so I will be running my usual river run with a nice soft layer of snow under foot.

Busbar,
Good luck with the test, it sounds like that marathon took a lot more out of you than you thought. 

hell o all

leaving the typo.........................

A flying visit - I'm on my lunch break.

NZC
best wishes for a long and happy relationship with your Garmin.

I won't be at LFOTM this week (I'd said I might but can't remember if I'd said I wasn't going) but will be in London Sat and Sun.  programme as follows:
Sat - arrive early/mid morning (long story!!) maybe meet friend/colleaguie for coffee, have lunch, take bag to Islington, meet pammie and go to Geffrye/Wellcome or Museum of Childhood or just meander, back to travelodge, then paaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarty!
Sun - surface, eat, go and see the Lion King.  get train home.

All very exciting. Anyone else welcome at any time (apart from party - you'd be welcome on my part but you wouldn't be allowed in)

Afternoon

Coooooo-eeeeeee its me.

K2 looking forward to Saturday.

Happy Birthday NZC though its probably well i know its tomorrow for you now

Not much runnng cycling done but that is normal for Nov, Dec probably too maybe phases of absentism due to that thing called work and other things

But shall pop in when i can even if  to show i'm still breathing

NZC,
I ran a recovery run today on packed snow. It was new snow so a little bit soft which made the pace really slow. I thought you would like to see a typical HR recovery profile for me. My avg % WHR was 66%

 As you can see after a ramp up it flattens out just below the green line which is set at 70%. I spent 90% of the time in the yellow zone, that is 60 to 70%. We are all a bit different so you may find your recovery zone is a bit lower, more like ceal and TS.

K2,
Have a great weekend.

Pammie,
Some people still cycle through the winter here but definitely not me. 

Mick

Happy birthday NZC.

TS - I loved those cat pictures. Going to forward the link to Younger Daughter who is very fond of cats. Doesn't it look strange with those odd eyes?

Hello K2, good to hear from you.

Ceal - Japanese Broadcasting Corporation? Did you by any chance see "Lost in translation"?

NRD but been swimming. No, in the pool, not in the puddles.

Thanks everyone for all your lovely birthday wishes.

Ceal - good luck for Hyde Park and the interview - I'm sure you will come through with flying colours.

Torque Steer - thanks for the all tips re my new 610. How often should I charge it?

Mick - great detailed info, I have copied and printed it so that when I have all my info I will be able to make sense of it.

I ran with the heart rate monitor and garmin last night, but because I'd had a big lunch and a glass of wine, I'm sure my heart rate before starting my run was already high.

Half way around I needed a "comfort" stop - I didn't know if it would automatically stop and start again when I started again, so didn't do anything, but it didn't, so I ended up with a very slow km in that period and so my overall average therefore was very slow as well. The times don't mean much, apart from the fact I train much slower than Ceal and Torque Steer, and I was running at Cornwall park which is all up and down, climbing stiles etc, with very few flat sections. The bottom line is that it read 7.01km 45.16 Ave pace 6.28km Ave HR 156 Max HR 196. I did have a 5.31 3rd km but like I said because of my stop one of the kms was very slow.

The first thing I will do today is change that function so the watch stops when I do. I realise this won't be the option I will choose if I am running the marathon - you can't stop the watch then! But it will be good for pacing for packruns etc when there are regular drink/toilet stops.

Auto pause................

Good morning,
Another cool, very bright and sunny day here, really nice for running.

ceal,
Good luck with your LFOTM.

NZC,
I use the auto pause feature on my 405 and find it works really well. No more stopping my garmin at road crossings and forgetting to restart it.
One thing I have noticed is that though I stop and my HR drops very rapidly, it quickly returns to where it was once I start running again.

I have been using protein drinks for a while now, usually immediately after my gym sessions, mainly as an aid to recovery. I found this article in the US RW interesting.

http://www.runnersworld.com/nutrition-runners/protein-supplements-boost-benefits-strength-training

Off to the gym for a 5 miler and then some free weights, immediately followed by a protein drink.

Mick

I have mine set to auto-pause. Garmin Connect gives all sorts of information, such as total time, total moving time, and paces for both I think, so you still get an idea of the overall pace. I'm not sure what the difference is between time and moving time, as thee is also total elapsed time. Mick, do you know what 'Time' is? Last night's run shows it as longer that Moving time, but mot as long as elapsed time!

We did out 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 session last night, with the twist that the outward half of each interval was uphill. Total 5.24 miles in 52:31 (50:57 moving)

Diana - yes I've been on to Garmin Connect and logged 2 of my runs. Yesterday's was really slow because I ran the bush tracks near my home and it is all up and down around the bays, and today I run with a slower group, so at least my heart rate shouldn't be too high. It will be good to do a race and see how that goes, but I seem to be feeling tired all the time!

I have yet to work out how to do intervals on it, or how to be able to do a warm up, the race and warm-down, and be able to show all this info. Baby steps!

Sorry I've been missing. RW managed to log me out and it's taken a while to get back in.

Managed to read back and have seen lots of interesting comments but far too many to comment on individually.

Collected MrsJJ's new car today. Unfortunately she's been working today (a rarity) and hasn't driven it yet.

NZC
Belated birthday greetings and many happies.
JJ

NZC,
With most of the Garmins it is possible to program them to run a particular workout. 

They look like this

5 x 400m with 2 min recovery plus variable warm up and cool down.

Step 1 is my warm up so I first start the garmin and then when I am warmed up and ready to start my intervals I press the lap button.

The garmin now does everything else automatically so as soon as I press the lap button I am off on my first 400 interval. It will record all of the intervals and recovery periods as seperate laps without me doing anything.

You can write these programs in the training centre software. It is very easy to do as it is all in pull down menus, no actual programming.

 You can also import other people's programs into to the training centre software and then download them to your garmin.

In your garmin all you need to do to run them is select workouts, advance, and then the workout of your choice and select do workout and away you go.
I can email you a couple if you cannot find any or if you want an example to see how to program them yourself.

Diana,
They are four types of time, Elapsed, Moving, Rest and  Unknown.
When you auto pause Garmin connect will subtract that time from the Elapsed time and when you stop the garmin and start it again it will also subtract that unknown.
So Moving time is just the time that it has trackpoints for, that is elapsed time minus unknown and auto pause time.

Totally screwed it up today as when I got to the gym I found that I had forgotten my jacket and it was too cold to run in just a tshirt. Ran on the treadmill instead, yuk.

When I first got my Garmin I programmed it to do about three different workouts, but couldn't make out how to get into double figures, e.g. if I want to do more than 9 intervals or repeats. I also have the problem that I don't always hear it beep, my hearing not being very good. So mostly now I just press the "lap" button as I go; all the distances, times and speeds are recorded. 

It doesn't have a HRM. I do have a separate HRM but don't often use it.

Would be good to get the Garmin to measure hills, - how much Up and Down I've gone. I think it will do that, but I would need to sit down with the instructions and work out how.

Went out with the running club tonight; nearly 5 miles of intervals through town, plenty of upulations thrown in. Not as dark as it was last week, as there was a nice bright moon.

Mick - how annoying, about the jacket.