By Malcolm
Over the last few years I've read a few books about training and recently obtained a Garmin HRM and noticed the mixed quality of advice online, so here's a very brief summary.
Training for the Uphill Athlete (UA).
A book aimed at mountain ultra runners and ski mountaineering racers, the entry level commitment is 400hrs pa (average 8 hrs training pw with double that for 12 weeks) but 600hrs pa would be more normal and the elite do 1000+.
It has the clearest explanation of the metabolic basis of endurance and training whys and wherefores' I've ever read. If you only ever buy one book about running and how to train this is it, you could even apply the principles to 5K racing.
See also https://uphillathlete.com/ .
The Lost Art of Running by Shane Benzie (LA) which is a technique book based on using the bodies' natural elasticity for more speed for less effort ie a free lunch. (See also Even With Your Shoes On by Helen Hall based on similar stuff, but focussed on efficiency rather than speed. LA is is based on top Kenyan runners and others and some of the writer's trainees have won races like UTMB, The Spine, and MdS for example, and even set course records. That story is for another day once I've had time to play around with it, but you can get a copy and/or sign up to his web site https:/runreborn.com/ and develop your own opinion.
Healthy Intelligent Training is about the methods of Arthur Lydiard (going back to the 1950/60's) which were later corroborated by sports science. He was one of the early proponents of periodisation (and the training pyramid, built on a wide base), he coached some Olympic champions.
Decades ago there was Peter Janssen's Training, Lactate, Pulse-Rate, (published by Polar!) quite influential at the time and based on Lactate Threshold, the theory being that you should base all your training around that to shift it upwards. There's a lengthy section on the Conconi test (to determine LT) for subsequent HR based training.
The Heart Rate Monitor Book by Sally Edwards (also published by Polar) (1990’s) popularised the idea of 5 HR zones based on the Karvonen formula (220 - age, 226 for women, for Maximum Heart Rate) with training zones occupying 10% bands from the top and described as
5 Red line Zone
4 Anerobic Threshold Zone
3 Aerobic zone
2 Weight Management
1 Moderate activity
It looks as if Polar's five zones were invented as a marketing device to appeal to different demographics, and the formula provided a safe introduction to HR based exercise for beginners. Here we can see the foundations of the smart watch suggested sessions of today for the casual runner, and also the mass of confused advise online.
Running Power, available free for download from https://blog.stryd.com/2021/08/04/train-in-your-zones/. All about how to train with a Stryd footpod by Stryd. It's all based on Critical Power, which seems to be the power produced at your LT, and they say 'training effects start above your AT', so it's like Peter Janssen's ideas repackaged, with another Karvonen type formula based on CP to calculate your zones. Like Polar's HRM book it's aimed at a wide market (a recent estimate gives 150k club runners in the UK and 2-6 million casual runners). There's the Power Curve, which is a visualisation of your training over 90 days that tells you how balanced it is.
Fast 5k by Pete Magill, who was still running sub-16 mins on the track in his early 60's. He suggests several training plans involving short fast intervals, yet is happy to have people running 95k per week, it's that all important Base again.
Now let's consider some history!
Old Skool/ Pre-technology days
Club runners (mainly from a track and field background) i.e. people who entered track and road races would train by pace, using a stopwatch and courses of a known length. 5k race pace for interval sessions on a track (16x400m, 4x1mile), marathon pace + 1 min per mile for long runs for example. This assumes that people know these paces and are competent to get quite close to this in training, but this was (& still is) the case. Lactate Threshold pace was 'your 10 mile race pace' as that's what a typical senior male club runner would do (10 miles in one hour), or near enough. 3k race pace was V02max as the typical club runner would race 3k in about 12 minutes, hence the Cooper Test (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooper_test). (Yet what use is V02max?).
Early HRM's (sooo last century ...)
Polar originated the HRM watch in the 1980's and produced a range of consumer watches around 1990, but they turned out to be of limited use as they all interfered due to non-coded chest bands. HR based training was a proxy for pace, with the advantage that you could do a lab test to find out the relevant numbers.
Modern HRM’s with GPS
HR based training only works well for a steady pace in a flat environment: if you run intervals then due to HR kinetics, your HR lags behind your effort and you can't use it to set the interval pace. If you have uphills and downhills to deal with you might be able to maintain a steady HR, but if so simple Perceived Level of Exertion will work for you. Until you are past your warm up (10-20 minutes, sweating) then HR is not a reliable indicator and should be ignored. The technology is good and wiggly graphs abound, but personally I’m sceptical of the session analysis and recommendations. Pace works well with GPS reasonably accurate, but only on a flat surface (see charts below, from a fartlek session on an undulating course, first half is mostly downhill, second half mostly uphill – note that HR increases and pace drops, and there’s a noticeable warm up effect on HR).
Footpods and Chest Bands (2016 onwards)
With the advent of cheap accelerometers it became possible to manufacture these; cyclists had been using power cranks for at least a decade, and have the advantage over runners of having the monitor mounted in front of them. These allow you to train at a consistent level of effort and give instant feedback, solving the problems of HR kinetics and hills, and interval training. A bit like PLE, but with a computer to tell you how hard it feels.
Using the Technology
The (Garmin default) HR Zones 1-5 formulae are based on a prediction of an averaged person, not a measurement: it's like your doctor calculating your BMI from the average height and weight of people the same age as you. Instead you need to measure AT and LT (for HR based training), otherwise you are training blind, and then you need to consider what this tells you: UA defines 'Aerobic Deficiency Syndrome' as when LT > 1.1 AT (measured by HR, the factor of 1.1 determined empirically from large numbers of trainees) and if this applies to you, you need to do different training than if not. (NB although these charts show ‘zones 4-5’ the authors only recognise 4 HR training zones, Z5 is strength training)
I'll define a further threshold (T1) which is the slowest HR you can achieve with a jogging gait, or the HR you achieve on the fastest walking you can manage (or an average of those two), after warming up fully.
With three thresholds there can only be four zones! (inactive, aerobic, lactate, anaerobic). Aerobic gets split into two (Base and Aerobic or Low and High Aerobic) between T1 and AT on account of high volume training. For example, Arthur Lydiard (1960's) had several young trainees who every week ran more than 100 miles, which is approximately 4 marathons. A well trained runner's marathon pace will be close to their Aerobic Threshold and they would be racing 4 marathons every week and would get excessively fatigued and likely injured if they ran at a High Aerobic pace (this is why LSD pace was marathon race pace plus 1 min per mile). If you train low mileage this does not impact you but if you train e.g. 50+ miles per week then you need to stick mainly with Base.
Recovery is hidden in there somewhere, depending on circumstances it's the same as Base but as a short session, or could be below that e.g. a recovery walk.
For this to work with Garmin's five zones your four training zones have to be Zones 2-5. Zone 1 is walking.
Testing for AT and LT
Assuming you don’t want to do a blood test in a lab, then for AT you can do the talk test of 7 words per breath (first approximation) and then (fully warmed up) run for 5 minutes as fast as you can breathing through your nose, back off when it get too fast. Your average HR is your AT.
For LT try the talk test of 3 words per breath (first approximation) or run for 30 min as fast as you can (fully warmed up first) and take your average HR for the last 20 minutes: that is your LT.
Alternatively you can try a Conconi test: warm up fully, then starting slow run round a 200m circuit at a steady pace and increase this by 20sec/mile or 12sec/km each lap. Record the average pace and average HR per lap. You need to go anaerobic – can only say one or two words per breath, or stop when you cannot maintain the pace, and then cool down. Then plot these on a graph.
Why use HR?
The point of training is to induce physiological changes and this requires activating different energy systems and muscle fibres. Some runners need help to run slow, some to run fast, during steady paced runs - running downhill with a HRM shows that I automatically slow down and there’s some easy gains to be had there. Base (to increase aerobic capacity, increase capillarisation, increase the number of mitochondria) requires (for me) a painfully slow effort and I need a HRM to show me how much harder I have to try. There are some more obscure examples ...
Training with Power
Disclaimer: I haven't tried this much myself, caveat lector. I’m more interested in seeing if the numbers improve over time, and using sessions based on physiology. As mentioned above you can use power as a more accurate proxy for HR and do HR based training.
If you are interested in form/ technique then you can use power statistics to evaluate what difference it makes, and be more effective and/or efficient (get more power from the same HR).
A footpod or chest band is essential: wrist based power calculations are likely to be poor (obviously, as the power reading is derived from your foot strike, and your hands are in motion). Different manufacturers equipment cannot be compared, they use different technology and software to interpret it.
Training by power appears to be highly developed for cyclists with a forest of obscure terminology (see https://trainingpeaks.com/blog/the-differences-between-running-and-cycling-power/) and apps and fancy web sites. But cycling and running are completely different sports, among other things when running you have to support your own weight. Critical Power (CP) is based on LT and cyclists often have 7 or more zones (calculated – see Using the Technology above) to work with; this might not translate well into running – if 7 zones are good then why didn’t we have these with HR? There’s a test protocol for runners which has been copied over from cycling … you could instead run at your LT (and AT) and just note your power output.