Are you unsure on how to pace your training runs? There are various methods, and each one has some things you need to take into consideration. On this episode of the Ask Coach Parry podcast we look at some of them. Most notably, looking at pacing versus Heart Rate training.

Transcript

Welcome onto this edition of the Ask Coach Parry podcast, I’m Brad Brown and I’ve got Lindsey Parry with me once again. Lindsey, a great question from Donnè van Eck who also asked this in the Coach Parry online community. Donnè wants to know about how do you train to run a specific pace in a race?

What factors should be taken into consideration, especially when training on heart rate. If training on heart rate, how do you calculate the best pace for you to run or the best pace for you to aim at. She’s currently training for the Comrades Marathon, but as a principle, it should be transferrable to other races she asks?

Lindsey Parry: Look, you have to make a little bit of a decision, whether you’re going to train according to pace or whether you’re going to train to heart rate. That’s kind of one of the first things that you’ve got to do. If you’re getting advice from somebody who is quite experienced in terms of calculating training paces, then it is quite a nice way of training. Because it almost gives you a performance outcome to aim for, even though the paces may be quite slow.

Get proper advice if you want to train to pace

Personally, it depends for me, which one of the two that I use and sometimes there is a close correlation between the two. But that only really, I’m not going to get into why that happens and why it doesn’t happen. For most people, it’s a question of choosing which way to go. I wouldn’t train on pace if I’m not getting advice from someone who is very experienced in calculating proper pace related training zones.

Because what typically happens when we train according to pace or a target pace is that we often end up running too fast. Pushing ourselves too hard. Therefore we don’t develop at the rate that we should be developing at, then you need to train on heart rate.

It’s a little bit difficult, I guess to calculate the correct zones there. But it’s still easier than calculating the correct running zones. Because those, take zones in terms of pace. That does take a considerable amount of experience. On running, I’ve actually found the most useful method to use for a lay person to be the method employed by Dr Phil Maffetone.

Dr Phil Maffetone, he lets you do a running test which is a fairly arbitrary number that he’s selected. It’s 180 minus your age. But what that tells us is that you are running at, we are almost certain that by running at 180 minus your age, that you are running sub-anaerobically. In other words, you are definitely running aerobically.

Then if you’re new to running or if you’re returning from an illness or if you are returning from an injury, you will then take further amounts off there. If you have all three, if you’re brand new to running, returning from illness and injury, for example, all three, you would take a further 15 seconds off of that.

A formula for working out training pace

In the case of most people, it normally means that you’re repeatedly getting injured or repeatedly getting sick. We would do 180 minus age minus 5. In extreme circumstances, it would be 180 minus age minus 10 and that would effectively set the intensity that you are running at.

If you want to go a little bit more scientifically accurate. I can assure you that that Dr Phil Maffetone stuff works. I’ve used it on many clients of mine that it’s obvious that they’ve got an over-developed anaerobic system. It’s worked very, very well. But if you do want to go a little bit more detailed, a bit more complicated, a bit more scientific – is probably the right word – then you do want to calculate your heart rate maximum.

Not on an age minus, 220 minus age, you want to actually go out and calculate that. Provided you’ve been exercising fairly regularly, you have been running for a couple of months already. You can get yourself onto a track or onto a hill and you do between two and three minutes of really hard efforts with a long recovery in between. Say five minutes or so between three minute efforts.

If you repeat that process four to five times, in there, you will get very close to your maximum heart rate. Then you can calculate your various zones according to that. But your easy running and in particular, training for a race like Comrades, you want to do most of those runs at a low 70% of whatever that maximum value is.

When you start training on heart rate, believe me, it’s frustrating. It seems ridiculous, it seems like you can’t run this slowly. There’s times where you’re actually forced into a walk. But if you stick to it and you persevere with it, over a period of six to twelve weeks, you will just see very significant improvements in your running speeds at those heart rates.

BB: Excellent stuff Lindsey. A funny little story about a mate of mine who decided a couple of years ago he was going to train by heart rate and heart rate alone. He’s a triathlete and a pretty good one at that as well. In that initial training he was cycling up a hill at whatever the heart rate was he was supposed to go. Because he was going up a hill, he was going so slowly that some guy in a suit on a bicycle, literally came spinning past him.

He was in his gear, aero helmet, tri bike, the works. So as you say, it’s frustrating, but if you stick with it, the performance benefits do come. Fantastic Lindsey, thank you very much, we’re back again in just a couple of days’ time with the next edition of the Ask Coach Parry podcast. Until then, from the two of us, it’s cheers.