I've been working on my cardio lately but there has been one little problem in that my mindset was starting to be one of not slowing down or stopping until i get to at least 5km.
This has been negatively affecting my training because I have a rule that i employ in my workouts where it can never become something that I loathe doing. Well, I was starting to loathe the rule of not stopping until 5k and nobody was actually making me do that.
I also didn't like being in zone 4 so often and for now at least, that is where I am going to end up when I run continually in summer here. So I decided to switch things up and focus on a longer run but this time paying close attention to the BPM
Any time that I looked at my watch and my heart rate was in zone 4, I would step it back. The focus was to get to the extent of zone 3 but not surpass it. I don't remember exactly but I think my zone 3 threshold where it crosses into zone 4 is 154 BPM.
I never crossed very far into zone 4 and this was kind of the idea. I actually can run for quite a while in zone 4, really far into it actually. But the problem there is that I get gassed pretty fast and there is a greater chance of me feeling extremely drained afterwards or even sore the next day. So this is more of an experiment than anything else.
I think the major difference here was that during and after the 10k, I didn't ever feel very drained. I also was never huffing and puffing and I don't really understand this about my own body. My heart rate will be very high but I am never struggling for breath. It's like I have enough air, but just not enough blood circulation or something. I rarely struggle for breath when I am exercising in any capacity actually. Maybe I should see a doctor about this some day.
My split times were nothing to write home about but I was never really trying to make them so. One thing I did notice was that I feel as though I can keep moving in zone 3 for a very long time, perhaps just keep going for hours. The issue here is that unless I am walking, I am always going to cross over into zone 4 at some point. I would like to find the pace that I can never exit zone 3 but i don't know if it is just because I am older or because I never focused on cardio until recently, but my upper limit of zone 3 while jogging is closer to walking than it is to running.
Not that I really care what other people think of me, but I kind of feel like I look a bit foolish, like something that is power-walking.
The whole point of this exercise was to make the cardio not suck again because I know that I will not stick with any exercise that I loathe. I am happy to report that other than running out of water again, there really wasn't any particularly good reason for me to stop at 10k. Next up I may try to figure out a method of stashing some water in a bush somewhere and then picking it up later rather than stopping once I run out.
I lost more than 2kg in this 90 minutes due to sweating, so I know that rehydrating is going to be a very important part of me doing any sort of longer-distance running.
Thoughts?
