Had an interesting chat with a colleague on Friday, and she explained in 5 minutes what I have never understood about heart rate zone training. 

Apparently it is REALLY HARD to begin with to keep within the ranges and you spend most of the time walking, even if your fitness level is apparently good. But if you persevere, over the course of a few weeks you will find you are able to run faster and/or longer at the lower heart rate.

I have never managed to get my average heart rate below 169 when running, so haven't been using the zones on my HR monitor at all. I made really good progress anyway, getting from not running at all to running for over an hour, managing 10K in 55 mins. My resting heart rate is now around the 50 bpm mark, and my max is around 198 bpm. 

Then I started to plateau just before Xmas, and now I know it is probably because while my general fitness improved, I never improved my basic aerobic fitness.

After this revelation, I am going to give HR zones a go again. While I know it will  be really frustrating to begin with, I am hoping to see some improvements over the next few weeks that will allow me to start reaping the benefits over the long term.

Will llet you know how I get on!

Good on you Ian, you will find it most beneficial as you will appreciate the effort required as opposed to the speed. I done HR training for around 6 months and it did improve my times insomuch that I found my lactic threshold and was able to use that to my advantage in racing and training.

I always monitor my HR in races especially at the start as I do not want to exhaust myself too quickly and suffer further on into the race, only at the very end of racing I use pure pace as the lactic build up is not so critical.

I went to a party last night, and was supposed to drive but decided to leave the car there and have a few 'looseners'. So, today I ran back to pick the car up (oddly, almost exactly 5K door to door), averaged 170 bpm, but managed to peak at 193 bpm! Yikes!

There was one little quite steep hill, it must have been there as the rest was pretty much flat or downhill all the way. 

It may have had something to do with the all the chilli vodkas I drank last night, too!

Ok, so did my first proper 'easy/recovery' run this morning- managed to keep my heart rate below 154 bpm, averaging 147 bpm. It was definitely easier than last time I tried to do it, and I was able to run slowly rather than shuffle-walk. Of course, every time I started to get into my stride or get my form looking right, BEEP BEEP BEEP goes the watch... slow down again....  After an hour of this, and having covered abit less than 8Km, I had to run really fast just to loosen up a bit! 

So frustrating, but ultimately I think it will be worthwhile.

Thought I should add an update to this.

It has now been 3 weeks since I started the HR training, and the improvements are coming thick and fast.

I started off taking 1:08:00 to do 8Km, keeping my HR less than 70% (152 bpm) by running REALLY slowly and walking at times.

In the second week, that dropped to 1:06:25. A bit quicker, and less walking.

Last week, 1:03:40 on Wednesday, and 1:02:25 on Friday… starting to be able to control my HR by slowing down without walking.

Well, this morning was a major improvement, at 0:57:30 with an average HR of 150.  That’s 4 mins 45 seconds faster than on Friday, and more than 10 minutes faster than three weeks ago!

I was still blipping over the upper limit occasionally, but found it much easier to control it and bring my HR back below 152 just by slowing a little.

Another few weeks of this, and I’ll be back down to my pre-HR training speed, (time around 45 mins), but with a greatly reduced HR.

The challenge of keeping my HR low while increasing speed has actually added a new level of motivation! Also, the additional challenge of keeping my HR above 80% for my tempo runs has added a whole new level of focus to my training. 

Anyone tempted to give HR training a try, I say go for it. It is tough going at first, because you have to run SO slowly and even walk at times, but with a bit of discipline you will certainly see the benefits within just a few weeks!