Broken Woman to Iron Man - tough weeks make you tougher

This week was supposed to be three runs where you walk 1 min and run 1 min, 15 times... I got out twice and found both times difficult to complete.  Whatever knocks you down, just makes you stronger, get back up and go again.  Work, Family, Life, Mental Fatigue... so many reasons to stay down, don't.  Get up again.  One step at a time.

Overall, I'm getting there. Truly.  (inner voice is saying FIND THE POSITIVITY in everything, and success will find you)  I'm now walking with a good stride for the full 30 minutes, I'm running a good pace and feeling comfortable (6 min/km) but my heart rate is still exceedingly high for that 1min.  Upwards of 160 bpm to keep my body moving. So its going to be important to continue to watch and work on getting myself more efficient.

I'm going to keep practicing this as I really do believe the theories that if we train our body to be efficient, we can go on forever... Rich Roll, during a 3 hour Sunday run, wrote the following... "Sunday: 3 hour run.  When I woke up, my legs were so thrashed, I seriously doubted whether I was going to be able to handle this run.  When faced with these thoughts, I just have to turn my brain off and go.  I loaded up my fuel belt and headed out.  My legs were very heavy the first 30 minutes, but they loosened up and I ended up feeling fine.  I built into the run and ended up feeling pretty good, a big surprise and great indication of just how massive my endurance base is right now.  I worked on my climbing and descents, trying to acclimate my legs to the pounding of going downhill, which can bury a runner on a long run when not used to this.  I also had no issues keeping my heart rate squarely in Zone 2 between 130 – 140 bpm, which has become very comfortable — I could run all day in this zone."

This is so inspiring to me.. Rich wrote this after extensive endurance racing and training... if he can get there, ANYONE can.  We humans have an infinite store of ability, we only need believe, and proceed to tap into it.

In order to figure out where you should be training, you need to first find out your maximum heart rate. This is one way to determine it:  "The basic way to calculate your maximum heart rate is to subtract your age from 220. For example, if you're 45 years old, subtract 45 from 220 to get a maximum heart rate of 175. This is the maximum number of times your heart should beat per minute during exercise."

So they (google) say... that performing an activity for a long period of time i.e. endurance running, you truly don't want your heart rate higher than 75%. You want to stay in the aerobic zone where energy will be most efficiently distributed in your body. 

This article is a good one with some of the science behind training in this lower heart rate zone.  It goes through a good explanation of what each zone is, how you can tell if your in it, and some of the key benefits and disadvantages of each zone. 

Another website I found has much more extensive details on the Science behind these techniques if you are interested here.

In short... the beginning is hard and it takes time for us to get used to the movements we are performing... don't ever go so hard that you hurt yourself, and if you feel your heart rate pounding, slow down... and don't feel guilty for going slowly.. you are actually burning more fat rather than carbs now - and your body is learning to burn this fuel efficiently!!! Keep on moving forward, that is our only goal. :)