Heart of the Matter

Here's a simple, easy to understand article written by midwestern athlete Amy Kuitse about the basics of heart rate training:

http://www.triathletemag.com/Departments/Training/2007/Get_in_the_zone.htm

IHeart rate training is the key to understanding how your body responds to different types of training. It helps to train smart, train safe, and train in a way that will help your body to make improvements over time.

Several times each season we test our heart rate zones. From there, workouts are written using heart rate zones as a guideline for your effort. It's not so much that I write workouts with heart zones to get you to work harder during a hard workout - it's to keep you in check during a lower intensity workout. Espeically at this time of year, it's easy to find yourself drifting into Zone 3 and training in that dead zone that doesn't do much good right now. Instead, workouts in the winter are predominantly in Zones 1 - 2. A few short bursts of Zone 4 are a good way to keep your legs snappy and sharp here and there but mostly you'll pass the time in Zones 1 - 2 building your aerobic engine to safely handle harder efforts ahead.

The best way to get the most out of heart rate training is to make the connection bewteen heart rate numbers and how your body feels. Paying attention to changes in breathing and the feeling in your legs helps you to become more in tune with how the numbers and feelings correlate. On the bike, get familiar with how different gearings and cadence influence your heart rate. On the run, notice how different stride rates and terrain correspond to heart rate. Making these connections ultimately makes you a better athlete on race day. While racing with a heart rate monitor is not always preferred or feasible, if you can better understand your body's cues in the different zones you can learn to listen during the race and make changes in your effort accordingly.

I'll give you an example of how heart rate monitors are a useful tool for training. The other day, my husband and I were running. The run included Zones 1 - 2 efforts. I was wearing my heart rate monitor and followed it, working into Zone 2 on the hills and coasting down to Zone 1 to recover. My husband, on the other hand, was falling behind. Quite unusual because he is a much faster runner than myself. At one point, we were climbing a hill and he stopped - he said you win. I stopped and asked what he was talking about. He told me he couldn't keep up in Zones 1 - 2, he was in Zone 3.

I thought that was funny because I didn't notice he was wearing a heart rate monitor. I asked him where it was and he said "at home." I asked him how he knew he was in Zone 3 and he said he could tell by his breathing. Now, if you do much running in the cold weather you know that your breathing tends to sound much harder than your heart rate reflects so breathing is not an accurate cue. Another reason why a heart rate monitor is very useful at this time of year.

Not believing that he was in Zone 3 climbing some rolling hills, I decided to do an experiment. I gave my husband my heart rate monitor strap and told him I would wear the watch. When he went into Zone 2 I would tell him and if he approached Zone 3 on any hills I would let him know and we would slow down. He told me the upper limits for his zones and off we went.

A funny thing happened - we started running faster than before. Actually, he did and I kept up while maintaining my zones. And watching his heart rate on the watch I noticed that he wasn't even near the top of his Zone 1. It took a good 15 minutes and a fairly steep hill before he even entered Zone 2. When I told him he finally entered Zone 2 he said "you have to be kidding me." His breathing was not quiet, his legs were feeling it (but this is common at this time of year from cumulative fatigue of lifting or big gear bike work) and was what he would have thought was Zone 3 effort. Not the case.

After a few more miles, we started our cool down. I summed it up for him - according to his heart rate he wasn't even close to touching Zone 3 - at his "hardest" he was off that zone by 10 beats. So he was running as prescribed in Zones 1 - 2. Coincidentally, our pace was 1 minute per mile faster when he had the heart rate monitor on and he wasn't blowing his zones.

The lesson learned is that at this time of year going by perceived exertion is not always consistent. Simply put, it pays to wear your heart rate monitor. It pays to pay attention and learn your body's cues. Because right now you will sound and feel different when you run than you did in the summer. And by learning your body's cues you become a better runner. You start to understand how to make changes to not only increase your heart rate but to bring it down. You become more in control of yourself and the way your body works.

Keep in mind your heart rate will be influenced by several factors; stress levels, hydration, nutrition, overtraining, terrain, temperature, fatigue, interference from power lines and more. By monitoring your heart rate over time and under different conditions, you'll get to the heart of the matter by understanding how your body is responding to the training and also what it needs (rest, hydration, lower intensity, etc.).