Every Wish That We Put Into Motion.... (comments welcome!)

[Herding_Cats]

Things are all falling apart. I should have expected as much.
Monday nothing

Tuesday did Monday's workout of L4 Chest/Back and then 3mi on the treadmill. HR stayed the lowest it has in awhile, but with a big asterisk. And that was that I had to take 3 quick breaks to fix a too-tight shoe, and deal with DD being up from her nap a lot earlier than expected.

My foot was bothering me a lot more during this run, and it's continued to bother me randomly throughout the week. I can be sitting, doing nothing physical and my heel or achilles will start to throb or burn. My arch, just in front of my heel, feels like it's swollen, or like I stomped on a lego. So I'm back to all of the ice and motrin and stretching. And not doing anything. The last 2 weeks of L4 is hiit-heavy and if I feel like I need to give my foot a week off from running, hiit is definitely out of the question. I might see about getting on the spin bike today just because not working out is getting to me; the cleaning/packing phase of getting ready for vacation is stressful enough without taking away my stress reliever of running and lifting.

This means I won't be costume testing for SS until Monday at the earliest (and we leave for Orlando on Thursday), and I'll be missing out on the heat-acclimation training I was planning on starting 2 days ago.

Looks like it's time to schedule that physical with my doc and see if we can figure out a solution to this nagging issue.

Edit: I just had a possible lightbulb moment. I have been wearing my old 880s (that gave my problems last summer) for the L4 stuff. And I wonder if that shoe just doesn't work for my foot at all and the fact that I've been wearing it for almost 2 months for a lot of jumpy stuff is aggravating my foot. Ugh.

 

[HangWithMerida]

You may be on to something with the shoes. Definitely worth switching them out when you are back to activities. Remember, be gentle with stretching it at this point. It sounds really inflamed. Can’t remember what type of icing you were doing, but rolling the bottom of your foot on a frozen water bottle will give you a good amount of massage/stretching with the icing. I hope it feels better in time for SS!!

 

[Herding_Cats]

2.5 weeks of not doing anything is not helping my mojo, but it does seem to be helping my foot. The first week it sucked that I wasn’t getting any exercise, and then the 2nd week I just didn’t care any more AND was realistically too busy to also cram that into my schedule. Additionally, I quit paying attention to the food plan side of things (didn’t go crazy or anything) and I gained back EVERYTHING I had lost of the last 2 months. In a week. So that’s really frustrating. And also means that I’ve somehow gained almost 15 pounds since August. I will definitely talk to my doc about it when I go in to see her since I feel like putting on that much weight in 6 months while training for 2 marathons.

the big news is that I was offered and accepted the middle school baseball coaching job. Only one other person applied and it sounds like he just rubbed the AD and varsity coach the wrong way. And since I have 9 years of assistant coach experience and know how to do the parent communication side of thing well, the job is mine. It’s basically a 2 month gig, and I have no idea if I’ll be able to shoehorn any running in during the weekdays. I’m contemplating attempting 80DO during nap time (giving my foot more time to heal) since DD will be spending a lot of time in the stroller at practices and games.

and because I definitely need some cuteness after all of that...here is a pic of DD at Epcot yesterday.

 

[DopeyBadger]

the big news is that I was offered and accepted the middle school baseball coaching job.

Congrats!

 

[Herding_Cats]

SS 10k was super fun! That was a really fun course to run (character lines were long enough that we just selfied all of them) and I totally understand why that distance sells out so quickly. My foot/ankle was really bothersome after around the half way point. We still made really good time, stopping for a selfie at all mile markers and for all of the characters (around 1:30....I forgot to stop my watch at the finish and also forgot to turn off auto-pause) considering that I hadn’t run in around 3 weeks and it was huuuumid. We did intervals, unstructured. Basically when it started to feel really hard, effort wise, we took a walk break for a minute or so. Looking at my hr zones from the race though....I feel like maybe I need to prioritize a max hr test when my foot is better amd my schedule isn’t insane (oh wait! That means it will never happen) because there’s no way I ran that much in my max zone. Right? Or maybe that is possible? Idk. Seems suspicious.


Edit: ok so I went back and looked at my previous races and I spent a *lot* of time in zone 5 for those also. So maybe it’s one of the precision/accuracy things. Or maybe I’m in denial about my fitness level.

 

[Herding_Cats]

Also, race weekend sketch:

 

[lookingforsunshine]

because there’s no way I ran that much in my max zone. Right? Or maybe that is possible? Idk.

Mine often looks like that too. My watch says my VO2 Max is bad lol.

 

[Herding_Cats]

Yeah I hover around 39. And I know it's just because I'm a slower runner. And FWIW, the race didn't change my "score" at all, unlike back in January (when I ran outside for the first time in forever) for MW and it went up because it finally had GPS data after 2.5mo of treadmill-only.

 

[GollyGadget]

SS 10k was super fun! That was a really fun course to run (character lines were long enough that we just selfied all of them) and I totally understand why that distance sells out so quickly. My foot/ankle was really bothersome after around the half way point. We still made really good time, stopping for a selfie at all mile markers and for all of the characters (around 1:30....I forgot to stop my watch at the finish and also forgot to turn off auto-pause) considering that I hadn’t run in around 3 weeks and it was huuuumid. We did intervals, unstructured. Basically when it started to feel really hard, effort wise, we took a walk break for a minute or so. Looking at my hr zones from the race though....I feel like maybe I need to prioritize a max hr test when my foot is better amd my schedule isn’t insane (oh wait! That means it will never happen) because there’s no way I ran that much in my max zone. Right? Or maybe that is possible? Idk. Seems suspicious.
View attachment 659783

Edit: ok so I went back and looked at my previous races and I spent a *lot* of time in zone 5 for those also. So maybe it’s one of the precision/accuracy things. Or maybe I’m in denial about my fitness level.

I just updated my garmin heart rate zones to use heart rate reserve instead of max heart rate. I haven’t raced since but it seems to align a lot better to how the training runs feel. Do you know which you are using?

Looking back at the half in January, my heart rate was pretty steady the entire race with a slight steady increase. It was also classified a zone 5 for 86% of the run.

All of this is to say, I have no idea if it’s accurate. Based on the description of zone 5, it doesn’t sound feasible but I see the same thing. If I remember, I’ll report back after my race in a few weeks to see if the change to hrr made a difference.

 

[Herding_Cats]

I just updated my garmin heart rate zones to use heart rate reserve instead of max heart rate. I haven’t raced since but it seems to align a lot better to how the training runs feel. Do you know which you are using?

Looking back at the half in January, my heart rate was pretty steady the entire race with a slight steady increase. It was also classified a zone 5 for 86% of the run.

All of this is to say, I have no idea if it’s accurate. Based on the description of zone 5, it doesn’t sound feasible but I see the same thing. If I remember, I’ll report back after my race in a few weeks to see if the change to hrr made a difference.

I'm just using whatever the factory settings are with my garmin, which is likely 220 - age. And then the % ranges.

I will say that never felt like I couldn't talk/breathe, or that I was gasping for air, but I could *feel* that it was a lot higher effort (miles 1 and 2 were just over 13:00 pace, which was about the fastest I wanted to go) because SIL is quite a bit faster than I am, and I was trying to find the balance between not dying and not going too slow for her. And when I would check my watch when things felt difficult, my HR was reading over 180. We went slower as the race progressed and more characters/photo ops/water stations presented themselves, but even with all of the walking breaks, I was surprised to see 167 for avg HR, and a max of 188.


ACTUALLY, the numbers are really similar to when I did my simulated half back in August on a day where the weather was similar (T+D is pretty close to that 3.5% mark for both runs) and I felt like I was absolutely DYING on that run.

 

[DopeyBadger]

I'm just using whatever the factory settings are with my garmin, which is likely 220 - age. And then the % ranges.

It's highly unlikely you're running in Zone 5 for that long. That's the anaerobic/maximal area, and isn't sustained for all that long. The zones are likely off because your HR max is higher than the factory settings.

-Go to Activities on desktop Garmin Connect
-Click the run icon
-On the far right you'll see what looks like three switches at the end of the columns "edit activity metrics"
-Click and drag "Max HR" to replace one of the other options.
-Sort runs by "Max HR"
-View each activity and look for the occurrence of the max HR. Was it a random spike (therefore likely erroneous) or a buildup and then down during a time which should have seen a buildup. If so, then use this value as your max HR instead of the factory value. You'll probably find a handful of runs in the same area as the max run, and most likely during 5k/10k or extremely hard training runs.

ETA - Only use data from your current watch/setup (like HR strap). Data from old devices is irrelevant.

 

[Herding_Cats]

It's highly unlikely you're running in Zone 5 for that long. That's the anaerobic/maximal area, and isn't sustained for all that long. The zones are likely off because your HR max is higher than the factory settings.

-Go to Activities on desktop Garmin Connect
-Click the run icon
-On the far right you'll see what looks like three switches at the end of the columns "edit activity metrics"
-Click and drag "Max HR" to replace one of the other options.
-Sort runs by "Max HR"
-View each activity and look for the occurrence of the max HR. Was it a random spike (therefore likely erroneous) or a buildup and then down during a time which should have seen a buildup. If so, then use this value as your max HR instead of the factory value. You'll probably find a handful of runs in the same area as the max run, and most likely during 5k/10k or extremely hard training runs.

ETA - Only use data from your current watch/setup (like HR strap). Data from old devices is irrelevant.

OK, so when I do that I have a couple of runs in the 200bpm area that I can toss out because they are weird spikes. But then I have 3 or 4 that are in the 188-194 range that don't look like anomalies. I have done *very few* hard runs in the past year since it was mostly marathon prep. So given all that, do I go in on my phone and just change that "max heart rate" box to 194? (188? 191 to split the difference?) and then everything else just auto-populates I see. Will this back-date all of my other runs and adjust the time-in-zone?

 

[GollyGadget]

OK, so when I do that I have a couple of runs in the 200bpm area that I can toss out because they are weird spikes. But then I have 3 or 4 that are in the 188-194 range that don't look like anomalies. I have done *very few* hard runs in the past year since it was mostly marathon prep. So given all that, do I go in on my phone and just change that "max heart rate" box to 194? (188? 191 to split the difference?) and then everything else just auto-populates I see. Will this back-date all of my other runs and adjust the time-in-zone?

Since it's a max, I would enter 194 as that is the max value you're seeing.

No, it will not back-date. It will just adjust on future runs.

 

[MissLiss279]

Does it ever look like your HR is matching your cadence? Mine gets into cadence lock occasionally, and then it throws of the training status because it thinks I’ve been a high HR.

 

[Herding_Cats]

Does it ever look like your HR is matching your cadence? Mine gets into cadence lock occasionally, and then it throws of the training status because it thinks I’ve been a high HZ.

When I was running in my FR35, it was occasionally doing that, which is one of the reasons I upgraded to my current vivoactive 4. I did overlay the elevation on my HR graphs, and what I was finding was that the big peaks for HR were on/directly after hills, and were always followed by a walk break where I see my HR come back down.

 

[DopeyBadger]

OK, so when I do that I have a couple of runs in the 200bpm area that I can toss out because they are weird spikes.

As long as they're weird spikes because I do know of two people with maxHRs in the 210-220 area. I also know a runner with a maxHR in the 145 area. All sorts of maxHR values out there. These are on the extremes, but whose to say you aren't there as well.

 

[Herding_Cats]

This was my first half (which ended up being a lot of trail running that I wasn't prepared fully for, and after taking 2 weeks off when i first messed up my ankle. That first spike over the 200 line is 205bpm, and the 2nd spike near the end is 212. This was with my older watch (FR35.) They last for just a few seconds before dropping back down in the 180s/190s. Which makes me think I should not trust those spikes.





This is the simulated half I did on what ended up being a hot and humid August day (T+D was over 150 by the end), and that peak in the middle is 198 (on my current watch.)




And this is the 5k I ran last July. The first pair of bumps are 186 and 189 (yay for a big hill!), and the peak at the end is 194. Also on my current watch.


And the Turkey Trot I did (that I wasn't supposed to race but kind of did in the 2nd half) peaked at 192.

 

[DopeyBadger]

And this is the 5k I ran last July. The first pair of bumps are 186 and 189 (yay for a big hill!), and the peak at the end is 194. Also on my current watch.

194 looks like the value to use.

 

[Herding_Cats]

In other news, the Sleeping Bear marathon that I ran last year had registration open on the 1st. And this year's shirt and medal look SO GOOD. I like them even more than last year's. (If anyone is looking for a destination race, and you also like wine and microbreweries, this is a good race to come run. Just make sure you train for hills.) And of course, that day is the same day my oldest 2 have a XC meet that's 2.5 hours away. Last year DH and I didn't go (because I was running the full and he was running the 5k, had a wedding to attend that night, and spending 5 hours in the car for DS to run a 20min race wasn't gonna happen) but I don't know that skipping it will be an option again this year. Otherwise I'd already be signed up for the half.

 

[HangWithMerida]

Re: HR zones. I really should make these adjustments for mine too. I sort of mentally adjust mine because I noticed that I was spending most of my time in zone 4 or 5 even on very easy efforts and that zone 3 was practically nonexistent for me, and it wasn't consistent with my perceived effort. This past year of purposefully slowing down shifted my zone4:zone 5 ratio closer to 50:50 for long runs and pace runs and I can get a little zone 3 on easy runs if it is cool out. The second it gets into the 70's, boom, zone 5 like crazy. The mental adjustments are definitely not accurate but I also largely run and race on perceived exertion unless I have a target pace for a workout.

edit: I finally sat down and edited the zones on garmin connect. It had my max HR about 10 bpm lower than my actual max. I expect that will adjust the zone 4 to 5 ratio to be closer to what I actually feel.