Monday 17th and a lazy 5 miles around the burrow... or so I thought... Remember I spoke of the Garmin and all its wonderful and super essential information that it provides you while you run. Things like how many steps I took and my average number of steps per km.... Well today I thought , just because I could, I would put on the heart rate monitor and use the threshold limits. This was set to my height, weight and age.Well of I set content in the knowledge that I am getting a little fitter and can actually talk aloud to myself without collapsing. Next thing my Garmin is beeping at me. According to the limits I was about to flat line.... Now I know that at the present time my fitness levels are far below what they are capable of and where they should be given my genuine love of the sport. But seriously I was not about to slow to a walk to keep the Garmin happy.
Choosing to ignore the alarm I continued on my easy run, according to me and not the Garmin. Again here lies the problem. I understand the science behind the threshold limits , I get the point of working at the various levels of heart rate to achieve the desired outcomes but seriously I was more than happy to run along at a pace that was around the 7 minute mile pace. Its not fast , its around 4m20s a km and it was not going to kill me... Eventually the alarm settled and my heart rate dropped. When I checked again it had dropped to the point of stopping, no reading " Shit I am now dead" or so I thought... With a bit of wriggling the chest band settled and got a connection again and things were good however my heart rate had increased from the stress of thinking I was dead so the bloody alarm was going off again.
I know that Lance Armstrong swears by the numbers in terms of his training (from what I have read as I have never actually met the guy , would love to but highly unlikely it will happen) but my run was becoming a genuine pain in the arse.
My heart rate did eventually settle well it felt like it had as I was now running with the heart rate monitor in my hand and just to really annoy the Garmin I worked the hill because I could.
I finished the run moving slightly quicker that 6m45s/mile in the final stages happy in the knowledge that I am actually getting fitter.
I should apologise to Garmin, the watch is a bloody good watch in that it gives me the session splits and I can program all the other sessions into it but I can do without the digital telling me I am going to flatline and slow down. I mean really if your in a race to you really slow down because its a little bit uncomfortable.NOOO.... Do you ease off just before you reach the finish line because you are above threshold NOOOO... you show your wombat and dig deeper....
Like Trailblazer said in one of his comments his coach gave him a hard time for looking at his watch. In actual fact I only wore a watch for training to record my total time and interval session I never used to race with one until I started racing the marathon. I still question myself over this as I often wonder about the watch actually causing you to hold back if you see that you well into pb territory...
See you out there people...
Barrel on wombats...
:-) *ROFL* Gotta be careful not to wake up my kids with late night laughing...Seriously Garmin needs to have a Wombat threshold option. Basically the way I envisage wombat threshold working is that if your heart rate goes below 170 it gives you a little shock and says "speed up you soft loser"...the upper limit could be say 210 beats per minute, and it could squirt some water from the watch at the neck, and say "just a little bit faster now and a tour of a hospital could be yours...."...
ReplyDeleteInteresting thinking about the whole watch debate. I guess what my coach is getting at is anything that distracts you from attacking in a fullblooded manner, anything that gets in the way of pushing your limits, and being 100% focused on doing that for optimal time while racing, is an obstacle to better times...