[Scott Johnston]

Fred:

Sorry for the late reply.  First let me say that your English is great.  I’ve met native English speakers who cold not put there sentences together so well.  Now on to your question.

Clearly the last test started at too high of of a speed so disregard it.  While it is possible that your aerobic capacity increased in one week, I doubt your AeT would increase very much.  Regardless of the test results if training with 148 as an AeT leaves you quite tired with heavy legs this is too high of a speed/heart rate.  Given your life history I think your choice of  140 as the top of your Zone 2 or AeT is a better place for you to train for the next 6 weeks.  There will be a day sometime after 4 weeks of careful training in the 130-14o range when you notice that you are going faster.  Maybe you will be on a trail you go to frequently and that day you will notice that you are (I’m just making up the number) 2min faster than normal to some land mark.  This is happening because your aerobic capacity has increased and this would be a good time to do another drift test maybe using 145 as the starting HR.  This process takes patience but you will see gains over the months in both pace and HR at AeT.  Don’t try to force the improvement. Let it happen.  If you need to walk on some hills to stay below 140 that is what you must do.  The biggest improvement in aerobic capacity will come from consistency and a high volume of this training.  If your legs are too tired for training too hard you will not be able to achieve either a high volume of consistency.

I hope this helps

Scott