[swiftgoose]

Hi,

I read the book of TFTNA and other resources and got me a plan. I have been following it for almost half a year, with strength training and aerobic training. My aerobic training is mostly inclined treadmill walking at 15%, and hiking, under AeT. I haven’t done a lot of muscular endurance work since I don’t have any upfront trips.

I believe the training has some effect, since my HR dropped from sub 150 to 120 – 130 on the same treadmill at a certain speed and incline. Initially I used HR drift test to estimate my AeT to be 146. I haven’t done a good drift test again, and have been using 146 to guide my intensity. My observed highest HR is 192 and I am 31yo male.

This weekend I tried some higher intensity hikes mostly for fun with friends. The hikes include one at the sea level, 6mi round trip and 2k ft elevation gain, as well as some higher altitude ones, e.g. starting from 10k ft, 5mi round trip and 3k ft elevation gain.

We went fast on the sea level hike, not running but fast walk. My HR was on average 180, even hitting 191 once, consistently during the 1h uphill hike. The HR only dropped to 160+ when the terrain was flat. My legs felt tired. But my breath was purely nasal, and I didn’t need to open my mouth at all. Subjectively I felt my bottleneck was the lower body muscles.

On the higher altitude hikes I saw similar performance. The speed was moderate; the breath was mostly nasal inhaling and oral exhaling. All-out breath when I scrambled. HR was between 140 and 170. And muscle seemed to be the limiting factor again.

I am wondering what this experience tells me about my training.

1. How should I interpret the discrepancy between HR and breath? Ideally if my aerobic capacity are well conditioned I expect easy breath and low HR, but I see fairly easy breath and very high HR. I use a polar h10 to measure; the data seems accurate.
2. Does this mean that muscular endurance is the main limiting factor? If so, that’s expected because I haven’t done it a lot. My understanding is that it’s a shorter term thing, and we arrange it around our big climbing goals. Without a trip, I am just focusing on the high volume aerobic training, and a max strength routine. Is this correct?
3. Related to 2 – these hikes are not “big goals” so the speed doesn’t matter too much to me; I was not slow. But on the other hand I was not super fast compared to friends who don’t follow a structural training plan. Is it expected that with mostly aerobic training we will be better but not much better? Or this exposes something I need to address in my training?

Thanks!

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