Scott Johnston
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Krizz:
The only explanation I can think of for a 15bpm drop in HR is some sort of glitch with the monitor. Did your perceived exertion stay the same during those 3 minute periods as it did on the rest of the test. It seems that even if you exclude those 3 minute drops in HR you would still get no or only a tiny amount of upward HR drift and perhaps the HR average would 160.
If you have been diligently training in Z2 for 3 months since that last outside test it is not at all unlikely that your AeT HR has moved more than 3bpm. If I were you I would start using 165 as the top of Z2 for the next few weeks and then test again.
I hope this helps,
Scott
Thanks for your great question and good luck in your FKT attempt.
Rather than lying in a supine position for your leg raises you might want to try using a slant board or a bench, one end of which is elevated 12 inches or so. This will increase the load on the hip flexors through a range that is more specific to hiking or running. Hanging leg raises are another way to up the ante. While side lying leg raises like clams etc definitely target the glute meds I would try adding in single-leg Romanian Dead Lift as a more running/hiking glute med exercise.
I’ll also ask some other coaches to chime in here.
Scott
Tim:
Thanks for writing in with your very good questions. It is good to have this background and you do sound like someone with a good aerobic training history. It is just that a lot of it was in the higher-intensity zones. You will find even more speed and endurance once you put a better aerobic base under that top-end.
ME: There are many methods you can use to get a good ME training effect. I have tried many over the past 30+ years and all will work. I settled on the Gym ME program you are currently using after having very good results with it for mountain runners. If you are seeing good gains with it I suggest staying with it. It is a bit more load each workout than the original Verk ME with 2x/week. But our ME 1x/week allows more time for running training which I think is still important for its aerobic benefits. Verk’s guys were 800-1500m runners so lower aerobic running volume.
Lastly, congratulations on coming back to running from what could have been career-ending injuries. Keep going.
Scott
Kyle:
What kind of warm-up did you have before they started taking lactate samples? I do not see how we could call AeT 160 since your lactate never stabilized and lower heart rates. It rapidly rose from the get-go. Normally one will call the AeT the point either where LA goes above 2mMol/L or where its initial rise of 1mMol/L occurs.
I strongly suggest you do the HR Drift test as described here: https://evokeendurance.com/our-latest-thinking-on-aerobic-assessment-for-the-mountain-athlete/
Do that test hiking on a treadmill set at 15% and use 135 as the starting HR.
From the chart you have sent 160HR indicates a LA of 3mMol/l. That is well above any definition of AeT. Based on this test I would call AeT 135ish because that is where LA started climbing.
The above comments on this test are null and void if you didn’t have at least a 10min gradual warm-up.
Scott
Adam:
Thanks for writing in and wow! A broken neck! You’re one lucky guy. Understandably, you are struggling to figure out the best path forward. What follows is my best guess. It is not medical advice.
You do not sound like an OverTraining victim however I can’t say this for sure. Continue to track your morning RHR. That is as good as, maybe better than HRV for monitoring recovery state and OTS.
Is your lifestyle contributing to the frequent illnesses? Getting enough sleep, eating well, taking Vitamins D and K2 and cutting all alcohol will all help give your immune system support. I don’t normally see folks with OTS getting sick more often.
Given your self-confessed personality type, it is quite possible that during your illnesses you get rested and well-recovered. This might cause you to come out of the gates too hard when you feel well enough to train. This might in turn cause you to overdo things and drive your immune system into the tank. Your brain remembers what it ‘should’ feel like to train at a normal load, but your body has lost that work capacity during this on-again, off-again thing you’ve had going on. Doing that a few times will keep lowering your base fitness and work capacity.
Whatever the cause, what you are doing is too much for your body right now. You need to be very gentle with yourself and very gradually add training load. Even if this means missing the mountaineering trip in November. You can’t bludgeon yourself into fitness.
I hope this helps a bit and good luck.
ScottGreat conversation. Seth is right on the combo of ME and hill sprints and you, Kevin, have experienced the gains first hand. With reference to Luke Nelson’s ME training before his top ten at the Tor d’Geant 300+km race: Luke did 13 of the gym ME workouts over the course of 16 weeks. Some work and training interruptions always happen. We then shifted to 1x/week of steep uphill intervals for 6 weeks before tapering. We used a hill that Luke has trained on and affectionately named “Stupid Steep” because the average gradient is 35% or so. Each of the 3 reps lasted about 15min when we started which already very close to Luke’s PR on that hill. Each session his time kept improving and by the end he was doing 3 reps all about 2min after than his old one rep PR. I chalk this up to the fact that as the weeks went on the lingering fatigue from the gym ME wore off.
Scott
Ralfm:
Yes, that kind of session is going to be very typical for most people’s Z2 work and it will get the job done.
Scott
Ralf:
If the goal is to improve your aerobic capacity/elevate your AeT then you need to train below your AeT. The drift test tells you whether the STARTING heart rate was at or below your AeT. Your AeT does not drift up during a long ski tour.
Scott
Doug:
Based on what you have said I think you can trust the results of this test. I suspect that your starting HR might have been lower than 130 since HR bounces around a lot. maybe try averaging your HR data for the first 5 or 10 minutes. If you do want to retest I would hold the starting HR for longer to allow it to stabilize.
Scott
As soon as you are rested enough to get back to training I would focus on the ME weighted STEEP uphill carries. This is the surest way to increase your uphill performance. These must be steep to be effective and if you have access to a stair master that will be the best bang for the time spent.
Scott
Adam:
Welcome to the Evoke community. We are glad you found us. That is a pile of good questions and I will do my best to provide answers but most of the answers will of necessity be general in nature.
1) Variation in aerobic assessment results:
As you have grasped temperature affects HR drastically and there is no way I know of to account for the variation with varying temperatures when assigning intensity, especially with swings of 20C.
By ‘indoors’ I assume you mean on a treadmill. While some of the variation in HR to Pace could be due to convective cooling outside, it is also very likely that your treadmill’s speed readings are not accurate and so you are not comparing apple to apples. Only laboratory grade treadmills like the Woodway will provide accuracy and repeatability. This article shows the fix I use https://evokeendurance.com/treadmill-season/
Your “feels like Z3 to me” comment:If it feels like Z3, feels fast and feels relatively hard then it is very likely Z3 (unless fatigue is the cause). Do not become too data driven. You have a very sophisticate built in feedback system in your nervous system. Pay attention to the sensations in your training and try to correlate those to HR in a GENERAL way. We are not machines and so complex that to expect 100% repeatability is unrealistically. From what you say it is possible that your AeT and AnT are quite close together and that is why on some days Zone 2 feels harder than others. Fatigue and recovery status play a big role day to day.
2) Training Methodology
1) Your outline of the plan looks very solid. Best not to get too detailed with this plan, like locking yourself into a weekly schedule 6 weeks out. It is a waste of time to try to get too detailed that far in advance. I like the way you have laid out the areas of focus. The ME work is going to be the vital component that will really pay off in the mountains so before you have at least 8 weeks of a solid ME progression using steep weighted uphills carries. A star machine is ideal for this.
2) Upper body ME should be done in as climbing specific modality as possible. Cranking out hundreds of pull ups is great upper body ME work but doing something like weighted climbing on lower grade routes will probably pay off better. Something like laps in a gym with a weight vest on a grade you can do 10minutes continuous climbing (climb up, climb down) will be a good session for alpine climbing. Rest and repeat. This can be done in conjunction with lower body ME work.
3) ME: If you had a longer time frame then starting with the Gym ME and moving to the weighted steep hikes would be ideal. Give the time you have I would stick with the most specific training which is weighted hikes.
4) You will see gains in ME in the first couple of workouts but getting in at least 8 week will be very helpful, 12 weeks even better.
I hope this helps.
Scott
Hey Brian;
That ‘burn’ associated with a low HR is EXACTLY what you feel when Local Muscular Endurance is the limitation to speed. It is very common to fill this in your quads when running to hiking steeply uphill outside. But the unrelenting nature of the treadmill that keeps you on your toes forces the calves into meeting their endurance limit. If you were doing this same workout on a stair machine you would not feel your calves but your quads as the limiter. If you shifted to hiking at 25% I suspect the burn will shift more to the quads.
Overall this “burn” is a good and appropriate training effect. As long as you are recovering well enough between sessions that you are seeing progress you are doing this correctly.
Keep it up.
Scott
