Monday, August 19, 2013

Getting all Geeky with a Ling Fell Heart Rate Interval Workout

becoming familiar territory - Ling Fell looking over Sale Fell

Tonight's work out was three intervals of ten minutes in zone 4 with 2 minutes recovery.  I decided to run on Ling Fell.  The highest my heart rate should have got to was about 170bpm.  I went slightly over that a few times.  I struggled to keep my heart rate high on the down hill sections and so I turned around and ran up hill to bring my heart rate back up.

The course up and down with the switch backs.  Overall I went to the summit three times

Heart Rate

Four distinct efforts - mostly in zone 4.  The first ten minutes was supposed to be a warm up but as it was the climb up to the summit from the road, this is the part where my heart rate was highest.  You can see in the last effort my heart rate dropping and then rising again when I turned around to go back up the hill.

Heart Rate over Elevation
This diagram shows elevation in green against heart rate.  You can see in green the three times I went to the summit.  Right at the start my heart rate rose to the highest point.  This was as expected as I had climbed for ten minutes.  I had two minutes easy running around the top where my heart rate dropped and then climbed up again as I descended steeply.  I soon worked out that I couldn't maintain zone 4 heart rate on the descent so I turned around and started climbing again.  My heart rate doesn't go quite as high for the second time at the summit.  This is because I was slowing down to bring it down and I had not climbed as far as the original effort.  Again I descended but quickly realised that I would not keep my heart rate high so turned around to climb to the top one last time.  Again, I controlled my speed to keep my heart rate within the desired range.  I rested for two minutes on top (the big drop in heart rate) and then descended steeply.  The jagged descent at the end represents me turning around to climb back up when my heart rate dropped too low.  The heart rate is also jagged at this point reflecting the effort levels.  The last few minutes were an easy recovery and so the heart rate was at a relaxed level.

That's why I love heart rate training.

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