Another week, another 5k personal best

Someone told me that personal bests are like buses - you wait for one, and then three come along simultaneously.

That gave me some comfort when I hadn't had a PB in over two years of running... But a bit of weight loss and a bit more training has helped me to get EIGHT PB's in a row!!

My previous 5k PB before the summer was 29:14, set way back in March 2008.

After the summer, I started losing weight and getting fitter, and within 7 weeks of getting back from vacation, I got my first PB in over a year - 28:30. Wow I was chuffed with myself!

The next week I took another 17 seconds off, then 14, then 24, then 12, then 8, then 0 (we'll come back to that...), then 11, and last week I took another 25 seconds off the Fat Runner's 5k PB time to get to 26:56 - quite a drop in only eight weeks!

So, should I count the 'same time' result from 17 October as a PB? The reason I am doing so is as follows. The batteries in my Garmin Forerunner died within a few minutes so I had no idea how fast I was running. If I'd known that I was destined for the exact same time as I'd run the week before, then I'd definitely have pushed just a little more to get another second off... Is that fair?

We'll see how next week goes. Another PB may be tricky for two reasons.

Firstly, I took 25 seconds off last week, so I think that I was right at the limit of what I was capable of.

Secondly, I've got a sore achilles tendon 3 days after the run which might not fix in time, and I'm certainly not running on it this week so I'll be relying on gym work, swimming and cycling for any fitness gains this week.

Other news - as well as the half marathon I'll be doing in March next year (by the way - I'm still very eager for sponsorship - please support me!), I'm also signed up for a triathlon in May. Am I mad? Possibly...

Ups and downs...

In this post, read:

1. How I got on at last weekend's Wimbledon Common Time Trial


2. Current success at asking people to sponsor me for the Silverstone Half Marathon


3. Recent weight loss progress

Wimbledon Common Time Trial
Another personal best! Admittedly, this time by only 8 seconds, but it's still a PB! And not bad given I'd had far too many glasses of wine the night before and I was very close to decided to have a lie-in on Saturday morning. So that's five personal bests in five weeks!

Sponsorship for Silverstone Half Marathon
So far, two fellow bloggers have been kind enough to sponsor me. Very kind, in fact, as they've never met me. And in fact, the first email I have ever received from the Virtual Runner was to say that he had sponsored me - what a star!
I'm still hoping for a lot more sponsorship, however. And any amount is helpful. Remember it's going to help children around the world. Give up your Starbucks for a day and sponsor me instead! The world's children and your waistline will thank you!

Recent weight loss progress
Not such a good story here unfortunately... I think I might have hit a weight loss plateau and I'm losing minimal amounts of weight per week at the moment.
I think, however, I know the reasons:

1. Looking back at my exercise diary, I have not been working out as regularly as I was when I started this weight loss push a few months ago - time to get back to 5 sessions a week!


2. I've also let myself start drinking again - not a lot, but I think it's still having an effect. And not just with the calories in the drink - I think it also has had an effect on the amount I've been working out, as well as the amount/type of food I've been eating


3. Finally, I'm not eating as well as I used to. I'm still following Intermittent Fasting, but when I do eat, I'm not eating anywhere near as healthily as I was. Not helped by the fact that my wife had two birthday parties in the last week, both with three different cakes...

So, I'm going to have a good week this week - working out Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, not drinking and getting back to the good way of eating I used to. I even made a large ratatouille last night which will be my vegetables for the next week or so.
Let's see if I can break this plateau!!

Fat Runner gets another 5k personal best

Personal bests are always a great feeling for a runner - knowing that you've never run faster than before gives you a great sense of achievement, knowing that your hard training is paying off in better performance.

Personal bests also might make you think that you've started a trend, and that your time might continue to drop.

I'm feeling great for both of these reasons, because in the last four weeks of the 5k Wimbledon Common time trial, I've achieved FOUR personal best times!!

• Previous PB (set on 8th March 2008): 29:14


• 12th September 2009: 28:30


• 19th September 2009: 28:16


• 26th September 2009: 27:52


• 3rd October 2009: 27:40

As I mentioned in this post about my first 5k personal best, I think that there are five things which are making a difference.

• I'm lighter - now down to around 93kg - read my Intermittent Fasting story here


• I'm stronger - from using Turbulence Training


• I'm getting more mid-week runs in


• I'm doing more speed work/intervals in my training


• I'm concentrating a lot on technique

Just as a bit of fun, I've drawn a correlation between my weight and my time - here it is...



And running through Excel's statistical tools lets me know that, if weight is a good predictor of time, then the following equation holds true:

T=-7.8 + 0.38 x W

Where:
T = time in minutes
W = weight in kilograms

Therefore, at my target weight of 85 kg (which I think I should hit by the end of November), my 5k time should be around 24:45, which I think will be very respectable...

That would put me at just around half way up (or down) the field at the 5k time trial, and would give me an age-graded performance of 53%.

Apparently, "local class" athletes should have age-graded performances of around 60%, which would mean a 22:06 5k time. Right now, that feels very much out of my grasp, but who knows?

Anyway, while all of this talk of personal best times is very exciting, and the "predictions" are fun, there is a downside... What if I don't achieve another PB next Saturday? It will be the first Saturday in a while that I haven't been able to come back and tell my wife that I've achieved a personal best... She's already said that I should text her on the way back if I don't get a PB so that she can get out of the house...

5K personal best for The Fat Runner

Another week, another 5k personal best!! This time, down to 28:16 at the Wimbledon Common Time Trial.

While I know that I'm not troubling the front-runners, this is quite major for me.

I've been running for a few years now, and up until a few weeks ago, I only succeeded in maintaining my (slow) pace - I wasn't getting any quicker at all. Very annoying!

So what is different this time?

Well I'm gradually getting lighter through intermittent fasting (based on the Eat Stop Eat book) than I used to be - which must help.

I'm doing more strength training to improve my core strength (using Turbulence Training) which again must help.

I'm also doing a few more mid week runs (well one is more than zero, right?) than I used to.

Finally, my training runs are now made up predominantly of intervals (between 1 and 4 minutes long) to get my body used to running at faster speeds.

All of these things have, I think, contributed to bringing my 5k time down, and therefore I'll continue to do them. Seeing the results of my fitness push, both on the scales as well as on the time clock, is doing wonders for my motivation to keep on going!

Talking of motivation, there's someone I want to mention who also runs at the Wimbledon Common Time Trial (let's call her "X"). She's a little older than I am (according to the website, she sits in the 40-44 year old category) and she's probably a little overweight.

However, since I started running this event, she has always been faster than me (other than last week).

I could never understand it - she's older than I am, she's of the statistically slower sex, she's quite short, and she doesn't "look" fit. So how was it that she was, at times, substantially faster than me?

Well the answer came when I was running alongside her for the first time last week. She sounded like a steam-train she was breathing so hard! So basically I think a big reason for her being as fast as she is, is that she puts a hell of a lot of effort into every 5k she does - really inspirational considering she's nearer the back than the front.

Now, whenever I feel like slowing down or stopping to walk for a bit, I ask myself "Would X slow down or would she keep on going?".

She's a real inspiration (and doesn't know it).

Fat Runner 5k personal best

As promised in Thursday's post, "Lose Weight, Run Faster", here is my update on my 5k performance after losing a little more weight, running a bit more in the week, and thinking much harder about my technique.

Well you'll probably have guessed from the title of this post "Fat Runner 5k personal best" that I managed to run it faster than I've ever run it before!

In fact, I got down to 28:30 - which is a full 50 seconds off last week.

So what was different?

Firstly, I weighed a little less than last week - but only by a kilo or so, so not enough to explain the difference.

Secondly, I think I ate a few more carbs on Friday versus the week before, so perhaps a bit more energy in the muscles?

Thirdly, the training that I'd done in the week hopefully had two effects - getting me to think harder about technique as well as getting my body used to faster speeds (even if I could only sustain them for short distances).

Interestingly, this PB included four short periods (30-45 seconds) of walking which seemed to allow me to keep a much higher pace when I was running - more support for the "run walk run" technique, at least for beginner/unfit runners like me!

Of course, this could all be a bit of a fluke, but I'll be going through the same routine this week to see if I can take any more time off my 5k race time. So, intervals tonight, a longish (or at least longer) run perhaps Wednesday, and hopefully another kilo or more of weight loss...

If I'm lucky next week, I'll break 28 minutes!!

Lose weight, run faster

Intermittent fasting and substantially increasing the amount I do physical exercise has kept allowing me to lose weight - I am now down just over 7kg (around 16 pounds) in just over 4 weeks.

And last week at the Wimbledon Common 5k, I managed to get my time down to 29 mins 20 seconds. That is the second fastest time I've ever run it. The only time I beat that was in March 2008 when I ran 29:14. Unfortunately I don't have a record of what I weighed then, but going back over my training log in Garmin Training Center, it seems that I had been running more than usual for back then, including adding in some long slow runs...

As well as losing weight through intermittent fasting, the other thing I've been looking at recently is improving my running technique to run faster.

Unfortunately running technique is a little like losing weight - no one seems to agree on the best approach!

However, I've found in weight loss that many people will argue about the exact details, rather than just getting on with it and cutting calories. Almost every diet which works relies on calorie reduction in one way or another.

And as far as I can see, much is the same for running. Whether you use the Pose method, or Chi running, or something else, most people seem to agree that good running technique has:

• a fast leg turnover - something in the range of 180 foot strikes per minute


• feet landing under the hips


• landing on the midfoot rather than the heel


• picking the heel up at the end (rather than swinging a straight leg forward

There are plenty of other things I can look at for when I get better/faster, but just focusing on these will be enough for now I think.

The other thing I read was that the way to run faster is to run faster. In other words, practice running faster during your training so that your legs are used to the pace when you want to use it in a race. So that's what I did on Monday night.

Tuesday night was going to be a long slow run, but I think I pushed myself so much on Monday that my legs were absolutely not up to anything more than 5k...

I'll report back next week on how my Saturday 5k race went and whether I've managed to achieve an all-time personal best (rather than just a seasons best)...

I've also put a graph onto my "Losing Weight" page which shows how my weight has come down day by day. It's part motivation for me, but hopefully it's useful to you if you're trying to lose weight so that you can see that intermittent fasting appears to work.

Until next time.

Rapid weight loss success

In my last post which chronicled my own weight loss stories, I mentioned that I'd started on a radical new rapid weight loss regime, and that it was, to date, highly successful.

You may notice that at the top of the right hand column of my blog, I'm now posting my daily weight so that you can keep track of how I'm doing in my weight loss quest.

Also, here is a graph which charts my weight loss over the last three weeks.



So, basically I've lost 5.4kg (12 pounds) of weight in 3 weeks. Given where I want to get to (around 85kg or 185 pounds) that means I'm a third of the way already - and in only three weeks.

How have I been doing it? In essence, it's based on the principles which I identified in my last post which worked for me so well in my teenage years.

• Be active


• Eat less


• Get support

Be active

I have massively increased the amount of activity I do. I used to be lucky (if I'm honest) to get two runs or workouts in each week. Now I'm prioritising my health to the same level as my career success. This means that I'm running the Wimbledon Common Time Trial on a Saturday, having another run on Sunday, and then working out in the office gym two to three days a week. I'm following the principles of Turbulence Training which mean that I get a hell of a lot of exercise done in the gym in a short space of time. The Turbulence Training workouts are different to what I'm used to in three key aspects:

• Supersets. Supersets are combinations of two exercises which you do one after the other without a break. Normally they use different or opposing muscle groups, so that's why you don't need the break. For instance, bench press followed by abdominal crunches. Different muscle groups used, so why do you need a break? You don't. This means I can get through around 30 sets of exercises well within half an hour.



• Compound movements. Turbulence Training focuses on doing exercises which use a lot of different muscle groups at the same time, and also involve moving a lot of weight over a large distance to increase the amount of work you do in the workout - it can be rather intense! For instance, rather than using the hamstring curl machine, it advises doing a Swiss ball hamstring curl or Hungarian deadlifts - both of which force you to use many more muscles than just the hamstrings, and they also force you to stabilise your body through every move (so more of that 'core stability' we're all meant to be getting more of).



• Weights before cardio. I always used to do cardio before weights. Of course, if you want to put maximum effort into the weights, then you should be doing it the other way around. What I do find, however, with this is that the cardio suffers a little. Turbulence Training advises to do hard cardio intervals after the weight training, and sometimes it can be extremely hard to push out the final interval at high intensity, particularly if there have been a lot of leg exercises in the workout.

Overall, however, I'm very happy with Turbulence Training - it has opened my eyes to a lot more free weights exercises and body weight exercises, is very balanced across the major muscle groups, gives me a clear plan of what I'm going to be doing every time I step into the gym, and gets me out of the gym in the shortest amount of time possible.

The guy who wrote Turbulence Training - Craig Ballantyne - has a very good phrase to remember:

You can't out-train a bad diet

So in my next post, I'll cover what I've been doing on the eating front - it's worth reading as it's rather controversial.

Day 1 of three week weight loss challenge

So, after my horrible body fat percentage result, I promised to update you daily on progress towards losing 6kg in 3 weeks.

Day 1
Current weight - 102.7kg
Lost - 0.3kg
Weight to lose - 5.7kg

Plan for weekend (including Monday as it's a public holiday in the UK):

Saturday morning - 5k run, again the excellent Wimbledon Common Time Trial
Sunday morning - 40k bike ride in Richmond Park
Monday - gym session (intervals)

Will try to post my weight over the weekend...

Wimbledon Common - and a free Flip video camera and free ipod

Just a short post today. I found the following clip of the Wimbledon Common Time Trial on youtube today, and thought it would give people who are considering entering an event an appreciation of just how varied the people are who run in these events. Hopefully it'll spur you on to do some yourself!!



Now, for the competitions!!

Over the next couple of days, I'll be announcing a competition for a free ipod and related goodies. If that's not enough for you, I'll also be announcing a competiton for a free Flip video camera! How good is that?

Remember to check back (or even more easily, subscribe to this blog using the links on the right to make sure you don't miss out!

Walking in running races

I think I have the answer to my last question - "Can I walk during races?"

Well Jeff Galloway, proponent of the run walk run system, has answered this exact question in his post If I walk during a marathon am I cheating?

He has some interesting coverage from the marathon in the first modern olympics (1896) which suggests that most if not all of the runners actually walked during the race.

Now the only question is whether I'm going to annoy other runners? Perhaps I'll play it safe and just run next Saturday at the Wimbledon Common 5k.

Walking to faster running times

Sounds counter intuitive doesn't it? If I walk more then my times will be faster?

It puzzled me that my third run of the holiday was so much slower (almost half a minute on a 24 minute run) than my second.

There could be a number of rational explanations for this - different weather, more fatigue etc. etc. But the other difference in the runs was that in my second run, I walked about 25% of the way back to my starting point, whereas in the third run, I decided I was going to run the whole distance.

On my second run, I used the telegraph poles to ration my walking - so I guess it turned into a bit of an interval or fartlek session. I walked to one pole, jogged to the next one, and then ran through the next two before walking again.

I'm not yet convinced that run-walk is necessarily quicker for me (you certainly don't see many people doing it at the Wimbledon Common Time Trial), but this article from Jeff Galloway on Run-Walk seems to suggest it would be quicker by delaying fatigue. It may even be a way of reducing soreness or injury after the run.

So I've got a choice to make today - run-walk, or just run?

Anyone else had experiences of this? What do you think is quicker?

New Year's Resolutions!!!

Wow - doesn't 4 months go fast?

Well that's the last time I posted as The Fat Runner. Since the Nike 10k, the amount of running I did went down sharply. A couple of colds in October, a lot of travelling in November, and then the party season in December, coupled with the dark and cold mornings/nights gave me enough of an excuse to persuade myself that it was ok not to go running.

But now is the time for New Year's Resolutions - time to forget about all of the bad habits and to leave them behind, and think only to what you can do now!!

So, here I declare to the world (well at least the world which reads this blog) to:
a) go to the gym 100 times this year
b) on top of this, run a total of 300 miles
c) on top of this, cycle a total of 1,000 miles

This is actually quite a target to go for, and I'll keep you updated as I go.

But, in the luxury of armchair planning, this is what it might look like:

Monday morning - 7am gym
Tuesday evening - 3 mile run
Thursday morning - 7am gym
Saturday morning - 3 mile run (the Wimbledon Common Time Trial)
Sunday morning - 20 mile bike ride

So this doesn't look impossible. But then I ask myself why I haven't been able to do a schedule like this for the last 5 years or so?

Is work the reason?

No - I used to work just as many hours - perhaps more - in my mid 20's but was still able to get to the gym 3-5 times a week.

Is socialising the reason?

While it is true that I spend more time socialising now than I used to, I can't blame that on my lack of progress on my fitness goals.

Is family life the reason?

Ahhh - perhaps we're on to something here. I LOVE spending time with my wife, and given the choice of going for a run or being with her, then it's too easy to choose the latter. I was having a chat with one of my colleagues about this - his wife is just about to give birth to their second child, and yet he is able to go for a long bike ride and a short bike ride per week, and has the same job as I do. His secret was to specify "Me time" with his wife.

Me time - what's that?

It's time which they both specifically set aside for themselves as individuals - he uses his to go cycling and she uses hers to go to art galleries and museums (she works for an auction house).

So I had a similar conversation with my wife this morning and shared with her the above schedule.

The schedule starts when I get back to London (I'm in Sweden at the moment, it's -5 deg C and too cold to run). I'll let you know how I get on - let's see if I can resist the temptations of my wife!

Happy 2009!

Rapid weight loss

A bit of a funny week this has been... But a good one!

When TFR weighed in before the Wimbledon Common Time Trial 5k, he weighed around 100 kg (Saturday 23rd).

His WCTT run performance was dismal. Although he felt great around the whole course, and overtook a few people on each lap, when the clock finally stopped, it was very much the wrong side of 30 minutes... He was at a complete loss to understand why, although a bit of analysis on the Garmin Training Center software showed why. When compared with other (faster) runs around Wimbledon Common, it became clear that the run felt easy because it WAS easy... Basically, he didn't push himself hard enough - his heart rate was a good 5 beats per minute lower for the duration of the run...

So anyway, 100 kg on the Saturday.

Then his weight started to drop throughout the week, so that only 6 days later, he is weighing 3 kg less!!

So what might be the reasons for this?

1) Venom Hyperdrive!!! Actually, no. He hasn't been taking VH for a long time (and never really took it consistently... He has a stressful enough job without adding further anxiety with caffeine pills and other 'metabolic enhancers' in VH

2) Exercise? Well he's done a bit more this week than normally - a 1.5 hour bike ride (around 20 miles) on Monday, and a 30 minute run around Kensington Gardens on Wednesday evening

3) Diet? Not sure - although his lunch has become healthier (the Pret a Manger chicken salad rather than a big toasted sandwich) he has still been having a few drinks in the evening. In fact, yesterday's intake consisted of the salad, 1.5 bags of crisps, a few cans of diet coke, two slices of ryvita with smoked salmon, some shepherd's pie and two glasses of champagne. Not obvious diet food!!

So he's at a bit of a loss to explain why this is happening, but it has given him the motivation to watch what he eats more closely. In fact, he was in the office canteen this morning, where every friday they provide free sausage and bacon baguettes (and they're good!) but he went for the muesli instead.

The good thing is that he'll be hauling around 3kg less in this weekend's Nike 10k race.

Talking of which, I must be going so I can pick up my race pack!
Sun 99.1
Mon 98.6
Tue 98.2
Wed 97.7
Thu 97.3
Fri 97.1

Disappointment and motivation

Just a short post from The Fat Runner today.

>> Disappointment

I did the Wimbledon Common Time Trial on Saturday and came in at a disappointing 30 mins 1 second. There are no excuses - the groud was good, not too warm or too cold, no rain etc. It's simply down to the fact that I'm not training enough.

>> Motivation

So I've decided (perhaps foolhardedly) to enter the Nike Human Race - the 10k race which is hoping to attract 1 million people around the world. In London, the run will be starting off from Wembley and it's planned for 31/8/08.

Looks like I'll need to get serious about this training as I've only got three weeks to go from a slow 5k runner to a slow 10k runner...

Kensington Gardens run tomorrow morning

Just a quick note to say that now The Fat Runner's plantar fasciitis has cleared up, he's going to be running a very gentle 5k around Kensington Gardens tomorrow at around 0830 to see whether he'll be able to start running the Wimbledon Common Time Trial the next weekend he's in London...

If you're around, then he'll be the one wearing all black... And running slowly...

Plantar Fasciitis - a pain in the ****

Any runner who has had plantar fasciitis knows what a pain it can be - in practice, a pain under the heel.

Plantar Fasciitis is "a painful inflammatory condition caused by excessive wear to the plantar fascia of the foot or biomechanical faults that cause abnormal pronation of the foot" (Source: Wikipedia)

The Fat Runner has had plantar fasciitis before - about three years ago when he decided to run to work and back from work the same day - far more than he'd run before - and this is what set it off. And it took a few weeks to recover from.

So what is it - basically, it feels like excruciating pain on the bottom of the heel - and can spread forwards along the botto of the foot to the end of the long bones in the foot. At its worst, it is almost impossible to walk. And it's worst in the early morning when you've been off your feet for a while.

TFR knew that he'd picked up a little plantar fasciitis a few weeks ago, but decided anyway to do the Wimbledon Common Time Trial last Saturday. 1k in and he was feeling ok. 2k in and he was feeling much better. By 3k, however, he thought he should pull out, which is what he did.

And as soon as he had got back to the car, it was clear that he should have pulled out much earlier. It's now Thursday, and TFR can just about walk - slowly, and with a hobble, but at least he can walk.

He's heard some horror stories about PF taking over 2 years to fix, so he wanted to make sure his rehab was planned immediately - so what has he been doing?

1) Stretches.

He met someone at the WCTT who had also had it (and who advised him not to run...) He said that twice-daily stretches of the foot (toes on a stair and drop the heel as far as possible) worked for him within a month or so.

2) Icing

As with most injuries, rapid icing is key. So he filled a drinks bottle with water and dropped it into the freezer. He was then able to roll the bottle under his foot to provide at least some cooling benefit to his foot.

TFR has never been so injured as he has been by running over the last 6-8 months - but please stick with him - he's hoping, once this is over, to be injury free for the rest of the year!

You can find out more about Plantar Fasciitis by clicking on the link.

Personal Best at WCTT!

TFR has set a personal best at the Wimbledon Common Time Trial.

Okay, so he still didn't prepare particularly well for it. He had drinks with a client on Friday night, and then a few glasses of wine with his wife later on.

He felt a little shaky when he woke up, and if it weren't for his friend coming around to pick him up at 0815 that morning, he might have decided not to go.

But he did so anway. The first lap went actually rather well. Lots of people overtaking him, but he stuck to his pace and felt able to push a little in the second lap. In fact, in the last 400 metres he was able to pass four people. One girl he passed literally metres from the line. The picture on the WCTT website shows that she wasn't too happy...

So, his new PB for the WCTT is 29:14. And he is very happy that finally he has broken the time he set way back last year when he first ran the WCTT.

So why does he think he did well. He thinks that a lot of it is down to the Long Slow Run. That relatively monotonous run which seems to go for ever and seems to be so sloooooowww. But it's that which builds fitness, burns calories, improves technique, and gets the body ready to run shorter distances with more effort.

So from now on, TFR is making sure that he builds a LSR into every week - and he suggests that you do the same if you're not already doing it!

TFR may not run the WCTT next week as he is likely to be in France - he's seeing whether he can take the first flight back in the morning and still get there in time...

Running on alcohol

Stupid fat runner.

He once again ran the excellent Wimbledon Common Time Trial last Saturday.

The only problem was that Friday was a bit of a big night.

Drinks with his team - 4 bottles of Becks
Pre-dinner drinks at a work recruiting event - 3 glasses of champagne
Drinks with dinner - 4 glasses of wine

He went to bed, feeling fine, and woke up feeling equally fine.

He even woke up early (after having a dream that he had woken up late and missed the run!)

He set the virtual trainer on his Garmin Forerunner to match the pace he ran last time.

He set off, although very rapidly found that he was working very hard to keep up with the pace he ran last time, despite the fact that the last time he ran, the first lap was at a very slow and comfortable pace.

So he gave up.

And has promised he will never be drinking that much on the night before a race.

He was very annoyed, particularly since he had trained during the week as well as at the weekend and was feeling that he could have gone for a PB.

Oh well, there's always next week!

Win some, lose some

As you know, The Fat Runner had a surprise last week - that his heart rate when running was able to get up to 196bpm - much higher than predicted by the many maximum heart rate formulae. This appears to prove one thing - that the maximum heart rate formulae are entirely useless when trying to understand the level at which you should be exercising.

So armed with this new information, as well as a quick look at the Runners World website to understand the ranges he should be working in, TFR headed out for the weekly Wimbledon Common Time Trial.

The Runners World website suggested that someone with a resting heart rate of 60bpm, and a maximum of 196bpm, should be running a 10k at 176-182bpm.

This seemed rather rapid, so TFR backed off a little from these figures, aiming for a heart rate of around 170-175bpm on the first lap and 175-180bpm on the second lap.

Well it seems to have gone rather well! He ran what felt like a very comfortable first lap and then was able to push a bit harder in the second lap (instead of hanging on desperately which is what he normally does).

He'll definitely be following these heart rate guides into his next race.

Now, the final sprint....

Again, his heart rate peaked in the mid 190s (so proving that the result last week was not spurious), but unfortunately when he tried to put in a second kick for the line, one of the muscles in his hamstring gave way (an obvious rip) so we'll have to see if he turns out next week or not.

Next time you hear from TFR, he'll tell you all about hamstring strain repair!!!

Maximum heart rate research

I've oone a little research into maximum heart rates (given TFR's recent run), but the overall conclusion is that these maximum heart rate calculators are entirely useless.

So let's go through them:

Basic formula: 200-age
Londeree and Moeschberger (1982): 206.3-(0.711 x age)
Miller et al (1993): 217-(0.85 x age)
USA researchers (2007): 206.9-(0.67 x age)
UK reseachers (2007): 202-(0.55 x age) for male athletes

Now applying each of these formulae for maximum heart rate to TFR's age gives a maximum heart rate of 182 (Londeree and Moeschberger) to 188 (Miller et al). Nothing like the 196 that TFR recorded on his latest run.

By the way, TFR has downloaded his heart rate from his Garmin Forerunner 305 to check whether this was a spike reading or not. The sad reading is that it wasn't a spike - his heart rate gradually crept up to this level as he sprinted for the finish...

In some ways, however, this is good news!

Now that TFR knows that his maximum heart rate is very different to that predicted by a formula, he can work out what his real heart rate training areas should be! More on that in the next post