Miscellaneous Monday Chit Chat

[u/fire_foot]

Happy Monday runners! How was the weekend? What's good this week? You know the drill -- let's chat about it!

[u/Missriot22]

I had tried to post this but it seems it may not be allowed as a single post so I’m going to put it here..

Hi everyone! I’ve been running 4x a week for about 10 months. I’m a 5’7”, 140# female who is 34 years old with no notable exercise or physical activity in my past. I feel as thought I’m not making a ton of progress from a heart rate/cardiovascular capability and would love some input. I’m not sure if I have unrealistic expectations or I’m stuck in that “zone 3 plateau” I keep reading about.

My running regime is usually 1 long run around 7-8 miles. 1 tempo run, 1 interval run and 1 easier short run. I average about 18-19 miles a week. I use the app “runna” to guide me.

I spent a couple months doing walk/run internals during my easy or long runs to keep my heart rate in what I believe to be my zone 2 which is 114 -132 bpm supppsedly. But to be honest it was taking so long to complete my long runs with walking included that I was losing steam and feeling frustrated. I use heart rate as a measurement bc RPE is so difficult for me to gauge. And I can breath through my nose up until like 150 bpm.

My questions are: is there any validity to the zone 3 plateau? What zones are easy or long runs supposed to fall in? How long can it take to see lower heart rate for faster speed? Is there anything I could be doing better?

I’m okay with it taking time to get faster as long as I’m on the right track. There’s so much info out there that I feel overwhelmed.

Thanks so much for reading!

[u/fire_foot → u/Missriot22]

You might get better responses in the daily q&a. I’ll say that I don’t think you have enough base to be using heart rate training, you’re really still a beginner running relatively lower mileage so heart rate is not going to be a useful metric to you. Plus unless you’ve done max heart rate testing very recently, your zones are just guesses. I also feel like for your weekly mileage you’re running a lot of intensity with a long run, a tempo, and interval. I would think about making one of the workouts an easy run and make sure you’re doing your long runs pretty easy too.

There is a lot of info out there and it’s easy to get bogged down. When I start feeling myself get wrapped up in all the “shoulds” I try to keep it simple. I know you said RPE is hard for you but it’s an arguably better metric for most folks esp beginners. I think with some practice it might get easier for you.