Building a Base

I only have two more workouts and a 5k before I start focusing on building up my aerobic base. I've done some reading on low heart rate training and I've decided that's how I'm going to try and build my base up. I'll link to a couple of articles at the end of this post that have really given me a lot of very good information and convinced me that this is the right way to do things (if you're short on time you'd be better off skipping to the end and following them). They recommend during a couple base building sessions a year of 8-12 weeks. But since I'm so out of shape that's all I'm going to do for the rest of the year before I start training hard next year.

Basically what it entails is running all of your miles at a pace that keeps your heart rate low. The formula is 180-age, but there is some tweaking depending on your level of fitness. I won't be doing any tweaking so the max for my heart rate will be 155. I'm going to set my the top of my zone at 150 though so I can slow down before I get over my limit. Right now my average pace is 11:40 at a heart rate of 140. I know that's under my target but if I try much harder than that my heart rate seems to jump up into the high 150s. My run this last Sunday went really well though, I'm guessing my average heart rate was 145-147 but I ran a pace of 10:36 for three miles. I can only guess what my heart rate was though because of a little issue I had with my watch (more on that shortly). So hopefully that wasn't a fluke and I am starting to be able to run faster at a similar heart rate.

Follow the links below because they really do give a lot of very good information and what I type here won't even come close to doing them justice, but I'll try anyway. What's going on is that by keeping your heart rate low you are building your aerobic base. They say that the 5k is 95% aerobic and the marathon 99%. When you have a big aerobic base you are able to maintain your pace for a longer period of time. If you want to know if you have an issue with your aerobic base you can use a running calculator like, McMillan's, to see if your race times have a relationship similar to what they predict. If not then it's likely that you need to work on building your base.

Something that I have experienced so far in doing this is that at first it really sucks (great selling point huh?). It is really hard to run as slow as they say I should. During the second half of my runs I have to walk up hills to keep my heart rate where it should be, and walking hurts the pride a little bit. I've comments from quite a few people who have experienced the same thing but they insist that it does get better. So I'm going to spend the next 5 months or so running extremely slowly in hopes that I will have a very big base built up before I start doing speed work again. I'll be sure to keep you posted on how it goes.

Here are the links
Want Speed? Slow Down! by Dr. Philip Maffetone - This is the article that convinced me to give this type of training a shot. If you are going to follow any of these links follow this one. If it doesn't peak your interest then this probably isn't the training for you.
Low Heart Rate training FAQ by formationflier - He has put together a very good FAQ that has answered a lot of questions that I've had since I first read about this.
Low HR Training group on RunningAHEAD - This is a group of runnings that are currently doing low heart rate training, some of them have been doing it for years. They seem more than willing to help people out by answering questions and giving advice. I'll be joining the group late this week, so far I've just been lurking around there.